One night while I was eating a tuna crunch roll with my manager, Dave, at Trumbull Kitchen where I tend bar 2 nights a week, he asked me what I do all day every day, being a stay-at-home-mom.

"What do I do all day? What DON'T I do all day," is pretty much how I reacted and then went forth with the long list of what my family does on our little 5 acre plot of land in northeast Connecticut. There is so much to do out here, 2 large vegetable gardens that we work in 3 seasons out of 4, constant amounts of wood waiting to be sawed, split, and stacked for New England winters, 6 laying hens that come running to me as soon as they hear my voice while looking for a handout, our 2 small children ages 3 and 1, numerous compost piles that the chickens and I obsessively turn over, and a variety of other chores, projects, and improvements we make out here all the time.

I started this blog to not only reflect on all we do on our little farmette, but to also offer some helpful tips and ideas on how to become more self sufficient and green in an age of consumption and waste. I have found that learning to do as much as you can by yourself is way more rewarding that paying someone else to do it, and hey, it saves a ton of money. And you become smarter, to boot.   

So begins the journey of Terra Mama, the efforts to raise happy, healthy kids, garden organically to provide ourselves with food, methods to cook and preserve all that excellent produce, keep chickens for eggs and self-sustainablitly through their foraging and awesome chicken-manure-everywhereness, and finally just all the ways to turn a house and yard into a homestead.