Welcome!

Whether you clicked on the about us link or stumbled upon this page, you are about to dive into our little Homestead story and our journey to living for ourselves!

First off let me introduce myself, my name is Tara. The writer, vlogger, researcher, doer, most likely to break it or mess it up and the glue that holds it all together! My better half is Mark. He is the guy that can do it all and will either be the worst or best conversationist you’ve ever gotten the pleasure, or nightmare, of talking to in your life. He is the reason why we found ourselves in this lifestyle to begin with. We have two beautiful children, 4 and 2 (at the time of this blogs creation, 2022), Temperance and Bentley, though you will rarely hear him be referred to by his name as we call him Bubs, Bubby, BubaWuba, Mr. Bear, and BubaWubaBear.

Mark and I got married back in 2016 and our whole lives as a married couple and eventual parents was hard. It seemed no matter which job we had, or how much money we were making, we were always struggling. We struggled to pay bills, to have any kind of life other than work, and our diet consisted of ramen noodles and boxed hamburger helper. We welcomed Temperance in November of 2017, and as anyone with kids knows, those messy boogers are expensive! By the time 2018 rolled around, we were up to our eyeballs in debt, sick of the rental company constantly raising rates for a leaky, dwindling townhouse in the city, and our marriage was barely holding on by a thread (honestly guys, even the two different marriage counselors we saw didn’t know what to do with us).

Mark is known for always having a new and fabulous idea or goal in life. I thought he had completely gone off his rocker when he came up to me and suggested that we live off grid in a tiny house on wheels. I was completely against it and shut it down almost immediately. He wouldn’t let it rest however, and I soon found myself getting sucked into the tiny house shows he was binge watching on Netflix and Hulu. The challenge of something different and the possibility of escaping our money struggles was really tugging at my heart strings. The biggest challenge we were going to face with this adventure was because of the fact that we wanted to escape the Monopoly board. We didn’t want to, and honestly didn’t have the credit to get a loan to not only build our house, but have land to put it on. Even though this was going to add another struggle to our life, I knew that someday, when it was all said and done, it would all be worth it. I soon found myself agreeing to the tiny house with one caveat, that someday he would build me a normal size house to raise our family.

The moment I agreed to the tiny house adventure was the moment my husband’s spark came alive. He became completely devoured by his hopes and dreams for our tiny future. With each new building material he stacked in our townhouse basement, his excitement and anticipation grew (y’all have never seen joy like this man had when his composting toilet came in the mail, for real). We spent any extra penny we got towards supply for the house, including all tax returns and extra student loan money (we were both in college full-time). Soon the extra money ran out, we were a few months behind on rent and facing eviction. We knew we had to make a change in order to continue with our dream.

We had been sporadically looking for land to eventually park our house on, but it was never a huge priority as the only thing we had done was some welding on the trailer and supplies stacking in the basement, not to mention no way of getting approved for a loan. Our plan was to just keep working on the house and possibly park it at an RV site until we could save enough money for some dirt. Then one day, around October 2019, I happened to stumble upon a owner finance plot of land. I honestly don’t remember what I was looking for or where I found it at, but we called the number and within a few days we were owners of a 5 acre plot of land. We convinced his brother-in-law to let us borrow his RV for a few months, sold a majority of our furniture, and packed up and moved our entire household to the country, all during my month of being on maternity leave after Bentley was born. Welcome to the world son, and our new lifestyle where we have absolutely no idea what we’re doing!

Once we moved to our 5 acre plot of land, we thought we were going to hit the ground running. Instead we ran smack dab in the middle of a never ending maze called big government and COVID. Instead of rainbows and butterflies, 2020 brought us mold and mildew. The cost of materials skyrocketed or just wasn’t available, so we were limited to what we had already bought in order to get us into our home. In May 2020, we had to return the RV and moved into our tiny shell, with only the floors and insulation done in the 7.5’ × 9.5’ “master” bedroom. No running water. Very few windows cut out and installed. Oh, and our composting toilet was in the woods surrounded by a tarp.

To say we were roughing it is kind of an understatement.

We were SO happy. No, seriously! I personally, and I think I speak for my husband as well, have never lived such a simplistic and peaceful life. I hated getting up and going to work because I didn’t want to leave our little plot of dirt. The world was full of chaos, deception, and abuse, but none of that was found when I was home. All of the stress of working in the medical field during a pandemic, fighting for the rights of the patients, myself and my coworkers, rifts being created in mine and Marks family, and just dealing with a different way of life within society. None of that followed me down that dirt road. I didn’t find it in the woods as I learned about the wild plants. I never felt it as I watched our kids run around in their birthday suits, splashing in the mud or counting the zillion stars above our heads. Suddenly, my idea of a relaxing weekend was shoveling through the rock and clay to get a garden plot planted. It was helping Mark clear trees and having endless nights by the fire making s’mores. We had found our little piece of Heaven on earth.

Going through such a massive changed was the best decision we ever made. We still struggle with money, as there’s ALWAYS something we are needing to buy on the farm, but those struggles don’t tear us down and apart like they use to. We have never been more secure in our marriage and so in love, and I honestly don’t think our kids could handle it if we moved back to a subdivision. Don’t get me wrong, living the way we do is definitely hard. We get judged a lot by people who don’t understand and almost no one comes to see us anymore. Plus there is always heartache on a farm (where there’s livestock, there’s deadstock). We continue to push through because we know it’s worth it and our love, faith in God and each other, and happiness for the simple things continue to grow with each sunrise and sunset.