Introducing Born for the Barn: A Homestead Journey

I have a great job: it’s extremely interesting work; it brings me into daily contact with great people; and it pays well enough to support our family as the sole income source. However, looking at a computer screen (as I’m inevitably doing right now) for eight hours a day is not a source of joy. The moment I’m home from work, I’m usually outside tending to our chickens, working in the garden, tinkering with the tractor, or simply staring at the unused portions of our six acres and thinking about all the possibilities. Spending time in nature is a joy I rediscovered after spending several years in big cities, feeling claustrophobic and starved of nature’s beauty. Those years were exciting, too, but in a very different way: finishing undergraduate school, meeting my wife, welcoming our first child, and the chaos of 2020 and 2021.

I was always a “country boy” at heart, growing up on many acres in the South, but the Covid-era policies and spiking violence in the large cities (e.g. looting right across the street) expedited the return to a more rural life. Quite frankly, I don’t think we’re rural enough now, but having a grocery store close by is handy until we get the hang of growing and raising animals. In our first “real” year of homesteading, we appear to be well on our way toward greater self-sufficiency, healthier food, and to living the life we dream about.

This is not the first blog I’ve started; I continue to run another with the help of my brothers (and it’s actually earning a little money at last!), but I can already see the writing on the wall for it: it’s not my passion. I don’t claim to be someone who says “always chase your passion”, as I’m a bit too practical to say things like that. But now that I’m settled in my career and location with a little more experience putting my hand to different hobbies, homesteading or mini-farming or whatever you might like to call it fits the bill of a passion. I look forward to sweating outside nearly every day, building a productive a d beautiful slice of heaven, and I look forward to sharing my experiences, learning, successes and failures, and knowledge about all-things homesteading and small-time farming on this blog.

Never stop growing,

Christian