Day by Day Homesteading: The Art of Creating Resiliency, One Day at a Time...: One-Year Blogaversary: Reflections and the Year in Pictures

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

One-Year Blogaversary: Reflections and the Year in Pictures

Day by Day Homesteaders, this week marks the official one-year anniversary of this blog. As of today, October 29, 2014, it has been exactly one year since I published my first post for this blog. I have to admit that I was a little scared at first to let my voice be read by the world, but I was driven by a desire to share what I have learned about gardening, homesteading, and becoming more resilient.

Writing this blog has actually been really fun, since I have always enjoyed writing, and it has been a great motivator for me to learn many new homesteading skills. I enjoy learning these skills, and it is really exciting to learn how to do yet one more thing myself at home. I hope that you have enjoyed learning new skills from reading this blog, and perhaps you have even begun to see the world a little differently. I especially hope that you feel more empowered to try some of these projects yourself. I also hope that you feel a little more connected to the natural world around you and to others around the globe.

In our modern world, many of us have simply never needed to learn how to do or make many of these things ourselves that we do as homesteaders. For many of us, the convenience of store-bought items is often much more alluring in our busy lives than the effort that it takes to make them ourselves. However, what have we traded and lost in exchange for our “conveniences”? Here are just a few thoughts:

We have lost the connection to the resources (e.g., the time, the energy, and the natural resources) that it takes to actually make many of these things.

We have lost the understanding of the ingredients in our foods, body care products, and many other products that we use everyday.

We have lost the quality and the nutrition in our food, as well as the sense of community that often goes with the preparation of traditional and nourishing foods and the “breaking of bread” together.

We have lost the skills necessary to make our own medicines from plants as generations before us have done.

We have lost our sense of place, and are quite often socially isolated from one another.

To me, homesteading activities help us to reclaim some of these things in our lives, even if it is done just one day at a time. We don’t have to figure all of these things out all at once. We can implement these steps gradually, as we have time, energy, and resources to do so. Before you know it, you are living a much more resilient lifestyle and are so much more empowered in your own life. Through homesteading, we increase our resiliency, empowerment, and yes, abundance. That is what Day by Day Homesteading is all about, my Dear Readers.

I look forward to sharing with you much more resiliency, empowerment, and abundance in the future. I’m so glad that you have joined me on my Day by Day Homesteading journey, and I hope that you are having your very own Day by Day Homesteading adventures in your own life.

Below are my top twelve favorite pictures from the blog over the past year, one for each month of the very young life of this blog. These are my favorite pictures that I took myself. Perhaps I should also write a separate post about my favorite posts over the last year...

Do you have any personal favorites that I didn’t post here?