Sometimes you feel like you were especially called and chosen.  For a specific task, or moment in time.  I felt like that upon arriving back home from a trip one February afternoon. 

Ever had that sinking feeling in your gut when you just know something bad is going to happen, or has just happened? Yeah, me too. 

Ah…..bread.  Who doesn’t love bread?  And better yet, fresh hot, homemade bread.  There are certain things in life that truly evoke that feeling of home.  Of connection, comfort.  Safety, abundance. 

Have you ever had the feeling like you were stuck and you couldn’t move forward?  Well, have I got a story for you!  Sometimes you get to doing life, and you think, “I’m making some really good choices right now.”  And then the universe sends you a reminder that “no, you need a curveball right about now.”

When we added a kitchen garden to our homestead, we knew that we needed a steady, reliable source of water.  And lots of it.  Enter the experience of having a pond.   Digging out the pond was an interesting adventure all in itself.  We situated it across from the garden, and laid a pipe through the adjacent wall so that we could hook up a hose and use that water for the garden.  Oh yes, all that good fish emulsion (the word we use instead of fish poop) fertilizes the garden quite nicely. 

Have you ever heard that chickens are the gateway drug for Homesteaders?  Well, it’s true from my experience.  We always planned on having chickens here on the farm.  My husband found some plans online to build our own coop.  It was super cute.  Not practical, but cute.  And he built it out of ¾” plywood.  So, it was extremely heavy (as in when we needed to expand into something more, it was hard to even move it). 

Living here in the verdant hills of Kentucky, we knew that we wanted to implement as many off-grid elements as we could here.  A cistern can be very helpful to that end, once you have spent a bazillion dollars to drill a water well.  We researched and ordered a 3,000 gallon tank. 

Now I’ve taken road trips before, and have driven along the highway where the fields were all rolled up dotted with haybales.  Conceptually I understood that something agricultural had been done.  But I really had no idea what “hay” was.  Nobody wants to sound like an out-of-town greenie.  So, when we had these discussions about the fields, I kept using the word “hay” like I knew what it was.  Secretly I was googling to discover that hay is just grasses that grow in fields.  Translation…I didn’t have to plant hay.  It was going to grow.  And somebody wanted it and could use it. 

When we first moved to Kentucky, it was such a shock to our systems.  Everything was new, different.  Different doesn’t mean bad.  It just means different.  And I lament that you can only experience a “first” one time.  Because of course, the next time you experience that thing, now you’ve seen it before. 

Let’s just admit it.  I hate weed barrier fabric!

Garden cloth, landscape fabric, whatever you call it, I call it “broken promises.”  This product is something you purchase with the hope that it will do as advertised.  But alas, it is only a temporary stunting of the indominable weed.  In fact, I’m convinced that what it actually does, is create the perfect firm foundation for those relentless tiny weed seeds to anchor their roots to.  Try pulling the weeds that will now grow directly out of or on top of that cloth.  Mighty hard.  

I’ve always enjoyed reading Homesteading stories as they tend to deliver a heaping helping of “you gotta hear this” and “say what?!?” and “oh, no you didn’t!”  Real life happening here.  And I do love to tell a story, but some of this stuff I don’t even think I could make up.