Two City Kids and a Compost Pile
Splashing in the creek, chasing fireflies at dusk, and living life at the end of a dirt road. Nope, that wasn’t my childhood. I wasn’t raised a homesteader. In fact, I didn’t even grow up out in the country. Like many folks, I have homesteaders and farmers on branches of both sides of my family tree, but my childhood was spent in a regular little neighborhood on a small lot in rural northern Idaho—no acreage, no chickens, and no big red barns.
My upbringing may have been suburban, but I had a fascination with all things country right from the start. While all my friends were playing dress-up, I pushed a wheelbarrow around our tiny yard and pretended I was living on a farm and mucking stalls. (Yes, really.) The other girls giggled about their latest crush while I doodled sketches of my future barns and corrals. In high school, the thought of Saturdays spent roaming the mall bored me to tears. I much preferred using my weekends to help local ranching friends build fences and clean pens. I never really fit in with the crowd, but I never really wanted to either.
I’ve been obsessed with horses since I was two years old, so after graduating from high school, it only made sense to pursue a career in the equine industry. Instead of staying close to home, I packed up my F-150 truck and drove to Wyoming to begin a grand adventure 1,100 miles away from everything and everyone I had ever known. I was scared to death, but promptly fell in love with the ruggedness and wide-open spaces of the Cowboy State and swore to never leave. A few years into that adventure, I met my future husband, Christian. It was a totally romantic first encounter—I was shoveling liquid cow manure in the college arena the first time he laid eyes on me. Now that I think about it, it had to be some sort of a foreshadowing of our future lifestyle. He wasn’t raised on a farm or ranch either, but our early dates were filled with talk of our shared dreams of owning land and cattle someday. He proposed on horseback and we were married soon after.
The concept of homesteading couldn’t have been further from our minds as newlyweds, but we had a couple of horses and knew for certain we didn’t want to live in town. We saved up a down payment and began to shop for our first home. Instead of playing it safe and, like rational people, buying one of those cute little starter homes three minutes away from the grocery store, we fell head over heels for a neglected property 40 miles from town. The tiny hundred-year-old home boasted 900 square feet of shoebox-sized rooms with an awkward layout. The accompanying cinder-block barn and shop (circa 1940) were filled waist-deep with junk and rusty car parts. The fence posts were rotted, leaning, and laced with ancient strands of broken barbed wire. And my personal favorite—there was a dead washing machine in the front yard full of moldy clothes. The place radiated charm.
Our friends thought we had completely lost our minds, and when I look back at those early photos, I suppose I can see their point. But tumbledown fences and trashy buildings aside, the sad little property gave two city kids with a small budget a chance to become the proud owners of 67 acres of prairie land. And it was glorious.
Blinded by potential, we feverishly dove into setting new fence posts, reconstructing crumbling outbuildings, and hauling away over 20 tons of trash (and that lovely washing machine). Since then, the entire place has undergone a complete transformation, and it looks nothing like it did back then. Thankfully, Christian and I are both home-improvement junkies, so we’ve enjoyed (almost) every second of building, fencing, digging, painting, remodeling, and planting.
I wish I could say there was a profound or poetic moment that sparked our first official homestead endeavor, but the truth is, the catalyst was horse manure. There was a growing pile in the back pasture, and it would be years before our budget could handle the purchase of a tractor. And so the pile grew larger by the day and drove me crazy every time I looked at it. I was desperate for a solution, so when a library book introduced me to the idea of turning animal manure into rich plant food, I was wildly inspired.
Christian built two compost bins out of salvaged scrap lumber on the edge of the yard. I remember surveying the completed bins and feeling an awakening I’d never quite experienced before. Our new little property felt so ripe with possibility, I was beside myself. I schemed about how our land could become profitable (or at least earn its keep), and I was hit with a powerful desire to start growing food. I checked out every library book I could find about vegetables, dairy goats, and chickens, and found myself lying in bed at night, unable to sleep as my heart pounded with excitement at the potential of what we could create here on our little piece of land.
We had created something from almost nothing, we were opting out of cultural norms, we were preparing to grow food, and we were one step closer to sustainable self-sufficiency. It was intoxicating. I became addicted right then and there and immediately began to plan the next project. Shortly thereafter, I impulse-bought a flock of Rhode Island Red chickens, followed by a pair of pregnant dairy goats (when I was nine months pregnant myself). There was no turning back.
After several naysayers told me gardening in our corner of Wyoming wasn’t worth bothering with, I set my sights on mastering vegetables. Despite more than a few mistakes and plenty of weeds, I eventually harvested pumpkins, potatoes, onions, corn, carrots, and beans by the basketful. The milk cow came a little while later, and so did the hogs, cheese making, and chickens. We don’t grow every single bit of our food ourselves and likely never will, but our efforts have paid off handsomely and we enjoy many, many meals made with ingredients grown right here on our prairie homestead.
As our homesteading adventure progressed and we added children into the mix, our life felt so unusual and exciting, I wanted to talk about it. A lot. The problem? I didn’t have any homesteading friends at that point, and my family members were getting tired of goat talk. So like a true child of the Internet age, I took my passions to the World Wide Web, and in 2010, I began rambling away on my blog, The Prairie Homestead (theprairiehomestead.com). Little did I know that this little blog would eventually become a thriving community of online homesteaders with many millions of visitors each year. There were other people out there who loved composting. And chickens. And baking bread.
What a thrill! My favorite emails are the ones where people tell me how reading the blog inspired them to take action and dive into their own homesteading adventure. Connecting with so many people all over the globe with a shared love for this modern twist on an old-fashioned lifestyle has been one of the greatest privileges of my life.
For us, homesteading has been the gateway to building a life we love. Christian and I have never wanted to live our lives just going through the motions—homesteading is how we have chosen to live with intention and purpose. It helps us stay grounded and in sync with the cycles of nature. To put it simply, homesteading makes us feel more alive.
But that was only the beginning. Once I broke out of the box in one area of life, I couldn’t help but keep busting down my other self-imposed walls too. This notion of purposefully creating what we wanted rather than allowing ourselves to be pulled along by the cultural current of passivity began to creep into all other areas of our lives.
What began as a simple passion for rural living and good food has resulted in opting out of the nine-to-five lifestyle, becoming entrepreneurs, schooling our children at home, and exploring natural medicines, among many other things. Homesteading invited Christian and me to design the life we had dreamed of and has taken us further than we ever could have imagined. Sometimes I look at where our life is now and I have to pinch myself. The little girl who pushed her wheelbarrow to the country finally has stalls to muck, plus a whole lot more. And it all started with one humble compost pile.
Homesteading Redefined
There’s no shortage of debate these days over what the term homesteader should mean. Some folks even assume the strictest definition of the word and email me wanting to know how we got our land for free. (Spoiler alert—we had to buy our property just like everyone else!)
I call our lifestyle homesteading because that particular label seems to fit our unique routine better than others. Considering we don’t sell food to the public or make an income from our animals and crops, calling ourselves farmers or ranchers feels awkward to me. The “homesteading” label feels most natural when someone asks why we do what we do, and it’s easier than reciting a lengthy sermon on my philosophies of self-sufficiency and quality of life. The good news? You can call yourself anything you like—there are no real rules here, just preferences.
Back in the day, a homesteader was someone who claimed a piece of federal land and made it his or her own. As author and western historian Candy Moulton explains:
The 1862 Homestead Act allowed men and women to claim up to 160 acres of land. Anyone who was twenty-one years old or the head of a family, who was a United States citizen or in the process of becoming one, and who had never fought in a war against the United States could claim a homestead. In order to prove up or gain title, an individual had to live on the claim for at least six months each year during a five-year development period and make improvements. After a five-year development period, the land became the homesteader’s property.
The original homesteaders possessed a sizable dose of determination, courage, and grit to be willing to head into unknown territory to chase the promise of a better life and more opportunities. Many failed, but many others succeeded and ended up shaping history forever. Both sides of my family homesteaded in southeastern Idaho, and my great-grandmother Genevieve even homesteaded solo after her husband decided he didn’t care for the rugged lifestyle. She kept chickens, cattle, horses, sheep, gooseberry bushes, and a vegetable garden, and was well-known for her skills with a horse and a gun. (She also challenged societal norms at the time and scandalized the community by being one of the few women who wore pants.) To me, she embodied the tenacity and fortitude of the original and the modern homesteaders alike.
In 1976, the Homestead Act was repealed, and with it, that particular definition of homesteading has been laid to rest. The enticement of free land is a thing of the past. But the spirit of homesteading is just as alive and well as it has ever been. The traits that made the original homesteaders so legendary continue to live on in a new group of pioneers for whom self-sufficiency and freedom are as alluring as ever.
There are plenty of potential titles for this crazy existence that bucks modern-day norms. Some call it homesteading. Some call it backyard farming. Some call it urban farming. And some people don’t have a name for it; it’s just life. But regardless of the title, the ideology is spreading like wildfire because even in the midst of a modern culture full of ease and convenience, folks are fed up.
They’re fed up with eating processed foods laced with chemicals. They’re fed up with passionless desk jobs and sitting in endless traffic. They’re fed up with witnessing poor stewardship of land and resources. They’re fed up with their kids thinking food somehow just magically appears on the shelves at the grocery store. And they’re fed up with being dependent on someone else.
This notion of modern homesteading doesn’t get hung up on specific definitions because it speaks to a mind-set rather than to a specific location or list of possessions. It’s a mentality of celebrating a simpler way of life, of savoring the sheer enjoyment of working with your hands, and of appreciating time-honored skills and wholesome food.
Homesteading has taught me how to appreciate the simpler, slower parts of life. In a world where life seems to move faster and faster, it’s easy to become disconnected from what matters. Homesteading breaks this cycle by encouraging us to get our hands dirty and return to an intimate relationship with the cycles of nature and food production. I’m convinced this is a need every human carries and that returning to it satisfies something deep inside us.
I’m also convinced humans need an element of challenge to feel fully alive. I know I personally feel the most content when I’m knee-deep in a project and trying my best to figure it all out. Obstacles and challenges shape us, teach us life lessons, and, when we overcome them, provide a heady feeling of accomplishment that inspires us to keep going. I have a hunch that many of us are just plain bored with all of the conveniences available. Homesteading captures our imagination because it’s not easy—yet we know in our gut it’s going to be a thrilling ride. Why else would a perfectly rational adult spend dozens of hours coaxing tiny seeds to grow when they could zip to the grocery store and buy as many vegetables as they want in mere minutes? It’s because we anticipate the rewards of labor and desire the satisfaction and gratification that come from time well spent. It’s a part of our human fiber.
Modern homesteaders are people who are choosing to opt out of the rat race. They savor good food and crave playing an active role in producing what they eat. Dirt under their fingernails and manure on their boots doesn’t bother them a bit, and they don’t bat an eye at spending a late night putting food in jars to preserve the harvest. They appreciate the value of hard work and consider sore muscles at the end of a day spent outside something of which they can be proud.
Land ownership isn’t a requirement, because homesteading is a state of mind. Sure, some homesteaders live on hundreds of acres, but you’ll find many others in the most urban of settings, sprinkled across suburbia, or tending vegetables on the balconies of their high-rise apartments.
Regardless of where a homesteader lives, our objectives remain the same. We long to return to our roots. We crave self-sufficiency. And we yearn for the freedom to write our own story—just like our pioneer ancestors. If these concepts resonate with you, then you’re already a homesteader, my friend.
“I want to homestead SO BAD, but I don’t have any land, and I won’t be getting chickens for a long time…. Help!”
Emails like this find their way into my inbox in a never-ending trickle, and they make me excited. Because yes, there is so much you can do! Modern homesteading has many different moving parts, but when you step back and look at the bigger picture, these pieces all revolve around one thing: FOOD. That is the answer. Start shifting your food habits and not only will your health improve, but you’ll be well on your way to adopting the homesteading philosophy into other parts of your life too. If you’re wondering exactly how to start that shift, well, you’re holding the answer in your hands. This cookbook will provide you with the exact tools you need to cook like a homesteader—no matter where you live.
Try your hand at kneading bread, creating ricotta clouds in a pot of milk, or roasting a vegetable you’ve never tried before from the local farm stand. Ditch the boxes, cans, and frozen dinners and fall in love with colorful, fresh, whole ingredients. If you can’t grow your own ingredients at the moment, begin a new habit of visiting local producers or farmers’ markets. Turn off the TV and embrace the time-honored ritual of taking a moment to gather the family around the table to pause and break bread.
Food has a supernatural way of bringing humans together. It’s meant to be appreciated, celebrated, and savored. Even the tiniest apartment kitchen can create farmhouse-worthy food and bring a taste of the homestead to the city. It’s very possible, and extremely delicious.
Good, Better, Best
When my out-of-state friends talk about grocery shopping, I listen to every detail with complete fascination. They’ll talk about making the rounds to multiple natural food stores in their town, grabbing their favorite brand of yogurt at one store and the best coconut oil at another. All manner of raw dairy, local organic produce, and grass-fed meats are at their disposal, whether through their favorite organic chain or through one of many farmers in their area. And they can shop around to find their favorite producers and the best prices. It sounds like a blast!
In Wyoming, we have wide-open spaces, a rugged population, and not a single Whole Foods Market or Trader Joe’s in the whole state. While there are farmers’ markets scattered around the region, they only operate during a handful of months and even then much of the produce is shipped in from neighboring areas. I’ve been pleased to see more and more small local producers pop up recently, but when I first started, finding organic anything around here was like finding a needle in a haystack.
As frustrating as it can be to hunt down quality, whole-food ingredients in a place like Wyoming, I’m living proof it can be done. There’s a precious window of time each year when I grocery shop from my garden several times per day, and nearly every meal features onions, potatoes, beets, squash, or green beans picked just hours prior. As beautiful as that time of year is, it doesn’t last very long, so we rely on other options during the rest of the year, including frozen or canned produce or things picked up in town. I have zero reservations about buying nonorganic produce from trusted producers who don’t use pesticides or herbicides, as the organic certification process is often too costly for the little guys, and I’m always delighted to support them anyway.
Growing ingredients ourselves (more on that in Part Two), combined with ordering food online and bulk buying with friends when necessary, has provided us with all the ingredients we have needed for the almost ten years we’ve been on our whole-food journey. I feel like a treasure hunter sometimes, but if I can cook with whole foods out here on the Wyoming prairie, then anyone can. (And these same principles apply to anyone who might live in an urban or suburban area with limited options as well!)
I use a “Good, Better, Best” scale when I’m shopping for ingredients (you can find more specifics on some of my favorite ingredients here), because sometimes I have to make do with certain things, no matter how much I’d prefer better options. If you can relate to the idea of having to treasure hunt to find quality food in your area, then you’ll find this helpful.
GOOD—Upgrade the ingredients you currently use by choosing less processed or homemade versions. Swap out white sugar for dehydrated whole cane sugar, maple syrup, or honey. Buy whole chickens instead of just breasts and wings so you can make homemade stock (here) with the leftover bones. Even if a conventional grocery store is the only option you have available, there’s so much you can do with the food there.
Example: Choose butter instead of margarine.
BETTER—Opt for organic at the regular grocery store or seek out whole-food cooperatives or buying clubs such as Bountiful Baskets. Even though not every single item might be USDA Certified Organic, some may still have been grown without pesticides or chemicals by growers who couldn’t afford the organic certification process.
Example: Choose organic butter from the natural food store.
BEST—Start growing your own ingredients. If that’s not a possibility, seek out local farmers from whom you can purchase directly, participate in a community garden, or join a local Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program. Another option is to partner with friends who have a garden plot or who are able to keep chickens or larger animals, and split the labor and expenses with them.
Example: Choose butter from local, grass-fed cows or milk your own dairy animals.
The recipes in this cookbook are designed to fit any of these three scenarios and can be easily adapted to what is currently available to you, no matter if you’re using regular grocery store ingredients or the finest, locally sourced or homegrown produce, dairy, and meats. Don’t expect your cupboards to change overnight—it’s a process, and trying to make all the swaps all at once will have you pulling your hair out. Focus on swapping out one ingredient at a time and enjoy the ride.
In Defense of Balance
As passionate as I am about whole, homegrown foods, I refuse to be dogmatic about them, so allow me clarify a few things before we dive into the recipes.
I’ve watched various diet fads come and go over the years and have been alarmed by recent trends demanding absolute perfection. As much as I adore whole foods and do my very best to source high-quality ingredients, I’m not a purist. For the sake of my sanity, I do compromise sometimes.
I see a lot of people running themselves ragged in an attempt to make their diets perfect. I fell into this common trap at the beginning of my own journey, and thought my efforts were a failure if every bit of every meal was not perfectly sourced and homemade. I’ll never forget the time I spent an entire day attempting to prepare a sack lunch for a family outing. I was determined to make every single bit of it by hand (the bread, the lunchmeat, the cheese, the snacks) and I nearly drove myself to tears in the process. It was the final straw, but an important turning point. From that day forward, I stopped beating myself up for not being perfect and worked on celebrating what I did create, instead of worrying about what I didn’t.
My mission is for our food to give us joy and nourished bellies, but for it also to leave us time to do other things we love. Now, I know some of you may be reading these words with one eyebrow raised saying, “You’re joking, right? You milk a cow, grow a garden, and raise your own beef, for heaven’s sake!” Yes, it’s a funny balance we have, but a balance nonetheless. I love the process of growing and cooking food, so I intentionally choose to spend a considerable amount of time doing those things since they contribute to our overall quality of life. Not to mention, recipes calling for a “box of this” and a “can of that” always leave me feeling rather uninspired. If I’m going to cook something, I’d rather it be from scratch.
However, as much as I love food, my life simply cannot revolve around it all the time. In our home, whole-food and from-scratch cooking requires a sort of fluidity and a willingness to be flexible and, yes, even to compromise sometimes. What does this look like? It means some days we have roasted homegrown chicken for supper with seasoned fried potatoes from the garden and a side salad of fresh lettuce picked from right outside the door. But it also means on the busier days you might find us chowing down on nachos made with the ground beef I hastily defrosted and fried up and store-bought tortilla chips. Therefore, right here and now I’m declaring my stance as a whole-food-loving homesteader who believes it’s entirely okay to cheat sometimes.
Here is where you come in, dear reader—good food shouldn’t be an all-or-nothing thing. Perfection is overrated, and the process of learning something worthwhile never happens overnight. Consider The Prairie Homestead Cookbook your guilt-free road map to this beautiful, crazy life we call homesteading. My hope is that it inspires you to get in the kitchen, create some tasty food, and maybe even experience a spark of excitement from learning a new skill.
Fitting Homesteading into a Modern Schedule
Homestead food is slow food. In a day and age where waiting on the microwave feels like an eternity, it seems counterintuitive to make homemade pizza dough that requires 24 hours to reach its full potential. However, the blessing of slow food is that the time required by the techniques is rarely hands-on.
It sounds impressive (and complicated!) to brag that the soup on the table contains homemade stock, homegrown sausage, and cream from the cow, but it’s easier than you think. The secret? Most homegrown and homemade meals I put on the table have been created in stages. I made and canned the stock two months ago, ground and seasoned the sausage last year, and skimmed the cream this week. Putting the ingredients together in the pot and tossing in a bit of seasoning is hardly any more difficult than making a boxed dinner from the grocery store.
With a bit of forethought and the recipes in this book, you can stock your pantry and make your homemade meals a snap. Here are a few other tips for balancing homestead-style cooking with a modern schedule.
PLAN AHEAD—If I’m planning on making a recipe that includes longer wait times, it helps to pencil it into my calendar just like I would a trip to town or an appointment. It also ensures I remember to have the various ingredients on hand or defrosted before I start. If you work during the week, you may find the weekend is the best time to have homemade dairy products culturing (such as buttermilk, here, or cream cheese, here) or stock (here) bubbling away on the stove.
BUILD A REPERTOIRE—There’s a time for complex kitchen experiments and a time for good old standbys. Create a list of five to ten from-scratch meals you know inside and out and keep the ingredients always available. Make slightly more complicated or adventurous recipes two or three times a week and fill in the other days with easier options (three cheers for scrambled eggs!). Keeping basics like Simple Roast Chicken or Stovetop Mac ’n’ Cheese on frequent rotation also helps to eliminate decision fatigue in your menu planning (the struggle is real).
BATCH COOK—I’m famous for making gallons of chicken stock (here) or multiple batches of mozzarella at the same time so I only have to dirty pots and pans once. Double or triple recipes whenever possible so you can freeze them or eat them the following day.
PRESERVE LIKE CRAZY—Having jars of home-canned beans in the pantry or containers of homemade ricotta cheese (here) tucked away in the freezer means I can include more homegrown or organically sourced ingredients in my recipes without having to make every single part of the recipe on the same day. Food preservation is a worthwhile skill to add to your repertoire—it will save you time and money in the long run.
LET GO OF PERFECTION—There’s one thing I know for certain—there are days your meals just won’t come together. (Or you explode your picture-perfect, homegrown pumpkin pie just moments before sitting down at the table.) You know what? It’s okay. Pop a batch of popcorn, drizzle some butter on top, and try again tomorrow.
Time Management on the Homestead
For me, modern homesteading is about mixing the best of two worlds. We take a generous helping of our ancestors’ grit and know-how and mix it with a few spoonfuls of the conveniences available to us (I really love running water).
Because most of us still have at least one foot firmly planted in the twenty-first century, we have the unique experience of figuring out how to juggle our modern responsibilities with tasks our ancestors would have spent the majority of their day accomplishing. It’s a delicate balance, but I’m here to tell you that it can be done. While I most definitely do not have it all figured out, here are a few principles I’ve adopted over the years that keep my schedule flowing as much as possible.
RESPECT THE SEASONS—Nature does an excellent job of leading the way. To everything there is a season, and I try my best to mimic that with my schedule. Winter is for cleaning cabinets, reflection, and rest. Spring is for planting and preparation. Summer is for growth and all the outdoor projects I can possibly handle. And fall is for harvest, filling the larder, and overall regrouping. Getting the bright idea to deep-clean my cabinets in the midst of fall preservation ends with one stressed-out mama. Every single time.
There are seasons I put all my energies into gardening, seasons I focus on organizing my home, and seasons where I push hard in my businesses. I’m not convinced everything should be in perfect balance at all times—sometimes it’s appropriate to put more focus on one area and let the others coast for a while.
WRITE IT ALL DOWN—Planners, calendars, notebooks, binders—it doesn’t matter what you use, but make a habit of getting it out of your head and onto paper. Nothing is more stressful than a million to-dos swirling around in your brain. My planner tracks our homeschool schedule, when we bred the cows, when I planted what seeds, what I’m making for supper, and so much more. Plus, it’s gratifying to be able to look back at old planners and see how far you’ve come.
GET UP EARLIER—This one isn’t my favorite, but it works. Our days always run more smoothly when I get up even 30 minutes earlier than normal. It’s enough time to do chores, put a roast in the slow cooker (here), or get a head start on a kitchen project before the chaos of the day is in full swing. When mornings are smooth, the mood for the rest of the day tends to follow.
LET IT GO—I gave up being a purist years ago, and I no longer beat myself up for cutting corners here and there. Sometimes I buy store-bought tortillas. Sometimes I forget to defrost the meat for supper and we just eat sandwiches. Some years I have tons of vegetables, some years I have only a few, and some years I just have dead vegetable plants. I’ve stopped trying to live up to some imaginary depiction of what a perfect homesteader should look like and I just do the things that make sense for us. And you know what? I like this lifestyle a whole lot better this way.
Embracing Failure
Maybe you’ve already given this homesteading thing a try and it didn’t work out quite like you thought. You’re considering calling it quits, and wondering if you jumped in too fast. Or perhaps you’re afraid you’re just not cut out for this lifestyle.
I get it. I’ve been there. There are times this journey is so intoxicating, you have to pinch yourself to make sure it’s real. And there are other times it brings you to your knees and breaks your heart.
I’ve wept over hail-shredded vegetables. I’ve been devastated over dead chickens. I’ve cried when I’ve found baby goats standing next to their dead mother. I’ve thrown tantrums and yelled, “I quit!” to anyone who would listen.
If you’re wondering if it’s time to throw in the towel, let me say this: If you can’t get homesteading out of your mind; if the thought of chickens pecking in the front yard and vibrant jars of home-canned food in the pantry makes your heart beat a little faster; if the thought of eating a meal you grew with your own two hands still makes your eyes light up, stick with it. Fight the urge to play small to avoid failure—it’s a surefire recipe for regret.
If you want to succeed faster, double your rate of failure.
—BRIAN TRACY, bestselling self-development author
I invite you to not only let go of your fear of failure, but to actually embrace failure. Get all cozy with it. Own your mistakes because mistakes are proof that you’re trying. You’re doing the hard things. You’ve upgraded from spectator status, you’re officially in the arena, and you’re making it happen. In fact, if you’re not experiencing some sort of failure in an area you’re passionate about, perhaps you’re not chasing that particular dream hard enough. Radical thought, huh?
That’s the key, my friends. If homesteading is something you truly love, don’t let the sting of failure stop you from pursuing it. Not for one second. Don’t be one of the many whose fear of failure has paralyzed them for a lifetime. Sometimes your biggest successes can only appear after you experience your biggest failures. Burn the pie, make chewy pork chops, and bake rock-hard loaves of bread. It doesn’t matter. Sometimes it has to get ugly before it can get pretty. And if you quit in the midst of the striving, you will miss out on the greatest reward of all.
It’s not about talent, or genetics, or finances, or your background. It’s about sheer determination and resilience. Just don’t quit.
my hopes for you and this cookbook
As I’ve ventured into the world of modern homesteading in all its glory and frustrations, I’ve discovered one trait that has served me better than all the others: action. If you can hone the ability to learn a new skill and swiftly implement it, you’ll go far in this homesteading gig. The magic shows up as you dive in and make mistakes. The mastery materializes through steady, consistent attempts that don’t feel very remarkable at first, but eventually add up to greatness. It’s the action that yields the results.
My prayer is that you’ll transform the information in this book into tangible activity. The photos might be beautiful, but this book is not meant to sit on the coffee table. It’s meant to be your companion in the kitchen as you roll out flaky pie crust, brown chunks of grass-fed beef, chop crisp lettuce, and knead yeasty bread dough with the heels of your hands.
I hope the pages end up being dog-eared, wrinkled, and splattered with bacon grease and bits of flour. I hope you bond with your family and friends as you make Simple Roast Chicken, Rustic Sausage Potato Soup, and Apple Molasses Pie with Cheddar Crust. I hope you devour the meals with the TV turned off and the conversation flowing.
I hope you swell with pride as you tackle the time-honored skills from these pages and master the art of homemade butter, and ricotta, and stock. I hope you feel inspired to grow something. Anything. Even just a pot of basil in the window. I hope you’ll laugh when you mess something up or when the smoke alarm goes off. And then I hope you’ll try again.
If you’ve been homesteading for years, I hope this book brings a sense of community and validation to the lifestyle you already embrace and love.
And if you’re new to this beautifully old-fashioned lifestyle, I hope you feel the rush of adrenaline as you taste the possibilities for the very first time. I hope the notion of self-sufficiency begins to shift from a dream to a concrete reality for you.
No matter what your homesteading journey looks like, I hope you are filled with deep satisfaction as you return to your roots and craft delicious foods to nourish the bellies and souls of those you love.
Now, let’s get cooking!
