I have been obsessed with animals since I was little. Growing up we moved a lot and my dad suffered from allergies (I'm in denial about my allergies), which prevented me from being able to have a lot of pets in the home or outside. I didn't have anyone in my family or group of friends that identified as a homesteader or had livestock it was all a totally wild fantasy, it seemed totally inaccessible. Besides going to Petting zoos and volunteering at the dog shelter as a kid I thought I just had to follow the track of becoming a veterinarian to be able to work with animals. 

When I started pursuing a biology degree and started shadowing veterinarians so that I could apply to vet school, I realized that it wasn't going to satisfy the vision for my life I had always wanted.  The reality of shadowing the vets one summer was very depressing, I realized the majority of what I would be doing is dealing with people who may or may not care to for their animals to the extent that I would and that the interactions are rarely because everything is going well. 

I decided working as a wildlife biologist might help me satisfy the desire to be around animals in the less invasive and sad way, which is very much not the case because of habitat loss and climate change and was even more depressing! but while I was pursuing that degree at Colorado State University I did find my love of being outside and got very comfortable being outside of my comfort zone and meeting more people some of which add a homestead lifestyle that was the perfect vision of what I had always wanted but didn't know how to get. Having no experience with livestock it seemed too big of a jump or too unrealistic for me to ever be able to have a cow in my backyard. 

Over the years I was there I found a few places that were open to me trading labor for lessons on how to work with horses and other livestock and get comfortable around animals I really didn't have any experience with. At the time I was still very committed to wildlife conservation and continued my studies into graduate school at North Carolina State University studying invasive fish species in our fresh waters around North Carolina. this work centered around tilapia which were thriving in power plant reservoirs due to the warmer temperatures oh, I was assessing there influence on Native species of fish. of course the introduction of tilapia into these waterways came from the fact that tilapia are very popular aquaculture species so much of my work in the second half of my Master's research revolved around studying tilapia in an aquaculture setting.

Currently it's my husband and I, and our two and a half year old daughter. This is really my dream, my husband enjoys that my daughter gets to grow up in this environment, but outside of keeping me company this is not his passion and only gets involved at my request when I need him to help me manhandle some goats!

We are currently going through the process to get license to become foster parents with the state of North Carolina so we are waiting to settle into how that feels so that we can make sure we can do the best job possible for these children who Are coming into our lives. For this reason we are pausing on expanding any of our Homestead goals to focus on our family and providing the best homes possible for these children.

The stay-at-home mom child balance lifestyle Homestead set up that we have currently is 1 dairy cow with a nurse calf, three Dairy goats in milk, four fiber goats, and about six additional meat goats this year (that number varies wildly due to their purpose), chickens, a vegetable garden, a fruit and nut orchard, as well as a vineyard for a variety of grapes.