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Welcome to Kait’s Garden, a blog about homesteading, gardening, seed saving, farm animals, living off the land and doing it yourself!

 

I’m Kait! Here’s a little bit about me…

 

 

I grew up in rural Western Oregon. As a homeschooler, my parents made sure I had a thorough education, but they also gave us lots of time to enjoy the outdoors!

When I was 12 years old, always brainstorming ways to make money, I came up with the splendid idea to sell flowers at the road!

 

I snuck into my mother’s flower patch and cut some nice specimens, placed them in a bucket of water, and set it by the road. Lo and behold, a couple hours later the flowers were gone, and $2 was left under the bucket!

The next day, with my dad’s help, I set up a flower stand. All summer I sold cut flowers, earning enough to buy my horse new boots.

And so it began….

The next year I planted my own flower patch. The year after that I decided to try some vegetables.

Soon I was experimenting with all kinds of gardening methods, and saving seeds to plant the next year.

I finished high school at 17, and to the shock of many friends and family members, chose not to go to college. As a Christian, I wanted to eventually be a wife and homemaker. Although I was always an entrepreneur, I didn’t want a career, and didn’t want to start my life with a large amount of debt.

Right after my graduation, my entire family moved to a 12 acre farm in Montana.

Instead of a formal college education, I visited the local library every week, devouring multiple books in a day. It was a fun time of learning so many practical skills that I use to this day!

My parents’ property became my science lab. Soon I had about 1/3 of an acre turned into garden. I learned much more about seed saving and started collecting heirloom vegetables.

I started a full-fledged chicken breeding operation and started developing my own chicken for my brother’s fly tying hobby. Turkey pens soon sprung up, and beef steers joined the horses at pasture.

 

 

Always horse crazy, I took the opportunity to take more lessons and perfect my horsemanship skills, working with young horses every day.

And then came the cow…

My parents happened to be on vacation when I saw the perfect milk cow for sale (yes, I did ask before taking the money out of their safe to buy them a cow). What a learning curve that turned out to be! But in spite of all the work, having a milk cow was a blast!

 

 

Growing all this food, I had to learn how to preserve it too.

I had already been learning about herbal medicine for a few years, but really starting reading, and learning to grow my own natural medicines.

My parents’ fridge and pantry were full of my herbal and food “experiments”.

Then I brought home a 5′ wide floor loom that landed in their living room.

I think it was around that time they decided they needed to get rid of me… and thankfully that was also around the time my future husband showed up.

We were the only two singles working in a youth ministry, so always ended up working together. Ben became good pals with my brothers, so was at our table at least twice a week. I suppose it was inevitable we would eventually fall for each other.

We soon got married and moved into the tiniest apartment in town. It was a studio attached to someone’s garage, about 300 square feet total. Although we kept two horses with our parents, the rest of the animals had to go.

I was working at a local cafe and didn’t have much time, but our landlord gave permission for me to turn our tiny patch of grass into a garden. I was able to fit 9 3’x6′ raised beds in the space, and managed to grow a nice garden that year.

The next year we moved into a bigger house. It was a redneck apartment building out in the country, with a shop attached to one side of our one bedroom home, and another apartment on the opposite side.

Looking back I feel bad for that landlord. Although I had permission, I kinda took over his property with my projects. The steep slope in front of the main house became my horse pasture. A big pile of hay landed in his backyard, along with my raised beds and potted plants.

The year our first baby was born, I decided to sell produce at the farmers’ market. I didn’t have much space, but didn’t let that stop me. I found two other people who let me set up gardens on their property. That was a busy summer, driving around every day tending to three different gardens with a newborn and setting up at farmers’ market every Saturday rain or shine.

 

 

We were still trying to breed horses at that point, with a pasture on a steep hill, no barn and no horse trailer. We finally gave up (temporarily) and sold all but our nicest filly.

After our second baby was born, we decided a bigger home was a must (four people in a 1 bedroom house!). We found a great deal on a mobile home that just needed a little work, and rented five acres to put it on.

The move also gave us far more garden space, room for the remaining horse, and allowed us to start breeding poultry again!

 

Some fun facts about me:

• I always have gazillion different projects going on (no kidding, just ask my hubby!)
• I’m the best at trying to do too much at one time and getting in over my head
• The last half of 2019 and first part of 2020, I had three kids three and under. Talk about being busy!

 

The blog

 

On this blog, you’ll find lots of homesteading how-to’s, including gardening tips, seed saving tutorials, homestead recipes, natural medicine, prepping and backyard chickens. I enjoy sharing what I’m learning!

You can sign up for our newsletter here. You’ll automatically get our free email series about living off the land no matter where you live. It’s packed with tips to save money and become less dependent on the grocery store.

 

You can check out some of our most popular posts below!

 

Gardening:

 

Homesteading:

 

 

Backyard Chickens:

 

 

Some more resources you’ll find on this website:

 

We have an online course for beginning seed savers. Learn everything you need to successfully save seeds in just a couple hours’ time! The course is affordable and includes some great bonuses like printable reference charts and seed packets! You can find out all about the course here!

 

 

We also have a free chicken breed finder!

 

 

And don’t forget to check out our real homesteading and gardening book reviews (actually there are a lot more than 12 now!)

 

 

Thanks for stopping by! You can contact me here if you have any questions about my site!

-Kait