Welcome!

Welcome, welcome, welcome!  My name is Danielle and my husband is Scott.  We are so happy to have you join us here!  We’d like to invite you to come take a look around and join us on our homesteading journey.  Full disclosure, this is all very new to us!  Well, maybe not ALL of it, but most of it.  Feel free to leave comments with positive advice and encouragement or correction.  We know that we have a lot to learn, and that it will take us time to “get there.”

To start with, Scott and I both grew up in the country, but neither of us lived on farms.  I would say that Scott’s life has a lot more of that type of experience than I do!  We have a strong love for nature and love being a part of God’s beautiful work.  Up until 8 months ago, we were living as city dwellers, dissatisfied with some of our surroundings. We were there to begin with not so much by choice as by financial circumstance.  After a series of unfortunate (?) events, we decided we needed to find a way to get out of the city as soon as possible, but figured it would still be a few years before we could find the right place in the country.  But thanks to God’s grace and mercy, we found our new home, Spring Lake Homestead!

A few years ago, after watching several documentaries about food, health and growing healthy food, we decided to try our hand at vegetable gardening.  I had planted pumpkins as a kid and grew a few flowers here and there, but was never really invested into the process, which usually led to dead plants.  Scott on the other hand, has helped his parents with different gardening projects for years before we got married, so to him, this was not all quite so new.  It was one of the best experiences of my life, and it just kept pushing us closer and closer to needing to get back to the country.

I have to say, God really provided for us when he brought us to this property.  I mean, he met every desire that we had, every need that we had, and a few things we didn’t know we needed or wanted.  How great is that!  We have 5 kids and we homeschool, so to be able to live in a place where we have room to move and space for the kids to run and yell and be kids was kind of vital to us.  Nobody wants to “shush” their kids all of the time when they are playing outside (nobody wants them screaming outside all of the time either ;)).  On top of that, we have oh….let’s say…a million hobbies?  So we really needed the space for everything that we do.  We were cramped in our old house, and our ideas were far bigger than the space we had!  (See, now we can fit 4-5 little ones on our front porch swing…one of my many projects!)

So, with that all out of the way, I’d just like to say that as we go, you will find posts about all kinds of things from us, from gardening to sewing, painting to homeschooling, robotics to tractors…It may not all be of interest to you.  You may think we are crazy!  You might think that we do a lot of things wrong (and we probably will, remember there is a big learning curve here!), but in the end, it all comes down to us sharing with you the things we do that make us happy…or at least sweat…or leave us sleepless at night when the project ideas get rolling…

As we go along, we will share more about all of the things we like, love and need to do, along with what drives us and led us to some of the decisions we are making.  Feel free to ask questions if you have them!

Love~ Danielle