And you are?
Great question! Well, in short, I’m an average girl trying for the extraordinary. I am not an expert in any one thing but skilled in many.
Now that you know what I’m not, let me share a bit about what, and who I am.
I am a single mom with one main goal: build my daughter, and myself, an environment to live a fruitful and happy life. Simple right?!
With that mission in mind, I stumbled into homesteading.
Over the last seven years or so, we have been integrating our love of outdoors, gardening, crafting, baking, and simple living into our suburban life.
The goal is to eventually purchase raw land and build from the ground up. Until then, we do what we can with what we have.
And dream!
In the meantime, I am a homeschooling, work-at-home, single mom to a wonderful young lady, and a cantankerous ginger-kitty.
On a more personal level, hi, I’m Sierra. A 40-something-year-old woman whose brain never made it past the age of twelve most days. My tween daughter and I live with my mother who has been more than gracious to let us take over her home. She gets the joy of spending as much time with her granddaughter as either of them can stand. I am an only child, so this is the only grandchild she gets! At least the only human one. (Didn’t mean to forget the kitty).
Over the last several years I have been persuading my mother into allowing me to take over her backyard and turning it into a small, suburban homestead.
I have always been very drawn to life in the late nineteenth century/early twentieth century thanks to show such as Little House on the Prairie and Road to Avonlea. The more I discovered about the homesteading lifestyle, the more I fell in love with it. Then along came my little miracle – my daughter. Not to be cliché, but she is a miracle to me. Something I have dreamed of my entire life but didn’t know if it would ever happen.
Anyway, turns out she has a personality primed for homesteading. Anything outdoors and we are both hooked. Living in suburbia we are surrounded by a certain amount of nature, but it is limited. That is one reason most of the vacations we take are to a National Parks or natural conservation area. Not to mention camping.
Learning about having and caring for animals has become part of our homeschool curriculum. Getting us both ready, as much as we can be in theory, for a small farm.
We have both taken to the idea of self-sufficiency quite easily. While we are far from some major goals, we are enjoying living and learning.
What is Mountain Bean Farm?
The idea for the name, Mountain Bean Farm, was inspired by my best friend when I was struggling to find one.
I had a great group of friends in middle school all the way through high school. We were not popular. We were also not toss-you-in-your-locker type of unpopular either. We all fell somewhere between – middle of the road nerds is what we considered ourselves. So, of course, we all had nicknames for each other. Mine was Yosemite. For those who are not familiar with National Park geography, the Sierra Nevada Mountain range runs about 400 miles through three national parks. Yosemite included. But we did not pronounce it as yoh-SEM-eh-tee. We pronounced it yoh-seh-might. Sierra = Yosemite = Mountain.
As for nicknames; my daughter. One day, when she was still an infant, a nickname popped out of my mouth. It came from the depths of nowhere and stuck.
Butterbean. She is my butterbean. For some crazy reason, she loves that name. I will tease her with other names when we are being silly, and she will correct me. “No, I’m a butterbean!” As names go, even her nickname gets shortened as I often just call her ‘Bean’.
Farm came about because that is what we someday would love to have. Mountain Bean is long enough, adding ‘homestead’ at the end was bordering ridiculous. So farm it is!
And so, the Mountain Bean Farm brand was born.
What is our blog about?
Every how-to I have read tells you to pick a niche, one thing that represents who you are essentially. And once you define that niche, you stick to it tighter than gum stuck in hair.
There is not one facet in our lives that I would like to focus on more than another for the span of an entire blog. Forever. This decision may sink this project but that’s okay. As long as one single person reads one single post and either learns something, finds inspiration, or nods their head in understanding – I’m happy. This is a passion project of mine. Something to help me reflect and chronicle our journey. Hopefully make some friends along the way.
In the end, as long as I am enjoying this and I am able to spark one idea in one person – more happiness.
Get ready for an eclectic journey of food, crafts, homesteading, life, some random travel, and growth. If you are searching for a little corner of the internet that caters to simple pleasures in life, feel free to join us.
So, welcome to Mountain Bean Farm! Hope you decide to stay awhile.
