The following speech was presented to the Floyd County Homemakers Group on March 12, 2024. What a delightful group of ladies who made me feel so welcome and asked so many wonderful questions! It was an honor for me to be able to present to the group.
My Homesteading Journey
Pretend with me for a moment that we go to Food Lion as a group. While there, we see a family shopping together: a small girl, her mother, and her grandmother. This little family is such a delight, and we cannot keep from nudging each other and pointing them out. When we are finished shopping and return to the church, I might ask each of you to share your perspective on the family at the grocery store. One of you might say, “Wasn’t that little girl so well-behaved? My daughter was such a handful at that age.” Someone else might reply, “I remember when I went to the store with my mother. Grocery stores sure look different today than they did when I was a little girl in the 60’s!” Still, another of you might say something like, “Did you notice the vitality of that grandmother? I wouldn’t be able to carry my granddaughter around the store on my hip like that!” Through the eyes of a mother, a daughter, a grandmother, or perhaps through another lens altogether, each of us could share a different perspective.
We can also view the story of our own lives through various lenses. For example, I could share my life story with you from the perspective of someone whose life was shaped by the religious choices of the family into which I was born. Or I might share with you my life story from the perspective of a child raised in the Midwest by parents who had been transplanted from the South. I could also write my life story focusing on the many incredible adventures I have had. On the flip side, I could focus on the disappointments that have marked my path. But today was the perfect opportunity for me to share with you the story of my life as seen through the lens of a homesteader.
Homesteading has come to mean something much different than it did when Abraham Lincoln enacted the Homestead Act of 1862 to encourage people to move and settle the mostly wild and uninhabited lands of the West. Today, the term “homesteading” has become synonymous with attempting to live as sustainably and self-reliant as possible with whatever resources are available. Modern homesteading can include families living remotely, off-grid as well as individuals living in urban areas, growing the majority of their vegetables in container gardens. Perhaps today’s “homestead movement” might be better compared to the “back to the land” movement of the 1970’s.
In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s when I was a little girl and the Back to the Land Movement was popular, my parents didn’t need to return to the simple way of living, because they never left it. Gardening, food preservation, foraging, hunting, herbal remedies, planting by the signs, and cooking from scratch - all elements of our ancestors' life for generations. My earliest memories are scenes from around our little homestead. We kept chickens, raised hogs, butchered meat rabbits, and grew a large garden. When I was as young as four, my daddy would take me into the Missouri woods to shoot squirrels. He and my momma had made the move from the mountains of North Georgia so that Daddy could work on the assembly line at Ford Motor Company in St. Louis. We lived sixty miles south of the big city and in those days, it was still very rural. I would help to skin the squirrels that Daddy shot by holding onto their feet while he pulled the fur up, away from the skin, and exposed the meat beneath. I remember momma cooking the squirrels with gravy and making biscuits for our supper. Those first seven years of my life were the absolute best for a young girl like me who loved running barefoot through the meadow, climbing trees, digging in the garden, picking strawberries, playing in creeks, digging worms, fishing, collecting caterpillars, watching my pet raccoon and trying to hand-feed driveway gravel to my faithful dog, Lady.
My mother died when I was seven and my little brother was almost four. That’s when we moved to a hundred-acre farm. We didn’t own the farm. My daddy was just a caretaker. He also worked for the dairy farmer who lived close by and cut firewood and sold it to people who lived in the big city. It was during the recession of the 1970’s and he was laid off from his job at Ford Motor Company. Our home on that farm was a house trailer. We did not have a designated yard but shared the pasture with the cattle who would stand under the cedar trees outside my bedroom window. I remember being awakened many mornings by the sound of cattle rubbing against the corner of the trailer scratching itself. I would peer through the window from my vantage point on the top bunk and watch the cows just outside my window. I believe that’s where my love of cattle first began.
We lived on that farm from the time I was seven until I was twelve. It was there I learned to bottle-feed calves, drive an old Farmall tractor, and work in the garden. It was there I had my first employment opportunity when at eleven years of age, I worked double shifts in a commercial chicken house. When the farmer was shipping out birds and getting new peeps, I worked with the farmer’s teenage sons to gather, vaccinate, debeak, crate, and load the laying hens onto trucks to be shipped off to laying houses. Then, when the house was empty and had been cleaned and prepped, we unpackaged and divided the newly hatched and shipped baby birds into groups to start the process of growing laying hens all over again. For all of this, I was paid ½ penny for every bird I handled. At the end of the job, when I brought home $200-300 cash, I felt like the richest girl in the world. I didn’t mind working hard, and I didn’t know anyone else my age who was making that kind of money in those days when it was so hard to come by.
When we weren’t working, we were allowed to roam the farm at will. I loved being outdoors and I loved to read. Every chance I got, I took to the woods with a book. I had many secret places where I could be alone. No one ever questioned my safety, my whereabouts, or what I was doing. I had such a sense of peace and freedom when I was alone and outdoors. It was during this time of my life that I began to understand that living close to the land would prove to be one of my deepest desires.
During this time, my daddy also helped a neighboring dairy farmer who owned Holsteins. He would come home with stories about the cows, who all had names and he would tell us about their individual character traits. While I thought the Holsteins were cool, I wasn’t prepared for how I would feel when I was first introduced to a Jersey cow. One week when I went with my stepmother to pick up milk, I came face to face with the most beautiful creature I had ever seen. When I looked into the eyes of that small Jersey, I fell in love. It would take me many, many years to find a way to have my own Jersey, but that was the day that set the course.
I was around the age of twelve when my family moved from the farm. My dad bought a small piece of property that wasn’t quite as secluded as what we had been used to. We had neighbors and there weren’t a lot of places for me to roam. That was hard on me. Another brother was added to our family when I was 14 and a sister when I was 16. A lot of the homemaking became my responsibility. I learned to cook, buy groceries on a budget, do laundry, and keep the house while I also kept up with school. I helped take care of my younger siblings, helped in the garden, and learned how to hot water bath and pressure can the fruits and vegetables that our garden produced. I’m not going to say I always enjoyed those things because I would have much rather been roaming the woods with a good book, but I learned a lot about homemaking that I carry with me to this day.
I graduated from high school in the spring of 1985 and in 1986, I turned 19 years old somewhere along a stretch of the Alaskan-Canadian highway. I was going to visit my grandparents for the summer, but it wasn’t my first trip to Alaska. I had been there once before when I was only six. I had told many of my childhood friends that I would one day return to Alaska. I spent the better part of 13 years there and those were some of the most adventurous years of my life. For a while, I lived in a cabin, hauling water from an artesian spring, washing clothes in a wringer washer, and hanging them on a clothesline in the winter that extended from one end of the cabin loft to the other. We used outdoor toilets or indoor porta potties, hunted for moose and bears, fished salmon, rainbow trout, and Northern Pike from remote locations, and picked wild blueberries and tiny wild strawberries on the Alaskan tundra. We grew cabbage so big under the midnight sun that we could hardly get our arms around them to pick them up. Most importantly, I began raising my two children there. I had a variety of jobs while living in Alaska but the two most memorable for me were working as a teleconference moderator at the Legislative Information Office in Delta Junction and milking cows at Shaw Creek Dairy. Again, I was working with Holsteins but dreaming of one day owning my Jersey.
I never dreamed that I would leave Alaska permanently, but I did so to try to save a marriage that would prove unsalvageable. Before we finally called it quits, however, I followed the man I married to Wyoming, Colorado, California, and Montana where he worked as a traveler. We spent time in remote locations living out of a tent or in a camper and while these times were difficult in many ways, I was able to experience so much of the wilderness in these various locations. It also allowed me to spend a lot of one-on-one time with my children.
Eventually, circumstances brought us to Bedford County, Virginia where my in-laws were living. My 15-year, rocky marriage was finally over, and I began a new life here in Virginia with my children. When I began dating again, I knew that I would never consider a serious relationship with anyone who didn’t love living off the land as much as I did. How fortunate for me when I met Mike, and we began dating.
Mike is a third-generation farmer from the Shenandoah Valley. His grandfather started a dairy and his father took over the farm when his grandfather became too old to continue. Eventually, Mike and his brother shared the business. When his brother moved on to other things, Mike ran the dairy by himself for a while but had to finally sell out. He then ran a brood cow operation on the family farm while growing and selling produce, making and selling hay, and growing small grain cash crops. He had only been out of the dairy business a few years when we met and after a short time, were married.
As a farmer’s wife, I had everything I had ever dreamed of having except the Jersey cow I had always wanted. We had not been together for very long when I told him that I wanted to buy that cow. Bless his heart, the man was a good sport. Together we looked until we were able to find and bring home two dairy cows and a bull. It wasn’t an easy task because at that time, the dairy industry was doing fairly well, and the local farmers would not sell me a Jersey. I was told that I was a waste of their time. Why would they sell me an individual cow when they could sell a whole group of heifers to other dairies or at the market? They made it known that my request was a burden to them. Searching for a Jersey, I became aware for the first time of a breed called the Miniature Jersey.
Miniature Jerseys are not like some of the micro-mini cattle sold now as pets. The original herd that became the foundation stock for the registered Miniature Jerseys that we have today originated in North Carolina with a man named Ralph Martin. The story is told that he saw the decline of these little, backyard family cows. As commercial dairies pushed for production, and selective breeding was used to increase the size of the standard Jersey, these little family cows were falling by the wayside. Mr. Martin stepped in to save these little cows from extinction. When Mr. Martin died and his family eventually began to disperse his herd. Thus, the Miniature Jersey breed was born from the little Appalachian Family Cows that once populated the mountain homesteads. There is some controversy over whether these animals were kept pure or whether other small breeds of cattle, such as Dexter, were used to breed down the size of these Jerseys. It’s probably safe to say that some outcrossing took place simply because there were so few animals that new blood had to be introduced. There are those, however, that argue the breed was always kept pure. Regardless of what happened in the early days, the registries take great care now to keep exact records so that buyers know the background of the animals. Miniature Jersey cattle vary in size and are recorded as mid-miniature, miniature or micro miniatures with the registries. Those classified as mid-miniatures range from 43 to 48 inches. (Anything over 48 inches is considered standard sized.) Miniatures are under 42 inches and micro miniature cattle are 36 inches or less when they have reached mature height at three years of age.
When we began our search for a Miniature Jersey there were very few available. They were difficult to find and very expensive. Mike finally found two middle-aged cows and a bull for sale near Atlanta Georgia that had been used only for breeding purposes and kept at a petting zoo. The owner wanted to move an older bull and a cow that did not appear to be pure Jersey. So, to make the sale more enticing, she threw in a nice Miniature Jersey cow but said she would only sell them as a group. My husband was determined to get these animals for his new bride, but he was just as determined not to pay the mind-blowing amount of money the breeder was asking for the trio. They negotiated for what seemed like hours over the phone until they agreed on a price. Then, we made the trip to Georgia to pick up the cattle. I had the cow that would become the foundation of my mini jersey herd.
Now that everything was in place and I had my milk cows, I felt like all my dreams had come true. I gave up my job as a special education aid at the elementary school and joined my husband full-time in farming. We expanded our produce business, and I began a cow share program so that I could market milk from my dairy cows. Although I never advertised, the share program grew by word of mouth until I was milking twelve cows and distributing over 100 gallons of milk each week. I also made a variety of dairy products from the milk and distributed these among the share members as well. The raw milk micro-dairy was a year-round project. I milked twice a day, seven days a week without any breaks for over a decade.
When Mike and I married, we each had two children and ours became a blended family. In 2013, Mike’s daughter gave birth to twins in May and my daughter gave birth as well. We suddenly became grandparents of not one, but three grandchildren. With both of our daughters working, I began providing child care for our three grandchildren and scaled back my involvement on the farm. I switched to a seasonal dairy operation with the share program, shutting the program down in the fall and taking the winter off, resuming in the spring when calves were born. It was at this time that Mike and I were finally able to leave the farm for a few days at a time for small breaks.
Needing someplace to travel that wasn’t too far away from home, we began taking trips down the Blue Ridge Parkway and staying in Air BNB’s, cabins and such on the weekends. Eventually, we found our way to this part of Southwest Virginia and fell in love. The area reminded me so much of Northwest Georgia where my dad’s family still lives. When I came here, I felt like I had come home. After visiting the area on weekends for almost a year, we decided to buy a cabin or small home. Our intention was to have a get-away where we could visit on weekends and holidays. As we began looking for a place, we soon decided we wanted something large enough so that we could invite the kids and grandkids to join us when they were able. It was never our intention, however, to buy a farm in Carroll County. However, when we were shown the older home and property on Dugspur Road that once belonged to the Jackson family, we fell I love and bought a fifty-acre farm. I fell in love with the old dairy barn and the old sink with drain boards in the kitchen was perfect for making cheese. I knew it would be a wonderful place to live a homestead life.
By this time the original three grandchildren were reaching school age, and two more grandchildren were added for a total of five. For a while, I continued to spend four days in the Staunton area helping with the grandchildren. Then, we would spend long weekends at our place in Laurel Fork. After a year of this, we moved what remained of my dairy herd and I became a full-time resident of Carroll County. Mike continued to travel back and forth, especially during the summer months, farming in the Shenandoah Valley. Two years ago, we closed on our house and property in Staunton. Mike has since retired, and we have now lived here for seven years this month.
I continue to breed and train miniature jerseys as homestead cows, but I no longer run a cow share program. Instead, I sell the cows to families who long for a milk cow of their own. I have been raising this wonderful breed of small dairy cow for close to twenty years now. Mike helps me with the more physical chores and still grows a large garden. I preserve most of the food that we consume. We raise our own beef and I make all of our cheese, butter and other dairy products. A lifetime of practicing various aspects of modern homestead skills has come full circle for me.
Remember how I started this off with the illustration of looking at stories through various lenses? What I have shared with you thus far is the history of my life through the lens of homesteading. For a moment, however, let’s look at it through a different lens.
I mentioned that when I was very young, I loved to combine the practice of being alone in the woods with reading. What feels like to me a natural byproduct of this arrangement is that from a very young age, I also had a desire to write. Since I was young, I have dreamed of being able to combine a love of homesteading with my love of writing. Except for a blog to which I have made sporadic contributions since 2008 and a brief article that I submitted to Countryside Magazine after I first bought my Jerseys, the writing dream was kept on the back burner for most of my life. However, in 2022, I entered the Chautauqua Writing contest that’s held in Wytheville each summer. I won first place for a fiction story and second place for a personal essay. This gave me the confidence to reach out to several magazines to see if any of the editors were interested in buying homesteading articles from me. You can imagine my excitement when the editor from Grit expressed interest in the first article I pitched to her. It was a “how to” article with instructions on making cheese curds or “Squeaky Cheese”. My first article for Grit appeared in the January 2023 issue and paved the way for a number of other articles with that magazine and others. Now I am writing for Grit, Good Old Days, Self-Reliance, Backwoods Home, and Hobby Farms.
In 2023, I stepped outside my comfort zone once again and this time submitted a poem to the Chautauqua Writing Contest and received first place for that contribution. While I am not a public speaker, I also agreed to teach a workshop in December 2023 at Blue Ridge Community College in Weyers Cave, Virginia (which is close to our former home in Staunton). With each of these ventures, I have been terrified to put myself out there because I am quite introverted and have a lot of social anxiety. I share this with you all because I want to encourage you that no matter your age or how intimidated you might be to try something new, you can do it. Growing older can be the beginning of exciting new things and you're rarely too old to follow your dreams.