I got to thinking about our journey of homesteading and realized that if you didn’t “know” Dave and me b.c. (before children) then you really couldn’t have a full appreciation for our journey into homesteading.
When Dave and I met, I was living with some friends in the same town where I’d gone to college. Dave was working on his Master’s degree in Piano Performance and was in his last year of school.
I’d graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Speech Education and I was filling out applications to get my Master’s in Speech Pathology. I was also planning a 3 month backpacking trip across Europe.
Instead, I got engaged and tossed my plans aside for a later date.
I remember talking with Dave about children. He’s the youngest of 3 and has 2 older sisters. I’m the oldest of 4 and have a sister and two younger brothers. Dave had never been around children and I had done a ton of babysitting. When he asked me how many children I’d like to have, I said 1, maybe 2. He was happy with that answer.
Dave had grown up in the typical suburbs of the Portland, Oregon area. His dad, Bob Ball, was General Manager of a radio station for all of Dave’s growing up years. Dave’s mom, Barbara Ball, was a Child Psychologist in the Portland school system. She started her own developmental testing business in the early 80’s and still runs her business today. Dave was a soccer and basketball player and of course, music was a huge part of his growing up years!
I grew up in a Navy family and we moved every 6 months for the first several years of my life. My family settled in Connecticut when I was 7 years old. My dad left the Navy and became an airline pilot for American Airlines. We lived just outside of New York City. We didn’t live in a suburban neighborhood but we didn’t live in the country either. When I was 16, we moved to NH, not far from Boston. This time we lived in an historical district because our house was built in 1806.
My mom was a stay-at-home mom and our family was very much into sports and shopping. We lived on 3 acres but we didn’t keep any kind of farm animals.
When Dave and I started our life together on November 29, 1985, he was working at a radio station in Seattle, WA. Soon afterwards, I was working in customer service for a large mortgage company in downtown Seattle. We were a corporate couple with 2 cars, no children, and debt, living in an apartment on the outskirts of the city.
The thought of homesteading wasn’t anywhere on my horizon. My knowledge of animals consisted of dogs and cats, hamsters and parakeets, one session of horse lessons for a birthday gift and some trail rides.
And then we had a baby…
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