This year, since I decided to revive my website, I’ve been struggling to identify my niche. Who is ProMomLife? Like many working moms, I wear many hats and have many life passions. The options are endless. I could write about parenting and the challenges of being a full-time working mom, grandparenting and helping to raise your live-in grandchildren, or I could focus on the career side of my life, what it’s like having a career as a mom. There are so many things I could write about.
I found that I also have a passion for homesteading.
As my children have all reached adulthood and we sold our house in the city to move to the country (more on that below), I found that I also have a passion for homesteading. That is what I’m going to focus on here. While I’m not new to country life or small family farm life, I am new to homesteading as an adult, and this is already a great adventure.
Some background: I grew up in the country. We raised chickens and had a huge garden. It was a way of life I have always loved. There is no experience like eating fresh eggs gathered from your own chickens or eating fresh vegetables from your own garden. I guarantee once you have eaten a vine-ripened tomato fresh from the garden, those grocery store versions will NEVER TASTE THE SAME. There is no replacing organically grown garden fresh vegetables.
Do you know where your food comes from?
Do you know how old your vegetables are when you buy them off the grocery store shelf?
What chemicals have they been exposed to?
Do you know what they do to those vegetables to get them to last through the supply chain from farm to warehouse to the grocery store and then to your kitchen?
Having grown up on fresh-grown food, these were some of the concerns I have always had as a busy working mom and city dweller, but I didn’t have the time, or at least I didn’t think I had the time to make changes and start growing my own food. Now I know that it can be done – even in the city in a small backyard or on an apartment balcony if that’s all you have.
Skip to 2020, life was hard during the economic shutdown that kept getting extended. Our income was severely decreased and while the economy started coming back in 2021 the economic damage was done and we realized that we couldn’t afford to keep our home of 21 years. So, in October of 2021, I liquidated my investments and poured it all into renovating our house to prepare it to sell. All of my children had become adults and I had three grandchildren (two of them living with me). The Mister and I decided to sell our home and buy some land in the country near where I grew up. Unfortunately, there was a housing bubble – great for sellers but challenging for buyers – that raised the price per acre beyond what we wanted to spend, so we opted to take the proceeds of our sale and buy a modular home (a double-wide mobile home) and live on my parent’s 5 acres in the country. BEST DECISION EVER. At a recent family reunion, some of my relatives referred to it as ‘the compound’ because we share the land with my parents, my uncle, and three of my sisters. BUT, I found that life is better together with my family. We have our own home but we are close enough to help each other.
I’ve spent the last year preparing my garden and growing a small flock of chickens. We have fresh eggs every day. My next steps: expand my garden and chicken flock. In the fall when my new chickens start laying eggs, I’m going to send the original 11 to freezer camp and begin raising meat birds for processing.
Join my on my homesteading journey and lets grow together.
THE GOAL: BECOME A SELF-SUSTAINABLE HOMESTEAD/FAMILY FARM
So, who is ProMomLife? An active homesteader providing knowledge, skills and resources for beginner homesteaders.
