From Agriculturist to Homesteader – Sharing My Path to Self-Sufficiency

Hi friends and thank you for tuning in today on!

Spring has officially sprung on our homestead. I know this because the dandelions have bloomed and my four-year-old excitedly brings me a flower after every trip outside.

In our region of North Idaho, the old timers say your potatoes should be in the ground once the dandelions bloom. I think that we are about a week early based on the notes in my planner from last year and even though I’ve been told you can put your garden in the ground on Mother’s Day here in zone 6b, I wouldn’t risk it. We are still getting frost at night. I recently wrote a blog that talked about my favorite seed starting guide for every region. I’ll link that in the show notes.

Someone else that is watching the dandelions are the local foragers and salve makers. Dandelions make for a tasty salads, pesto, jelly, tea, and wonderfully pain relieving and anti-inflammatory salves.

On to today’s episode, I’d like to take the opportunity to tell you a little about myself. To share my story of how I came to homesteading and homeschooling, because I think that it’s important for you to know my credentials and to bring to light that not everyone has the by the book, easy path to this life that is often portrayed on social media. In my previous episode I promised to stay real with you and today I plan to do just that.

My story starts as a typical small-town girl, to working commercial agriculture to now happily living a slower homestead life. Although, who am I kidding? Homestead isn’t often slower, just more peaceful.

I grew up in a rural part of Northern California. In that place where wine country meets the redwoods. There were herds of cows and sheep on the hillsides and orchards in the valleys. Once upon a time, this was an amazing place to grow up.

My parents were divorced, and my mom and I lived in the small town of 1700 where she had grown up. My had a large cattle ranch about a half an hour away. During the week I had an average small-town life. Went to school, hung out with my two best friends, played sports, attended my church’s youth group and of course was very active in 4-H. My friends and I spent our free time riding bikes, swimming in the river and as we got older, 4-wheeling and target shooting. If was a good life.

But my weekends and summers!

Those were spent on the ranch! This is where I truly learned independence and was trusted in my abilities. I was taught something once and expected to be able to complete that task at any future point independently and often unsupervised.

I learned how to handle horses, work cattle, hunt, train dogs, work fence lines, process meat, carpentry, mechanics, personal skills, and so much more. By my early teens I was running a ranch crew and by the time I was out of high school I was guiding hunting trips on the ranch.

I went through a few years after high school where I thoroughly enjoyed the freedoms of young adulthood. All while racking up some college credits and the local community college and building a career a local refuse company. I had the stereotypical small town life. I got married and had my twins, Savannah and Wyatt. I’ll have to share more on what it is like raising twins one day.

Now what I will tell you next, I have never shared on social media. I always felt like it was my story or cross to bear. But I know that hear this part of my story will help someone, so here it is.

Sadly, when the twins were only a few months old, I tragically became a single mom when my husband had a mental break and beat me so badly, I was hospitalized. This isn’t my proudest moment. What I did next though is. A black eye and two babies in tow, I went and signed back up for college. I had previously gotten a certificate in accounting, so I decided to go for the gusto and get a bachelor’s degree in business and accounting.

My very first semester I met the instructor who changed my life. What started as a general ed writing class was the turning point for me. This instructor had grown up on a cattle ranch in Texas and now him and his partner owned a small farm near the coast. No one really called them homesteads at this point. After reviewing my writing assignments and even helping me get one published in a regional hunting magazine, he didn’t just suggest, he demanded that I change my major. He told me that I was wasting a talent and a passion on accounting when I needed to be pursuing a career in agriculture.

Now in early high school I had looking into one day working for the USDA and had been pretty set on it at one point. However, having decided to not attend a 4 year university, I had though that door was closed for me.

I did some research and decided that agriculture was the most logical path for me. After taking some awe-inspiring science prerequisites the next semester, I packed up myself and my 18-month-old twins. We moved 3 hours away from the only home I had ever known to attend Chico State University’s College of Agriculture.

This was one of the most amazing times in my life. Not for the typical reasons that people refer to their college years as amazing though. I was a single mom of 2 small children with minimal help while taking 24 units at a time and working an internship. I was exhausted, BUT thiving! This was 100% my element. Agriculture is an amazing balance of science, hands on experiences, busines, creativity, public relations, and community involvement and networking.

I landed a dream internship with an organic almond processing plant working with their food safety specialist. At first, I was learning a lot and then out of nowhere he left the job. My employers were in a panic because they had an audit coming up. So, I researched everything I could and with some help from my food safety instructor in college I was able to help them move forward.

This ignited a creative piece in me that I didn’t know excited. Research, designing, and implementing food safety procedures for the impending audit really expanded my brain’s abilities and because like a driving force for me.

The week after I graduated from college, I went back to the instructor who demanded I change my major with a gift basket of foods and wines from all the plants and farms I had worked and trained at since the conversation with him that changed my life. It brought tears to his eyes as he told me that just that week, he had asked himself if he was even making an impact anymore.

Armed with a Bachelor’s Degree in Agriculture, Animal Science and the experience from my internship I went on to getting hired on and consulting with several large food processing plants to help prepare them for food safety audits including the global food safety initiative.

I was thriving in my career, but my previous ignited fire was starting to burn out. I was working 80-hour weeks and I never saw my kids. My son, who had been diagnosed with high functioning autism, was needing more and more of my time. Because of this I was beginning to have some struggles at the office and the mom guilt was through the roof.

It was about this time that I met Ron, an army veteran and widower with 3 rambunctious boys. This attractive and infuriating man with irresistible dimples swept me off my feet. Until meeting him, I had been cautious about anyone getting close to my now 7-year-old twins. But I as I sat in church one Sunday shortly after we met, the pastor was preaching that morning on the importance of children having a mother and a father to guide them. I felt as though he was talking to me directly as Ron and I both had children that were in desperate need of having a hole filled in their lives.

A year later we had given ourselves a fresh start. A new home in a new state (we had to join the California exodus) and newly married. Financially, I no longer had to work so we decided I would take some time off to enjoy life with my new husband and help our children adjust. We spent the next couple of years really enjoying the outdoors. Hiking, fishing, traveling, starting a small homestead and the best part of those years was welcoming our fist son together, Wade.

Wade has been so special to all of us since day one. He brought us all together as a family.

When he was about 6 months old though, my husband was diagnosed with a potentially fatal digestive disease. Essentially, the only treatment or cure was an all-natural lifestyle. I feel like this was the most life altering event we have ever experienced. So, while my husband went into a slight depression while adjusted to the news, I turned to my old friend, RESEARCH!

A side note before I move on, this is also when we decided it was time to homeschool the kids. There were struggles happen for each of them in school and there was a thought that their dad may not be around for as long as we hoped. We decided to pull the kids from school and live life with them! I have never looked back on that choice.

I found every way possible to change our lifestyle to all natural. In fact, I had always been a home cooker, but turns out it was never as homemade as I had thought. This is how I came up with the name of my website, The Homemade Revelation. Many believe that it is a religious plug, when in fact it is my revelations on how to change our lifestyle.

We quickly found out that the region of central Oregon that we were living in was not conducive to the type of farming that our family required. To be honest, it was a giant frozen sandbox there. We began to look for property in North Idaho to be near some friends and family that lived in the area.

BEST THING WE HAVE EVER DONE!

We found a beautiful home on 40 acres that was 100% set up for homesteading. We never had to skip a beat and were able to expand on our endeavors right away.

Our advancement couldn’t have come a more opportune time than they did. COVID hit just a mere 4 months after the purchase of our first milk cow. I gave birth to our now 6^th  and final tornado (I mean son) in February of 2020 and got to come home from the hospital in just the nick of time. Everything was shutting down as we were driving home from the specialty NICU we had been in for over a month, and we were scrambling to get last minute essentials for our fragile infant.

I continue to be so thankful that our homestead was in place, stocked and functional before everyone’s world shut down. Luckily, due to the homestead and homeschooling our lives changed very little during the shut down.

Now as restrictions are lightening, I decided to give my little side business an overhaul. This is my passion, this is where I can help, this where I am needed. So many people started homesteading and homeschooling at an exponential rate and I don’t want to see this fade away because things are going back to “quote” normal.

Now is the time to increase our efforts. I feel like the supply chain is only temporarily stabilized because as I am recording this podcast, 23 food plants have burned to the ground in the last few months and starts are beginning to push some strange laws in public schools again that many see as indoctrination.

I don’t think things are actually going back to normal. I think this may possibly only be the beginning. They best way to protect ourselves and continue to thrive is to embrace our communities, reignite lost skills, and stand together. We may not all see eye to on every topic, that is part of the break down of systems. So when I say we need to stand together, I mean that…

Now is the time for us to stand together in self-sufficiency.