My name is Brittany. My husband David, Our Son, two Golden Retrievers, Koda and Lilah and I live on 4 acres of desert land. My goal for my family is to be healthy and have long established skills of growing, preserving, raising and preparing food on our own land for my family and loved ones.
If you have a small acreage in the dry heated desert, wet swamps or in the arctic and think it is impossible to start your homestead dream, I am here to tell you it is possible! My husband and I found our home and we knew it was the place we wanted to start our dreams. I honestly did not even think about the fact that we were buying a home in a desert and how hard it would be to grow green plants with minimal water and keep livestock alive with no forage. But I will say my husband and I were determined to make our land a possible home for anything I dreamed of having.
We work teaching our growing boy how to have a conservative view on living off a budget and minimal waste. We try to reuse everything we can. Going to the grocery store for organic foods costs a lot of money. As we do want to support other local farmers we also strive to grow and raise our own, so we know exactly what is put into our food.
I was raised by my dad who lived outside in his garden growing bananas, plantains and tomatoes. Although my dad’s focus was colorful flowers like roses and plumerias he still owned many books and held a lot of education on growing plants from seeds. Our backyard was always green, beautiful and smelled amazing. I watched my dad spend hours giving energy and love to his garden and I knew when I started my garden it was going to be very time-consuming.
My mom always had a fresh cooked meal on the dinner table at sunset. Usually, this dinner included something my dad grew outside in his garden. This was a principle that I always held and have worked on teaching our son. Growing what we eat in our home, praying before our meals and sitting together at the kitchen table as a family.
My dad would also drive me to a beautiful field of wildflowers and let me pick a bouquet for my mom. This reminds me of the need to slow down and show my loved ones how much I appreciate them. Maintaining a homestead can be extremely timely. So, this has not been an easy task with all the demands of life around us. Finding the balance of work, family, friends and homesteading is very hard and not for the weak.
I spent years earning my nursing license and spent a decade working as a Neuro Trauma Nurse. I also spent those first ten years building an amazing garden with my dad’s guidance and help of installing a drip system. On the extreme hot days my husband makes sure to give the plants the extra water they need. (Which seems to become harder every year since our garden continues to grow every year.)
Most days I work as a nurse and then come home to being a mom, feeding animals, cleaning poop, seeding, planting, harvesting and preserving. There seems to be no time left in the day! Although it seemed I did not have any extra time to dehydrate and preserve all the items I would like to. Our son and I still felt an empty space. So, we decided it was time to purchase baby chicks, baby rabbits and then baby goats.
Our son and I spent at least a year studying and learning how to raise chickens, rabbits and goats prior to purchasing them. I recommend Boekel Farms for goats and Critter’s Corner for Pigs. This was an obstacle….. deciding on breeds and where to purchase livestock. After years of thought and hundreds of hours of prepping the land, I was dedicated to trying an old-fashioned lifestyle in this new contemporary world where the old ways have been lost by so many. A big thank you to my husband for coming outside every time I needed help building fencing and structures for our farm.
At the end of the day our family can enjoy growing and raising our own food, herbs and supplements. I hope that Aurora Ranch can also help provide new homesteaders with the information that I was looking for when I was beginning my journey. Even though I am blessed to have started my journey years ago, I still have so much to learn too.
I hope to offer a solution to you feeling overwhelmed with beginning your homestead and making life simpler. We all want peace and openness and there is no judgment on my behalf because I know how busy and hectic life can get!
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