Self-proclaimed "modern homesteader"
About this website: This website is a compilation of information that has aided me in my modern homesteading journey.
The best tshirt I've ever owned
About me: I’m a city born and raised girl. Right out of high school I started a conventional career journey. I started off by assisting in managing a camera shop before I decided to try my hand at real estate. I sold houses successfully for nearly 10 years while simultaneously continuing my college education, then learned I was pregnant with my son Guy. I had fun in real estate, but grew tired of the drudgery off going to work every day. And I decided that being an organic figure in my son’s life was most important to me, so I turned in my license and decided to become a stay-at-home mom.
Me in my culinary school uniform
About a year after my son was born, I decided that I wanted to learn more about food. I attended culinary school, but ultimately did not complete the program because my education IRA that I had set aside for myself (like all “retirement” accounts during the economic recession) plummeted dramatically. I also found the program a little too elementary and found that if I sought well-written culinary books (which are unfortunately few and far between) I could teach myself.
Here I am cooking up some Indian food
When the economy tanked, I became leery of our financial dependence to survive, and set out to everything I could think of to reduce our need for money (which is largely what this site is all about).
Me and my son Guy, the sweetest little boy on the planet
While we lived in the city, I ramped up all of my gardening efforts. I grew potatoes on top of our sun-drenched, flat- roof garage. I grew tomatoes and zillions of other edible plants in five gallon buckets stacked high on restaurant shelves in our driveway. We had a canopy of hops (did you know hops shoots are edible, similar to asparagus?). I sought out edible plants for the shady areas of our yard such as currants, honeyberries and alpine strawberries.
Then we got chickens. Long story short: our neighbors, who were previously only highly annoying, lost their minds and became livid with us because of our decision to include chickens in our yard. And so, we packed up, dug up all of our plants, put the house on the market and moved just outside the center of the city.
My son Guy meeting his new goats
We moved to a 2.5 acre lot just outside Oregon City, which is a suburb of Portland, Oregon. We have a tiny house but plenty of land and not one neighbor in sight (though we adore all of our neighbors, thankfully!). We’ve invested in many more chickens, tried our hand at raising ducks and turkeys. And now we’re raising rabbits and dairy goats and a piglet. I’ve planted every imaginable fruit for our climate and expanded our vegetable garden dramatically.
About the name of this site: As I had mentioned before, I began this journey of self-sufficiency back when we were in the City. It was just around the time when the idea of “Urban Homesteading” started to become popular. The idea is that no matter how small the land you occupy, you can do much to provide for yourself. For me, I am not quite rural and certainly no longer urban–though I still enjoy the luxury of living near a major city.
My husband Ed, shooting a photo of himself with the baby in the backpack
My hope is that I can create an online diary for myself that will hopefully be useful to others. I wish that I could live my life entirely without needing money at all, but there are still medical bills and mortgages to pay for. I have a page on my site of product recommendations that have been useful to me. I earn referrals for anything you purchase through links I provide on my site. If I have saved you money in any way and you would like to donate (invest) in this site I am happy to accept through paypal.
Enjoy, and, please drop me a line… comments, questions, all are welcome.
Amy
Amy,
Oh, how lives correspond over distance. I have been browsing your site and have found so many similarities to my own circumstances. I will be following you blog from now on. I love your goats, mine are the essence of our homestead and the love of our lives. I am so glad that I found you. Blessings to you, let the sun shine and the rain be gentle and may your soil be forever fertile.
Sonia T.
Hey thanks Sonia. I’m glad you found me as well!
Warmly,
Amy
I just wanted to stop by and say hi. I just started in the homestead direction, and I’m sure I’ll be stopping by and asking you lots of questions:)
I’m glad you stopped by! Ask away, I’m glad to help if I can.
Hi, I was just browsing around your site and I noticed that you have a link here for eggs that you sell… Just so you know, the link sends you to price comarisons for Sluggo. Not what I had in mind for breakfast!
Hi, I had to laugh ruefully about your chickens and your first neighbors. I started just like you- planting every available inch of space with fruits, veggies & of course my cottage garden favorites. My highly annoying neighbors didn’t like the landscaping, the picket fence…then came the chickens. Well, we also ended up with the house on the market. We found our perfect place about an hour outside of Portland. Our journey started about 3 1/2 years ago. Funny how times change, now it’s “hip” to plant your front yard & raise your own eggs. Keep living the dream!
I really like the direction you are taking as a “modern homesteader”. Becoming more self-sufficient is not only very important to the health of our families, it also provides us and our children with knowledge and survival skills that would otherwise be long forgotten in this world of technological dependencies. Great information that you have collected here on your site. Keep up the good work. -todd
I’m in Southern Oregon on a few acres, moved here ten years ago and very slowly pursuing the dream. I’ve made more mistakes gardening than anyone I know (yes, I read, but I read so much in so many sources that I forgot what to do with what). I finally started a huge binder and print out everything I think is important about a plant and keep it all under each category. This year looks much more successful as a result although our weather has been more like yours than ours typically is, rain, rain, cold rain.
I really enjoyed stumbling on your site and will be excited to see how you continue living the dream.
Gerrie, thank you so much for finding me and leaving me a comment! Yes, I find this kind of lifestyle trial and error. What may work in another region doesn’t always work well here.
Keep in touch and let if you feel free sharing any info please do!
always glad to see another person step back away from the quick pace life. we live just south of hillsboro oregon about four miles on my grandfathers forty acre farm our family has been here since 1919. my wife and daughter and i love the farm life. i also have some haskaps here that i purchased from osu. enjoy watching things grow and being self sufficient . if you want to come by email us.
Hi Doug! Thanks for stopping by! I wasn’t sure what you meant by haskaps. Are you Canadian?
I, too, am striving to become mostly self-reliant. I was (in what seems a previous life) a chemist and then a chemistry/math teacher. But, then, I quit to stay home with my son in ’04. Now, I make soap, grow a garden, raise chickens, compost, and hope to get goats in the near future. I just can’t bring myself to eat any of my animals. I guess when my chickens get old and stop laying eggs, we will be running a chicken retirement home!! I just love this simple life!!! (I did say simple – not easy!)
Sometimes I don’t know if this life is so simple. It really can be complicated to truly save money. I haven’t found making my own soap or keeping chickens to be much less expensive, unless we get a bit creative.
Two issues with your heading graphic:
1. First, easily enough, is that you used a “quote” quotation mark rather than an “unquote” quotation mark at the end of the analect that you mistakenly attribute to M. Ghandi. To find the hard-character for “unquote,” try some combination of right-bracket + alt, ctrl, command, or Apple.
2. Ghandi never said what you attribute to him as having said. Here’s a NYTimes article on it:
“…Gandhi’s words have been tweaked a little too in recent years. Perhaps you’ve noticed a bumper sticker that purports to quote him: ‘Be the change you wish to see in the world.’ When you first come across it, this does sound like something Gandhi would have said. But when you think about it a little, it starts to sound more like … a bumper sticker…”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/30/opinion/falser-words-were-never-spoken.html
Good luck with it all.
Mona L.V.
Hello. I have been looking over your website. It is very nice. I noticed you posted on Sarah’s website the Healthy Home Economist and had some questions. Please, do not get upset with my questions. IT seems when anyone asks a question about raw milk, it insights anger. I am not sure why. But I was wondering why you are so against The Weston Price foundation, raw milk consumption. What are your sources. I am somewhat new to all of this, and have done countless hours of research over the last several years, about a year ago, I was told about the Weston Price website. My oldest boy had cancer, he is in remission, that is what prompted my journey of diet. When we did what the Dr.s told us, the things the government recommended, the food pyramid, the vaccines, my kids were very very sickly, not just my son with cancer. They all 3 were diagnosed ADHD, autistic, and other things. When I started preparing whole foods, supplementation, and got off the idea of the horrible food pyramid, my kids are getting stronger and stronger. So I have seen the health benefits of not doing what the government suggests. Now, I am not implying you are wrong, please, I am just asking your sources and why you feel the way you do about Weston A Price articles. I want to know as much as I can to make an informed desicion. My son’s endocrinologist told us to get him off the cow’s milk at the stores, because of the rBGH in it, and none are truly hormone free. It is messing with his hormones, we cannot afford goat’s milk, but we can afford the raw milks by buying herdshares. But I am leary. So any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
Hey Carolyn, no, I’m not angry at all. I do get a little testy when I think people flat our refuse to recognize the risks involved, but this is merely because children have gotten sick and nearly died.
My sources? Well, mostly I would say that I have a critical brain. I learned that you cannot take any article, news source or otherwise, at face-value. You have to read through “sources” and figure out the information for yourself. For example (this was a long time ago, so I cannot point to specific links on the website) when I read through the Weston Price foundation’s sources, I found that many of the scientific articles that they listed had nothing to do with consuming raw ruminant milk. I found study that pointed to the benefits of babies consuming breastmilk. How exactly this relates to raw ruminant milk I am not sure. Maybe the point was that most (but not all) breast milk is consumed raw. But, unlike a cow or a goat, humans typically shower every day, wear clothes, and don’t lay in their own feces (my goats did that all the time. they even pooped while they were on the milk stanchion!).
I was also very alarmed when I read through Sally Fallon’s book and could not find one source to back up her claims about raw milk.
I know about food safety because I was forced to learn about it in school.
I know that bacteria can and will readily colonize milk ducts because I have been hospitalized with MRSA in my breasts (mastitis).
Also, please note that because I am quite leery of raw milk does not mean that I think we should all go out and buy intensively farmed milk. Far from it! I think we should all be as close to our food source as possible. I also think that if you are concerned about the pasteurization issue, that you should consider purchasing milk that has not been Ultra-heat treated. There is a huge difference between the two, which is rarely talked about by the raw milkers. Ultra heat treated milk is usually what you buy at the grocery store, and you cannot even make cheese out of it because the proteins are so damaged. Vat-pasteurization is heated far gentler.
Any other questions please ask away.
Warmly,
Amy
PS I’m very sorry about your son. I can’t even imagine.
I found you via the raw milk conversation as well. Whether you choose to drink raw milk is up to you, BUT there is an inaccurate comparison going on with the breastfeeding comparison, and citing that you know that bacteria can colonize b/c you experienced mastitis. As a lactation consultant, I can tell you that mastitis is NOT the result of an infection or bacteria, but the body’s PERCEPTION that there is an infection. Milk can safely be consumed during mastitis with no ill effect, because there are no pathogens present in the milk. The blocked ducts and cytokines (proteins) in the milk “trick” the immune system into believing it needs to attack, so in essence, it is a protective, but autoimmune-like response, and nothing to do with a change in the milk or infection. Just an FYI.