When I graduated from Kutztown in 2005, my first post-college job was in Knoxville, Tenn. I moved there by myself to work for a television network's website. I rented the bottom floor of an old boarding house in a historic district called Fourth & Gill. This was my old bedroom in said apartment. I laughed when I came across this photo because I'm pretty sure that old place could fit two of my present cabins inside it. Maybe three. It feels like ages ago. A past life.

This picture was taken the day I brought Jazz home, which was in July of that same summer. I was alone two weeks in the world before I adopted him. They were an awful two weeks. Women of a certain disposition should not be alone in a new city without a good dog. They feel awkward and pointless without a leash in their hands in public — but give them a large, kind dog and they are sirens. They can get by without a good man just fine, but never without a good dog.

I am of that disposition.

I look at this picture and can't help but smile, tilt my head, and raise an eyebrow. Back then all I wanted was to be a designer. I wanted a board position in my AIGA chapter. I wanted to be out in Market Square with my dog. Jazz, by the way, was never intended to be on snow. He was a southern city pet. Sure, he might pack in the Cumberlands with me, but he wasn't going to be a sled dog ...

Little did I know 18 months later I'd be in a farmhouse in Northern Idaho with him, another Siberian, and a sled parked in the garage. That all happened because of a cove in the Smoky Mountains, a night with fireflies at an abandoned camp, and a jump from a waterfall where a young man died the following day. Those are all separate and complicated stories, but they are why I'm writing you from a small cabin in a New England hollow. They are the alchemy that created the hope you know as Cold Antler Farm. (Which, if you're new to this blog, hasn't actually happened yet. Welcome to the ride.)

Life can change fast. It doesn't really change any other way.

Anyway, I thought this snapshot from a past life might give some comfort to those of you who dream of goats and chickens and a cabin in the woods but are presently sifting through take-out menus in your current metropolis. Please remember, It was just a few years ago I had one dog in a city apartment. Now I'm in this beautiful mess.

Tomorrow I'll visit a brewery and probably come home wanting to make my own beer. Sunday, Steve and I are going to slaughter an angry rooster I raised out of the palm of my hand. Right now I'm going to go outside and close the coop door before the rain comes. If you wish you too were closing a coop door you can take a deep breath and rest easy tonight. I promise if it's something you really want — it'll happen. You'll find a way because you must. And when it does happen, be ready — because it'll come fast. Life doesn't happen any other way. At least not the parts worth living.

Read more from Jenna at Cold Antler Farm

Photo by Jenna Woginrich

We’ve said before that our magazine specializes in both the here-and-now and the later-and-wow. With no limitations, what would your ideal future homestead look like? What would you grow? What animals would grace your pastures? Close your eyes, plan it out, and tell us all about it. If you are lucky enough to be living your dream, go ahead and brag about it!  

I've been hurt by this farm. Really hurt. I've been bitten, butted, cut, scarred, and brought to tears from pain, stress and exhaustion. This happens over and over and I'm always alone. There are things I won't blog about because I don't want my mother to worry. There are things that happen that terrify me.

This year was the hardest yet. I planted my largest garden ever, raised the most animals, and took on more work and personal projects than any sane human being should. Now that the year is almost over, and the south side of October is days away, I can let out a long sigh and tell you it was all worth it. I found a balance in it all, kept my blinders on, and everything got done. The garden was tilled, weeded, and harvested. The two-week-old goat kid grew up into a spit-fire. The young birds are almost full-sized chickens now and the rabbit doe is due to bear kits any night. Yes, the hive was lost. And yes, I failed the sheepdog I once called my own, but you'll have this from time to time. And you and I don't have enough nights to list my faults. There are many, some are awful. Trust me.

If you read this blog and find it overly positive, dramatic, or analytical: that's because writing about my choices is my daily therapy. I don't see a shrink—I write to 40,000. Sharing my stories and photos on this blog is like a long exhalation. I depend on the people who read this because in the shower I lose count of the cuts and bruises and I want to know they belong to something bigger than my body. All things considered, I am quite small.

Some nights I barely fall asleep, isomniatic from worrying about the delicate balance that is my work life, family life and farm life. I am so grateful for Jazz, my old dog, who looks at me every day like the wise bodhisattva that he is and I will never be. A good dog can walk up to you, slowly, one paw in front of the other, and sit down next to you with great stillness. I feel him lean into me and I realize I'm not the only animal on this farm. I am never alone and it is bigger than us both. He rests and lets me scratch behind his ears and only when he knows I understand the world again, pads off. Jazz isn't my child and he isn't my pet either. He's a good dog. Nothing more.

For quite some time now, people without dogs seem broken to me.

I am a farmer without a farm, a shepherd without a sheepdog, and in love with this big, stupid world without a lover. That's fine. Sometimes I foolishly think everything would be better if I had a mortgage, a collie, and a man. But I know myself well enough to see the idiocy in such black-and-white thinking. I know better. We all know better. Maybe these things will come or maybe I'll be hit by space trash tomorrow. It really doesn't matter. It's the wanting that fuels us. It's the hope. That desire to attain the life you want, whatever it is, and to fold your ears back and run into the wind like you're in harness—is life. Cold Antler farm isn't a place—it is an idea. Knowing I want it means I am already home. Actually getting there, is moot.

Read more from Jenna at Cold Antler Farm 

Photo by JOANNA CHATTMAN

Coming up in the October/November issue, contributing editor and DIY expert Steve Maxwell shares the many lessons he learned during his twenty years as a homesteader. Man, is there a lot of trial-and-error involved in the process of honing those skills! Veteran homesteaders: Please, please share your wisdom with those of us who are just getting started down the path to self-sufficiency — what are the most important lessons you learned along the way?

Photo by iStockphoto/Moira De La O

President Abraham Lincoln signed into law the Homestead Act of 1862, opening up 270 million acres of public domain land for settlers to “prove up.” A filing fee of $10 and a $2 commission to the land agent were the only fees necessary to file a claim on 160 acres of homestead land. Settlers then had five years to build a home and farm on the land before they could receive a patent for the land.

Between 1871 and 1950, more than 1,465,346 people received a final patent on their homestead land. The Homestead Act was repealed in the lower 48 states in 1976 and in Alaska in 1986. You can learn more about the Homestead Act and the pioneers who settled the land at the Homestead National Monument of America just outside of Beatrice, Neb. Their website reports, “On March 19, 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the law and Homestead National Monument of America ‘as an appropriate monument to retain for posterity a proper memorial emblematical of the hardships and the pioneer life through which the early settlers passed in the settlement, cultivation and civilization of the Great West.'"

Do you have ancestors who filed a claim or received a patent on their homestead land? If so, share your family story in the comments below.

By Jenna Woginrich

If you’re the first of your friends to move to the country, get some chickens and plant an organic garden there will be some inevitable social fallout. It’s not your fault, but you’re going to raise the eyebrows of some of your more cynical friends. While there are plenty of people out there excited about self-reliance, there are just as many folks jaded by the hype and greenwashing that society has been slinging at us ever since Al Gore shared his slideshow. As green living gets trendier, it can’t help but jump the shark. You just can’t blame people for rolling their eyes when oil companies air commercials about sustainability.  

Around the time your coffee table starts to fill up with seed and hatchery catalogs you can expect the occasional jab for subscribing to the country cliché. The suspicious will cross their arms and peg you as just another converted-starry-eyed-back-to-the-lander. With an air of certainty and rib-nudging judgment, they’ll announce that at the end of all your dirty fingernails and feed sacks you’ll learn nothing that hasn’t been learned a million times before. That the merits of country living have already been printed in thousands of books, seen in endless movies, and are currently being spouted as gospel by hundreds of others just like you, probably even at the same farmers market. They’ll start doling out references from old episodes of Green Acres. There will be melting glacier jokes. You know the drill, you’ve been there. These otherwise wonderful folks will point their fingers at your western shirt and call you another sucker for the country life.

Here’s the thing. They’re right.

Of course they’re right. Agriculture isn’t exactly new to the scene, and deciding to turn your life from consumer to producer (even if it’s just a few gardens and some chickens) is a step taken by throngs before us. There is nothing new, or special, or innovative about it. The Simple Life has been experienced by humanity since the fertile crescent, was, well... fertile. The results are ridiculously cliché. If you join the coverall club you’re not going to have any experiences that many of us haven’t already had, and will continue to have indefinitely. Sorry kids, this show is always a rerun.

But you know what I say to all this? So what. I mean isn’t that the point of all this? To get your hands dirty and join the secret society of tractors and baling wire? To be able to nod your head around the campfire when other gardeners talk about blight and potato beetles, and to learn the same sense of satisfaction of growing your own food? There is comfort in knowing you’re living a cliché. It means the results of the lifestyle are so stereotypical they’re guaranteed. And while it may not be clever — it’s clear that there are a reason some clichés stick around. Some are good enough to be true. Roll your eyes all you want son. This stereotype’s got some eggs to collect.

BRYAN WELCH

My neighbor Bill is a great asset to me. He understands machines. When one of my machines isn’t running and I have no idea how to fix it (pretty much every time), I can ask Bill and get a reasonable, logical and well-informed set of directions. Typically, just what I need. In his own shop he has a Farmall H tractor he’s restored, a garden tractor he built from scratch and a 2,000-pound belt-driven drill press he picked up somewhere. His place is immaculate and Bill’s just about the fittest 80-year-old you’ll ever meet.

Bill spends most of his time caring for his wife, Beverly, who has Parkinson’s Disease. I tell Bill she’s lucky to have him. He says he’s lucky to have her.

Beverly’s taken a turn for the worse since she had knee surgery recently, and the other day a for-sale sign showed up on Bill’s lawn. He told me they’re moving into a retirement home. He’s decided he needs a little more help to give Beverly the life they want for her.

He invited me over to look at some of his farm equipment and tools he won’t need any more.

“I have a lot of projects, but I guess I ran out of time,” he said.

And it occurred to me that he didn’t mean he ran out of time that day, or this week. He meant he’d run out of time. He sounded disappointed but he wasn’t maudlin. Bill seemed to figure running out of time — running out of life, as it were — is a perfectly natural state of affairs.

I guess that’s right.

My husband, Rob, and I used to joke that we liked nature as long as we could see it through a windshield. I have no idea when or how that changed; one day, we had a gym membership and prepackaged food in our pantry, and the next we were cranky if we couldn’t get out for a hike and chafed at any food that we hadn’t bought directly from the farmer. 

Our organic transition was kicked off by a chance encounter with the joyful movement called Slow Food. After a while, it seemed natural that we would move to a rural area, somewhere mountainous and beautiful, private with a decent garden space. 

We found a house — the house — a red-roofed 1941 farmhouse in a community where people smile at one another and offer useful advice. 

We’ve lived here for two months now and I can finally admit that we have no idea what we’re doing. Our major previous garden success was a squash plant that we couldn’t have stopped had we wanted to. Rob once camped out at a festival. I like to can jelly and preserves, despite my 60% gel rate. We have a lot to learn. 

We expect to work hard, but after all, we’re chasing some pretty major goals. We moved here in hope of reducing our environmental footprint, and to get away from total dependence on the grid. But we also moved here to start fresh: to redefine our idea of success, to move backburner dreams to the forefront, and to become the people we want to be. 

But first things first: finding the local cheesemakers… 

Sarah Beth Jones is taking a break from a career in newspaper, magazine and business writing to learn how to live more wisely in Floyd, Virginia.

Photo by Rob Jones

I’m relatively new to homesteading. Brand new, actually. I’ve only been at it a few years. My gardens are humble, my livestock pint-sized, and the closest thing I have to a draft horse are my Siberian Huskies pulling a small sled — not exactly CSA startup material here. But hey, I’ll catch up.

While my current adventures in self-sufficiency are pretty light, they are slowly growing more complex and rewarding. Last year I was keeping rabbits — now I’m breeding them. I used to keep just a few hens for my own eggs — now I’m selling cartons at work from a larger flock. Every year I learn something new, make different mistakes, and get a little more comfortable in wellies and carhart. I’m getting it, but I wouldn’t be at it at all if I waited till the day I could buy a small farm to get started. You see folks, I farm and I rent.

Yes, I rent. I pay pet deposits, go to laundromats and the plumber does not bill me. It’s not the conventional way to go, but for me (and maybe you) it’s the only way to go right now. I am a firm believer that putting off what makes you content is happiness suicide. I don’t care what anyone else tells you, a homesteader doesn’t necessarily have to be a home owner. You don’t have to put off your fresh food dreams because you didn’t pick out the welcome mat.

Tenets like us don’t have to wait to start homesteading. There are things you can do right now that won’t break your lease or scare your neighbors. A henhouse with a few cooing Rhode Island Reds pecking around the yard makes less noise and causes less wear on a lawn then a Scottish Terrier. A small raised bed garden and some potted plants are even less obtrusive. I’m not saying to overhaul land that isn’t yours and pack it tight with 30 Nubian goats — but if your landlord can be sweet-talked into some small backyard projects, go for it with gusto (and if they balk, offer them a dozen organic free-range eggs every two weeks and some homemade tomato sauce. They’ll cave like spelunkers.)

Hey, even if animals aren’t a reality, and you can’t have a kitten (much less a Cochin) at your place there are no rules saying you have to pay a mortgage to bake your own bread or can green beans from the farmers market. Homesteading has so many intricate little parts that don’t require that romantic seven acres upstate — you shouldn’t wait. Start up that pressure canner and knit yourself a hat, son! Learn those skills you’ll use on the farm before you get there — you’ll be glad you did!

You shouldn’t have to spend a lot of money to get started either. A used sewing machine off Craigslist or a drop spindle and some roving might be all you need to start making your own clothes or spinning your own yarns. If money isn’t the issue, and space is, see if some of your friends want to get together and work on a community garden in one of their back yards or rooftops. You’d be amazed at what urbanites can do when they crave fresh vegetables. A lot of topsoil is being carried up elevators as we speak.

Point is, do not be discouraged if that dream farm isn’t here yet. It certainly isn’t for me and I have no idea when it will. However, until then there are a million recipes to test, country fairs to visit, local farms to tour and sheepdog trials to observe. So get off your desk chair and plant some peas in a pot. Yes, I know it’s not a rolling hillside, but hey, it’s something real we can put in our stomachs. And when all the tractor-and-Holstein wrapping paper is ripped off that’s what this is about in the first place, isn’t it? So let’s take what we can get tonight and be grateful for it.

Jenna Woginrich is the author of the forthcoming book, Made from Scratch: Discovering the Pleasures of a Handmade Life, from Storey Publishing. Visit her Web site at coldantlerfarm.blogspot.com.

If you knew me growing up you’d probably be surprised to find out that after a perfectly normal suburban childhood, I ended up standing in a chicken coop at 5 a.m. ankle-deep in straw and chicken poo.

After all, that was never the plan. I grew up in the complacency of small town America. We had a fine house with a beautiful back yard, neighborhood friends, and wonderbread sandwiches. Once a year near Halloween, my parents would take us three kids to a small family farm with a pumpkin patch. I’m fairly certain that annual trip was the closest I ever got to the farmlife.

Now, 26 and on my own in rural Vermont — things have changed. Bread comes from my oven — not plastic bags with twist ties. Eggs come from the chicken coop — not a styrofoam container. And vegetables come from the garden not the produce section (though technically, the garden is the produce section of the property, but you know what I mean.) My life went from an urban design job in the city to the path of an apprentice shepherd. While I still have a 9-5 job, my weekends are spent at sheepdog clinics and lambing seminars. The dream is to raise lambs up here in the gambols of Vermont. And the road to that reality is a lot different than the one I’ve been trained for in college. (They don’t teach you how to pull out an inverted lamb from a stubborn ewe in typography classes, just a heads up for any designers-turning-farmers out there.) Anyway,  I’ve been sweating, tilling, and stepping in random feces for a few years now and whenever someone who knew me before all paths lead to sheep runs into me, they always ask me the same question.

Why?

Why would a perfectly normal middle class gal, who had a nice city job, and a pleasant apartment pick up her life and shake it till trowels and feed sacks fell out? Why spend a year learning to raise chickens and keep bees and nearly pass out of heat stroke in the garden when eggs, honey, and broccoli are all for sale at the grocery store for less than the cost of that hoe in your blistered hands?

There are a lot of canned answers to this and you know them already. As fellow homesteaders (or friends there of) you get the whole “homegrown-satisfaction-quality-of-life-green-living” bit. All those reasons ring true for me too, but there’s something else writhing below those surface answers. Something deeper that makes me smile in the garden or laugh from my belly in the bird yard.

It’s the honesty of knowing what I do everyday directly helps keep me alive.

It’s that simple.

Gardening, farming, raising animals — these are seen as labor or hobbies to most. I can’t tell you how many times people have told me “Farming isn’t my thing” which is always said with flippant arrogance masquerading as either city-slicker inadequacy or self-effacing ambivalence. Which is fine. If it weren’t for people not wanting to farm, farmers wouldn’t have any business in the first place. But here’s the thing. If you ever ate anything that had to be raised, slaughtered, or planted — farming is definitely your thing. Actually, It’s the only thing.

We can sit on the porch and talk all day about philosophy and religion and what people want. But the conversation about what the human animal needs is pretty short — food, shelter, water, protection. While I love the literature, art, and amazing questions people ask about ‘what we want’. I find true peace and purpose taking control of what I need.

Raising and growing your own is more than a lifestyle — it is life. Contrary to popular belief there is nothing altruistic about it. Homesteading is the most self-involved way to live. But it’s exactly how most animals do live, and there’s no logical reason for any of us to think we have the world figured out better than anything else stumbling around the planet. Animals live a wild life of procuring food and creating life. The shepherd with a lamb in his arms is no different than the wolf with a lamb in his jaws. Two animals with food being the center of their present lives. I love that so much about farming, you just can’t know.

So I suppose that is why I homestead. The correctness of survival. The wildness of understanding basic needs. It all draws me in and keeps the bit between my teeth. It lets me feel more a part of the world in the most basic sense. Thanks to the egg, garden, and lamb — I too can gain all the satisfaction I need from being in charge of my own life. You know, there’s a reason eating a salad you grew yourself tastes so good, and if you don’t believe me, you can ask that wolf.

Jenna Woginrich is the author of the forthcoming book,  Made from Scratch: Discovering the Pleasures of a Handmade Life, from Storey Publishing. Visit her Web site at coldantlerfarm.blogspot.com.