Where Every Story Begins...

Every story only has only one place to start: the very beginning.  As this blog begins, so does our homesteading journey!  I decided to begin this blog as we embark on building our family homestead in the woods of Maine to document and share every triumph and every setback.

We are in a great place to begin.  We have a family, a house, and plenty of ambition.

The Family

Me

I'm Allie.  I was raised in Florida and in Maine and decided somewhere along the way that Maine was where I wanted to settle.  I met myself a man in my freshman year of college and we got married, bought a house, and had a kid.  I have a lot of dreams and plenty of drive, but zero homesteading experience!

Andrew 

My husband, Andrew, is definitely the brawn in this home.  I'm not afraid of some good, back-breaking labor, but he's the real muscle around here.  He's primarily a stay-at-home Dad and general handyman.  He is full of creativity and dreams, as well as the drive to make them all come true.  We would be lost without him.

Charles

Little baby Charlie is the light of our lives and the primary reason we chose to build a homestead.  We want to be home to watch our son grow and we want our home to be filled with home-produced food.  What's healthier than that?!  Charlie is made of smiles and sunshine.  We have dedicated ourselves to parenting as naturally as possible.

Pea-bear & Merle

Pea-bear the dog and Merle the cat.  Pea is a sweet, fat, and gluttonous ball of love!  Merle is... well, he is not.  He just became an indoor/outdoor cat this week, so maybe the wild woods will wear him out during the day so that he stops attacking our feet all night.

The Home

Our home is a log home built from lumber harvested on-site in the 80's.  We bought it in December of 2012 and have been slowly chipping away at improvements since then.  I say improvements, but what I mean is we have been slowly finishing building it.  It needs a lot of love.  Thank goodness we have lots of love to give the old gal.  We live on 15 acres of wooded property with just enough cleared to make livestock possible in the near future.  We live entirely off grid--we use solar energy and propane appliances.  We heat entirely with wood that we cut from our property.  Our road is unmaintained.  Well, it's maintained by my family and the others who share our road.  Believe me... there are not many of us.  However, we are in the perfect home to begin homesteading.  We just have to jump in and go!

I currently work full-time as an ed tech during the school year.  Andrew will begin staying home five days a week when I go back to work at the end of August.  We will be building, gardening, harvesting, toiling, diapering, living, and crossing our fingers with every spare moment we have.  We'd love for others to join us on our homesteading journey; we're looking for help, inspiration, advice, and support.  And maybe... just maybe... eventually customers.  Welcome to our story!