It has officially been one year since we moved into this home. I distinctly remember this day. We had been slowly moving some things in to get them set up while we waited for the carpet to get put in. I had to leave for work that evening. When I got off, I pulled up the driveway and cried. We were home. It felt like home. It felt like a hug at the end of some really hard years… and is continuing to hold me as I lost my Grandpa suddenly on Sunday.
Living on a farm has been a dream of ours for quite some time. I don’t really remember exactly when it started. In 2010, my dad had open heart surgery right after I became a mom. I remember learning all that I could about eating healthy, because I was told that heart disease was coming for me, too. (Who knew I already had it!) I remember trying to make healthier decisions for my family. I wanted to plant a garden and grow our own food. I got really into watching food documentaries.
Somehow all of this evolved into discovering homesteading. I read as many blog posts as I could about homesteading. I checked out books and watched YouTube videos. It became a dream that Scott and I wanted so badly. We would drive around the country in the states we lived in and dream. We knew it was a far, far off dream. We couldn’t afford to buy even a tiny house. We’d never be able to afford land.
But, God.
It’s amazing how tiny decisions can lead to huge results. Let that be a lesson– good or bad. The tiny decision to strike up a conversation with a library patron lead to this massive shift in our life. We get to rent this beautiful home with this beautiful land. We get to plant gardens and raise chickens. The dream has been far better than we expected.
In the past year, we have baked countless loaves of bread. We watched the leaves change colors and fall to the ground. We’ve gathered around the threshing table for Thanksgiving and Christmas meals. We’ve squealed with delight over waking up to snow on the ground. We watched the world come back to life in the spring. We put our blood, sweat, and tears into creating our garden. We worked hard to expand the chicken run and make sure that they had a safe coop to be in. We’ve lost animals that we love.
It’s harvest time! We are so thankful that most of our plants have done well. We were gifted a huge box of tomatoes, so I canned those yesterday. Canning is such an awesome skill to have learned, but it also feel so stressful because I don’t want to mess it up!
It feels so good to go to the garden to pick vegetables and herbs to cook with. I also FINALLY made some candles out of beeswax! Traditional candles are so harmful to burn, but I love the warm light that they offer. It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for years! Learning these new skills has been incredible. It feels good to use the gifts that God has given me. There are so many skills that are disappearing because they aren’t used anymore. I don’t want to lose them! I want to pass them on to my daughters.
One year in, and I’d say that we are official homesteaders of the renting sort. (I just reached for my coffee, and there is a gnat floating in it. So, that’s a definite yes.)