Homesteading on a Farm of Our Own…Someday

A few weeks ago when my car was in the shop, I got a ride in the car dealership’s shuttle to go pick up a loaner car (it was a long eight days without my car!).  It was nice to finally be a passenger for once and to enjoy the rural scenery on our quiet ride.  The driver took me down some country roads I’d never driven before, and I saw some amazing farmhouses that literally took my breath away.  I picked up my jaw from my lap and processed what I’d seen:

Freshly painted late 1800s/early 1990s farmhouses boasted beautiful covered front porches with bright red wooden benches. White picket fences cordoned off the yards from the rest of the farmland around them, and I imagined the beautiful flowers I’d grow in the yard and the rows and rows of crops I’d plant if the home were mine.

And then it hit me.  We’d been so busy living our lives on someone else’s farm, that I almost forgot about our dream of homesteading on a farm of our own—rather, I forgot that my husband is actually into it.  Right now, because of his job as a caretaker, he doesn’t have the time or energy in the summer to help me garden and preserve the food we grow—and we don’t have the room and the storage space to homestead the way we want to here.  I’ve been doing the best I can by myself all along, but it’s just not enough.  We’re not really homesteading the way I want to be.

Before we had Nathan, I tended a 1,000+ square foot vegetable garden and a smaller herb garden on my own and I desperately wanted chickens.  The chickens were out—we’d have to ask permission and it’s just better not to—and I can’t manage a garden that big by myself now with a little one in tow.

I wouldn't mind a view like this from an attic window someday.  This is a photo of a painting hanging my craft room/studio.

I’m so glad for that car ride down an unfamiliar country road.  It reinvigorated me and reawakened my homesteading spirit.  I want it so badly!  And I'm glad to remember that my husband wants it someday, too.  There must be ways for me to homestead more here, on someone else’s amazing old farm, in a home we’re glad to live in but don’t own.  I will find a way.