My Journey to Homesteading

I’m going to share my story of how I started homesteading and why it’s important to me. I hope it inspires you on your own journey to homesteading.

Growing up

I grew up in Pennsylvania near lake Erie. Living on 8 acres there was naturally always room to run around. My home town is known for local wineries and grape vineyards. Well the property we lived on had 3 acres of grape vineyards that would be sold annually to a local winery who also maintained them.

Although I was raised in the country, I was never taught the basics of homemaking or homesteading. I was raised to graduate high school, go to college and get a good paying job. Growing up I learned what the school systems taught and that was about it. Typical kid, friends and looks is all I really cared about and I had know one to teach me otherwise. I lived in the perfect setting to grow up experiencing a homestead life. Now that I am older I look back and wonder why we never had chickens and more. Every adult looks back at their childhood sometimes and scratches their head from time to time, I am sure.

Back to the grape vineyards. Every once in awhile the farmer would come by and ask us to close up our windows. This was because he was going to spray chemicals or pesticides onto the grape vineyards. I never thought anything of it. Up to this point as a teen I ate anything and everything I wanted. I had zero discernment when it came to the food industry, house chemicals and what I was eating off the grocery store shelves. I just ate what was good to me and that was that.

The Diagnosis

Eventually all those chemicals in the air from spraying the vineyards and the poisons in the food I ate would catch up to me. At the age of 16, I was diagnosed with cancer.

Now I’ll spare you the details, sadly everyone nowadays knows someone who has had it, lost a loved one from it or has had it themselves. Lets just say, I was pumped full of a lot more chemicals and consumed lots of medication. This experience was the result of chemicals and poisons. But at the time I had not yet come to this realization yet. Thankfully after a year, I was cured and sent home to live my normal life. I graduated high school, packed my things and moved across the county to Texas.

City Life

I spent my young adult years living in the city. Living in a cookie cutter home that I naturally hated. The homes were so close together that you could stick your hand out your bedroom window and touch the other house. At the time I did not know exactly why I hated living in a development. I worked at a grocery store at the time, and I remember always bringing home plants. Because I enjoyed growing and taking care of them. I am sure my neighbors behind me enjoyed them since they could see my whole back yard through their upstairs bedroom.. At this point though, I was still a bit clueless about the food industry and still had no discernment toward it.

My Family

In 2014 I married my wonderful husband and a couple years later had our son. Life was exciting at this stage of life but also scary as well. When my son was born we took him to every recommended doctor appointment, and we ourselves went on a yearly basis. That included my annual oncology visit.

Faith in Doctors

Ever since my health scare, I was obsessed with visiting the doctor. I wanted my blood checked all of the time. Mostly because I was paranoid. I would take any prescription or shot without question. I put my faith in the doctors to keep me healthy and I would always go running to them whenever I had a problem. I guess you could have called me a hypochondriac. I always thought I was sick and only felt better after seeing my doctor. I used to drive my husband crazy with this! Remember Melman from the movie Madagascar? Yeah, that was me.

Moving to New Hampshire

After my son turned one we decided to sell our house and move to New Hampshire. Now my husband has lived here before in his teenage years, but I never had. We both grew up in northern states for the most part and we missed the four seasons. We had many reasons why we wanted to leave.

• four seasons
• less developed
• cooler weather
• secluded living

This is just to name a few. We even left to escape toxic family members. But that’s a whole other story. So, we backed up our two wheel drive F-150 and a small U-Haul trailer and hauled everything we owned up to New Hampshire. My husbands family is from Connecticut, so we were able to drop our stuff off at a storage shed and stay in Connecticut for a couple months.

Experiencing Homesteading

I will never forget the smell when we pulled into my husbands Grandmothers driveway the first night with all of our stuff. It was October and the outside air was full of the smell of a wood stove burning. What a wonderful cool crisp smell. We arrived after traveling all the way from Texas and planned to take the trailer with all of our things to the storage unit in New Hampshire the following day.

She lives in a big old farmhouse where she used to raise cattle. There were many farms nearby. One of the farms kept their cows on some of her land. We would go visit these farms often and got to know them well. This was my family’s first time really being in the middle of the homestead/farm life. We loved it! My husband even got to help process chickens for the first time. Many people in that area like to barter for things as well. Not many people do that anymore.

Waking up

Long story short, we ended up in New Hampshire after a few months living in Connecticut. We stayed in a condo for a few months. During this time, my husband and I found ourselves surfing the internet learning about raising meat chickens. We also started waking up to how unhealthy the food industry has become. The months we spent in the condo were enlightening. We had nothing else to do in our spare time since we lived in a condo environment so we spent it learning all we could about raising our own food.

Our Homestead!

After a few months in the condo, we were able to purchase our home. This is the home we currently live in. Since we moved in we immediately got to work. We started with building chicken tractors and brought our first meat birds home. It seems to me that’s how most people start out with homesteading. Ever since we have been learning and growing in our homesteading journey. Now I get to share it with you through this blog and YouTube! At this point we now raise Chickens, Quail and Meat Rabbits. Along with growing a large garden every year.

My YouTube Grandma

Silly title right? Well, that’s what I call it whenever I am trying to learn something new. Whether it is about homesteading or homemaking, I have to refer to my YouTube Grandma to teach me. If I am being honest, I find it very frustrating as an adult trying to raise a family, when I have to spend lots of time learning things that I feel should have been taught in my years growing up. Oftentimes I am looking at a phone or computer when I am trying to learn something, when that time could be spent with my son. For example, there has been many times that my son and I will be out in the garden. We will be planting something and think of a question while I am out there. So of course I refer to my Google Grandma real quick to find the answer. I wish I was taught the basics of homemaking and homesteading at a young age so that I could have grown up with these skills.

Lost Art of Homesteading

Unfortunately over the decades and generations, we have been quickly losing the traditional way of life. People are so reliant on the government to take care of them. The medical industry has a hold on them like it once did me. They rely solely on the industrial food system to feed themselves and families. The generation we live in today has lost its sense of self reliance. They do not know how to take care of themselves. They have bought into this corrupt mindset of, in order to be successful you have to go to college and get a good job… Mothers don’t teach their daughters how to be a wife and homemaker anymore. I had to learn how to make sourdough bread from my YouTube Grandma! I went years never knowing what Kefir was. It’s really quite heartbreaking. Kids nowadays, would rather sit in the house on a nice day and play video games. Rather than play outside and get their hands dirty. Make a fort, dance in the rain, play in the mud, build something in the snow, anything. The parents are to blame for this.

Teaching the next Generation

I am thankful that my son has experienced homesteading his whole life. Fortunately he was too young to remember anything before living in our home now. He is now seven, and daily he is apart of our homesteading life. Learning how to source wood and process it to heat our home. Learning how to grow a garden and how animals are raised and processed. He will grow up learning these skills as a young kid and will take them with him into his adult life. He knows about sourdough and Kefir and I will continue to teach him basic home skills like bread making and the importance of herbs, raw milk and more.

Faith in God

I am grateful to share with you, that my faith in the medical industry is completely gone. I no longer am chained to the doctors. I have put mine and my family’s health in the hands of God. He has provided all the medicine we need in the wholesome foods he has given us along with the herbs. He supplies for all of our needs. My family no longer has health insurance because we put our faith in God to take care of us. Not in some insurance plan. We have chosen to no longer visit the doctors or receive vaccines of any kind. This is a personal choice.

Why you should Homestead

I don’t think it is any secret how corrupt “things” have become. The same people that own and run the medical industry as a whole, also own and control to processed foods on the grocery shelves. I wont get into all that but the point is, we need to be in control of our own food. We need to gain the skills necessary to take care of ourselves and teach it to our young ones. Not only that, but you will live a more full filling life. We were not designed by God to be inside and unproductive. Get outside, walk barefoot in your garden. Give thanks to God for all that he has provided you with. He is good. Don’t put your faith in little g (government). Put your faith in God. He will take care of you and lead you on this path of Homesteading.

Are you Saved?

Jesus saved my soul. He came down from Glory and humbled Himself born as a baby. In a barn no less! All to live a sinless life so that He could be the atonement for mine and your sins by shedding His perfect blood on the cross. He was obedient unto death for us. Jesus was rich because he was in heaven with God the father, but yet for our sake He became poor so that one day we might be able to be rich. Now from a biblical worldview, being rich has nothing to do with money. The Bible talks about being rich, and it is referring to having Christ. Not money or material possessions. With Christ I have everything, without Him, I have nothing.

Now if you have made it this far reading my story, I have probably almost just about put you to sleep. So as a thank you for reading this, I am going to leave you with this message from Pastor Cody Zorn. You wont want to miss this. God Bless.

Ashley Nicole