05/04/2023
• Farmer Tiff 🔆 Emish Style •
Way down in the holler of the hills of eastern Kentucky, nestled on an Amish homestead, is a patch of land that I get to call home! We’ll actually, I’m naming it “The Homestead Blessing” for I’m living English in an Amish world, and, it is a blessing that I’m pretty sure hardly anyone gets the privilege to do! Or, at least, no one I know has ever had this opportunity, and I may be the only one, truthfully, for every person, Amish included, that I talk to has NEVER heard of such a non Amish person being allowed to homestead on the same land and build a house on an Amish farm! But it’s happening! I call myself EMISH (English-Amish LOL ) Idie J and Gus just laugh, and anytime I see an Amish person do something an English one would do, I call them Emish too! 😉
For years Idie J and I have dreamt of homesteading together, and the Bishop approved for me to build a homestead and do life together with them, and we’ll work together to have the things our families need! I mean, what a blessing! Years ago, we gardened together, but this time it’s different, for my door is literally 100 steps from her door! Yes, we stepped it out and counted! We’ve doodled our garden on paper for years and dreamt of what we would do, and this year we’ve ordered organic non-GMO heirloom seeds, and we’ve even traveled to our favorite Amish county of Holmes in Ohio to gather supplies for we’re bringing this doodle to life!
You see, I’ve had a sick child for over a decade, and I’ve done my extensive research so that I never harm another one of my children or grandbabies with toxins, and we consume so many toxins in our food it’s frightening. Sadly we, the people, didn’t get a say in these toxins being put into our food chain! Idie and I are determined to grow healthy organic & non-toxic non-GMO food for our families! Our lives depend on it, literally!
Most people don’t realize that GMO food isn’t of God and it’s harming our bodies! It’s one reason why everyone is sick with autoimmune and cancer! Most people don’t even think we are going against the word of God either, but The Bible says you’re NOT to mix seeds and alter God's creations! We’ll man has done that to our food, sadly, and the consequences of eating man-made poisons is sickness! When you research, you find so much wicked stuff out! I don’t want to buy my food from the grocery store anymore, for it’s all full of toxins that make us sick! We try to grow and make as much as possible so we don't have to buy their toxic things. Now we are realistic that there are some things we can't grow and make but well give it our best shot! We want to grow our herbs & vegetables, milk our own cows and have organic dairy products and, raise our own chickens, and have pasture-raised non-toxic poultry too, and make our food for our families from scratch! The more we can naturally grow and raise to make our food from WE WILL!
For months we’ve bossed the boys around to fertilize the ground and then till it! We always said when I had a homestead with them, we’d make the garden bigger & fancy, and fancy we sure did! Our fertilizer comes naturally from the barnyard created by our critters!
Idie always wanted the black w**d protector for her garden; we hate w**ding; it just kills our backs, and well, this year, we got it! She’s so excited! She’s gone Fancy I tell her! 🤣🤣 You should have seen the two of us last week unfolding those huge black things; we had two of them for I’m a go big or go home kind of girl, and trying to pin it down into the dirt was hysterical! At one point, it looked like a parachute, and the wind was blowing down in the valley, and the wind kicked it up, and we’ll we got so tickled! I think they are each 36 feet long and 24 feet wide, and we didn’t have enough to do the entire garden! But while the fellers were off to work and the kiddos were in school together, we worked hard, laying out our garden and bringing it to life last week!
I’ve watched so many homesteader YouTube channels and fell in love with hog panel gardening, so I showed them to Idie, and she agreed we needed them, for we’re breaking our backs picking beans and cucumbers! I had sweet friends Teddy and Lisa Hughes deliver our 16-foot hog panels, for we didn’t have an Amish buggy long enough to pick them up ourselves! 😉
Together Idie and I wired our T bars onto the hog panels, and boy, my hands were black as coal! Every nail is off! No traces of the city girl i have to get gussied up before Derby! ! You wouldn’t believe it, but the two of us could stand them up and put them in the ground without a man! WOOHOO! 🙌🏼 I’ve lived far too long by myself! Idie always says, “Tiffany can do it; she can figure anything out,” LOL, and last week we did just that! We now have five fancy tunnels, and the entire back of our garden is lined with hog panels, too, as a fence line for our produce to grow up! If hay weren’t so high, we’d be doing some hay bale gardening too!
You should have seen the smile on Gushty's face when he got home from work and saw our fancy garden! He was impressed with our vision and said nobody has these tunnels in their community! I’m sure we’ll be the start of it there! The garden now has four raised flower beds, too, thanks to my sweet man feller for helping me lug them home from Caneyville, for he stumbled upon a salvage place near his farm, and we got them at a steal! Idie and I loaded organic dirt into them, and we’ll be putting our strawberries in them on the edge of the garden! They fit perfectly! Thanks, Babe!
So last week, we’ve worked hard down at the homestead, and I’m sunburnt, and my back knows it’s springtime for it’s sore, for it does this every year when we garden! Bending over never gets easier the older you get! I’ve lived in my overalls, and Georgie and Kevin sure get a kick out of me! Georgie found Wendell's last pair he wore they are “Liberty” overalls and showed them to me; we both agreed we need a picture of Kevin in them!
Idie and I have figured out where everything is going, and our tatters, onions, herbs, and corn goes in another field! After the hard work, we prayed over our land & garden, and we dedicated it to The Lord; and I know he will bless it and allow us to feed many! Now to wait till after Mother’s Day, when we can put the plants in the ground!
In the meantime, I’m figuring out where I want the herb garden and the fruit bushes, the grape arbors, along with designing a new chicken coop for my girls, and I’m sure I’ll be buying flowers to tuck around the homestead, even if the outside porches aren’t done yet! 😉 Jason Rayburn can’t wait to see you, LOL
Slowly but surely, it’s coming together; it looks like we’ll have the gardens done before the inside of the homestead! I can’t wait to get my kitchen done, for I designed a double kitchen 24 feet long on each side, and one side is just for canning or our canning kitchen as Idie calls it, for it will have everything for all our caning needs!
I came back to the city for the weekend, and we stumbled upon $2.00 Non-GMO organic grapes; we also found blackberry, blueberry, and raspberry bushes for cheap, too, so we got them for the farm, and now I have to seriously get busy planning out the orchard and herb garden area!
If you want to see how we transformed our piece of dirt into our dream garden, check out the pictures in the comments! It is ginormous! It’s just the structure it we can’t wait until we plant and it’s all in bloom!
Thanks God
