about me

Some background, so you know where I’m coming from.

Early history

I grew up in south central Pennsylvania, near Harrisburg. All-white suburbs. I loved that I could ride my bicycle all over town, to the pool, the library, the store. I could even ride my bike to school, although 1.5 miles is SO far when you’re a teenager. I ran cross country and track, and studied art and German.

I was frustrated by the assumption that growing up, getting a job, and buying a house in the suburbs was the only model of living that existed. I read Mother Earth News and was fascinated with other non-suburban models of living. Solar power, organic gardening, utilizing rainwater. Spoiler alert – this interest would be given full rein in only half a decade.

But tech was also an interest, as evident in this school homework poster.

college

I went to college in North Carolina. I wanted to go to school in New England, and had dutifully applied to all of the (top level) schools I found interesting, but was not accepted to any of them. In lackadaisical desperation, I re-entered my college criteria into the guidance counselor’s computer, with the geographical area turned to South. A college turned up, had a late application date, and I was accepted. My guidance counselor called my parents because she was so concerned that she had never heard of the college (most PA kids go to PA schools). I went to Guilford College, a very cool Quaker school with an awesome art department, in the fall, sight unseen.

My sophomore year I studied abroad in the college’s program at Brunnenburg Castle in the South Tirol region of northern Italy. I hesitated on going, because it sounded a little like sun-bathing and nonsense, but eventually changed my mind: it’s a German-speaking area, the college was sending an art professor, and there was a once-a-week workday in the vineyard.

It was a great experience and I fell in love with the 29yo American guy who was running the entire vineyard at the castle (since the resident farmer had died unexpectedly). I also fell in love with the small scale farms I saw in the Alps, meticulously maintained by the Tirolean farmers – very different from the farms I had seen in the US.

early homestead years

My fiancé got a job with a college in New England as soon as I graduated, and we married shortly after we moved to Poultney, Vermont. Another option had been to stay and farm at his grandparent’s farm in the Sandhills of North Carolina, but as much as I liked Guilford, there was no way I was staying in North Carolina.

A friend of his had just become the president of Green Mountain College, and had reinvented the school to focus on environmental liberal arts. An environmental focus permeated all the classes, and my husband gradually worked his way out of teaching English as a second language and remedial English classes to building the college garden and, eventually, farm.

Meanwhile, we bought 25 acres in Pawlet, Vermont. Cheap because it was too far off the road for grid power, it also came with a small cabin. We insulated the cabin and lived in it for 8 years, with no electricity, spring water outside the house, and a bucket toilet. 

 

Solar years

With one kid already here and another on the way, we decided to take a leap and build a larger house with solar power and running hot water. Self designed and self built, the efficiencies of a washer, an oven, and a hot shower were game changers. There was also room for everyone to have their own bed and my life was easier, although these conveniences came with a (construction) mortgage, homeowners insurance, and higher taxes (and eventually cell service and satellite internet) – higher expenses than we had ever had.

We moved in when the new house was insulated but barely done. The eventual floor boards were stacked to dry in the living room, and I finished drywall and put up shelves in my spare time. The kids were homeschooled, I put in a garden and made cheese and yogurt, and sold eggs to the local general store. My husband would bring bus loads of students up each year to marvel at our lifestyle and wave at me.

 

reinvention

This is the hardest part of my story to tell, perhaps because it’s the most recent and I have no distance.

I began to feel stuck in my life – like I wasn’t moving forward. Homeschooling my middle child was difficult – it was a struggle to get him out of bed and he didn’t want to do anything I asked. At the same time, my husband had a sabbatical and was home to watch the kids, so I went to work for a local farm. It was during that sweet potato harvest that I realized how much I missed other people and the outside world.

That spring I took up running again, after I raced my eldest son up our driveway on a bet, and also took a Geographic Information System (GIS) class at the college. It also became apparent to me during this time that activities that I loved, like hiking and camping and music, that I always thought would reappear in my life “someday,” were not happening.

In an effort to fight my status quo, I decided that saying “no” was a fear-based reflex that was keeping me “stuck.” I ended up learning to ride a motorcycle at a friend’s suggestion and coaching the college’s cross country team, as well as working on any farm that would hire me. I sent my kids to public school (ecstatically happy to have someone else direct my 11yo in reading and writing, even if the material wasn’t that interesting). My eldest started high school and my youngest started kindergarten.

Now

So where am I now? I got my motorcycle license endorsement in 2016. I’ve got three motorcycles, as well as “parts” bikes for when I need to fix them. I’ve traveled thousands of miles and backpacked and camped. I also learned to ride off-road.

I went back to school and got my MBA, with a focus on sustainability.

I learned to contradance, downhill ski, snowboard, and make videos. Now I’m learning programming (HMTL, CSS, and Javascript).

I’ve been Airbnb’ing the cabin my mom built, a little up the road from our house. And our first cabin will eventually also be an Airbnb. Incidentally, it’s more lovely now than it ever was when we lived in it.

I’ve got a kid in college, a kid in high school, and a younger one in middle school. She had desperately wanted to be homeschooled, so I took her out of school and homeschooled her during the coronavirus years.

The homesteading life became overwhelming and all encompassing. I’m trying to reconnect with who I am and what I love, trying to find my voice and create a life that I don’t want to run away from. Hence, this website and blog. If you’ve made it this far, welcome:)