This is a story of our journey that led us to this new chapter in our life! I know it will come as a shock to many of you that have followed me for many years now. Let me share my story for those who are new and also letting my wonderful friends and faithful followers know what happened during my long absence (spring and summer of 2026).
I'm breaking the story down into a few parts.
Part 1
This year, 2026 has brought HUGE changes for my Hubby and me. I'm still overwhelmed with all that has happened.
I turned 62 this year. I've had an online presence for over 20 years now. Some of my followers today are from those early years. I had a large website, The Family Homestead. I shared about life in a practical everyday way. I had 8 children living at home. I took the everyday skills I had and began to share. I posted recipes, how to save money while feeding a large family, how to make bread, how to be frugal, the art of living on one income, I shared my faith in Jesus, my desire to serve Him by serving and caring for my husband, family and home.
I also had a blog, Homemaking on the Homestead. I continued to share on that platform after closing down my website.
A few years ago I began a YouTube channel, Homemaking on the Homestead. I plan to continue my YT channel and am searching for a new name for this new chapter in my life. I had always wanted to start another blog to accompany my YT channel and that is the goal of this new blog.
On our homestead (18 acres in SW Washington State) we had many animals. I raised goats and learned to make yogurt, kefir and cheese from their milk. I had chickens and lots of eggs!!
Each year I had a huge garden and I would can hundreds of jars of food.
I also homeschooled my 8 children through high school. They participated in every aspect of home life and farm life right along with me. I look back on those years with so many wonderful memories.
Then, as happens, my children began to leave the nest one by one. Until I was down to none. The change happens somewhat slowly. The first one leaves, then time goes by, the next one leaves, and so on. You see it coming and you try and prepare yourself for it. But when it does come you are not prepared at all.
I've
talked to many women over the years and all share that sense of loss
and most certainly that sense of, “What is my purpose now Lord?”.
You grieve, you pray, and you seek to understand your new purpose.
I've found that sometimes it's been a day by day process. Some days I
spend a bit of my Bible and prayer time asking the Lord for my
purpose that day. Nothing big like raising a family was, but “Lord,
what is my purpose today?”
My
husband retired at 59. He's been retired for 6 years now. We enjoy
the time we now have together. He worked over 30 years on the
graveyard shift. It was challenging for all of us. But together we
made it work for our family. Hubby had a full time job plus commute
time and was gone about 50 hours a week. When he was home he was
improving our old farm house, taking care of the property and more.
When the children were all gone we began to ask ourselves if the work
and time involved in caring for our homestead still had the same
value to us that it previously had.
Living
on a large piece of property still required a lot of work. We no
longer had farm animals and due to health issues I had stopped
gardening and never got back to it.
We
wanted to do other things in life so we purchased and converted a van for
camping and did some traveling. To see places we'd never seen and to
spend time with children and grandchildren that lived out of state.
We enjoyed that a lot.
But
the property always called us back home. It needed mowing and much
maintenance. The house was old and needed lots of care and
improvement. We heated with wood and my hubby needed to bring in 6 to
8 cords of wood in each summer to keep us warm and toasty during the
winter. We couldn't leave during the winter months. Snow piling up on
roof tops, frozen pipes, ice storms and the inevitable falling
branches and trees that would accompany it all meant we needed to be
home.
After
he retired we discussed selling our property. At that time we didn't
know what we wanted to do or where we would go. We continued on for
another 6 years, always discussing the possibility of selling and always praying the Lord would show us when the time was right. But we were never quite sure where we would move to.
We
began making a list of what we would want to see in our future.
A
home with less maintenance was top on that list.
Our property was in a scenic
area which was wonderful and beautiful. It did come with one thing that made it so green
and lush and that was rain. The Pacific Northwest is known for its rain.
The area we lived in had 75 to 100 inches of rain each year. It's
also very cloudy and gray. That means 8 months or more each year can
be gray and cloudy.
We had done enough traveling to know that we were
ready for more sunshine and less rain in our life.
I've had several
health issues over the last years and we wanted to live near good
medical services as well.
I'll share about the area we finally decided we would like to call home.
Stay tuned for Part 2!
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