building a homestead from scratch | homemade homestead | recipes from scratch | tips and tricks in the garden.
Hey Y’all!
We’re Marian and Andrew and we’re so excited to share a little about us with you and our journey of building a homestead from scratch. Join us and our family as we strive to live a simple, natural, healthier life. Each week we’ll bring to you DIY inspiration around our homemade homestead, tips and tricks in the garden, and recipes made from scratch. I love to document how our homestead is growing and all of the lessons along the way. I would love for you to follow along in our everyday life in hopes of providing you with inspiration on your homestead. For our disclosure & privacy policy just click here.
About Us
My husband and I are a retired military family that thought traveling the U.S. in our RV was the way to live retirement. But, I’m not a fan of reading and the RV did not provide the storage space needed for crafts, etc. Plus, hauling potted plants in and out of the RV with every stop got old quick. While Andrew was perfectly content taking a stroll and chatting up the neighbors, I was going stir crazy. I needed a bigger oven, a garden to grow things, a place for our dogs to run, and chickens sure would be nice. So we landed in Central Florida (close to the kids and grandkids) and began renting a home. We needed to figure out our next step.
Our First Homestead
Our homesteading journey began on an acre of land with a cute (but needed some work) little house. We built a hen house with a big run, which turned into a hen house with 2 big runs. We raised a bunch of chickens and quail, along with dairy goats and created an amazing garden. Muscadine vines were added plus citrus trees, sugar cane, and more. Unfortunately, our dreams were bigger than our property would allow and the cranky neighbor could handle. It’s kind of like potatoes, you only need one rotten potato to ruin the whole bag. And that’s what we ended up with in our neighborhood.
About Us and Our Homesteading Dreams
But the thing is, we had already been dreaming about moving to a larger piece of land. Plus, the real estate market was going nuts! We only had our home for 2 years and it’s value had increased substantially. Dreams of owning more land had been a goal for the future but quickly became a constant longing for the here and now. Except, the availability of land in our county that where lived did not exist in our price range. So we had to look north of us which brought us to the place we now live and love.
Blessings Come
Now we have 5 acres of land with a cute, well built little house on it and just tickled pink. The land is dotted with Live Oaks covered in Spanish Moss and untouched. No animal shelter or gardens. No fruit trees or berry bushes. A clean slate and a new beginning. We can build our little homestead any way we like. We could not feel more blessed.
God has lead us once again to “Build a Homestead from Scratch”.
Happy Homesteading!
Marian & Andrew