Welcome to our blog!

Hello and welcome to our blog =). We have many personalities wrapped up in our family that I am sure you will get to know, hence our homestead, Crazy Train Acres. We decided to blog about our homesteading lifestyle to share what it is like to homestead near the 45th parallel, aka frigid zone. There are a lot of hard lessons we have learned and are still learning but we love this crazy life and are amazed how much fun can be had while still working hard. 

I am not going to lie to you, it is daunting to start a homestead… overwhelming to say the least.  Often we looked at what others have and then researched what we needed to get to that point and it would be too much work and too much money. 

So what happened?  We never got started. 

I was there. 

I was too afraid to start because it was too much money.

However, personality #2 (my husband, lol) is the master of planning. He said to set a goal, little goals at first and obtainable, then move on to larger ones.

So, I set a 4 year goal: within four years, I wanted to be self-sustaining on our homestead to provide for our family. 

Three years ago, there was a catalyst that moved our "want to have" into a "need to have". Our daughter was a newborn and got a bump on her head that wouldn't go away. Not knowing what to do we sought out medical attention. Before long she had to have a surgeon remove it, which is scary as all get out to trust someone with your child at 6 months! Prior to her follow up appointment she already had another one growing on the other side of her head and then shortly later two more! I was a panicking mom and decided natural living was needed in our lives. 

I changed my daughters formula instantly, began washing her bump with homemade soap and using wheat germ oil on it, and also bentonite clay treatments on it. All natural changes and the bumps went away.

Next, I changed cleaning products, food, homeopathic medicine (within reason) and whole lifestyle change.

The benefits of a natural lifestyle it just kept ballooning and has moved us into this lifestyle that we live. 

So now we are three years into our four year plan. We have gone from buying “organic” to producing and harvesting our own organic.

Homesteading life for us is a wonderful family lifestyle and change that we are all enjoying. The first garden, first animal, first of everything is a big step. It is a commitment; but once you get started, it is not as daunting to add the next step. We started with just a cabin in the woods and have since added two large gardens, a greenhouse, orchard, chickens, rabbits, goats, dogs, cats, cutting our own hay for feeding during the summer months, making our own soap, tapping and making maple syrup and sugar, as well as many other adventures. We look forward to sharing these as well as other adventures with you, hoping to inspire you to live a natural healthy lifestyle that will benefit you as much as it has us.