Sustained

Sometimes this homesteading life is hard— really hard. It can be unpleasant, heartbreaking, and full of loss. I’ve been fortunate in many ways, but I won’t chalk it all up to luck. I take serious precautions to protect my animals: a large livestock guardian dog (LGD), strong fencing, motion-sensor lights, zero feed left out overnight, and a 12-gauge shotgun by the back door. But even with every safeguard in place, things can still go wrong. The Visitor: A Yearling Bear Last night, a young black bear paid us a visit—likely a yearling, based on the tracks he left behind. In hindsight, my LGD Orsa had been trying to warn me for over a week. She's often vocal, especially with stray cats visiting after dark, so I’d dismissed it. The trail cam picked up a fox the night before, which I assumed was the source of her unease. But I should have listened more closely. Her intense focus and barking toward the woods south and west of the house were more than her usual reaction to a fox. ...

Like so many other things, you have to be passionate about this lifestyle to make it work. For me, raising my own food started as a hobby—something I did in the margins of less fulfilling, better-paying full-time jobs. My first foray into self-sufficiency began with a backyard garden: a few tomatoes, some basil, peppers, and zucchini. Some years went great, and I had a bumper crop of one thing or another to learn how to preserve. I grew up canning with my mom, so we made plenty of salsa and ketchup one year. I had a chest freezer, so another year I froze enough zucchini to keep Starbucks in bread and muffins for a decade. I learned as I went. Growing up in Appalachia, frugality was already ingrained. Waste not, want not. We wasted nothing in those days with so many mouths to feed. My mother could stretch food like nobody’s business. It never really dawned on me that I could harvest my own quality meat until 2014. That year, I was growing peas and carrots in my garden, and I had a per...