IN THE GARDEN
Austin has always had a green thumb and has cultivated gardens in various places over the years. When we lived in downtown Little Rock, he developed an urban garden in the parking lot of the church he worked at as youth director. Produce grown in that garden was then donated to the church's food outreach program, where members could have fresh produce in their weekly food packages.
For the last five years, he has worked the very tough soil on the mountain where we lived in northern Colorado. The ground was hard, rocky, and the temperatures vary so much the growing season is short. He worked the soil for a year before planting the first crops, direct sowing root crops and transplanting others. This became a passion project for he and our family, and the produce grown was used both in the camp's kitchen and shared with the mountain community.
While we haven't yet cultivated the greenhouse garden on our new homestead property, I have no doubt in Austin's ability to grow after watching him turn raw land (and concrete space!) into bountiful harvests.
LIVESTOCK
Colorado is an open range, fence-out state, meaning it's a property owner's responsibility to keep other people's livestock out. For the last five years, Austin and our family have managed open range cattle on the 320 acre property where we lived.
In 2021, we purchased Alpine Nubian goats for low impact fire mitigation and sadly lost one of the goats around Thanksgiving to a mountain predator (most likely mountain lion). We still have one goat, Lavender, who is both a fantastic grazer and occasional menace.
We also purchased a yearling Highland bull, Grizz. He is currently still palling around with the open range cattle and will be moved to the homestead later this year. We would love to one day have a small herd of highlands to sell and process.
We would also love to have chickens and securing an area for their coop and safe grazing is a priority on the homestead.
ON THE HOMESTEAD
We purchased our now homestead property in March, 2022. It was our goal to spend the next year or so preparing it so we could move down full time, but due to Austin's abrupt termination and astronomical cost of living in northern Colorado, it is our only real lifeline to be able to stay in Colorado and raise our kids in this great state. We have plans and drawings for what we wanted the homestead to look like, and those are taking a back seat as we try to get it ready in such a short time for our family to move back to.
We just found out due to an unseasonably heavy rain, the work Austin had done to try to patch the roof of the old camper on the property didn't hold up and it is leaking. He is in the process of building a single-pitch roof structure over the camper so it will hold up to the elements and he can continue finishing out the inside.
Austin rigged up a large shade tent out of a log post and old parachute and that is what he is using as his covered shelter to cook under for the time being.