Homesteading stories - Take One.

Where did it all begin?

Nature photo of the past: our kitchen building in Ópusztaszer, Hungary, taken approximately in 2008.

Once upon a time there was a fiercely independent little girl born in the suburbs of Chicago. From a very young age she knew, she felt it in her bones, that she must move out west.

And so she did, as soon as she graduated from Iowa State University with a degree in horticulture, she drove out to Oregon in her silver Jeep (containing her most prized possessions), leaving the flatlands in the east.

There she met someone who wasn’t a cowboy or a farmer, just a homesteader-to-be, only she didn’t know that yet, neither did he.

After just three and a half months of knowing one another, they drove down to Las Vegas, and with one friend as a witness their adventurous lives were bound forever. After 5 trying-not-to-be-so-consumerist years in the west, or at least getting very tired of trying to fit in, they decided to move back “east”, to where he was sort of from, round about the city of Szeged in Southeastern Hungary.

From there they rented a car, for the last time ever, and drove around the extended area searching for a place to live. After a few very rotten misses, they settled on the tanya (isolated homestead) above.

5.6 hectares of land, with a deep pond, and 4 cob buildings in various states of crumbling apart. It was beautiful! Though the bank wouldn’t give them a loan.

They only stayed there for eight years, but if you were to drive by Testhalom tanya 33 today, a building or two may still be standing, but the real beauty shines in the many oaks and ashes they planted.

When getting clean is dirty, hay bales (later to be replaced by haystacks), and teaching the newest member of the team how to fill the firewood basket.

In the eight years they lived on their homestead, they raised goats, ducks, turkeys, guinea fowl and mangalica pigs. They invited wild nature into their lives, in the form of storks and herons, snakes slithering into the kitchen or even across a bare foot by the pond.

They learned to spin wool, to felt and to weave, to make a living, as well as have something to do (before the internet took off).

They learned how to can and preserve the fruits they harvested, and how to grow a garden under the scorching sun. Usually not very successfully, but they changed all that when they later changed their location.

Raising ducks for eggs and meat, pigs for belly rubs and prosciutto.

Naturally there was a learning curve for it all, for neither of them grew up on a farm/homestead. One might have even considered them overeducated idiots at the time, with college degrees and little life experience, yet they persevered through their mistakes, most of which were more timely than costly, though they had a few of those too.

Once they had things under control, they took in WWOOFers and helped other interested volunteers from afar to learn their new-found ways of living a simpler life close to nature.

Humanure compost, turning tilled land into a meadow, and Puli shepherd dogs preventing the ducks from enjoying their evening meal.

Some days were hard, yet most were pleasurable. Being on their own without much guidance, other than the inner kind, allowed them to learn first-hand what it meant to unschool their inner child. To learn from experience, rather than be told what’s right, or for the most part - what’s wrong.

After all, what could go wrong on a homestead out in the middle of nowhere?

It’s a theoretical question, nothing terrible ever really happened outside of some stolen underwear and an irrigation pump that walked away in the middle of the night.

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Thanks for reading,