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Welcome to Our Homestead
In 2005, Theresa & Bear bought a small "fixer-upper" in southwestern Wisconsin, on a tiny lot (60 x 140 feet). We didn’t realize at the time that we would end up trying to become homesteaders in this improbably small location.
Outside at our tiny homestead, we have been using permaculture principles to change our lawn into gardens, creating a "yarden" where we grow some of our own food (in spite of our mostly shady yard under two towering black walnuts), while rebuilding wildlife habitat and living in a way that connects us to Nature’s cycles (see the Celebrate tab).
Inside, we are learning new ways to cook (see the Cooking tab & Bear's Shelf Chefing), preserve the local harvest, make our own staples, maintain a pantry of bulk and preserved foods, prepare for emergencies, and celebrate the changing of the seasons (the Celebrate tab again). We are trying to find inexpensive ways to live sustainably and be as self-reliant as possible, experimenting with things like our Buy Nothing Challenge to help us consume less and save more. We are trying to recognize and change the preconceptions we've absorbed from mainstream American culture that are personally unfulfilling and harmful to the environment. We want to create a new cultural paradigm that supports our choices to honor and protect the Earth. Here we will share step by step instructions with photos for some of our more successful projects, and write about our humorous misadventures, while sharing our thoughts on why the changes we make are important. If you'd like to get updates on our progress and notifications about the new information we add to the website, subscribe to our blog. We hope to inspire you to join us in making some changes of your own, because we believe that... |
Small Choices Can Add Up to Big Change and
BEFORE: Sheet mulch, Fall 2008
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DURING: Garden begins, Spring 2009
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AFTER: Garden planted, late Summer 2009
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Our Choices Will Change the World
Our biodiverse yard vs. neighboring lawn.
Example 2- Our backyard pond is next to the Celtic Cross Garden:
BEFORE: Clearing the area with plastic mulch.
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DURING: Using newspapers to protect the liner.
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AFTER: the pond right after it was finished, 2012.
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The pond brought wildlife to what was once nothing but lawn:
A baby frog that was recently a tadpole.
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A dragonfly.
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Some of our Other Favorite Pages:
From Bear:
From Theresa:
