Ameliorate:
to make something better
Welcome to our Homestead!
Take two IT Professionals who are done with the DC racket and watch them move into farm life in rural Virginia.
Follow as we move
to our new life
All About Us & Our Homestead (a blog)
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We are moved in!
It’s been a while, but in truth, we made a big push to finally move to the farm house, and also to get our old house ready for sale. I feel as though I’m in a state of constant exhaustion. I am not sure I’ll get everything updated at once, but here are a few…
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How can it be Spring already?
And where have we been? Well, in truth, we’re living between two homes, finishing off the school year for our high schooler and elementary schooler, preparing everyone for new school (high schooler) and home school (soon to be middle schooler), and driving down to the farm on weekends to plant, check on things, decorate, repair,…
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It’s Electric — Farmhouse Edition
This one was written by Kyle. As the morning’s cold March wind blew through the still barren trees, a fluffy calico slipped out of the field into a row of barren bushes that line the field. The dawn sun had not yet cleared the horizon. The sky was luminous in places where the light pierced…
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So much snow in January
I hadn’t been down to the farm in several weeks thanks to a bout of pneumonia that I seem to be finally getting over. This weekend though, it was supposed to snow, and we wanted to make sure things were ok and the heat was working well and none of the roofs or gutters were…
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A Tuesday Delivery Day that Wasn’t
Where the heck have I been anyway? Working. Working is the answer. See, I was going to take this contract job and then it turned out they really needed someone to work full time. Since I swore I would never take a full-time job again, I was going to say no, but then I realized…
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Thanksgiving Saturday on the Farm: Library Edition
This weekend was Thanksgiving, and we had some friends over as we usually do. But we didn’t have our traditional Saturday After Thanksgiving Leftovers Potluck Extravaganza, because since Covid, it’s been less of an Extravaganza and more of a Disaster, where we have one visitor or maybe two, not at the same time, and it’s…
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Our Story
We’re a blended family with five kids, some of whom are grown and out and some of whom are still young and living at home. Back in 2020, during the pandemic quarantine, we started growing vegetables outside of our small townhouse in Reston, Virginia–a place fairly well known for having strict covenants.
In 2020, no one cared about our vegetable garden, and we grew a lot of potatoes and sweet potatoes. In 2021, no one cared, and we grew potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions, and some zucchini.
In 2022, we added a composter and expanded just a little bit and grew more food in pots and grow bags. In 2023, we got a notice informing us that we had to move our composter and “veggie plants” from the front of our house to the back of our house. We were given a month to do it, and after a month we harvested what we could and moved everything else, where it promptly all died because there is no sun in the back of the house.
So we decided it was time to get away from the world of HOAs. We started with a land search but ended up finding the perfect spot for our family: just over 5 acres with a beautiful old farm house and a bunch of outbuildings, far enough from DC that we can get away from the traffic, and close enough that we can still visit friends.
Our plan? Fix the house to our liking. Make repairs to the outbuildings. Grow vegetables and fruit trees, and keep chickens and maybe expand to other animals. Allow our daughter to finish high school. Home school our son. Blog and make YouTube videos when we can.
Try to make things better for everyone.