This is the first post on our new homestead blog, which means we’re about to find out whether I can keep this up. (We’ll see.)
Why publish?
Three reasons.
One: accountability. Putting a number in writing — feed cost, lambing rate, hours spent on a project — has a way of forcing honesty. The farms I trust are the ones that publish their math. We’re going to try to be one of those.
Two: a record. We’re going to forget what we did three years from now. The posts that go up here are mostly notes to our future selves. If they’re useful to anyone else, that’s a bonus.
Three: community. We’ve learned everything we know about this work from people who decided to share. Someone, somewhere, is one blog post away from skipping a mistake we already made. That’s worth the typing.
What to expect
- Build logs. Sheep shaw, fences, garden beds, water lines — the actual hours and dollars.
- Animal notes. What we tried with the flock, what worked, what didn’t.
- Numbers. Yields, feed conversion, sales, the unflattering ones too.
- Occasional rants. It’s a homestead. Things break. Sometimes I have feelings about it.
What you won’t find here is glossy lifestyle content. There’s plenty of that already, and most of it is lying.
Subscribe? Email me. Want to argue about something? Email me. See you out there.