Homestead Chronicles

Paige and husband have spent four years growing food on leased land—experimenting, adapting, and even the occasional smuggling. This post walks through how our garden’s evolved, what still fills our quarter-acre plot, and the plants that teach us patience (hello, asparagus).

Spring on the farm isn’t just blooming flowers—it’s cats going missing, ducks eloping, and chicks falling asleep face-first in their food. Each day, between the drama and the quiet, I learn a little more about what it means to be alive alongside them.

As we start building our homestead from scratch, we’re still living and working on the leased farm that taught us how to grow, steward land, and build a shared vision. This season, we’re juggling both—planting beds, wrangling ducks, collecting eggs, and learning from the space that got us here.

We’ve officially said “yes” to our forever homestead—a 44-acre property that aligns with our vision of self-sufficient living. The decision wasn’t without nerves, but trusting our shared values gave us the confidence to move forward. This is the beginning of an exciting journey where we’ll balance the practicalities of debt reduction and investment growth with the deeply personal work of building a life rooted in intention.

The simple life isn’t cheap. In fact, it’s a paradox: you have to shovel a lot of figurative (and sometimes literal) shit to earn the privilege of shoveling the real stuff. My dream is to homestead full-time, which is absolutely work. Retirement to me means not having to work for money. And when I can put an actual number on that (my FI number), it makes the vision feel so much more real. I become stoked to put money in those envelopes…