5 Acre Wood Homestead

Today I'm talking with Marissa at 5 Acre Wood Homestead.

A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Homegrowncollective.org.

 

Muck Boots 

Calendars.Com

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00:00 Did you know that muck boots all started with a universal problem? Muck? And did you know that it's their 25th anniversary this year?  Neither did I. But I do know that when you buy boots that don't last, it's really frustrating to have to replace them every couple of months.  So check out muck boots. The link is in the show notes. The very first thing that got hung in my beautiful kitchen when we moved in here four and a half years ago was a calendars.com  Lang calendar.

00:26 because I need something familiar in my new house. My mom loves them. We love them. Go check them out. The link is in the show notes. You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free to use farm to table platform, emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.

00:56 You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Marissa at Five Acre Wood Homestead in Washington State.  Good evening, Marissa. How are you? I'm great. Thank you so much for having me.  I am so excited to talk with you because you have everything going on at your homestead. So tell me about yourself and what you do. Well, um...

01:27 I, so  we weren't always, you know, Homesteader, Homestead life.  I really just stumbled into it as a lot of us do, right? But I did, I am from a very small, tiny town in Idaho.  And there was a lot of, you know, Homestead like things that went on there. And so I did have that very early  young childhood.

01:52 experience of that. Like I have memories of the things my parents had to do to get us through winters and whatnot, you know. And my mother and my grandmother, you know, they  sewed and crocheted and canned and did all the things. And so I kind of always had that influence in my life.  But growing  up,  we were, I was, you know,  displaced to the city here in Tacoma.

02:21 And that's where I spent 40 years was the middle of the city  and had my kids there.  And  at a certain point in my life, I was, I just decided that.  You know, we,  it's nice to talk about how we want to get back to the country and  the small town life and be self-sufficient and do all the things.  But at some point you just got to do it.  And that's really how this.

02:50 how the homestead came about.  And we've been here six years now. Okay. And still no animals.  Still a work in progress, right? Because  our homestead was was vacant for five years before we got it. And so nature kind of just did what nature does and took over.  And so  it's been the last three years has been

03:18 a lot of rebuilding and a lot of taking down and a lot of getting  the property back to where we need it to be so that we can incorporate the things that we want to have. It's been a lot of work.  Well, I'm going to jump in for one second. You don't have to have animals to be a homesteader. It's totally cool if you don't. I know. I know.  And  so many people have told me that because I feel

03:46 you know, kind of some days like  we're not a real homestead because we don't have animals yet.  And you're right. That's not that's not true at all.

03:58 Yeah, my friend, she's become a friend. didn't know her a year ago, but now I do because of the podcast.  My friend Amy Fagan at Grounded in Maine is her podcast. She asked me to be a guest and she  basically introduced me as  a homesteader who was bucking the system because we only have three acres and we don't have cows.  And it was kind of tongue in cheek. And for anybody listening.

04:23 If you are doing something that's an old fashioned skill as a part of your everyday life, you are practic