The Homesteading Dream

I have always had a dream, or maybe it should be called a vision or a desire.  The desire to raise livestock and grow a garden.  Not to have a commercial farm, but to have a spread of land with enough food production to provide free healthy organic fruits, vegetables and meat to people who are in need.  Maybe even staring a foundation to support this endeavor.  But in truth I have not acted on this vision.  Maybe the lack of movement could be blamed on fear or just life happenings.  In truth I could not tell you what keep us from jumping in the farmy or homesteading community.  It was like the dream had vanished.  The dream had died!  Not the homesteading dream, but the bigger purpose behind the reason of wanting to homestead.  It just seemed that it was an afterthought.  But life has an interesting way in resurrecting dreams.  I truly believe that even in the darkest days, there is always sunshine.  It might be behind the darkest of clouds, but it is there waiting to be discovered, waiting to be basked in.  For me this sunshine was the Coronavirus.

 I know.  How could anyone list the Coronavirus as a sunshine?  The virus has caused a health crisis, schools to be closed, countries to be shutdown, jobs to be lost, businesses to fail as well as creating an additional pandemic which is the surging growth in depression including children.  In a way the pandemic affected all of us in a negative way!  But it is in these hardest of times humanity has risen above.  Mankind has overcome so many obstacles.  In a sense, I am of the same belief of which William Faulkner spoke in his Nobel Peace acceptance speech.  His context was dealing with fear of being blown up and the causes it creates in writing.  That this caused writers to forget the problems of the human heart.  That man must relearn the problems of the human heart and until he does, he would write as if he was watching the end of man.  Faulkner would say, “I refuse to accept this.  I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail.  He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance”.  We have all endured and sacrificed in 2020.  Maybe the sunshine was just a cause of the Coronavirus.  The need of homesteading was emphasized while standing in a Kroger grocery store in April 2020 looking for food.  

The fear of the pandemic initially took the form of panic buying and that has significance for my family.  We choose to eat as much organic and GMO-free food as possible because Ansley has to eat clean food for health reasons (MTHFR, healing, detoxing, etc).  I could not simply just go pick up any piece of meat.  With stores not having the food that my family needed, we had to turn to alternative sources.  We had to go straight to the local farms, which in most cases was even more expensive.  While this was happening, I was determined to figure out a way to not be in this situation again.  How to do this? And how could we do this living on a small plot of land in the city of Memphis, TN? I know we must produce our own meat.  We need to get food production animals.  We needed chickens—for at least eggs for our daily breakfast! The truth is that we were dreaming of homesteading.  The pandemic just pushed us to dip our toes in the water.  

So in May 2020, Koen and I came home from Tractor Supply with 6 Isa Brown chicks just about a week or so old. 

Their names are Rosie, Browna, Sweetie, Snow, Daisy ,and Goldie. Our son also has had a dream of being farmer cowboy since the age of 3.  So, we are letting him get a hands-on experience in farming.  He is selling chicken eggs in warmer months.  He refers to the location as “Chicken Backyard Farms.” But in truth this is bigger than chicken eggs.  This is a step closer to homesteading and a step closer to rekindling my dream of producing food for people who are in need.    

-William