When we entered the Homestead world I can honestly say that I don’t think we even really realized how far we would travel in this journey. We did exactly like anyone says and we bought chickens. Everyone says chickens are the gateway to this passion of homesteading. We personally started with 9 chickens because my husband really wanted some for his birthday. At the time we lived in PA and really were not zoned to have any sort of homestead. We were allowed a few chickens and that was it. So the moment we moved to NC I believe that’s were it all started.
Shortly after moving to NC my husband was in contact with a man that had a lot of chickens and turkeys available. We purchased some while we were still in the camper but made them a whole box where they could stay just outside the camper. Our first goal was to just get some farm fresh eggs instead of store bought. Then once we moved we wanted to help our community. Still a task we want to do but currently we are helping friends with eggs. Next step for that will be to get some more egg layers and to donate the eggs but we also still need to find where we can go to donate. For example any sort of soup kitchen, food pantry, or any low income sorts of places that take donations. So as you can see we started out small, really small. We truly didn’t have crazy big dreams.
That is until now. Now we have so many dreams with our homestead. We do still plan to be able to donate some items to others but we also have been looking at this to help with our own health as well. The ability to homestead has meant the ability to know where our food comes from and what exactly they are raised on. This goes with treatment, no booster meds, what food they eat, and just simply that they were not packed in an area with no room to walk and live. Our homestead has been taking on this whole new meaning for us that we truly didn’t think it would have. If you asked me when we first got chickens if I would have the size of a homestead that we have now, I would have said no. This was not what I thought would happen.
Our dreams continue to grow and change with the homestead but currently we are looking at this as a good way to help our health. We have been able to change our eating habits a lot more recently. We raise our own meat chickens, purchase pig and raise our own pig meat, purchase cow from our friends, and visit our local farmers market for some veggies. We have a garden of our own but some of the items I may not have grown or they did not do so well in growth this year. The change in our eating habits is to benefit my health and for the kids health. The kids are healthy kids they truly are but with the risk of having any of my medical issues, I prefer to try to boost their systems with quality foods while I can. This is also why we can our food at home as well. We like to try to keep as much of the garden items throughout the year if we can. This years garden produced so much delicious veggies and fruit but next year we will have a lot more growing space.
We also have been feeling like this is what The Lord has been calling us to do for our lives. Jeremy and I have been able to use the homestead to bond even closer with each other and truly love being able to work on a passion with each other. We both have our own jobs and tasks that we need to accomplish but the homestead gives us a little more time to be together. We truly rely on each other to be able to make the homestead thrive.
The entire goal of our homestead is that we will be able to grow fruits and vegetables for us and to improve our health, donate to others, show off The Lord through our works and simply do life with people that live life like us. It’s crazy to say that the homestead has become a peaceful setting for our lives. We miss it when we travel and even though we are always covered in projects, we truly love being home and seeing all that they homestead offers. Hopefully one day my kids will see the homestead life was not just about having a ton of animals. I pray that once they get older they will notice that we have the homestead to help our health and that we are doing what we are feeling called to do. Hopefully we can show that you can walk in faith by listening to The Lord and doing what he has called you to but we will see how the kids take this lol once they get older!