Homestead Life
Whether you are brand new to homesteading, a seasoned pro, or just dreaming of owning your own homestead one day we are here to help you where you are. We will meet you at the homestead with tips for gardening and preserving your harvest, caring for animals, being a better steward to our world and navigating parenting conundrums on the farm. All the advice your momma could give and more.
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5 Holiday Desserts You Need This Season
The Holidays are upon us and with them come the always delicious and bountiful array of food that we all love. But the best part of the holiday feasting is the assortment of desserts that await after the main courses and sides have all been cleared away. Holiday desserts are the real reason we have holiday dinners right?! Usually you see the same few traditional holiday desserts year after year. Desserts like pumpkin and apple pie, while delicious are not going to really stand out in a crowd. This is the year to shake up your grandma’s holiday dessert table with something new, or in some cases forgotten, delicious holiday…
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Christmas Gift Giving on a Budget
Planning your Christmas gift giving on a budget can be hard, but it is not impossible. This year more than ever, we are all pinching pennies and trying to save a buck. But how do you make that translate into budget friendly Christmas gift giving? Whatever your budget, you can make this Christmas meaningful while ensuring your bank account doesn’t take the fall.. Stick around to see how! Christmas is a time of giving, but it can easily turn into a time of over spending. We have all felt the anxiety of overspending for the holidays. You know the feeling I am talking about. You start to tally up your total…
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Top 5 Favorite Books of 2020
In January, like many others, I set goals and publish them in my bullet journal to keep me on track for the year. To be honest, I really only accomplish about half of them because I set so many and some that I really don’t even care about. This year, my goal is to set more realistic and meaningful goals. Ones that I actually care about accomplishing. I used to believe that the more you commit to the more likely you are to accomplish something, but honestly it just stresses me out because I begin to feel like it is a race against the clock. I also found that a…
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Slowcooker Apple Butter Recipe
Using a slow cooker is one of the easiest ways to make apple butter. It tastes like you have stood over a wood burning fire stirring apples in a copper kettle all day. For those who may not know, apple butter does not actually contain butter. The “butter” term is used to describe its butter like texture. Apple butter is instead a scrumptiously decadent thickened applesauce spiced with cinnamon, cooked low and slow all day. It is delicious spread over toast in the morning or used in baked goods. Check out our recipe for homemade light bread to try it out on! It is so good! Apple butter is so…
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Simple Apple Sauce Recipe
When the apple harvest starts to come in I get the itch to make some of my favorite apple recipes to sustain my family through the winter. One of these family favorites is applesauce. So simple and so delicious. Yes, I realize that I can go and buy applesauce from the store, but there is nothing quite like fresh homemade applesauce. When it is made from scratch at home, I am able to keep the ingredients local, the quality high, and there is no added sugar (unless I just want to add some). My twins love applesauce. Really what 5 year old doesn’t? They love applesauce just plain in a…
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The PawPaw- What It Is and How to Grow It
Growing up in West Virginia, I had heard of a PawPaw, but never in my life had I ever seen one. I honestly didn’t really even know what it was until my husband walks into the kitchen a few nights ago and says “Babe, what is this?” cracking open a 5 inch long oval greenish maroon fruit. The smell was sweet and delicious like a banana mixed with citrus. It was a delightful scent, but I still had no idea what he had found or if it was something we should try to eat. So I did what I always do when I have no idea what a plant is,…
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Welcome to Hackett Hill
Hello and Welcome to our Blog! I am so excited to finally be here talking to you! For years I tossed around the idea of starting a blog. But where to begin? What would I write about? When we decided to buy our farm, I decided it was now or never. What better reason to start a blog than to chronical our adventures in the reimaging of our new (old) home?! I started this blog as a way to document our renovation process, but quickly decided I wanted the final product to be much more. I wanted a platform to share our home’s whole story: to bring you into our…
