Count off time. Let's see a raise of hands from my fellow aspiring homesteaders: How many of you have learned a major life skill from YouTube? WikiHow? My online search history reads like a homestead improvement library shelf, if such a heavenly place exists:
    "How to... make apple cider vinegar,
                    ... whitewash a chicken coop,
                    ... tat,
                    ... sprout fodder,
                    ... make herbal salves,
                    ... replace a sill plate,
                    ... cut hay with a scythe,
                    ... decoct essential oils"

    When my husband asks what I'm watching, I tell him my "farm porn."

    It might not be romantic, but I think the internet age is saving small scale agriculture. Many of us growing slow food are learning skills our grandparents would have considered common sense. OK, I don't know if every grandparent knew how to decoct essential oils but I bet they knew how to boil an egg (Yes, I did look it up once. Bring the eggs, a pinch of baking soda, and room temperature water to a rolling boil. Remove from heat and let sit 11 minutes. Transfer to ice water. You're welcome). Whether the culprit was megafarm mechanization or refrigerated transportation or genetic engineering or a globalized economy or the culture of upward mobility -- whatever is to blame, the accidental consequence was an entire generation of farmers skipped. Young folks fled the farms or just couldn't make a go of it. Opportunities beckoned from the cities. Comfortable suburban living was just a bulldozed farm away.

    The problem is, with that generation gap, we carved a gaping hole in our collective knowledge. Grandparents might have told stories from their farming past but rarely did those stories include detailed instructions for propagating grape scions or floating horse teeth. Parents were no longer teaching by example the proper way to prune a cherry tree versus an apple tree or rotate a crop with nitrogen fixers or cure nuts or dye wool. As my grandma once said, "Young people today would never survive another Great Depression. They only know how to push buttons."

    I know. I know. I can hear some of you clamoring to prove me wrong, shaking your 5th generation farmer heads. I know I'm generalizing. Plenty of you learned to buck hay from your daddy or can peaches with Aunt Trudy. I can't tell you how many people stepped forward with their own fond memories of a childhood on the farm when I was trying to buy our farm. I heard all about their summer jobs picking beans and raspberries, of lambing season and butchering season. But, by and large, they were telling these stories on a lunch break from their city job or across their desks at banks, dentist offices, bus terminals, etc. The nostalgia in their stories revealed to me how far removed those experiences were from their lives today.

    My mother's parents were farmers in Oklahoma. The Great Depression drove them to California a la The Grapes of Wrath. Grandpa became a union carpenter (by reading a how-to pamphlet, I might add) and Grandma kept house, sewing clothes for her three baby boomer daughters. They counted their pennies and their blessings and, honestly, their grudges too. They built several houses themselves and dabbled in every trade and hobby that "tickled" them, from painting and woodworking to cake decorating and hunting. They traveled the world in retirement and brought back souvenirs and stories of new friendships from China, Egypt, India, and beyond. Their grandsons were all taught to fish and I, the only (and favorite) granddaughter, was taught to sew and crochet because fish guts were icky, duh.

    The proudest achievement of my grandmother and the quality most valued in her "offspring," as she called us all, was education. She was the first in her family to graduate high school and my mother was the first to graduate college. I was praised above all else for being smart. Farming and homemaking skills seemed somewhat irrelevant, even backward, in this modern world that changed so dramatically over their lifetime. I hope I don't sound blameful here. Our family was just balancing on the same tectonic shift that everyone else in the twentieth century was navigating. How do you raise your kids with the skills you think they'll need when the ground keeps changing under your feet? Also, my stellar education has done nothing but open doors for me. I can still conjugate in Latin and I can hold my own at a dinner party with scientific study-quoting, English literate, art historian egg heads. Try me. Now that I'm raising a daughter, I am acutely aware of how precious education is, what a privilege to be born at a time when girls have the right to choose the direction of our lives and are given the tools to do so.

    Had I shown an early interest in gardening or cooking, I'm sure my grandma would have gladly helped me learn. Had I pointed to a wood planer in my grandpa's wood shop, rather than the cool little wood spirals it left on the floor, I'm sure he would have showed me how to use it, rather than shooing me out with my handful of wooden macaroni (which made awesome mermaid hair, BTW).  But my interest came too late. How I wish my grandpa was still here to help me with our barn repairs. I hear him turning over in his grave every time I hammer a nail in crooked. My biggest regret is not asking them more questions. Now, as I try to wrap my head around how to mend a split corner post or raise a wall to repair a foundation, I am left feeling totally inept. The tasks that Grandpa tackled with a cheerful whistle are the most daunting to me now. I know I am willing and capable of learning (I am "smart," right?) but I'm also smart enough to know when I'm in over my head.

    So now, when it's shearing time or I want to make my own beeswax candles, I crawl onto Granny Google's soft lap and type in my query:
    "How to... halter train,
                    ... stretch a field fence,
                    ... fell a tree."

    
    A blog is an inherently egotistical enterprise, as is any memoir or self portrait or even just rolling out of bed, polishing up the various unruly bits and stinking up the world with opinions and status updates and the like. It all makes me a bit uncomfortable, this "having a voice" business. But, at the same time, I can't seem to shut up so a blog seems like another good medium for making a fool of myself.

    
     So, what direction should I point this shiny, new blog?
     What great wisdom should I impart? 
     With what amusing anecdotes shall I entertain? 
      Do the people of the world need my recipe for Savory Pie a.k.a. Harvest Quiche a.k.a. "That Again, Mom?" (Comment your vote)
      Should I detail the clumsy (and costly) path of dumb luck that led me to this charming farm with its beautiful, crumbling old barn and its fickle trickle of a creek? 
      Or should I thank the people who didn't openly laugh when I told them our plan for living off the land? (I'm lookin' at you, Mom and Dad).

    Well, this is a homesteading blog on our farm's public website, so I'll at least try to temper my opinions on foreign affairs (of which I have a lot) and on Hollywood gossip (of which I have none). Any future fashion category will be limited to Carhartts (who need to improve their women's line, BTW) and Bogs Boots (which go with absolutely anything, I say). Likewise, any horoscopes will be plagiarized directly from the Farmer's Almanac. I might also have some Feng Shui design ideas for stuffing old feed sacks into every possible corner and for reusing baling twine to engineer chic tomato trellises, gate latches, and hair ties. And, as my favorite shovel knows, I've also got plenty of material for some head-in-the-clouds philosophizing and some down-to-earth moralizing, You wouldn't believe the ideas one can dream up (and mutter) while turning a compost pile.

    So stay tuned, people. This blog feels like it might get real Ladies' HomeSTEAD Companion on you, complete with an inadvisable advice column. Why not? I'm always writing down the profoundly absurd quotes from my life that should perfectly illustrate some questionable parenting tips, marital advice, and survival techniques (the latter two being mostly interchangeable). My family says (nervously) that they're willing and this is a family farm, so it's perfectly on topic.

    I'll leave you today with a little teaser of what's possible to come:

    Tune in next time, patient readers. I'll be sure to anthropomorphize more invertebrates and detail the cost/benefit analysis of DIY fence-building. SPOILER ALERT: Staples for fence post-inflicted head wounds cost $750; no lasting brain trauma: priceless.

   Let me introduce myself. I'm Becca, head gardener, poop scooper, and public relations associate at Barn on the Creek Farm. You'll recognize me by my ever present garden accessories: I always wear an assortment of blisters, calluses, and sunburns to get the job done. 

    I've been gardening to feed my small household for fifteen years and every year I think, Gee, I wish my garden was bigger. This year's vegetable garden is planted with a row of hard-lessons-learned, a patch of let's-try-this-new-way, and a whole crop of oops-that-worked-out-wells. My favorite tools are my strong but well worn back and my rusty old stick-to-it-iveness. 

   The mustard needs picking and the coop needs cleaning, so my first blog post is short. I'm glad to meet you and I hope you come back.