Who We Are
Cedar Swamp Homestead is what we call our approximately 100-acre farm that sits adjacent to the Nelson Swamp Unique Area in the Town of Nelson, NY.
We sell farm-fresh vegetables and duck eggs at our roadside stand.
Our blog offers informative articles about homesteading skills, such as gardening, baking, cooking from scratch, caring for farm animals, and more.
About the author of this homesteading blog
I grew up on a dairy farm not far from where we are today, but I spent most of my 2o’s and 30’s living in various small cities. While living the city lifestyle, which has its conveniences, I almost always had a nagging feeling that there wasn’t enough land around me. I knew in my heart I would always come back to the country because I love to garden, and I love food that is as homegrown and home-raised as it can be.
The homesteading bug really bit me when we moved to Cedar Swamp Homestead, and I’ve been on a journey ever since to learn new skills that will improve our self-sufficiency, reduce how much we spend on premade goods, and help us live well.
How this homesteading blog began
We moved to Cedar Swamp Homestead shortly before COVID-19 shook up the world and how it views everything from work to supply chains for food and other staples. I’ve always been a fan of local farmer’s markets and locally sourced items – choosing them when it was convenient. But, the disruption to the supply chain for meat convinced me that supporting local producers and growing and raising what we can (even if it’s just a salad garden on a patio) are crucial to the resilience of a community.
With that in mind, I began posting images and information about my homesteading projects on Facebook and soon discovered there’s a generation of people, my generation, looking to learn the skills their grandparents and, perhaps, parents had – the skills we left behind in favor of learning what we needed to succeed in the modern world. Focusing on the skills we needed to get jobs made sense when we were young, but we were left feeling lost and removed from things that truly sustain our well-being. This blog is for us.
The best advice I ever heard about homesteading
Most people who want to start living a more resilient lifestyle and begin exploring homesteading, myself included, become quickly overwhelmed by the vast number of skills involved. They think they need to learn everything there is to know about gardening, preparing food from scratch, baking, animal husbandry, carpentry, soap making, and more. The best advice I’ve heard on this was very simple and worth repeating – start where you are, and don’t let the vision of a completely self-sufficient life derail you. If you live in the city and have a patio, learn how to grow lettuce and bake bread from scratch. If you eat takeout 7 days a week, try cooking a meal with real ingredients from a farmer’s market. Then, move on to the next learning project, adding more and more skills as you go.
What I hope you’ll find on this homesteading blog
Ultimately, you may live your entire life in the city or the suburbs, never owning a farm or homesteading in the traditional sense. Homesteading isn’t for everyone, but the skills that homesteading offers can be mastered by anyone and can give you a sense of pride, purpose, and improved well-being. Through writing about my own homesteading journey, I hope you will find projects that suit your interests and help you discover and learn the homesteading skills you’ve been wanting to explore.
Regards,
Sheryl Davis
“I’ll never understand why people complain about snow. Without snow, there’s no spring thaw and no water for crops in the summer.”
Albert Koennecke (My dad)
Cedar Swamp Homestead 