Starting Here.

I can easily scroll through homesteading instagrams and gardening youtube channels for hours, I love seeing the routines of tending to animals, baking bread, making cheese, butter and growing food year round.

I decided instead of scrolling it was time that I started here. Started now.

I’m bought a book, The Backyard Homestead and I’ve started to thumb through and pick out things that are plausible for the space I have with my house and yard. I’m imagining a fantastic rendition of Julie & Julia that’s about to take place where I mimic the teachings from the book one page at a time, but let’s give myself some grace. Because I’m also tired and it’s 2020.

The first thing that caught my eye was keeping ducks. Did you know there are quackless ducks? I know, right? They’re called Muscovy ducks. They have warty little faces and I adore them. We have a creek that runs through our backyard and I’m always trying to spin up ideas on utilization.

I’m obviously not going to start with ducks, but I would like to end up around that vicinity of ducks.

Last winter, I started seed in the basement with a small lighted set up which developed into my first garden. The harvests weren’t all brag worthy, but I really enjoyed the experience.

I’ll probably look through the book and see if there’s some ideas for seed starting, growing indoors, how to properly plan a garden and kick off The Backyard Homestead Challenge!