city girl

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.

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.

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!