My journey to homegrown and homemade food did not begin from a resentment or getting sick from grocery store products. It began in a backyard, moved to a farm, visited a couple of acres, traveled an hour and some to a hillside, and then another twenty minutes to another big backyard. Eating homegrown food is home to me.

My Bloom grandparents lived on a farm with cows (in the first season of their life it was dairy; in the second season it was beef), haymaking, gardening, preserving food, hunting some, raising small animals of chickens and ducks, and enjoying some good meals in their country kitchen. It was their way of life. The farm life. My husband’s grandparents had a similar story where his maternal grandparents farmed over one hundred acres and his paternal grandparents farmed on a smaller scale, more like homesteading. But they didn’t call it that. It was their way of life. The country life. The farm life.

Homesteading

Growing up, I took piano lessons throughout elementary and high school. My mom would take all three of us kids to our music teacher’s home every week. They had cats, dogs, fish, along with chickens, ducks, geese, gardens, and orchards.

Whenever they would leave for vacations, we cared for their animals including a flock of laying hens, a few adorable ducks, and some terrifying geese. When they moved, we took in their animals at my mom’s farm. And thus started my adventurers of having chickens and ducks and being chased by the papa goose. He came after me every time I went to feed them that often I jumped on some farm equipment to escape his harmlessness. He would finally run away if my about 6’ tall now husband walked close to him.

I no longer have geese, even though I thought of getting some. But I still have laying hens and ducks, and hope to raise some meat chickens once another coop is built. In the long term, I think it would be awesome to raise some pigs, beef cattle, maybe a friendly goat, and possibly some sheep. Pigs and cows are a possible reality. A goat and sheep are a dream, but hey I can still dream. But until then, having our own backyard animals adds peace and abundance to our homestead.

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Gardening

My love of gardening began when I was picking tomatoes and beans from my mom’s garden as a kid. But my obsession with gardening started when I learned preventive weed control. I love gardening. I hate weeds.

Using newspapers, mulches, and landscape fabrics truly do transform a garden from a nightmare to a place with an abundance of summertime food. It can take a person from the attitude of giving up on having a garden to expanding into new ground and trying new varieties and new techniques.

Farmers and homesteaders are stewards of the land. It is a godly purpose in taking care of the plants and animals. The produce and meat they create are blessings from Our Lord, bountiful reapings that we’ve sown. Gardening and homesteading are our ways to love and serve God and our neighbors.

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Homegrown Cooking

When living at my mom’s farm, my one brother brought up the idea to one day grow all his own food. Be self-sufficient. Be independent. We used a lot of garden produce growing up, fresh and in season food. At that time, we also had laying hens to have our own eggs at the farm. I also had the influence of skills in preserving food from the garden from my now husband’s mom, my mom, and my grandmother, all impacting me and my goals in growing and preserving food from the garden.

When I married my husband, I was introduced to cooking venison for the first time. And wild turkey. And pheasant. My husband is a hunter at heart. He loves walking miles in the woods to bring home a deer and other animals. He provides meats that before I rarely had. I’ve grown to love these meats and use them in meals.

Those first two years, we also bought local beef raised by a relative, local pork raised from a family friend, and raised our own meat chickens. My husband has the skills to raise his own meat, but we are not in the season to do so yet. When we buy meat, we do look for high quality, which majority of the time one cannot find at big box stores. It’s at the local farms and butcher shops that we find our meats.

When incorporating the harvest from the garden, hunting, and local meat, I’ve learned to create homegrown meals. Majority of the ingredients are from sources that we have grown or that our neighbors have raised. It makes a meal special knowing that it was sourced from our own hard work and skills.

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Homemade Baking

My creative baking was first inspired by one ingredient. A zucchini from the garden. I baked zucchini bread and chocolate zucchini cake from recipes from a church cookbook. After this, I dove into baking from apple and pumpkin pies to finding the best chocolate chip cookie recipe.

I bake with homegrown ingredients, such as zucchini, pumpkin, and berries, but other recipes are made from scratch in the home kitchen. They’re too good not to share.

I love baking from scratch with tried and true recipes and new recipes I’ve never attempted before. Simple recipes are great like Lemon Cream Pie, but complicated recipes are just as fun such as a pumpkin roll. Following guidelines and the science of baking results in amazing baked goods from the home.

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