well, hello world

I have been meaning to do this for awhile, but my lovely sister, Naphtali, was the one who lit the proverbial fire. You will find her new blog to probably update a bit more than mine as she is much better about keeping people in the know about everything.

My new husband and I have recently moved to the Appalachian Mountains of NC. I had applied for a transfer/promotion with my company and was lucky enough to get it. We had wanted to move here as we were fed up with city life and really wanted to be a bit more natural. For us, this entailed having a little land (3 acres) and growing our own food. Now, we are not vegetarians, so comes the idea of meat. After learning too much about how today's CAFOs operate and what we are really eating, we decided we needed to change how we get our meat. So, over the next few years, our plans to clear the 2 acres we have of the invasive but delicious black berry bushes, start an acre organic garden for eating and preserving, raise our own chickens, rabbits, goats (for milk), possibly sheep (yeah, yarn!) and a pig. We also plan on having an orchard for fruit and nuts...what else could a girl want?

After moving to the mountains, we found the job market here to have much to be desired, and after a few months of searching, my husband and I decided that I would be the one to bring home the cash and he would raise the so called bacon. So far, he has cleared off the black berry bushes, cut down about 20 trees to make room for our orchard and has been working on various other projects...the most recent is restoring an iron fireplace insert which will keep us toasty this winter.

I have been learning to sew, reupholster, cook, preserve food, and garden. The sewing is coming along slowly but surely. Reupholstering my first project, a love seat, now - wish me luck. Cooking and baking has been fun and challenging on a tight budget. Once we are producing our own food, I will be in hog heaven. The small garden has mostly been successful this first year, but has had a few bumps in the road. The potatoes are pretty small as I didn't "hill" them properly but the grapes, tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, onions, beans, lettuce, carrots and various herbs are coming along swimmingly.

OK, well, I am droning on, but that is our background - two city kids, who don't know a lick about farming or most anything having to do with real life other than earning money and buying stuff, trying to learn how to take care of ourselves and the land we care for. Wish us luck!