Browsing Tag

wet mountain valley

Life on the Homestead

Working full time and taking care of 50 animals takes quite a bit of time – but seriously loving every minute. Until I can update again, I’ll share a brief overview of whats been going on around the homestead.

– Made some Elderberry Ginger Syrup

– Experimented with making a high altitude adjusted Chocolate Beet Cake

– Learned how to save money and make our own goat feed

– Still learning about raising pullets

– Watching ducks make a massive mess everyday in their food & water

– Making reusable “utter wipes” for the goat milking

– Canning summer fruits and veggies

– Visits from family

– Homemade yogurt

– Using the dehydrator more often to preserve summer goods

– Goat cheese making

– Sourdough successes

Processing Homestead Life

After moving around and having constant change for the past few years, its been really great to have some routine and structure. Milking every morning and evening, feeding animals, making cheese and sourdough, finally being able to actually throw away moving boxes (!!!) and settle in. It’s been kind of crazy how fast all this has happened. It’s such a different life than what we were living before – and such a refreshing change. I don’t think I realized how absolutely peaceful living on a homestead, taking care of animals, and being SO busy with things that I love doing, was going to be. In the craziness of what our world & culture looks like these days, this verse describes perfectly what we sense God is calling us to and what we find joy in:

“Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, and to work with your hands, so you may win the respect of outsiders and not be dependent on anyone”

We also have the most amazing neighbors ever. I’m serious. I can’t even tell you everything that they’ve done for us in helping us get going – not only are they pros at homesteading, they are just really fun people and we are super blessed to have great friends living just down the road. You should follow them here or here.

I also have to brag on the husband a little bit – he’s been working extremely hard over the past few months at work & sacrificing time spent on the farm, so that we can actually have this place. #imlucky

I hope to have time to post more updates with recipes, photos, and stories – but for now I’ll leave you with this quote from Abraham Lincoln

“The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land.”

Linking up with Leigh Kramer

September 1, 2015

Country Living, Simple Living, Tiny Living

Home Sweet Home

Quick update on our housing situation:

We bought a home in Westcliffe!

And it has a finished house on it!

With heat, water, electricity, AND a functioning kitchen.

And 6.5 acres. Also a barn & a couple of chicken coops.

And fun neighbors that we love.

We also ordered 30 chickens, 10 ducks, a couple kittens & 3 goats.

It may have taken us a couple years to get to this point, from starting to build a tiny house in Golden CO, to moving to Westcliffe last year, moving back to Denver area for work, and moving back to Westcliffe in March of this year.

Tiny House

Lots of folks ask us about our tiny house, so I wanted to talk about that a little bit here. It is currently on our neighbors land, waiting to be moved onto ours. We were initially told that the trailer was a better grade of metal than it actually is (thank you Craigslist) and we have been told by several knowledgeable folks that it needs to be put on a permanent foundation before we finish it/ASAP. SO: as of right now the plan is to move it onto our land and take it off the wheels & set it in its final resting place. There, we will either rent it out (nightly on Airbnb) or have it as a guest cabin for friends who come visit.

Our plans have changed so many times over the past two years. We’ve moved 15 times since we were married in April 2013.

But we’re hoping that this one really sticks.

In fact, to signify this commitment, we are expanding our family by 45 (before butchering most of them in the fall). We’ve got 30 chickens, 10 ducks, a couple kittens, and 3 goats headed to our little farm over the next month.

You better believe I’ll introduce to you them all and attempt to share our homesteading adventures over the next few months.

Welcome to our new adventure – we’re diving straight into this homesteading life!

(Photo cred for feature image: Susan Bonee)

July 6, 2015

Country Living, Simple Living, Tiny Living

Westcliffe CO: And Back Again

You people aren’t going to believe this. Some of you are going to think we are nuts.

And you’re definitely correct about that.

We’re moving back to Westcliffe – the land flowing with milk and honey.

Well not quite. At least about the honey part.

We’ve had quite the adventure over the past 2 years of marriage. We got married and started building a tiny house and lived it in for a few months, we moved to Westcliffe CO after dreaming about it for a couple years. We attempted to make it work (financially) in the small town – and figured out in order for us to get anywhere in life, we needed to make some substantial money first (otherwise, we’d end up living in cycles of poverty for quite awhile) – we moved to Brighton CO because Ryan got a job working in the oil fields in Northern Colorado.

Well, as you’ve all noticed gas prices are way down from what they used to be.

And while this is wonderful for lots of people, this has put his job at risk. In fact, he was pretty much guaranteed a lay off in the next few weeks/months. Since we are young and used to change, this hasn’t exactly shaken us too much. On the contrary – it feels like freedom to us in a lot of ways.

Most people know someone who works on the oil field, and you know that their work hours are unreal. Ryan has been averaging at 110 hours per week that he works (2 week on, 1 week off rotations). There are 336 hours in 14 days. 220 hours he has been working, 116 (58 a week or 8 hours a day – which always ends up being closer to 6) hours are spent sleeping, eating, showering, traveling to and from work, and anything else that comes up in life: like spending time with your wife.

Needless to say, we’re kind of DONE with oil field lifestyle.

So while this bring a tad of uncertainty back into our life, being the oldest children that we are, we both find some excitement in that.

Which brings me to the title of this post:

We are moving back to Westcliffe!!!

LOL

I’m sorry, I can’t help but laugh and roll my eyes at us. So its totally ok if you are too :)

Our goal in moving away to Brighton was to save some money so that we could *someday* move back, buy some land, and live simply. Well, this move back is certainly quicker than we thought it would be, but I suppose that’s life.

We are in the process of purchasing a piece of land in a beautiful valley (a couple lots over from this picture), with amazing neighbors who are already well on their way to living the homesteading lifestyle that we’re interested in. On the land and what we will live in is an…. (get ready to laugh and roll your eyes again)….

UNFINISHED TRAILER!

LOL! (Maybe I should have named this blog post “Déjà vu“…)

I couldn’t really believe it either when we started looking at this lovely piece of mess (sorry, no pics yet). I told Ry, “I’m really not sure I can do this again…”

I remembered last time we lived in a shed(tiny house), without electricity, without water, without a kitchen or bathroom… I mean, HELLO: I wrote an entire blog on it!! But before we saw the inside of this creature, we went through the things that were needed in order to make it livable:

Water
Electricity
Warmth
Functioning Kitchen & Bathroom

When we finally got into the tiny shack, we realized: it’s not as bad as we thought it was!! While it definitely needs some TLC, and a couple of major changes (like digging a well), overall, we don’t feel overwhelmed by everything that needs to be done. And that’s saying something.

Another question we’ve wrestled with: “can we/should we finish the tiny house?” And this is something we are still wrestling with. Because at this point where we are at with it is still: unfinished. Is it better to put money into tiny house or another unfinished housing project? Well, “what one requires less cash & stress?” is going to be the winning answer.

I haven’t found very many other tiny house people with a similar story to ours: except Casey and Jessica Friday (recently had their tiny house stolen). I empathize so much with this blog that Jessica recently wrote about why they won’t be living in their tiny house. While we do have several of the things that the Fridays no longer have at their disposal (land, lifestyle..etc), I totally get the basis of what she’s getting at here. The whole point of the tiny house movement is what? SIMPLICITY. So that’s our focus moving forward: do the simple thing.

So here’s to many more future blog posts about building chicken coops, milking goats, making cheese, and sharing life (and cows) with neighbors in our precious lil mountain town. Here’s to not many more moves, but an acknowledgement of “that’s where we are in life”.

Here’s to the kind of simple living that is sometimes more… complicated :)

(linking up with Leigh Kramer– because what I’m up to these days is moving and living the nomad’s life)

March 4, 2015

Country Living

Life in the Valley

Note: when I say “valley” I’m not speaking philosophically about where we are at in life.

Nope.

We literally live in a valley.

Between the Wet Mountains and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

And its great.

Here is a little snapshot of what our lives have looked like since being here:

The Groths (Hannah’s fam from TX) came and celebrating Christmas with us. Pic below is of sledding adventures in the mountains. It was great to create memories in our (2 bedroom 1 bath) rental home with them. SUCH a tight squeeze, but so worth it.

Ryan has been making rustic/farmhouse style furniture for the rental we’re living in currently (with hopes to sell when Tiny House is complete). There is a barn on the property, so he has a workshop finally! He’s had a few local folks interested in some custom furniture, so hopefully he’ll get to be out in his barn more often.

I’ve (Hannah) enjoyed having a home for the first time since we’ve been married. We realized that since April we have lived in 5 different homes and about 10 different hotels. The little things like cooking, and relaxing on the couch and watching a movie, having a Christmas tree, or hanging our coats up in a closet are things that I am thankful for in this housing situation.

We also have a new addition to the family: Macey the pup! She’s a Lab/St. Bernard mix and has a really laid back, sweet personality. She’s six months old, loves to please, and is eager to learn. One downside: she eats poop. No, she loves poop. I’ve heard this is normal for pups, still: NOT.OK. Other than that she’s great :)

We also traded (for good or bad) our Saturn for this big girl, Griselda Hobbs. She’s a 1975 Jeep Wagoneer. Almost all her handles that do anything functional, come off and on at different times. The radio doesn’t work as far as we know. To get to the trunk you need a special key to first put the window down, then unlatch the back. The fabric is torn and super retro. The seat belts go across your lap. She’s a hefty lady weighing 3 tons, but she can maneuver her way through at least 6-8 inches of standing snow, hold her own on the iciest of roads in negative degree Colorado winters, and she’s a lovely burnt orange, oxidized in all the right places. Not sure how long we’ll keep her alive, but for now, this charming old gal is ours.

We have been working on the Tiny House to get it ready to move down here from Golden. We had to order some more (bigger) axles, that could hold more weight because this house is freakin huge! We have some friends down here that have offered to let us park it on their land. Once it’s moved down here, we’ll work on getting it finished! The exterior is almost completely done, its just the inside that needs work now.

While we’ve found part time work here in the Valley, we are still looking for more lucrative means of making a living here. As we’ve talked to many people here, this is what they have to say about new folks coming in:

– people move to Westcliffe because they love it (either they have family that lives here, they’ve visited growing up, camped here, been hunting with their grandfather…etc.)

– they all struggle financially to “make it” for the first several years

– if they make it out of those first years, they stay forever

– if not, they leave to go make life work somewhere else

So, we have a similar story. We felt compelled to move here. Moved. And we would LOVE to make it work here and stay forever.

But that’s the part that we’re at currently: making it work here.

We absolutely LOVE being here. The people that we’ve met have such similar passions and goals in life as we do. There is a slightly older population in town, so we enjoy being on the younger end of things. There is an openness here to do things “differently” (i.e. build a Tiny House, or straw bale, or earth bag home). We are really looking forward to raising a family here and participating in the community here.

So, we’re still hopeful that perhaps we can be one of those families that can make it work here :)

We’ll keep you updated on our lives in the Wet Mountain Valley.

Living in a small town is like living in a large family of rather uncongenial relations. Sometimes it’s fun, and sometimes it’s perfectly awful, but it’s always good for you.

– Joyce Dennys

February 9, 2014

Country Living

Westcliffe, CO

If you know anything about Ryan and I its… (1) that we enjoy watching the thrilling nineties show, Northern Exposure (yeah, go ahead. watch it. you won’t be able to stop. and you won’t have a clue why), (2) that our Tiny House has taken much longer than we thought…. (3) and that we’re slightly obsessed with a lil town called Westcliffe. How to describe Westcliffe… – elevation is just under 8,000 in town – population is around 800 – there’s a movie theater in town that plays movies on Friday and Saturday nights. – on Halloween, the kids Trick-or-Treat in the downtown businesses. – there are about 10 churches in town. – when you get finger-printed at the sheriff’s office, there is a jail cell in the next room. – there is a strong Mennonite and Amish presence (there is also a bakery). – there are no building codes in Custer County (:cough: more.tiny.houses.coming. also more details from Ryan, because I’m sure that statement is more complicated than I just made it sound). – the elementary, middle, and high school are all in one building. – the only chains are: Subway, Family Dollar and The Post Office. Anyways. More posts to come about this magical place because long story made short/even longer by other blog posts later on…. We’re moving there :)

November 27, 2013