Hey. I'm Jill.
I'm a wife, mom of three, follower of Jesus, farm animal collector, entrepreneur, horsewoman, struggling gardener, homecook, essential oil fanatic, and lover of wide open spaces.
I'm a bit of an oddity compared to the rest of my generation, but I'm good with that. I believe in hard work, making your own way, personal responsibility, thinking for yourself, and getting dirt under your fingernails. We live 45 miles from the closest grocery store on the wide open Wyoming prairie, and I love the ruggedness of this life-- rattlesnakes, blizzards, and all. 🙂
CREATING A LIFE I LOVE…
I wasn’t raised a homesteader. Heck, I didn’t even grow up in the country. I had a very conventional childhood and as I grew up, I had zero expectations to live anything but the standard American life: get married, have 2.5 kids, work a standard 9-5 job, eat food from the grocery store, and hope we had enough money to do it all again the following month.
But as as young newlywed, I decided I was going to do life differently. And that’s when I started to kick down the box I’d lived in for so long.
Goodbye Box!
Homesteading was my gateway to building a life I love. Once I realized I could get off autopilot and create the life I had always wanted, I was hooked. What started with a passion for growing our own food eventually translated to my husband and I ditching the 9-5 lifestyle and becoming entrepreneurs, making counter-cultural financial choices, homeschooling our children, and ultimately creating a life I could have only dreamed of before. There are days when I look at my life, and have to pinch myself. It doesn't seem real.
But guess what? I don't have this super-unique, enchanted life. It's attainable for you, too. If you have the grit to think outside the box and dream bigger, it can happen. In fact, it WILL happen-- it's entirely up to you.
A Warning:
If you stumbled upon The Prairie Homestead looking for advice in building your homesteading dreams, you're in the right place. I have devoted the last six years in creating hundreds of posts and resources for folks just like you. But be prepared-- in your quest to learn to can pickles and keep chickens, you might just find yourself on the wildest adventure of your life as you learn to dream bigger and break out of the ruts. The homesteading mindset has a way of creeping into every other area of your life... That's exactly what happened to me, and I pray it happens for you as well. 🙂
