Month: September 2019

Several years ago I was given the opportunity to spend the summer in Eswatini, formerly known as Swaziland. It is a tiny country, about 6700 sq miles, with a population of about 1.1 million. I know what you are thinking, why on earth are we talking about a country in southern Africa on a homesteading blog. Well, honestly because I can Jand because while I didn’t know it then, this small country is a huge part of why we are homesteading today. 

You see, in the zulu language, Wahamba nathi, means “you walked with us”. It’s a popular praise song that we heard and sang often while in Eswatini. When I was preparing to leave for Eswatini, I was working a 12 hour job, finishing up from being in school full time as a paramedic, had just finished my master’s degree from Liberty and was fully involved in multiple activities outside of work and school. I was BUSY. If you saw me, you would notice my walk was near jogging, in just my everyday life. I lived fast, and I was good at my job and at school because I was able to function at such speed, but being good at something doesn’t mean that you are happy doing it. Going to Eswatini was like watching my high-speed life, hit a wall at 80 mph. Most people don’t walk away from that kind of accident and if they do, they make changes to the way they live.

I learned two very important life lessons while I was there. Both of which still permeate my life on a daily basis. The first while I am sure we will discuss another day was to learn to live vulnerable. This was by far the hardest lesson I have ever learned and is a phrase that I wear on a bracelet now as a reminder. You can never meet people where they are in life, if you are not willing to first live your life vulnerably. But as I said, we can discuss that another day. The second life lesson was learning to walk slowly.

Homesteading is my ultimate act in learning to walk slowly. I promised myself when I got off the plane from South Africa that I would be more intentional with the way I lived my life: to meet people where they are and if that act slowed my life down, to take the time with them. In the U.S. we find ourselves irritated with the car that drives the speed limit, or the elderly that walk slower in the grocery store. We find that if our whole day is not planned from sunrise to sundown we are missing out on something. We have even created an acronym to describe this: FOMO, the fear of missing out.

What if what we are truly missing out on is the people, not the events. I started small at first. Finding a job that didn’t require me to work so many hours away from my husband. Gardening on the weekends and taking up jogging to spend time with him doing something that he loved. But it didn’t take long for the culture that I had come back to, to slowly creep itself back into my every day life. Soon I found myself fighting the desire to climb the corporate ladder, while also trying to be an old school southern wife. I would try to bake from scratch, can, and freeze things on the weekend while bringing work home to do at night. It even crept into our vacations, where I found myself on a conference call, while in the waiting area to board a cruise.

While there are many factors that played into our ultimate decision of slowing down our lives and farming, the intentional act of walking slowly was one of them. I see the benefits daily as I am out and about talking with local business owners or random people in stores. Even today as I walked the aisles of Wal-Mart, I struck up a conversation with a lady regarding my larger than normal purchase of floating soap. It is good to be a part of a community, without always being in a hurry. It is freeing to not have every moment of every day planned out.

Even as the summer is coming to a close, I love to fill my basket with produce to deliver to our neighbors and customers. The farm, the animals, the people are all an act of intentionally learning to walk slowly in my life. Yes, there are going to be days where we are busy, where we have to pick up the pace, but that should never be our every day speed. If you never stop to smell the flowers or watch the sunset, how will you ever be able to appreciate how blessed you are to be living the life you have been granted. We only get one shot at this life and there is so much joy knowing that we walked with people through it.So my challenge to you is to walk just a little slower today. Sit a little longer at the café and read a book or have a conversation. Take a walk through the park and enjoy the changing of the leaves. Sit in the front porch swing, sipping ice tea and watch the sunset. Whatever you choose to do, slow your life down intentionally.  You won’t regret it. Until our next adventure, “wahamba nathi, siyabonga Jesu” that is to say “you walked with us, thank you Jesus”.

Who doesn’t like baby animals? I mean seriously, to not love them must be a crime. From their cute little faces and stature to their innocence, it is just impossible to not want to get all their snuggles. Thankfully, while we wait for their arrival to our home, we have been blessed with the opportunity to visit our baby donkeys. Raspberry and Jambalaya are coming from a cute little farm outside of Stem, NC called Elevenses, please feel free to visit them here http://www.elevensesllamas.com/Llamaweb/Welcome.html

When we first spoke with the owner of Elevenses, they really encouraged visitation with your animals until they are old enough to go to their new homes and we jumped at this chance. I mean how can you say “No” to these guys, look at those faces. This visit made our second trip up to the farm and we were all in awe of seeing how much they had grown in size, as well as, how much their little personalities had started to shine through.

While our visits aren’t long, we know Elevenses has tons of work to do each day, it is always both fun for us and educational. Remember, this is all new to us and that is what makes each day a new adventure. This weekend we got more info on what kind of food they are being fed currently, as well as, what kind of treats are best for them. Since we want our animals to be super friendly, spending time with them and giving them treats is a big part of that. However, we learned that due to their short stature, miniature donkeys have a tendency to become overweight and that is something that we definitely want to avoid. We do want people to be able to give them treats when they visit though, so we were able to get some great ideas about how to make this work for both the donkeys and our visitors.

We can’t wait for them to come home, but each visit reminds us about the work we have to complete prior to then. Making sure that our barns provide them with protection from predators and the weather, as well as, making sure that the pastures are fenced in appropriately for the small stature of the animals. But until then, we hope you enjoy this video and the cuteness overload of our latest adventure.

One of the best things about writing about our adventures in homesteading, is that the homestead encompasses so many aspects of our life. Topics from our garden, to our future animals, home projects, recipes and so much more. But today, I had to share one of my favorite recipes growing up.

On September 11, 2011 ( 8 years ago), our family lost a matriarch, my grandma Ag. She was the true glue that held us together. I think most southern families had someone in their family like this, someone who hosted Sunday lunch and baked Christmas cookies. That person who always had a $1 surprise bag from the dollar tree waiting for you and a pantry full of food for you to shop when you were so poor right after college. She was my favorite person, and missing her still creates an ache I can’t seem to hide. So, I must admit I am thankful that type doesn’t run like ink, or I would have to start over right now.

But the real reason we are here today is Blueberry Yum Yum. Man, was this one of my grandmother’s signature treats. Her and my grandpa, had these amazing blueberry bushes in their yard. She would take an old 5 gallon ice cream bucket and tie a string through it so that you could wear it around your neck while you picked blueberries, allowing you to use both hands.

When my grandpa passed away in July 2019, our family sat at his house for almost a week, reminiscing about things past and going through her old recipe box, which is how I rediscovered this delicious piece of history.

Blueberry Yum Yum

To Make the crust you will need:

• 1 c. all purpose flour
• 1 stick butter, softened
• 1 c. chopped pecans

To make the filling you will need:

• 8 oz cream cheese, softened
• 8 oz whipped topping
• 1 c. sugar

To make the topping you will need:

• 2 c. blueberries (fresh is best, but frozen will do in a pinch)
• ½ c. water
• 1 c. sugar
• ¼ c. cornstarch (mixed in water to create a slurry or liquid)

Preheat the oven to 350 ° . Spray a 9 x 13 inch baking dish with baking spray. Mix crust ingredients together. Once mixed well, press into the bottom of the pan. Bake for approximately 20 minutes and then let cool.

While the crust is baking, mix the cream cheese and sugar for the filling together. Add in the whipped topping and mix until smooth. Once the crust is cooled, spread the filling mixture on top of the crust. Place in refrigerator while preparing the topping.

Prepare the topping by place the blueberries, sugar for the topping and water in a small pot. Bring the blueberry mixture to a boil for approximately 2 minutes or until all the blueberries have burst. Remove from heat. Mix in the cornstarch and water slurry. Place the pot back onto heat and bring back to a boil, stirring constantly, for one minute. This will thicken the blueberry topping. Allow topping to cool . Spread topping on top of the filling and Enjoy.

We have had a garden for as long as we have been married and every year we make a couple changes to improve our efficiency. At the beginning of 2019, prior to ever even thinking about this whole homesteading idea, I decided I wanted to double our garden. Even now, I am not sure what I was thinking because we were not prepared for what the summer had in store for us. In April, we planted and planted and planted some more…honestly, I didn’t think we would ever get the garden completed.

In May, our garden was chugging along. Blooms were appearing on many of our plants and we decided to take a much needed weekend to go to see my husband’s parents. We were only gone a couple of days, but when we returned our beautiful tomato plants looked decimated. We had no idea that we had monsters in our midst. For several days after returning home, we looked at our destroyed tomato plants trying to understand what had happened. I had just turned in my notice at work and knew as soon as I was at home full time I would have to set my sights on correcting the tomato problem.

It was not until almost a week after our mini vacation that I discovered the tomato problem was staring us right in the eye.

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Tomato horn worms (or in some cases tobacco horn worms) had infiltrated and attempted to annihilate our garden. They were everywhere! When I first discovered them, it was because one had reared its head up at me, attempting to scare me away I think. It was almost 4-5 inches long, that is a huge worm, had what appeared to be a mouthful of teeth, and this little red horn off it’s backside. I had no idea if it could bite or sting and to make matters worse it appeared to be spitting green juice at me.

We had decided early on that we were not going to use any kind of pesticide or insecticide outside of soap and salt. Our plan had been from the beginning to grow everything as naturally as possible and even with these giant green monsters in play, we wanted to stick to our plan. Therefore, after a little more research, I found out that they were relatively harmless, to humans that is, and so our mission was to find each and every horn worm, pull it off the tomato plant and “smush” it.

The first week, we found hundreds of these creatures. Thankfully, the ant army would follow close behind us after we completed that day’s de-worming and they would take all the worm bodies away. As the weeks went on, we saw a decrease in the number of horn worms and our tomatoes were able to recover.

Just when I thought the worst of it was behind us I started to see a new variation of the monster I had fought all summer.

Initially, I thought it must be a mother horn worm, carrying all her babies and so I started removing these from my plants as well. I found myself intrigued though by this new monster as I continued to find more and more of them on my plants and so I sat down once again to do research.

The white larvae on the horn worm turned out not to be baby horn worms, but actually baby wasp; the braconid wasp. These wasp babies, were actually feeding on the horn worm from the inside out, eventually leading to the horn worm’s demise. Hello circle of life (cue the lion king please). I mean, you almost feel bad for the horn worm, he has baby wasps everywhere on him. Furthermore, I found out that once the baby wasps are full size they actually eat the horn worms. Winning!!

So while I continue to fight what feels like a never ending battle against the tomato monster, it is good to know that we have wasp allies on our side, fighting with us. It is always an adventure on the farm.

Have you ever done a job for 5 or 10 years and found that no matter how good you are at your job, it just doesn’t provide fulfillment? I know that feeling all to well, that is where I was four months ago. Hi, my name is Ashley and four months ago (May, 2019), I quit my job to homestead. Now, I know that sounds crazy. It felt pretty crazy at the time, and if we are honest most days I still feel like I am living in some kind of dream. A good dream though, not like a nightmare.

So, you are most likely thinking “what do I do all day”, right? I work. I work harder than I ever did in my “corporate” styled job. Why? Because for once in my life no one is telling me what to do and how to do it. I am having to figure it out all on my own. It has been an abrupt welcoming. Each day I wake up to work with my hands. Some days I find myself working in the garden, while others I may be helping fix fences. What I do know though is that no matter what chore is set before, I have the opportunity to learn everyday. Learning, that is what has made the biggest difference in my life thus far.

Where I live, in rural NC, there are so many farms still. Even as I write this post, I can watch tractors go down the road that I live on. The difference for my family though, is we are not farmers. Neither my husband nor I, grew up on a farm. We are both several generations removed from farming. So, the decision for me to quit my job and homestead, was a huge shift for us. I would love to tell you that it has been an easy transition, but then the welcome would have not have been abrupt and this would not be an adventure. Therefore, it is my hope that you will continue to come back to our little blog. That you will find joy in our journey, just as we have, and more than that, that our adventure will provide some positivity in a world where many people live feeling unfulfilled.