My Story

My name is Lyndsi. I am an enthusiast of gardening, natural medicine, antiques, and the western lifestyle. I was born and raised in rural Idaho. I spent my girlhood days barefoot in the garden picking wildflowers and daydreaming while horseback. Not much has changed since then. As a child I developed a love of raising and caring for animals. We had several horses, hogs, sheep, and rabbits. My parents taught me the value of hard work from an early age. My mom especially showed me just how capable women can be, and I am determined to pass down those traits to my daughter.

I met my husband, Stetson when I was just sixteen years old. That cowboy had my heart from the first day that I met him. He came from a long line of cattlemen. Now that our children are becoming quite the hands, it’s really special to see 4 generations working cattle together. Stetson is cowboy through and through. I mean, just look at his name! He is named after an iconic cowboy hat. He has an incredible gift with horses and has trained all of ours. I have been really spoiled to always have a good horse to ride because of him. He is handy with a rope, and let me just say right here, he looks mighty good while doing it all.

We have four beautiful children. Parenting has been an absolute joy for us. We strive every day to give our children responsibility and to teach them that they are very capable of completing challenging tasks. At the time I am writing this, our kids are 11, 9, 6, and 4. There are many days that we can go move a group of cattle into a different pasture, or even branding a small bunch that we can pull off with just us and the kids. We have a strong conviction that kids just need the opportunity and the belief that they can do something for them to accomplish really great things. Being able to raise our children in this lifestyle and work along-side them is truly a gift from God.

There was a period of my life that I didn’t do much of homesteading anything. And for the most part, I would say my philosophies and mindset was pretty “normal” to our society. From the time I was a newlywed and to the time my older two children were just little, I was in the thick of getting my teaching degree while trying to balance being a mom and life. Honestly, I was in survival mode. It was in 2015 that I really felt the burnout of what I like to call the “rat race” of our modern time. Somewhere around that time, I felt myself start to feel a call to get back to my roots. I had a deep desire to learn more homemaking skills from my mom and Grandma. I am so thankful I have both of them to still learn from. I also began following the OG’s (original gangsters) of the homesteading blogging movement.

You know how the saying goes. Chickens are the gateway drug to being a full blown, crazy homesteader. Well, my friends, I’m here to tell you that it’s true. In May of 2015, we got our first chickens. The picture below is the day we brought them home. The joy that my sweet little girl has is the same that I felt. And that first egg….I still feel the excitement of the gift of getting eggs. I realized I had forgotten. I had forgotten just how simple life has to be for you to be content. I realized that ”rat race lifestyle” was not bringing me joy, and it made me feel disconnected from who I believe God made me to be. I also came to the realization that what we call “modern homesteading” today is what just plain living was for our ancestors. I realized just in a matter of 2 generations how much those skills have dwindled. I felt the responsibility knowing that it’s up to my generation to bring back these self-sufficient skills before they are lost forever.

Here we are, nearly ten years later. I am a homeschool mom, we raise our own meat, I don’t own a microwave, I grow our own vegetables, I’ve had a milk cow and a goat, I forage and make our own medicine. I don’t desire to swim downstream, and quite honestly am very disenchanted with the way our culture as a whole has become. The need for instant, bigger, faster, grander, and dissatisfaction with what you have is not always a good thing. I can look back now and see it definitely WAS the chickens. But you know what? We are so happy and have SO much contentment. I believe one of the greatest things in life is to have complete enjoyment in the small things in life.

Homesteading and homemaking has not only brought me so much joy, but it has also brought a sense of security. Today, so many people are fearful of our future. And I can see why. Our world is a mess right now. What this lifestyle has given me is what I can only describe as a sense of empowerment. I am not afraid if I cannot get goods at the store like what happened in 2020. I am not afraid of inflation, because I have the skills and knowledge to grow our own food and make meals from scratch for next to nothing.

I would love for you to follow me as I share the skills I have learned along the way. I hope you will feel impowered that you are so capable to do this too. I hope you can feel the joy and peace of a simple life as I share beautiful moments of our days raising cattle and kids. Thank you for being here, friends.

-Lyndsi

Family Photo Credit: Nicole Erickson