Homesteaders of Michigan: The Beginning
In April of 2019, while spending the cold early spring days at home with my infant son, my husband and I were dreaming of transforming our property into a productive homestead.
My husband and I had a goal of renovating an out-building into a chicken coop and building an enormous run. We wanted a productive garden. As you do during the late winter and early spring, we dreamed.
During my son’s nap times I turned to Instagram for inspiration. My feed was filled with talented homesteaders with almost none from my region here in Michigan. I wanted to see how Michiganders built their coops to stand the harsh winters and how they handle gardening in our unpredictable springtime. I didn’t want to just read a book, I wanted to see how real people, flesh and blood, were doing what I wanted to do. I tried searching out various hashtags to connect with folks close-by, but thought there had to be an easier way to find my people.
And in case you were wondering, we did finish renovating that out-building and building our chicken run. More on that another day.
I imagined a space where people in this very unique state could find one another and talk about what has or hasn’t worked in their own gardening/livestock journey, and thus the Homesteaders of Michigan account was created.
I created the Homesteaders of Michigan Instagram account in hopes of finding like-minded individuals close to me; people who went through what I did on a regular basis. At the time I wasn’t quite sure if people would take an interest in what I was trying to do. Did other people really care about building their community up or were they content on their own?
Within a few weeks of starting the account, I realized that yes indeed, many people wanted the same thing that I did. It’s so helpful to have a community around you with similar beliefs and values; people who “get” this unpredictable life we are living.
Since then, we have developed into quite the wonderful community. There is representation from all walks of life, from urban homesteads to rural acreages, people who homestead full-time and those who do it as a hobby. I love the diversity of our community.
The little team of one, me, has evolved into a team of six passionate homesteaders from all over the state. We have transitioned from simply sharing homesteaders’ photos to creating a directory for Michiganders to find others in their area, hosting region-specific chat groups, and now a wonderful website.
We hope this website will become a go-to resource for you and encourage you to connect with other homesteaders. We want everyone to be successful and find what they need here. We have many hopes and dreams for our community and this website is a step toward even bigger and better things.
Are you part of our Instagram community? If not, what are you waiting for?
Written by Kendra
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Connecting homesteaders of Michigan with informational resources, and most importantly each other.