Writing from the homestead, old articles not so lost in cyberspace.

Since Modern homesteaders will soon be shutting down completely and I have articles that I wrote exclusively for the site, I thought I would share them here so that they do not disappear completely with the site. I feel that with reading these hopefully my readers will get to know me a little better and maybe even encourage a few new people to think outside the big box store. So I will start rereleasing all of my writing to be found here starting today.

It all started on a dirt road.
Let me start by introducing myself. My name is dirtyfeetmaggoo. I grew up in the middle of nowhere, on a dirt road in Oklahoma. As a kid I was encouraged to play outside. This meant climbing trees, digging in the dirt, fishing in the creek and swimming in the lake, and on occasion feeding the neighbors ostriches rocks.  I didn’t realize as a child how much the country life had affected me and stolen my heart. After moving to the city at the age of 13 I discovered that things were much more fast paced living in town. There was always something to do but I still found myself longing to be in the woods on that dirt road. So after a few years of living in town I was introduced to the love of my life who took me on the road all the way to south Louisiana. We don’t live on a dirt road, but we have our very own three acres on which we raise our two children that have increased our love for all things home grown.
 
After giving birth to my son I attended cooking school, it is  in this time that I discovered that I really didn’t pay too much attention to the food that we were consuming. I realized that my children did not know that food was not some magical thing that only the grocery store could have. If you asked my daughter then where apples came from she probably would have told you that they come from the store. I had to change this way of thinking, so I started digging. I planted a small ten by ten foot plot of veggies. It was a failure and nothing really grew well enough to make it to the dinner plate. But the same year our two tangerine trees that were here when we moved started producing fruit. This gave me faith that if I kept at it I could figure it out.

 
The next year we were gifted a tiller and the small garden grew to a quarter acre. I read books, watched documentaries and talked to the local agricultural cooperative trying to figure out the tricks of the trade and how to grow it all.  I was hooked I wanted to grow it all and taste it all. There were many things I had never even heard of until I planted them. Soon after, we built a coop and adopted some hens and baby chickens. We discovered very quickly that this was exactly what we wanted, what had been missing all along. A life on the homestead. My husband being the hunter and country boy that he is helped me realize that our chickens could be for more than just eggs, that it was within our power to grow our own meat.  We built chicken tractors so that we could fertilize our land while growing our own meat. The taste and satisfaction of knowing where our food was coming from was undeniable.
 
Our little homestead has grown from the little ten foot plot, and we have learned things we never thought we could do on our own. Our home now has 6 pecan trees, a black walnut tree, two tangerine trees, a lemon tree, a lime tree, two blueberry bushes, three pear trees, and one peach tree.  Our little flock of chickens that started out as five laying hens and six chicks has also grown to 38 chickens. We have ventured into raising rabbits and have also purchased a pig this year. We are still learning and we hope to eventually be a fully self sustainable farm. It is my hope that I can inspire others to get back to nature and get their hands dirty. To raise a curious generation, anxious to learn.