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Hi, we’re the Kempkey Family!

Welcome to our family homesteading journey in Northern California zone 8b. Follow along as we stumble and tumble our way to becoming self sufficient! We hope our journey inspires you to start, continue or accelerate your own homesteading journey!

 Why Homesteading?

Homesteading can be a fantastic choice for a lot of different reasons, especially if you're looking for a more self-sufficient lifestyle that's closer to nature. Homesteading involves living off the land and growing your own food, raising animals, and generally being more self-sufficient.

One of the biggest benefits of homesteading is that it allows you to have more control over your life. You don't have to rely as much on outside sources for your basic needs, like food and water. This can be especially important if you're concerned about the state of the world or if you just want to live a more sustainable lifestyle.

Homesteading can also be incredibly rewarding. There's something really satisfying about growing your own food, raising your own animals, and building your own home, coop, barn or other structures. You'll learn a lot of new skills along the way, which can be both fun and empowering.

Another great thing about homesteading is that it often brings people closer to nature. When you're living off the land, you're more in tune with the natural cycles of the seasons and the weather. You'll also likely be spending a lot of time outdoors, which can be great for your mental and physical health.

Of course, homesteading isn't for everyone. It can be a lot of work and it requires a certain level of self-sufficiency and resourcefulness. But if you're up for the challenge, it can be an incredibly fulfilling and rewarding way of life.

Living in the city can be overwhelming at times. The noise, the crowds, the pollution...it can all start to weigh on you after a while. Don't get me wrong, there are definitely some perks to city living, but my husband and I just felt like we needed a change. We felt pulled to this lifestyle.

So, after months of talking and planning, we finally decided to take the plunge and try our hand at homesteading. It wasn't an easy decision - we had to leave behind a lot of things we loved about city life, like easy access to restaurants and cultural events. But ultimately, we just felt like we needed to be closer to nature and live a more sustainable lifestyle.

And let me tell you, it's been an adventure so far! We're putting our skills to use every day and learning from both success and failure, from growing our own vegetables in. a new zone to how to build a chicken coop from scrap lumber. There have definitely been some challenges along the way, but it's all been worth it. There's something really special about being able to walk outside and pick fresh produce from our own garden, or to watch the sun rise and set over our own land. There’s a soundtrack to our life now and its quiet mixed with clucks and crows and the sound of a crackling fire in our wood stove.

I won't lie, there are times when I miss the convenience of city living. But overall, I wouldn't trade this homesteading life for anything. It's brought us closer together as a family, and it's given us a sense of purpose and connection to the earth that we never had before. So yeah, it's a big change from our city days, but it's one we're grateful for every single day.