Creating Homestead Science – Homeschool Curriculum for those who dream of a simpler life

Hey hey friends! Welcome to The Homestead Education Podcast!

I have starting hundreds of seedlings every year and this week, I saw something I have never seen before. I had two trays of bell pepper starts that were looking amazing and growing just as I would expect. A couple of days ago, I went out to water them and they looked just as healthy as had just the days before except they were BLACK! I freaked because these were pretty much all the seeds that I had in these trays and I have grand plans for my garden this year.

I of course frantically turn to google to see what can figure out. Most articles said that they had root rot and they were goners. I had a hard time believing this because they looked so healthy. With further digging because I figured there was no way that was my only fate. Turns out, specifically pepper plants have starter roots called water roots. These are pre roots before the fibrous permanent roots that can handle a large amount of water. The water roots can become waterlogged and can actually kill the seedling from rot, but it caught quickly will only effect the color of the seedlings. I quickly uncovered my plants and reduced my water schedule. Within just a day or so, some of the color has returned and only a few were lost.

So, if you start having weird things happening with anything on your homestead, take the time to research. If caught early, you can often halt and reverse any damage that has begun.

On to our main topic for this episode. We are going to be taking a deeper look at homeschool, curriculums, and some thoughts on rural living. So don’t worry, there is a little something for everyone.

I was recently reviewing some statistics from ThinkImpact.com that has some great credible resources, on homeschooling both before and after the pandemic. It was really inspiring to see that 43% more parents considered homeschool after the pandemic and of those that started homeschooling during the pandemic, 69% considered continuing to homeschool after the pandemic. These are amazing numbers! In fact, the homeschool rates in the last couple of years have jumped from 3.4%-9% of the school aged population. According to the 2020 US census, there are more than 76 million school aged children in the US. So, the number of homeschooled students is almost 7 million and considering there are states like we live in that do not requiring reporting to anyone that a child is homeschooled, so those number may be even higher! These are not small numbers, people!

I never thought in my life that homeschooling would be SO mainstream. When I was a kid, I had one friend that had been homeschooled until about 3^rd grade and I was blown away that homeschooling was even something that existed! I had never heard of it before. Personally, I liked the idea because I always wanted to work ahead and study more than what was happening in the classroom. But I was so programed that public school was the only option, I believed that homeschool was a taboo subject. When it became apparent that my kids needed an alternative to the schooling that they were receiving several years back, I was afraid to even suggest homeschooling. Especially to my husband who I was sure would think I’d lost my mind.

Luckily, we were friends with another veteran family (that is a big piece of my husband’s life, connecting with other veterans) who were homeschooling through a charter school. It was a really great program for us because you had a teacher that guided you, a spending budget for curriculum, and the kids still went to half day programs once a week at the charter. I suggested it to my husband after our oldest got in a little trouble and like I thought, he didn’t just think I was crazy, he was convinced that I was! However, we had recently received his diagnosis that I have spoke about previously on the podcast and my website, so we were looking for more ways to connect as a family. Within a few weeks, all four of our older children were enrolled in the charter program and we were solidly in over our heads. I was trying a little of everything to see what even felt right to us. Which now I know was a really great idea.

The place where I really messed up was that I didn’t give the kids a chance to deschool! I wrote about this recently on my blog, and I’ll link that in the show notes. But basically, it’s a chance for newly homeschooled students to decompress from the rigors of public school and find things that really interest them. My crew had all been having a rough time in school as all of them are not neurotypical children. 3 have ADHD, one is autistic, and on top of that one has a super fun condition called ODD or oppositional defiance disorder, one has speech delays, and one also has dyslexia and digraphia. I really feel like if I had given them more of an opportunity reset after being pulled from mainstream school, I would have had more success those first couple of stressful years. Don’t worry, it gets easier though. We have settled into a wonderful routine now, where our homeschool time is often quite enjoyable for all.

We were lucky when it came time for us to homeschool due to my husband’s income from veteran affairs we didn’t have to worry about child care. Not all families have or had that luxury in the past. What makes it possible today is a combination of a few things. One of those is the ability to work remotely, so one or both parents are able to be home with the children more. There are a ton of programs for homeschooling both online and as bookwork that really support the parents in teaching the kids or allow for independent learning from the kids themselves. One reason I personally have seen some financial options is real estate and investments (I am a realtor for my day job I guess you could say). A lot of people were able to catch a bubble in the real estate market where they could sell their homes in higher priced markets and buy property in lower priced markets where they had little to know monthly housing costs. These lower priced markets are often in rural areas as well. Which is a perfect segue to rest of what I have to say today.

With the influx of what many today call the modern homestead which is whole list of different types of endeavors that bring so many together in today’s world. Homesteaders include small-scale farmers, home cookers and preservers, gardening, off-griders, back to earthers, herbalists, hunters, mountain men, and urban farmers. I really could continue on, but I think you get the point. All of these interest groups have really one common interest, and that is self-sufficiency.

My favorite thing about this movement is the massive amounts of information our there for me to geek out on! I love that I can research almost any topic at the tip of my fingertips and listen to a podcast on so many ideas while commuting into town or while I work in my garden. Then about a year ago I was really trying to find my voice in blogging in the very loud arena right now and nothing was really standing out to me.

I love listening to the podcast Old Fashioned on Purpose with Jill Winger. Definitely one of my favorites to listen to and honestly the first podcast that I ever really binged on. I was driving to town one day last spring and listening to her series on homestead businesses. She had a gal on as a guest who was talking about how she had moved onto then fiancé’s now husband’s family’s ranch in rural Northern California which is where I grew up so the conversation caught my attention. She was talking about how she had tried to have a social media presence as a fashion blogger and didn’t really get any attention until she also started posting pictures of the horses. However, where her success really came from was when she designed a stamp as a wedding favor and started selling it on Etsy. Next thing she knew, she was being featured in (I believe) southern living magazine. What a huge turn around!

That is when it hit me! I may be a farmer that loves talking about my passion, but that doesn’t make me any different than the thousand other homestead bloggers out there. What makes me different is how I can teach it! When I started homeschooling my kids, I couldn’t wait to start teaching them ag science. This was my passion and I knew that I could ignite a love of science in my kids just like mine with everything I had to offer. But I wasn’t a teacher and never even took an ag ed class in college. So, I decided to seek out a homeschool curriculum for them on farming that I was going to rock at teaching. I was so disappointed to fine literally nothing! There were as science textbook designed for public high school students and 4-H curriculums that I still love, however, those are designed for group settings and still only had a few lessons each. I began making it my mission to put together solid lesson plans on farming that integrated with what we were doing on our farm or our travels. My goal was to have enough put together that by the time our two younger boys were old enough to start learning these topics, I already have everything in place.

I realized my voice needed to be putting everything I had together and write a homeschool curriculum on homesteading. The more I thought about it, the more I saw a need for this in the homesteading world and the homeschool world. Those that are new to homesteading with children and even long time farmers are always asking online how to get their kids involved in the farm. They are asking how to homestead with kids. And the question that they aren’t asking but I have the answer to, is how do I give my kids ownership in our endeavors. Ownership is key, kids want to be involved and they want to feel needed. Now I have seen conversations online that people say, homestead is something that you (as the parent) want, not your kids. So, you shouldn’t make them to the chores. But as controversial as this statement may or may not be, I believe that everyone should help! I’m not just referring to farm chores, this includes house chores and cooking as well. My daughter helps with the animals and my sons know how to cook. We as a family, support the family.

I believe strongly in this because the other thing I see trending online is people complaining that they weren’t taught some life skill in high school or college and that they wish they would have learned that instead of algebra or some other subject. Although don’t ask me about the importance of algebra, because that’s something I’ll fight ya on.

Anyways, though, this is what my kids are learning. Life skills. And what I feel like that is key, is that they are learning these things because they want to due to having a feeling of ownership in all the things that my husband and I are doing. I’m not saying that we never have to drag them out of bed to do chores. They are kids. But chores are good for them. It teaches them responsibilities, consequences and builds character and problem-solving skills. Even in the rural community, filled with hard working kids that we live in, our kids are so busy in the summer making spending money for fair doing odd jobs for people in the community. People appreciate the work ethic and responsibility that our kids exhibit.

When I started writing my currently available homeschool curriculum, this was something that I kept in mind. This is why I included stories on traditions and respect with each unit. When I release the middle school version later this spring, there will be many character build pieces build into it. I am doing this, because just like when I majored in agriculture, it wasn’t just about the science. It is about community, ingenuity, integrity, and hard work.

I really think that I could go on and one about this topic. Well actually I know that I could because that is why I started this podcast. I love teaching about homesteading, but the act of homesteading is only one piece of the puzzle. We would not be as successful as we are homesteading without the community that we have here. The friends, neighbors, and colleagues that we have forged relationships with have been integral in our advancement on the farm.

After I decided that writing a homeschool curriculum was what I needed to do, I needed to get my husband on board. To be honest, he isn’t always as gung hoe for my wild ideas as I am, but he usually gets on board after only a little persuading. I came home and told him my idea and for the first time, he loved it immediately! I know with my idea and his support I could really possibly have something here. We sat down and looked at our calendar over the next couple of months. It was the middle of June when we were deciding what our timeline should be. I knew I wanted the curriculum available before the following school year. So that gave me about 2 ½ months to at least have a downloadable version ready.

At that moment we were right in the middle of little league baseball season and headed quickly into 4^th of July festivities where my husband does all the parades for the volunteer fire department he is member of and one of our sons was running for fair royalty. Then our fair was the first week of August where all of our kids were showing animals and I was the swine barn superintendent. When it really came down to it, I had about 3 weeks in July to make this happen if I was going to be able to release before the school year started.

First off, I consulted with one of our neighbors that used to own a shipping company on how any of this was really going to work. They gave me some wonderful ideas and really saved me a lot of money in startup costs with their ideas.

But to be honest, when it became time to really start writing I was kind of at a loss. I had a ton of information and a very excited four-year-old ready to try all the projects and there was nothing traveling from my head to my hands. I started asking my kids for ideas on what they thought would be fun way to learn about homesteading. Now you might laugh when you hear this, but they were literally ignoring me because they were too busy playing FARMVILLE on their tablets! Are your kidding me? We have a whole farm outside!

That’s when it hit me. Kid like goals and simple steps with results. I began putting together the Build Your Own Homestead poster. This poster is the end product of the grammar school version of Homestead Science. The children will start each unit of the curriculum with a character building story. After that they go on to daily worksheets on various homestead topics which get them ready for their homestead improvement project on their poster. For example, if the child learns about chickens that day, they will build a chicken pen on their homestead poster that day and then add a chicken to the pen. At the end of their yearlong curriculum, they will have a finished homestead poster and receive a deed! This gives the kids short term results as well as the reward of all their efforts paying off over a long-term commitment.

The most common question I have received about my curriculum is “do I have to own a homestead for my kids to benefit from this curriculum?”

And my answer is an overwhelming absolutely not! If fact, this curriculum teaches a lot about where food comes from and gives options on how to complete activities for those who don’t have access to homesteads. My goal from the beginning is provide information and life skills to anybody that wants to learn them.

The next question I want to answer is why I call my curriculum Homestead Science. Because homesteading is 100% a science! It covers agriculture, food science, home ec, social science, problem-solving, and experimenting. For the grammar school level it is definitely about first exposure to these topics. When the middle school version is released, it could be for 5^th to 9^th grade or as an entry level for high school aged students. I plan to have it aligned to the suggested requirements of a grade appropriate life science.

I am so excited to be able to reach so many more students and their parents with these future curriculum levels. As I believe the importance of a homestead education is unmeasurable.

Many people have already purchased this curriculum for their family, co-ops, and after school programs. I have seen it used in farm schools and I am hoping that this year people pick it up as a summer learning option. I have recently been able to get the books professionally printed saving me hours of printing and home and making it possible to attend more conferences and shows.

If you think that Homeschool Science is right for your family, there is a link in the show notes. There are freebies available to sample some of the curriculum before purchase as well. Also in the show notes, I have a link to apply to be an affiliate for any of the products I sell on my page. If accepted, this affiliate program offers competitive percentages, a 50% off coupon code for the digital download, and access to graphics for marketing.

I am also available for many types of shows and conferences in the Pacific Northwest and Possibly beyond.

As so many agree, our next generation is very important in continuing this movement of self-sufficiency. And I am excited so excited to be on the forefront of empowering you in that movement.

My next episode I am going to start off with what might sound like a strange topic for spring, winter preparedness! Don’t think I’m crazy, I have reasons.

Then we are really going to dive into the topic of finding your passion and being confident in it! There were times that this was a hard path for me to follow and I hope that I can give you some insight on inspiration.

Have your idea ready to envision as we go through this together.