Our homesteading journey started back in 2008.
Shortly after we were married in 2007, we had moved into a "better" rental property, it was the most beautiful house. Like, a dream house for sure. It was going to be the perfect home to raise the girls and continue having babies. Well, turns out fairy tales don't always come true when you think they are about to. We had three German Shepherd pups and the landlord decided they didn't want to rent to us with that many dogs after all. They felt the large three bedroom house was just too small for us. So three months after moving in, we moved out.
And that is when our journey began....
The next property that we rented was a quaint three bedroom home on 200 acres, It was paradise. We spent much of our time outside, because I mean, who wouldn't want to be out enjoying that? We had two more babies and while living there we started raising chickens. They are truly the most perfect farm starter animal that there is. Easy to care for, low maintenance and they serve a DIY breakfast every day. We spend most of our time there rescuing cats and dogs from owners who no longer had the time or decided that they didn't want them anymore. So, we were really busy being a stepping stone for those animals that we didn't really expand our farm there. Aside from Delilah, she was a cute miniature pig that we got for a house pet, turned out she wasn't as mini as we thought and she went out to the old barn.
We moved again two more times. Once into the city, which was the most difficult time for all of us, and then one more time onto our last rental property. These landlords were pretty decent at first. The property wasn't much but we could have our chickens and a few of my family's Racing Pigeons, maybe some day I will touch base on those. Everyone is always fascinated with the fact that my family races pigeons, and makes money doing it. We also had a huge garden at this property and loved enjoying fresh fruits and veggies that came from our land. These landlords introduced us to 4-H and our eldest joined a few clubs , one of which was Miniature Horse, which got me hooked on minis.
One day the landlord's dog, who was never tied up or confined to their property wandered onto ours and killed most of our flock of chickens. I was devastated and didn't want to be there anymore. So, we purchased our very first house in the fall of 2014 and have been happy homesteading house owners ever since.
We had three miniature horses, pygmy goats, pigeons and chickens at this property, our neighbor had cattle so we got to try our hand a few times at getting the loose cows back into the pens. It was wonderful. I was in heaven. Sadly, we only lived in that home for, well almost three years. Then my husband had to move for work. We sold our animals, because we were moving into a rental until we could buy a place here and then finally sold our home and purchased a new one out East. That's where we are at the present moment but we do have a 10 year plan that will help us purchase a larger lot and have a better chance at homesteading and being more self-sufficient without as much need for outside sources.
At our current home we have 21 acres, a river running through it, well, it's a creek that runs from the river. We currently have 2 German Shepherds, 6 chickens, 4 cats, 2 rabbits and a bunch of fish. We are welcoming goats onto our farm this year, as well as a LGD and possibly pigs. We plan to get our garden up and going very well this year so I will be sure to post about all of those things.
I have a lot of plans for this little homestead of mine and plan to get cattle when we move to a larger property in a few years.
Well, I think that catches you all up to date on us for the moment, be sure to follow along with our homesteading journey by subscribing to our newsletter.
~Sally