If I am to be honest with my readers – and I will do my best – one would be hard-pressed to actually call my family’s home a ‘homestead’. We live on an acre in an area that is quickly making the transition from rural to solidly suburban. Roosters still crow in the distance while we drink our morning coffee. Wild turkey and deer still come through the yard nearly daily. We still listen to somebody shooting holes in paper while we float in the pool. But interspersed with the sounds we love are wailing sirens, construction equipment, and cars racing down the newly built toll road just a couple miles away.
Back to basics
This has been our home for the last ten years, and for reasons I may address later, we are here for the foreseeable future. While my wife, Ashley, and I both grew up in the busy suburbs of Central and South Florida, we feel drawn to a much simpler way of life.
We have spent the last several years slowly learning to raise animals and crops in our backyard homestead, teaching ourselves to preserve our yield, and finding ways to cut our household’s costs by returning to our roots. Of course, I don’t specifically mean our roots, as neither of us grew up living this lifestyle. I am speaking in more of a universal sense, which could be shared by the ancestors of everybody reading these words. Certainly, the wealthiest people in the world 300 years ago knew more about homesteading and hardship than I will likely ever know. It is important to me and Ashley that we regain some of that lost knowledge and pass it on to our children.
Why a blog?
The purpose of this blog is simple (you may notice ‘simple’ is a recurring theme here): we want to cut through the flashy pages showing families in their Sunday Best, Mom wearing a pound of makeup, in their perfectly manicured lawns with white picket fences. We have learned much over the last several years about suburban homesteading, and none of it is particularly glamorous. Our goal is to pass on the knowledge we have gained in a simple way that can be easily understood by those who are just starting their journeys. With any luck, we can make another family’s experience a little easier.
More to come…
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