First let me say, welcome to the Hartman Homestead!
We are so very grateful for the opportunity to live out the dream we fantasized about for 6 years. And even more gratifying is knowing that you are interested in what we have been doing since we left our jobs in the city and moved to our homestead in the mountains of Northeast Tennessee. Most of you have been following our journey on Instagram or Facebook. Now we are branching out a bit further into the social media space so we can share even more content and context to the new life that we have been fortunate to live. So, thank you for being here and following us. We love sharing what we do with you.
October 8, 2022 marked one year since we officially moved to the homestead and the work that we have accomplished over these last 12 months has been incredible. Everywhere I look, I see a project that I am proud to have had a hand in completing with my wonderfully handy husband, Rickie. The people in our community have really been an enormous help to us as well. Most of the families here have generational history so their knowledge of things like weather patterns, soil, and what grows and what doesn’t has been priceless to us.
Before we moved here, I had never even touched a chicken. But in March we took ourselves down to the local Rural King and bought 12 little chickie babies…and we just went for it. It didn’t take me long to figure out that raising baby chickens is not nearly as cute as I thought it was going to be. Things like pasty butt, litter dust, and just the general messy nature of baby chickens wasn’t something I was completely prepared for. BUT, we figured it out. And now we have some beautiful chicken ladies that are laying a rainbow of farm fresh eggs for us every day.
Another all-in venture we jumped into was cattle. In May, we bought 9 head of Angus cattle from a local rancher and by the end of September we added 5 new baby calves to the farm. Our first calving of a brand-new baby steer was flawless, we named him A-1. Our second steer was born about a week later and he presented challenges that we didn’t know how to address. He would not try to eat from his mother, but neither did his mother allow him to eat from her. We chatted with some friends of ours here in the Valley that raise cattle and they knew exactly what to do. Her first question to me was “Do you have a bottle?” Ummmm…NO! At that moment I felt like all of my common sense had gone right out the window. Here we have been waiting for months for these little babies to be born and we didn’t even have a bottle! But she fixed me up with a bottle and a package of newborn formula made just for cows. She gave me a laundry list of items and tasks that we needed to do to encourage baby to eat, and encourage mom to allow him to eat. She checked in on us several times a day. She cheered me on, guided me, and more importantly prepared me for the reality of what could potentially come of this baby calf. With the help of friends we made in our new community, our second steer, “Deuces”, survived and him and momma are doing all the cow things, just as cows should do.
But we weren’t just able to simply plop chickens and cows into random spaces on our 18 acres. Oh no, we had to build the infrastructure to house these little buddies. We had to clear out a lot of overgrown brush and trees and also build a secure fence around the pastures. We tore down an existing run-down building which opened up space to create a whole new fourth pasture that didn’t exist before. We also built a free range space for the chickens that included adding a few new fruit trees to the already existing apple trees. Now the Chicken Ladies (and two roosters) roam among apple, pear, cherry and peach trees in a grassy fenced-in mini orchard. We are very excited for the trees to begin producing fruit that we can harvest and preserve.
Our three gardens were very prosperous this year. Most everything grew successfully, but some things became more of a learning opportunity, to put it nicely. All said and done, we have somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 jars of canned fruits and vegetables, most of which came from our garden. Some came from neighbors who shared their overload of produce with us. And of course, we did the same. We gave away what we could to help out others who also needed to fill their pantry.
We repaired the barn that had buckled foundation and a leaky roof, removed trees that were a threat to the house or the garden, built a little pond area for the dogs to swim in, created a new path through our little wooded area, made nearly 60 bales of hay to feed the cows through winter…the list goes on. And we did this! The main objective we set for ourselves in January of 2022 was to bring this homestead to life. And we did it y’all. Nearly every goal we set, we accomplished. Now it is October, we are winding down and enjoying the fruits of our labor. But I am also looking ahead to next year. This is where you all come in to play.
Our main objective for 2023 is to turn this labor of love into a business. We will do this by expanding our cattle numbers, grow vegetables for sale, and possibly eggs. But we also want to document and share with you the things we do every day. This blog is how we will accomplish that. And who knows, maybe we will expand the blog into youtube and tik tock. We are very lucky to have our friend Jessica arriving in Feburary to help us out here on the homestead, and to help us with the blog and social media.
Look, we are doing this. We are actually making it on the homestead and I couldn’t be more proud of what we have done. Leaving everything you know behind and stepping into a whole new way of life is scary. There are trepidations. There are some stumbling blocks, and there are evens some failures. And I worried about what those things may be in the years we planned on creating a homestead for ourselves. But we didn’t let those worries stop us. Instead, we let our dream propel us and I am so glad we did it. We are not looking back for a second. So, let’s do this together. Let’s see what we can make on the homestead.