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So how did a girl who grew up in Dallas, Texas become a homesteader in Southwestern Colorado?
Well, it’s a long story.
My husband and I were married in 1999. We had both grown up in the suburbs.
Shortly after we were married, my husband entered pharmacy school. While he went to school for 4 years, I stayed home with the first of 3 children.
After he graduated, he got a job with the Indian Health Service. Our little family moved to the four corners area. 16 hours away from our closest immediate family was a big change. We made friends quickly and decided we could make a home here.
As the kids grew, we started getting interested in eating cleaner and using more natural products in our home. We started a garden and learned how to can our own food.
We live in a rural community, where we learned from other homemakers and farmers the skills we never learned in the city.
Neither of our families canned food or raised animals. Moving to the country made these activities more appealing and easy to learn. My mom did have a small garden when I was growing up, so I knew I wanted to have one too.
What is a Homesteader?
In history, homesteaders were people that earned free land from the government by taming the wilderness and making homes out on the open prairie. These families experienced incredible hardships from the land, wild animals and native tensions.
In the modern day, homesteaders are people that use the land they have (one acre or 100 acres) to grow their own food and raise animals to feed their families. They use modern conveniences and time tested techniques to become self-sufficient stewards of their land.
We have become homesteaders so that we can learn skills to help our family become partially self-sufficient. With our 4 acre homestead, we strive to use our resources wisely and frugally. We hope to teach our children to work hard and that sometimes the old ways are the best.
What kind of Homesteader are You?
Take our quiz in the box below and you will find out if homesteading life is right for you!
So that is our why-what’s yours? Please leave a comment and tell us what got you started with homesteading or why you have recently become interested in this lifestyle.
And if you found this post helpful, please share. Thanks!
Hello, im.new to this grew up right out side of Chicago. If always felt the need to grow stuff. Now that I’m a stay at home mom I want to embrace and learn homesteading. It’s gonna be a.bit of a challenge do to living in florida and is Sandy soil. But I’m ready to try we move in two months I I will begin then. Any tips are always welcomed and helpful
Welcome to homesteading! It is a great lifestyle. I think you will love it! You can homestead no matter where you live. In fact, if you would like I have an email course with that name that you can sign up for free that will help you find ways to homestead no matter your location. Just look in the side or bottom of the page to sign up. So glad you are here!
Hello, we are a couple who left the small but overpopulated country the Netherlands for some ruins in the South of France 14 yrs ago. Although always being interested in a more natural lifestyle, realizing a small homestead never seemed do-able in the city. Little by little this rural area taught us planting and harvesting, having chicken, canning ducks etc. People here have always been selfsufficient and ready to help eachother. However, three times our chicken were massacred by neighbour dogs so we took a break. But we enlarged our garden and are planning to built a green house in january. Having a very dry climate, 880 gallons saved rainwater is not enough so we want to install a grey water cane basin to pump up the cleaned water for our garden. And rebuilt a dog-proof chicken coop. And have a goat and perhaps rabbits one day. In the mean time I produce my homemade oliveoil washing soap, natural toothpaste and skinproducts and I learn so many other skills from the aged villagers. They love to teach us, we love to learn: win-win for all of us. Life is too short if you start too late: we’ll be 60 in 3 years. But happy to see our homestead grow.
Thank you for sharing your story. Good luck to you and your homesteading adventures.