The Happy Homesteader

You can tell what season it is by looking at my side table with the stack of books that never leaves!  I have a permanent book pile that always contains an array of books that I am currently perusing.  The pile is always there, but the selection changes seemingly from season to season and year to year.  This is one of the things that I love about homesteading.  You have so many varied things that you do…

I love to watch my kids play. They can become so consumed for hours in some kind of make believe world they have created in their minds and with their toys. It’s their imagination that I appreciate the most and it always amazes me what they come up with. I have often thought that a lack of imagination was one of the…

The Aspiring Farmer Blog



FINALLY we got a day out on the town together. In celebration of Sweetbread’s birthday coming up this week I planned a day-trip between milkings to the big city of Nashville. Until this point, nearly 5 months into the move, we had yet to take a “full day” and explore Nashville. It was great to decompress for a few hours and relax and talk about all that’s changed. We talk about it a lot at home too, and with…

That is what I call it, the piece of property that we want.  We wanted to go see it "at its worst" with the drought in full swing.  We wanted to see how the lake was holding up, if the pond had water, what the pastures looked like. 

So, we called up our realtor and went.  The pond was almost completely dried up.  What I noticed more, was how shallow the pond actually was.  I had envisioned it being deeper than that for some reason. 

The pasture was brown with lots of weeds. …

One of the biggest concerns we have as a family and that we have heard others express is making sure that our food is as healthy as possible. What that means to us is that we try to grow as much of our own food as possible and purchase what else we need from trusted local growers. In some instances we do visit local…

Wild Wanderings Blog – July 26, 2012   

Children are perhaps our greatest gifts and teachers in life. And, as adults, present one of our greatest challenges. It's so easy to get caught up in ourselves and the hustle and bustle of our daily routine that spending quality time with our children often goes by the wayside. …

First Post! I'm a college student living in Rural England. I have a deeprooted interest in gardening, self sufficiency, homesteading and survivalism/prepping.

I found this site after looking on Itunes for  interesting Podcasts, and I found Tim & Liz Young's Podcast. I thought it was great, and extremely relevant given that I'm a wannabe farmer. Unlik most of the farm dreams members, I want to start as I mean to go on, instead of building a life in the city then having to uproot…

The Practical Prepper

Recent changes in my day job have unfortunately required me to schedule a hiatus from my regularly scheduled writing here on The Practical Prepper. I've enjoyed my time with this blog and greatly appreciate the…

The Happy Homesteader

Last week we had a litter of piglets born and each year I look forward to it so much!  Baby piglets might just be the cutest thing on the farm.  When you homestead it seems that it is not complete unless you have a pig.  Watch any old movie where people lived closer to the land and grew their own food and you always see a pig in a pen.  Usually…

Well, I still have some good lettuce going and my broccoli is just getting started, but I also found my first melon growing on the vine!…

In a online PDC, Permaculture Design Course, I am taking I was asked what my thoughts were on the Primary Permaculture Ethics and what we can do to apply them in our lives. Here are some of my thoughts, what are yours?

The primary Permaculture Ethics are:

1. Care of the Earth

2. Care of…

We went to see 58 acres - described as pasture and woods with two mobile homes, barn, 2 car expanded garage, two ponds, some fencing.

We arrived at 8 am on Sunday and for 90 minutes we walked the land.  With the drought we are all experiencing, both ponds were dried up as was the pasture.  However, the pasture did look like a nice one.  The woods had quite the elevation too them and our walk quickly turned into a hike.  He had done a nice job of keeping the fence lines clean…

The Aspiring Farmer Blog



Last week I was debating what to do with the pigs. They were outgrowing the pallet pens I made, but they were still small enough and crazy enough that I didn’t want to put them out on…

Wild Wanderings Blog – July 19, 2012

When people think of trout fishing in Western NC, rivers like the Davidson, Mills and Tuckasegee come to mind. Spring Creek isn’t even a remote thought for most. The state of…

In my last blog post, I talked about going to see 218 acres with a historic farm house and barn. 

We awaited with ancipation for our appointment time to arrive and left ahead of schedule to make sure we got there on time. 

As we approached the land, we had to cross over a very narrow bridge that went over the creek that bordered the front of the property.  I ask the owner if it ever flooded and she said that if there was a heavy rain, sometimes you had to wait 1 to 1.5 hours to…

The Practical Prepper

Having a general, basic emergency kit in your house is essential, and putting together an…

The Aspiring Farmer Blog



A few weeks ago we wrote on our blog about the great piglet…

This past week the real estate agent called and asked if we were still interested in the 70 acres we had tried to buy back in March.  He knows we are because we had emailed that to him in May and told him we thought we would have our 20% down payment in August. 

The real reason he was calling was to tell us he had another interested buyer.  I was bummed at first but then remembered that we had been praying all along that if it was God's will for us to get this particular…

When you see an ad for a fast food restaurant what do you see? Because I don’t pay for commercial television (pun very much intended) out of principal, I cannot speak to their TV ads however I do see plenty of McDonald’s ads on busses. Each one tries to hammer home a similar message; that their food will make you happy, attractive and will make you feel good. This, aside from the attractive part at least, is the same marketing strategy as a carnival. A carnival sells tickets with the promise…

Without getting too far off on a tangent regarding Permaculture I wanted to take just a few moments and list some of the reasons why I believe the subject of Permaculture is not a new idea. Although Bill Mollison developed the primary ethics and principles of Permaculture in the not too distant past along with work…