I grew up in the small town of Altadena within the massive city of Los Angeles, California. My family was blessed to have an incredibly peaceful and beautiful oasis within the crushing, nonstop, frantic pace that is the nature of big cities. We had a small 1/4 acre plot that was really more like 1/2 acre as we had a set of Grandparents live literally right next door. Our two properties were connected by a stairway in the backyard. It was a pretty amazing situation to grow up in!

Both of my parents had been exposed to a farm lifestyle in their childhood and continued that tradition into raising my siblings and I. We always had a garden of varying success, and an attempt was always made each year, despite the success (or lack thereof) of the previous. We were never without a chicken coop full of egg-laying hens (at least 20 per batch of chickens) and later on my Dad tried his hand at raising meat birds. We had 4 turkeys at one point, but a bear cub got to them before they were much older than a month or two.

We grew up in a household that was always full of projects, chores, and learning a plethora of skills, some of which we learned we did not want to do again (i.e. working with concrete in any capacity). It was this slightly old-fashioned childhood that cultivated my love of working in space. I found a strong passion in gardening and fully took over the responsibility of planning and caring for the family garden in the last few seasons I was home. I learned to appreciate hard work and the satisfying results of completing a task with your own hands. I learned that I love to work the land.

Fast forward a few years and now I’m married, live in Huntsville, Alabama, and am still in a city, albeit a much smaller one than Los Angeles, and I haven’t lost that dream. The exciting part is now I get to share that dream with my wonderful husband. We dream of land with a home; a home in which the people care for one another’s needs lovingly. Land with a garden that supplies the food we’ve been so blessed to have access to. Land with animals to tend to that complete the cycle of giving and receiving. Land that is a refuge for my family, a place of peace, and a place of tender loving care. That’s the dream we hold onto and the dream we work so hard for… Today’s reality looks a little more like this:

We live in a small, but comfortable apartment in a peaceful neighborhood. I worked as a toddler teacher, and now substitute teacher, while my husband works as both a landscaper and electrical engineer. We’re young and both still working through school, settling into life. The busiest parts of the year are filled with 40-hour work weeks, college classes to attend, assignments to complete, a household to tend to, and a marriage to love and respect. Our hardships are ones we bare for the choice to be together sooner rather than later. Despite our struggles, I still wouldn’t trade it for a long-term, long-distance relationship because I get to spend every day with the man I love. But that brings us to the reason why you’re reading these words:

We have a dream for greater things. We have little money and rarely any excess time, but I have a passion for homesteading and working with my hands in ways that are labeled “old-fashioned.” I refuse to allow the modern creation of what life and the home should be to prevent me from laying a foundation to build our dream upon, even if I’m just building a skill set for the time being. This is the passion with which Honeybee Homestead has been founded. I want to share the journey with as many people as will join me and show that it’s possible to work towards your dreams in small ways every day, taking advantage of the blessings you’ve been given in the here and now.