Hello there new friend!
This page is a resume of sorts. We are going to be learning important things together, and it seems only fair that you know a bit more about me first.
I live in Eugene, Oregon with my husband and our two kiddos, surrounded by an abundant backyard homestead. I tend 300 square feet of intensive vegetable beds, six different kinds of fruit trees, berry bushes, culinary and medicinal herbs, and big overflowing beds of flowers and native plants. We keep chickens for eggs, and ducks for slug control. I put up cases of preserves every year, bake all of our bread, and make most of our food from scratch.
I have been blessed in many ways over my lifetime, and I really feel that my 43 years have uniquely prepared me for this work.
Alaskan, Born and Bred
I was raised in Alaska, a place where thrift, self-sufficiency, and doing-it-yourself are a way of life. Even in the city of Anchorage, where I grew up, those rural Alaskan values were strong. On top of that, my parents were hippies, and my childhood represented a massive experiment in thinking outside the box. My dad was an actual homesteader– as in, he acquired 160 acres of raw Alaskan bush property under the Homestead Act during the 70s. Unfortunately he lost it in a legal battle before I was born, and I was consequently steeped in an inherited need to get back to the land.
As a kid, my favorite game was pretending to be lost in the wild. I would set up my pretend shelter and start making it into a home, stocking up piles of spruce cones and leaves for “food.” As a teenager, when other girls were watching MTV and shopping at the mall, I was dreaming of root cellars. I spent every weekend I could backpacking with friends, I installed a wood stove in my bedroom, I learned how to bake bread and started a vegetable garden in our yard. By the time I graduated high-school, I had entirely set up my future homestead inside my own head.
Master of Fine (Homesteading) Arts
Rather than go to college, I spent the next several years doing interesting and practical work all over the place. I apprenticed for a potter, living in a tent on his wooded property for the entire summer; I learned how to frame a house, build a kayak and lay concrete block by helping friends; I spent a winter working for a dog musher and learned how to drive a dogsled; I was the camp cook at a remote fishing lodge in the bush; I travelled the world, working on farms for room and board, in places as far flung as Iceland and Australia.
At the ripe old age of 21 my then-lover and I “settled” in the woods outside of Haines, Alaska and built a sort of a practice homestead, complete with a treehouse-cabin, huge garden and genuine root cellar. We learned how to grow food, catch and smoke fish, shoot guns, butcher animals, and cut all of our own firewood. We were serious badasses.
Becoming a Grown-Up
The next chapter of my life was a bit more tame. I had learned how to live way out in the woods and it was surprisingly easy compared to my next task— learning to balance the alternative vision I had created for myself with a need to be a part of the world, imperfect though it may be. I am still figuring that one out.
At 25 I moved to Cordova, a tiny fishing town on the Alaskan coast. I met a winsome young man living in a tipi that he’d built himself from scavenged materials, and suing the Forest Service over clear cutting practices from his laptop. I fell hard, and a few years later we were married. A few years after that we had babies. Over the course of life and growing up, we moved first to a house in town, then to New Orleans for law school (him not me), then finally to Eugene, Oregon.
We landed here in 2016, bought a small house on a ¼ acre blank slate of weedy lawn, and I started right in to work. This is the third time in my life that I have built a homestead from ground zero and I feel a fever to catch up to where I think I ought to be by age 42. Don’t ever move! It is so hard to start over.
The Here and Now
We miss Alaska like crazy, we miss the mountains, and the wildness, and the chest freezer full of salmon and moose. The good news is that here I can finally fulfill my gardening dreams. I have gardened everywhere I have ever lived— from Alaska to New Orleans— but the Willamette Valley is famously ideal for growing food, and I am taking full advantage.
Several years ago I discovered permaculture and it was love at first sight. In 2017 I earned a Permaculture Design Certificate from Apovecho Institute. Although I frequently get discouraged by the dogma that propagates around it, the core principles of permaculture continue to inspire and guide me as I create our backyard Eden.
Learning to Share
In between all of that homesteading education I also became a writer and then, even more surprisingly to myself, a teacher. It started long ago, in my punky youth, with a zine called Subsist Resist which chronicled my days spent duck hunting and nettle picking. During the desperation of new motherhood my inner writer was reborn in Apron Stringz— a blog which was half DIY homemaking and half emotional processing.
I had discovered a desire to connect with the world and a latent skill for sharing what I know. After my kids grew up a bit I re-entered the workforce as an educator. I found employment for a non-profit, teaching Earth science in schools. But what I really loved was teaching adults how to do things. I taught pottery classes and gardening workshops, I led plant walks and made a wild foods cookbook. I learned how to teach, and began to share the skills I had spent my life learning.
Now I would like to share those skills with you, and help you to move towards the home and homestead that you’ve always dreamt about.
Let’s get started.
Store up summer’s goodness, in a jar!
Have you always wanted to learn how to preserve food, but felt too intimidated? This free workshop series will get you started!
Through eBooks, recipes and live online classes, these workshops will cover super simple beginner techniques, step by step, to give you the knowledge, skills and courage you need to fill your kitchen with jars.
Food Preservation 101
Free Workshop Series
How to Make Jam – October 3rd
Quick Pickles – October 10th
Freeze It! – October 17th
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