Oh wow, I’m that girl…
I often laugh at the life I now live. If you had asked me 20, 10, or even 5 years ago if I would A) own a farm B) homeschool my kids or C) make my own yogurt from raw milk, I would have probably laughed at you and said something sarcastic like “yeah, a farm would be cool, but no way that’s going to happen.” Well, now I do all that, and more than I ever imagined. Today I’m talking on the phone to one of my childhood best friends (like since we were 2.5 years old in ballet class) while moving baby goats and listening to the rooster crow—it’s really quite comical!
But, how did this happen? And could you do it too? It started a while back, maybe 7 or 8 years ago? I wanted to learn to make bread because I wanted to know what I was feeding my family—and if it can last for over a month before it molds, it’s probably not super healthy. Around that same time, I wanted to learn how to can foods—my grandmother had done it, I just wanted to learn how to have the knowledge. So I learned to can food (water bath and pressure canning, from her and taking a canning class through our local extension office) and eventually figured out how to make a simple sandwich yeast bread. This bread was NOT a quick thing for me. But I’ll tell that story another time. By this point I’m also cutting out some processed stuff, but mostly I’m just a mom who worked all day at a school trying to do the best I could to get meals for my family. Time keeps moving, Covid comes around and we are feeling uncomfortable where we are (read THIS POST for more details) and decide to move to West TN.
The farm we bought came with:
1. Muscadines ready to pick (spoiler: I’d never even heard of a muscadine! Much less picked them or processed them!)
2. Goats, tiny Pygmy/Nigerian dwarfs. 2 girls and a boy—they may be pregnant. (spoiler: I’ve only ever seen these goats hopping around on YouTube and at the petting zoo!)
3. A really old Horse (spoiler: I’ve always loved horses, never owned one. In fact, I’ve owned a cat, a few dogs, and fish as a kid)
4. About 100 feet of asparagus, a pear tree, a blackberry patch, and a whole lot of fencing. (spoiler: I know nothing about ANY OF THIS STUFF!)
We quickly added an RTV, Tractor, chickens, and some cows for beef (spoiler: never had cows or chickens before either!)
Here is the best part of the story-I love to learn. So I got in contact with our local county extension agent, took classes on cows and goats and running a farm and learned in every way I possibly could. We did soil tests and learned about regenerative agriculture and asked a million questions and read everything we could find and joined associations to make contacts and learn from the locals. And just figured it out and how to make it work in the simplest, most effective way we could. And we got bees, because we are gonna need pollinators for the massive garden we are about to plant in the spring! (spoiler again: never had bees either).
We grew a garden (not too successfully the first few years), and now I can, freeze, or freeze dry most things. I cook the majority of our food from scratch and make yogurt, bread, pickles and virtually all our tomato products—because I learned a little at a time. 1 new thing then added the next thing. Really, it was that simple. I want to make cheese next—because that would be super fun to make cheese from the cow down the street. So I’ll start learning that and it’ll just be another cool thing I’ve learned since we moved. I’m absolutely positive you can do this too.
This is all to say, that when our oldest daughter asked to homeschool before her junior year (we’d lived here 2 years by then), we said yes. What would that look like? I had no idea, but I knew we could figure it out and be successful (Boring spoiler: I taught 7 years and was a school counselor 7 years and subbed for 2 years, I had experience in this one). Now she has graduated, and we are homeschooling our youngest daughter as she goes into 6th grade. Yes, I’m officially that girl……
