This is not the beginning of the adventures, but it is the beginning of the tale. I've decided it's high time I started blogging, if for no one other than myself, to help me balance the mistakes I've made with what I've learned from them.
I lived the majority of my 30 years in Chicago (minus 3 in Japan and 5 in Miami), right in the heart of the hustle and bustle, a city girl to the core. Or so I thought. A serendipitous day spent on an organic farm in Wisconsin got me and my husband to thinking.... we could do this...not only do it, but love it. We could quit our jobs, leave our families, pack up our lives, and head to the countryside to try our hand at creating a homestead, even one day maybe a small farm. Somehow the boldness of it all made it seem simple.
And so, not 3 months later, we found ourselves the proud owners of a 23-acre "ranch" in rural Michigan. I say ranch, mostly out of what we dream it to one day be, rather than what it already was. There was a modest house, a pole barn that was being used as a garage, 4 acres of cleared grassland, and just under 20 acres of woods. We dreamed of vegetables and fruit trees, of chickens and goats, of tractors and fields of wildflowers. We even dreamed of a small store that centered around eco-friendly living and organic produce.
But where were we to begin? How does one turn a piece of grassland and forest into a small farm? (The answer to that, by the way, is still in the process of revealing itself to us.) I gobbled up all the stories of rural homestead living I could find, which were very useful, but many of them involved adventurous souls who bought an already (at least somewhat) functioning small farm and converted it to their liking. I felt lost and overwhelmed. I had (and still have) much learning to do. We wanted to start at the beginning, but where was the beginning anyway?
So I guess this will be the story of the mistakes and grand discoveries we have made already, and the ones we are in the process of making as our journey continues on. I've recently made a huge leap for the future of our homestead, leaving my teaching career in order to spend more time trying to make a living off of our land. It still remains to be seen whether or not that can be done, technically, but my heart tells me there is no doubt. It can be done. It must be done. Because we have chosen a path that provides us with much more quality of life, because it is exhilarating, because I wake up feeling just a tad bit younger these days, and because I truly believe that when you follow your heart, you have chosen the right path, no matter how winding it may be.
Comments