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Advice from real life Bohemian Farmgirl, Jenna Woginrich:
"Don't look at your current situation as a hindrance to living the way you want, because living the way you want has nothing to do with how much land you have or how much you can afford to spend on a new house. It has to do with the way you choose to live every day and how content you are with what you have. If a few things on your plate every season come from the work of your own hands, you are creating food for your body, and that is enough. If that hat on your head was knitted with your own hands, you're providing warmth from a string and that's enough. If you rode your bike to work, trained your dog to pack, or just baked a loaf of bread, let if be enough." (Borrowed from Made From Scratch page 12)
I just finished reading Jenna's hilarious memoir about starting out as a wannbe sheep farmer on rented land in northern Idaho. She's just like the rest of us: she has a day job, she makes mistakes, and she doesn't give up. Jenna's book explains how to (and how NOT to) build a backyard vegetable garden without a green thumb, tend a bee hive (she refers to this learning experience as "the summer I killed 20,000 bees"), raise chickens in spite of her own wolf dogs, mush through a snowstorm with glee, accept the hard truths of raising livestock (even "portable livestock"), make your own clothes, and teach yourself to play stringed mountain instruments. This is homesteading for regular folks, not quit-your-day-job-and-head-for-the-hills farming. It's a book about how to get started NOW and not wait until you have the perfect skills, enough money, enough land, the perfect dog, the perfect vintage truck, etc.
What are you waiting for?
