It’s called Made from Scratch by Jenna Woginrich of Cold Antler Farm. The author, Jenna Woginrich, caught a dream from a coworker who owned her own farm. She learned how to raise chickens, angora rabbits, and grow vegetables at a small rental house, how to play mountain music in TN, and eventually bought her own farm in VT, and started sheep. Farm City meets The Omnivore's Dilemma in Cold Antler Farm, a collection of essays on raising food on a small homestead, while honoring the natural cycle of the 'lost' holidays of the agricultural calendar. Author Jenna Woginrich is mistress of her one-woman farm and is well known for her essays on the mud and mess, the beautiful and tragic, the grime and passion that accompany homesteading. In Cold Antler Farm, she draws our attention to the timekeeper of such a lifestyle: the ancient agricultural year, filled with celebrations and seasonal touchstones that mark turning points in the cycles of life. Amidst these new-old holidays, we learn the stories of her beloved animals and crops.
Some of you may be familiar with me and the animals that make up Cold Antler Farm, but some of you may not. New readers find their way here and are thrown right into my story. Depending on when you met me – that story could be about chickens, new sheep, dogs, cart horses, or even hawks. Since the farm is always evolving, I wanted to take a minute to reintroduce myself to you. Old friends, I tip my hat for your patience and new friends, I welcome you to the clan.
Cold Antler Farm is a one-woman operation, on a 6.5 acre homestead in upstate New York. The center of its gravity is a compact Civil War Era farmhouse built into a side of a humble mountain. It sits amongst a small empire of fields and fences hugged tightly by forest, streams, and a pond. It sounds idyllic, but it is far from. CAF is a scrappy place held together by hope and force. Download 10moons cameras. But don’t let the sagging fences or chicken poo on the front steps fool you. This place is paradise. To get there you need to drive four hours north of New York City and find the right winding road off a lonely two-lane rural highway. That is where you will find me (Jenna Woginrich -31) because that place is my everything.
Cold Antler Farm Twitter
Cheat sheet tidyr. I wasn’t raised on a farm or ever around farmers growing up. Farming wasn’t even on my radar until after I had graduated from college with a BA in graphic design. My skills as a designer allowed me to work for any company that needed a designer, so I worked everywhere from the Southern Mountains of Tennessee to the Northern Rockies in Idaho. I lived in cities, towns, and eventually ended up on a retired cattle farm out west. While working full time in an office job I flirted with the idea of growing some of my own food and raising small livestock in my rented backyard. These adventures in mini-steading excited me beyond measure and I was becoming less of the Jenna everyone else knew and more of the Jenna I secretly wished to be: a farmer. It was during this flirtation stage with homesteading that I wrote my first book abourt learning to simplify. Bang & olufsen laptops & desktops driver download for windows. My fifth books comes out in a few months. All of my books are about my journey towards home: the animals, food, and experiences along the way.
I kept backyard farming, adding animals and growing more vegetables, until I realized my two worlds were at a crossroads. I had to choose to be a farmer and give it my all or scale back to a few hens again and remain a corporate employee. It turns out that passion has a way of making decisions for you. Because while falling in love with agriculture I became diagnosed with a disease of great consequence—Barnheart—that wouldn’t allow me to spent any more time working indoors for strangers. Since then I have never looked back. I have been keeping the animals fed and lights on through a combination of work, wits, and luck. I live a scrappy and creative life beside many animals including (but not limited to) dogs, cats, horses, sheep, goats, poultry, and pigs. I garden, hunt, and keep bees. I trail ride, drive, and travel with my horse whenever I can instead of my dented pickup truck. I am far from rich (usually just scraping by) but extremely wealthy in experiences, friends, and a love for this life I chose.
Legally, this farm is mine but ownership is something ruled by paperwork, banks, and handshakes, isn’t it? Honestly, Cold Antler owns me. Everything I do from the moment I wake up to the time my tired body falls asleep at night is ruled by the needs of the land, animals, and community around me. I wouldn’t want it any other way. Homesteading is it. No life in the history of human kind demands so much but gives you such amazing returns. Fresh eggs at dawn, warm milk in the pail, food from the good earth, and the feeling of wind on your cheeks during a nap in the hay. May I receive them without flinching, as the ol’ prayer goes.
Cold Antler Farm Blog
Here is a video of the farm, me, some of the critters and a taste of my next book.
I am the in a great debt to this place as it brought me the most exciting and wonderful years of my life thus far. I knew nothing about agriculture when I started and now I work draft horses in harness, breed sheep, milk goats, and have the confidence to send my horse at a full gallop up a mountain trail with my border collie running beside me. It took years of mistakes, failures, joys, and wonder to make this place, and the woman I have become. Which is to say a happy woman. Nothing special, just a stubborn, dirty, grinning woman bent on making her life the one she always dreamed of. Keep reading to see where the story flows next. I’ll be here.
Welcome to the farm!
Jenna Woginrich can be found at her website coldantlerfarm.blogspot.com
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