I had put off starting a blog for may years because the advice that is constantly put out there is to “find your niche”. Find the skill that you want to developpe for your hobby, find the subject that you want to focus on in school, find the one career that you are going to be passionate about for life, and of course find the one niche subject that you are going to write about.

It took me a long time to accept that that is just not how I am, and that that isn’t even a problem! Homesteaders are poster children for being curious generalists. The variety of skills that a homesteader can have are almost endless! No two know the same thing and there are always different ways to do things and different areas to focus on.

I am still an urban homesteader but I am working towards the dream of a piece of land that we can really grow and experiment on. I firmly believe in living as closely in line with what is important to you as you can, no matter where you are. I also don’t really believe that different threads of your life can truly be separate from each other. When we homeschool our children, we are teaching life skills along with the three R’s. When we plant a garden we are voting against a flawed food system. When I make an article of clothing by hand, I see the hours of work that went into it. I am more careful to make it last, I avoid purchasing a new item, and I think about where the fiber/fabric came from. When I can or dehydrate food, I have a pantry that serves as a buffer in leaner times. When I mend or repair something I am being thrifty, learning a new skill, and protecting earth’s resources. When I learn a traditional skill I am connected to other humans throughout time who bundled together a broom, stirred a pot of soup, spun fiber into yarn, or made a piece of furniture.

All of the threads of our lives are connected, and all of the things that we do as humans are too. If I were to list all of my hobbies and interests you might run screaming, but they all flow into each other in someway. (Any fellow ADHDer’s out there with a slightly ridiculous set of interests you have dived head first into?)

I won’t hold it against you if you aren’t interested in every aspect of this hodgepodge life of mine. I will do my best to sort posts so that you can easily search by topic in the future. But I hope that some part of it will spark an interest in you to try something for the first time. We are never, ever old enough to stop learning!