Welcome Home!!

Welcome to the Family!

 Come on in. Would you like a coffee or a tea? Or what is your preferred drink of choice? No matter what your drink of choice is welcome home! I am mama Missy, I would like you to know that you have found home with the Schwery's. There are 4 of us and we are always open to having new family members from near and far! 

Meet the Schwery's!

Let me start off with a little background for you! First off my name is Missy (nickname for Melissa), I am a mama to two beautiful kiddos. They will be referred to as J and K through out the blogs. I am married to Calvin, you will get the chance to meet him later. I used to work as a CNA for years before I left nursing and decided to try my hand at an office job. While I love what I do and who I work for, I will be honest being cooped up in an office all day has really started to feel like a burden. I got the idea to start a blog after we began homesteading in our little lot of a house with less than an acre of land. Using raised garden beds and what flower bed space we have around the house. Plus the thought of being able to share my homesteading journey with the world and meeting others with the same like mind as myself and my husband doesn't sound half bad. 

Cal (short for Calvin) is my husband of almost 2 years now, but we have been together for 11 years. Definitely the best friend a girl could ask for. Super supportive of all the crazy ideas that magically appear. What makes him ultra special is his ability to build things with almost nothing to go buy (the man does not believe in instructions), if it was not for him there would not be raised beds in the back yard. Cal is a semi driver during the day and a homesteader at night. Some of the things that he loves to do are hunt, work and eat. All in all he is an amazing human being and I hope that you all come to love him as I do. As this blog progresses he will be providing some input on here with DIY and how to content. 

On to the children, K is our daughter, feisty as they come and always looking for an adventure. Recently she decided to dabble in all things crafty. Making lip gloss has been her biggest thing but she has a goal of selling chap sticks that are 100% organic and healthy. Summer of 2023 is going to bring her the busiest summer of life with 4-h and the homestead in full force. In no way am I saying that she is expected to be 100% "working", the raising of the chickens is just to encourage her to work at goals and have responsibilities. She loves traveling! Camping and she got to take her first major vacation this year on a cruise to the Dominican Republic, US Virgin Island, British Virgin Islands, and the private island owned by Norwegian Cruise Line. 

Now, on to my Son J. If there was ever a kid that was the walking definition of controlled chaos, its my youngest! J has some learning deficits and does at times show what most would probably consider Autism, however, all the doctors we have gone to have had no concerns of it. While that is great they do not feel he needs to be tested, the public school he attends is a little less accepting of him (that will be a later conversation) this past school year was tough. 

Now that you have meet the family, I hope you feel comfortable with us and are as ready as we are to learn and come along with us on all of our adventures. 

Our Goals and Business!

So, you've decided to stick with me for this long! That's fantastic, you have surpassed my children and my husband! 

We decided to take the huge leap and dove right into homesteading in 2020 when everything in the world was shutting down and there was uncertainty everywhere! We started with just 6 tomato plants and 3 plants each of pumpkin and a winter squash. Bought a water bath canner ( I promise I did not water bath can the squash) and a food saver vacuum sealer. At this time I was working overnights at a hospital in the city over 45 minutes away but due to my position at the time my hours were constantly being cut. Our budget and our finances took a serious hit, and we unfortunately found our selves in major credit card debt. Not ideal, especially when there was no real time frame of if this would change in site. 

It was at that point that, my own roots started coming back. The small town girl who grew up canning and eating from a garden full of fresh veggies. The smell of the fresh turned dirt and what was going to come out of it. Poor Cal, had to have thought I had gone completely insane at this point. I took over the backyard and out of no where ended up with the 3 baby chicks in our garage. To me and my daughter that was normal, almost like we had been doing it our entire life! 2020 into 2021 was the year we began to master certain small steps to self reliance. We had managed to can a winters worth of spaghetti sauce and a years worth of pickles (I think we just got through them) made the attempt at home made bread.

As things have progressed we have increased our operations on the homestead from 1 chicken in town to  21 chickens, and its a mixed flock. We have Rhode Island Reds, Plymouth Barred Rocks, and Easter Eggers. One rooster named Thomas (J named him after Thomas and Friends), and our oldest and most loveable hen Sunshine (Buff Orpington).  There are another 10 baby Leghorns in the brooder, baby chicks are so cute! 

We would also like to help those with an interest in this lifestyle or just starting out how to finance it the best way that they can. It is not easy and in no way do we want you to think that this is just a walk in the park. Preferably we would want to slowly introduce you to it as we have spent the last 2 years getting to a point where we ourselves can begin to fill a sense of understanding. There are going to be long nights and tough decisions, once the foundation is built and stable it slowly falls into place. 

Eventually, there is hope that we can add more animals to the farm that we share with Cal's dad and step mom. We have talked about adding Goats for their milk as we have researched that the milk is great for use in soaps and even some lotions. Sheep we would want for their wool as it gets really cold in Iowa and with my use of yarn for crocheting it would save so much money to clean it and turn it into yarn on my own. There has also been the discussion of adding in pigs and cow for meat ( I understand not everyone enjoys meet, please note I will share vegetarian dishes on this blog). 

Let talk about our house pets! These two are so special to us, we have Nala a miniature  Aussie doggo! Spunky and very very demanding for cuddles, literally takes over my entire side of the bed at night. There will be a picture of her over-looking the work that was being done on the extension of the garden bed at the farm. Our second fur baby is our cat Kwazzi or Kwazicles depending on how needy he wants to be. We tried to get him to be an outside cat after we unfortunately lost his brother Snowflake (who was gray) right after we got home from vacation. 

While the loss of our cat was devastating and we still miss him a ton, the whole family learned a valuable lesson that life comes with ups and downs. 

Join us on our adventure!