About Me

 

Hi! I’m Maia; wife, mother, writer, and homesteader behind Emigrant Farms.

I’ve been living the homesteading lifestyle since 2009, when we brought home our first chickens. Since then, I’ve raised sheep, goats, pigs, cattle, ducks, geese, turkeys, guineas, quail, and rabbits.

In 2018, I moved from Alaska to California and somehow kept homesteading all along the way. Emigrant Farms is our current home and 2.5 acre homestead in Shasta County, California.

When my husband, Matt, and I met it was clear that we were kindred spirits. (You can’t hide an appreciation for the simpler life for long!) In the fall of 2021 our first daughter was born, and from day 1 she’s tagged along with all of the chores and projects the homestead requires.

Our goals at the homestead are simple: grow the best food we can, while stewarding our piece of the Earth carefully and conscientiously.

We have an eye ever-trained towards sustainability, soil improvement, and the long-term, big picture. In just a few years we’ve seen significant improvements in the quantity and quality of browse on the property.

We’ve thinned overgrown trees- making way for more light, better growth, and more resiliency in the trees we’ve left standing.

We’ve established two garden plots- one with raised beds and significant amounts of compost; the second is an in-ground, no-till plot sown in dense cover crops.

We let our poultry wander, our pigs root, and our ruminants graze- just as they were designed to.

Ultimately, we have hopes and dreams of moving to somewhere with a little more space. But in the meantime, we intend to make the best use of every square foot that we’ve been blessed to call our own.

I hope that you will find inspiration in these pages: you don’t need 1,000 acres to live a simpler life.

Homesteading is a mindset, a value system, and a way of life. Making the best of the blessings we’ve been given, learning the skills that may feel forgotten, including our children in our daily work: that’s homesteading.

If you’re feeling called to both simplify and connect to life in a concrete, authentic way: you’ve come to the right place. It’s a pleasure to meet you; thank you so much for reading and following along on my family’s homesteading story.

-Maia