24 Aug Wed 2022
What is Homesteading?
Hello again!
It has been a really long time since I put a blog on Local Harvest! Once Harlan and I got started homesteading in March 2020, there was really no time to maintain social media. We have a website now, RockingAFarm.com, we have a FaceBook page, Rocking A Farm, LLC, and we are on Instagram, rocking_a_farm_llc. We have an online store on our website, too. The maintenance and activity on these platforms falls on me, as Harlan is usually outdoors doing things I cannot do, like rebuilding my great-uncle's 1923 farmhouse.
Meanwhile, crops need planting, weeding, tilling, harvesting, cows need milking, weaning, worming, vaccinating, and the milk is pouring in so there's soap to be made and cheese and butter....
It's a whirlwind of tasks all day long from 7 am until 7 pm most days. Fridays are for market preparation so I bake for 4-6 hours, make labels and packaging, load the truck with the basics and get up at 5 am on Saturday to load beef and pork, eggs and milk for pre-orders, pack in the baked goods, jams, pickles, etc, and go set up a tent, tables, and our wares!
If we didn't love all this, it would be work. But coming from a retail pharmacist career, this is awesome! I hear birdsong, chickens cackling, insects humming, donkeys braying, cows lowing, and it is like heaven on earth. My kitchen is the office. I create homemade soaps from beef or pork fat that has been rendered and milk from my sweet Jersey girls. Elderberry syrup, muscadine jelly, pear sauce, zucchini pickles, etc. are all tucked away in the basement pantry. The freezers are full of summer's harvest. Now, we are ready to enjoy a couple of weeks of "leisure", tilling the summer garden into the soil, mowing pastures in preparation for winter grazing to be drilled in, dehydrating the last of the okra and making crafts for my other business, Denim DuOvers!
I tell you all this so you can appreciate the farmers in America. It is a 24/7 business and it can be exhausting! Support local growers and talk to them about what they bring to market. Learn from them. Visit their farm if that's an option. You'll appreciate them even more when you see their "offices". Farming is truly a labor of love.rockingafarm.com