Together Homestead

Welcome to Together Homestead

I’m so glad you’re here! Long story short, my name is Lea and I dream of homesteading and being more self-sufficient. My reality, unfortunately, is that I currently live on a tiny plot of land on the outskirts of a small rural town.

I used to tell myself that I couldn’t start homesteading because I have city ordinances to follow and I don’t have enough land. However, thanks to the internet, I have found that to not be true. I became determined to accept where I am and what I have and start to homestead now. If urban homesteading exists, surely small rural town homesteading can exist as well.

This will definitely be a long learning process. I am confident there will be grand failures, strange questions asked, a lot of research, several updates, and the over-celebration of very small victories. And I want to share those with you. As my family and I venture down this road, I want to make a space for other people to venture with us. I want you to be able to learn with us and from us and to teach us along the way. I want us all to not be scared to show (or talk about) our failures or over-celebrate our small victories. I want a space where we can share homesteading together.

  • Not the Start I’d Hoped For

    Y’all, it has been raining for almost a week and it is going to rain over the weekend. (It’s Thursday as I write this.) We just had a severe weather yesterday, we have a severe weather threat tomorrow, and we are in a flash flood watch until Sunday. Happy Midwestern Spring!

    So far the rain has kept me from getting my garden tilled. My husband tried to till last Sunday before a round of severe weather rolled through but the soil was essentially mud. He was able to just get the top most layer of it tilled so that we could get the initial weeds out, but for fear of compacting the soil he didn’t try to till any deeper. I am desperate to get this garden in. I have cool weather crops that are going to end up going in at least two weeks late. Depending on how the weather looks I may have to set my green stalks up for some of my cool weather crops so that I can get something in.

    Speaking of my Green Stalks, yesterday the wind was so bad, it toppled one of my planters. I have never had this happen before. I think when I moved them closer to my house I placed them in an area more susceptible to the wind. They also need more soil added to them so they were lighter than usual. Thankfully, the lemon balm that I salvaged out of the garden before my husband tilled was in the planter that stayed up right. The only plant I may have lost was some lavender. I did carefully pull it from the soil and replant it. We shall see if it survives.

    I of course took no pictures for fear of blowing away and the fact that I just don’t think to take pictures of things like that to share. That’s going to be one of those learning adjustments I go through this year.

    In the midst of waiting for the weather to come in, my husband’s best friend dropped off my chicken coop!! I have been yearning for chickens for at least 6 years now and I am finally getting some. We are starting with a very small coop that will only hold about 6 chickens. I haven’t yet decided what type of chickens I want to get. That is my project for this rainy weekend.