How We'll Homestead - Staying Local

So now that I've decided we'll homestead creatively...what does that mean? I'm trying to develop some guiding principles for us. Whenever it's time to make a big decision, we'll make them based on the path most aligned to those principles. This is nothing new, I think people generally function like this. I just want to be as intimately familiar with, and faithful to, our family principles as I have gotten with those of the corporations I've worked with and I want to be intentional in deciding on them.

The first thing that comes to mind is being integrated with the community. We do try to avoid trips to Lake City or other surrounding towns for supplies or activities unless something is really not available in Live Oak. But we still order way too much from Amazon and, budget allowing, Grove, and have recently even been relying on HelloFresh for meal planning.

Some of the "local" resources we're really happy with are dance lessons (The Dance Shop), drum lessons (Woodshed Drum Studios), swim lessons and recreational soccer leagues (Suwannee Rec Center), a crossfit gym (Dirty Gringos Crossfit) and even a pack/ship facilitating UPS and FedEx shipments (Live Oak PAck and Ship).

One of my favorite local resources is a homeschool support Facebook group where the most wonderful homeschool mama, based out of Live Oak, and other group members, share just about everything available for kids (oftentime low cost or free) in the North-Central Florida/South Georgia area. Her group is how I learned about our homeschool co-op and I feel so grateful for her, and that Facebook group and our co-op.

The most recent local connection I'm excited about is an organic family farm, growing everything from cilantro to potatoes, that we ran into on a Sunday drive a couple weeks ago. It was just lovely! They are open anytime and were very friendly when we dropped by. One of the owners immediately jumped into sharing knowledge on raising our chicks organically and the other gifted us cilantro plants that smelled amazing because we were interested and they were more mature than ideal for sale. I simply can't wait to "replace" a good portion of the publix list with regular visits to their fields.

Why is this important to me? First and foremost, I want my kids to really know AND appreciate where they're from. The land, the neighbors, the culture, the place. What we have is good enough and if we can contribute to it positively, then great. That leads me to my second, closely related reason. If I've been gifted the privilege of working a well paid corporate job from this small city surrounded by farm and wooded land, I will invest directly in my neighbors, to the extent possible, rather than in large corporations that merely employ us and can move on at any time without a second thought.

For our homeschooling, it means gardening for general knowledge and education rather than subsistence, coming along for farm pick-ups and taking unexpected trips around town to observe our environment and learn about local history. This week the kids explored Sweet River Farms, the Suwannee Springs bridge and the Florida Museum of Natural History (actually in Gainesville).