a fiber farm and artisan studio passionate about teaching you self-reliant skills for backyard homesteading.
Happy Chinese New Year and welcome to the Year of the Dragon. Not being Chinese, I don’t see the dragon as strength and motivation, but rather as a deadly foe to be overcome. And Tolkein agrees with my view. We just read The Hobbit aloud as a family, and admired Bilbo’s prowess at skillfully tricking [...]
2011 was an exciting adventure at Joybilee Farm. Change abounded. Sarah, our youngest homeschool student graduated from High-school and started university, at home, online. This freed my time to pursue writing more intentionally. I set up a Facebook page and started blogging 5 times a week about frugal, sustainable, homestead living and bioregional clothing. I [...]
Do more than survive — Thrive Joybilee Farm is about helping you thrive not just survive, while you change the world. Things are tough all around. People who had homes and mortgages a few years ago are homeless. There are university grads living in the streets or working at fast food joints because the world [...]
What is a hope chest? The traditional hope chest is a wooden box, sometimes lined with aromatic cedar, that fathers gave to their daughters in anticipation of marriage. Daughters worked with their mothers throughout middle childhood and adolescence, learning hand work skills like knitting, embroidery, weaving, and spinning, filling the chest with textiles for their [...]
Inspiration Who inspires you? When you were in school, I’ll bet it wasn’t the teacher that demanded perfect silence in the class and wrote spelling words on the black board. Most likely it was the teacher that did the unexpected, that mentored you, that called out of you the talent that was waiting to be [...]
One of the problems of rural life is the compulsory trips into “town”. If you work from home, live on a rural homestead and meet your own needs sustainably, through the efforts of your own hands, you need to be home to do the work. But life in town compels you to leave your rural [...]
Virgin Coconut Oil, Gold Label - 1 quart
