How We Homestead: Living Simply

Welcome to the second installment of our new five-week series, How We Homestead. Each Wednesday I write a post about a different homesteading topic to shed more light on where we are on our path to self-sufficiency and what homesteading looks like for us.

When we decided to make the move from the city to the country, we didn't realize it at first, but we instantly began to simplify our lives. In the city, we had a house that we absolutely adored, but it was very big. Much too big for what we needed, and it had old leaky windows, so our utility bill was sky high. Our new home is just a few years old and is much smaller and better suited to our needs. Since the structure is newer and shaded by trees, it is highly energy efficient and we spend about half in energy costs compared to what we spent at our old home in the city.

Living in the country, we are kind of forced to eat meals at home. The nearest restaurant is about 35 miles away, so there's no ordering takeout on a night that I don't feel like cooking. This is sort of a blessing in disguise, though, because it is much healthier to eat homemade meals prepared with whole foods rather than a diet heavy on processed ingredients made in a laboratory.

Where our lives are most simplified is what we do in our leisure time for fun. Tending to the garden is one of our favorite ways to spend a weekend and is also a great stress reliever. We love to take walks around our property every evening to note the changes in our flowers and veggies and take hikes in the woods together when we aren't busy with the garden.

We haven't been to a movie in ages; instead we watch chicken TV.

For us, simple pleasures is what life is all about. There's nothing like watching a mama hen with her new baby chick (something we witnessed for the very first time yesterday, more on that later!) or seeing the woods come back to life after a long, cold winter. Give me nature and I am one happy girl!



Four other awesome bloggers are participating in this series as well, so don't forget to check out their posts to read more about where they are in their homesteading journey. You can find them here -

Staci at Life At Cobble Hill Farm
Meg at Little Homestead
Daisy at Maple Hill 101
Amber at Making A Home

Thanks so much for reading and please do let me know if you have any questions or comments. I'd love to hear from you! Don't forget to check back next Wednesday for the third installment in the series where I will be focusing on real foods and how we grow and incorporate them into our diet.

~Tammy

Keeping Your Brain Sharp With Music

I started playing the clarinet in seventh grade and played in school until I graduated. For a couple summers in high school, I also played in the city's municipal band that performed each week at a local park. Music has been a huge part of my life, and one that is especially dear to me since David and I met through band! David is even a music teacher, so he has continued his love of music into his career. I occasionally play my clarinet with him and some of his students in small ensembles, but don't play nearly as much as I used to.

A while back I told David I wanted to play my clarinet more, so he suggested that we play together every once in a while. He can play just about every instrument there is, and even though he is more of a brass guy, he can definitely rock out on the clarinet. It's so fun to play together and I've found that it is a really good way for me to keep my brain sharp and give it a good workout. Playing my clarinet is like riding a bike; I don't think I'll ever forget how to do it. Reading music is another story.

David brought home a book of music for us to play together, and I realized how rusty I was at sight reading. It really did require my constant thought and attention to play each note while keeping the beat by tapping my big toe in my shoe (a habit my teacher taught me as a seventh grader and one I still practice today). When reading music while playing an instrument, there are several different things you have to keep in mind all at once and it really does give your brain a workout. Especially if you aren't in practice every day. And I better keep in practice because David wants to start a family band one day when we have kids! :)

Do you play an instrument? If you used to play in school, do you still play today?

~Tammy

Shared with Tuesday Muse 

Feathered Friend Friday: Baby Birds

Welcome to our series "Feathered Friend Friday." Every Friday I write a post with interesting facts, photos, or funny stories about our chickens and guineas. If you need to catch up, you'll find all the Feathered Friend Friday posts here. 

For today's Feathered Friend Friday, I thought I would post something a little different. Normally I write about chickens or guineas, but I recently saw something too cute not to share.

This is the second year that a bird has returned to this nest by our garage to lay her eggs. I always enjoy watching the mom tend to the nest as I wait impatiently for the babies to hatch. I was so excited earlier this week when I saw these five tiny birds in the nest! After I snapped the above photo, the mama bird was getting very angry with me, so I left her babies alone for a while. It was hard to do!

A couple days later, I noticed the birds standing up in the nest looking like they were ready to fly away. I remembered last year how they jumped out of the nest but stayed close by for a while, so I was wondering when I would see them walking around the porch. Soon after I saw this little guy hanging out on our bench.

He was so precious and let me get pretty close to get this shot. I really enjoyed seeing him out there whenever I would walk by. A couple more days later, I saw that one of his siblings had left the nest to join him on the bench.

I really wanted to pet and hold them (I swear I'm like a giggly little girl when I see baby animals), but I figured it's probably best not to interfere with nature and decided to just let them be. Today the nest is empty and there is no sign of the birds, so hopefully they found their wings and flew off to bigger and better things. Maybe next year one of them will return to the same nest to hatch her own eggs!

~Tammy

PS - Does anyone know what type of bird this is? I am not good at identification so I don't have a clue!

Shared with Farmgirl Friday 

How We Homestead: How It All Began

Welcome to the first installment of our new five-week series, How We Homestead. Each Wednesday I will write a post about a different homesteading topic to shed more light on where we are on our path to self-sufficiency and what homesteading looks like for us.

In spring 2009, I began to hear a lot of buzz around a new documentary called Food, Inc. It promised to give viewers an honest look at the current food industry in the US and reveal how it is controlled by several large corporations. I hadn't been too interested in where my food came from for most of my life, but when I found out about the film something inside me was provoked and I felt that I had to see the movie.

We weren't aware of it at the time, but Food, Inc. proved to be the catalyst for making big changes in our lives and inspiring our homesteading journey. The documentary opened our eyes and we were totally appalled at what we learned, so we vowed to take more control over our food supply. My first thought was that we had to start a vegetable garden; David was immediately talking chickens.

One of our first ever tomatoes.



Some of our first eggs.


We still lived in the city at this point, but were beginning to have big homesteading dreams and goals that would require more land than what we had on our tiny lot. We absolutely adored our home in the city, a very charming 1914 bungalow, but felt that as much as we loved our home, we wanted land more. So on St. Patrick's Day in 2010 (I remember it vividly because we lost our first hen, Raven, that morning) we met with a realtor and listed our home for sale.

The next year was an emotional rollercoaster. We eventually took our home off the market due to not receiving a single offer in nine months. We were crushed and figured our dream would just have to be put on hold until the housing market rebounded. After some serious and passionate conversations, we realized we were not willing to stay put and keep shoving our dreams aside, so we decided to relist with a different realtor and drastically reduce the price of our house for a quick sale. And guess what? We got it! Our home sold this time in just one week!

After accepting an offer, we kicked into high gear to find the perfect homestead. After a couple disappointments, we finally found a place with 20 wooded acres about 35 miles outside town. It wasn't totally perfect, but we vowed to turn it into our dream home; something we are still working on today.

The day our journey began.


Four other awesome bloggers are participating in this series as well, so don't forget to check out their posts to read more about where they are in their homesteading journey. You can find them here -

Staci at Life At Cobble Hill Farm
Meg at Little Homestead
Daisy at Maple Hill 101
Amber at Making A Home

Thanks so much for reading and please do let me know if you have any questions or comments. I'd love to hear from you! Don't forget to check back next Wednesday for the second installment in the series where I will be focusing on how we have begun to embrace simple living.

~Tammy

Shared with The Backyard Farming Connection Hop