Hey y’all. I’m Taryn! Me and my family homestead in the southern most tip of the rocky mountains in New Mexico. I have lived here mostly all my life and my husband and his family has been here for generations. I first jumped into creating content on Instagram where I have grown my audience to just shy of 30k. You can say the homestead was created when my husband John and I got married. (He’s the J in JT homestead). At the time we got married, I was working at my parents tire and automotive shop. I always joke around and say I know more about tires and front ends than most men, and its true!

We always had a few chickens and a small garden but everything changed in 2020. Once the pandemic hit, things got slow at work for me. I was given some time off and during that time off, our daughter, who was then in the 5th grade, was also home doing school “online”. During the craziness of the weeks following the lockdowns, we realized that we wanted to dig into our roots. We made the decision that I would quit my full time job and focus on growing our homestead and homeschooling our daughter. My husband grew up ranching and on my fathers side of my family many generations back, we were also farmers. It was like I was reclaiming the lost skills of my ancestors and learning lots from my husband along the way.

2020 and beyond has been full of growth. We added a few more chickens, expanded the garden substantially, added a small orchard, and I started to really focus on intentional living. Growing and canning as much food as I could, cooking and baking from scratch, cutting out processed foods and eating seasonally, creating a home that felt safe, comfortable, and cozy.

“Today when you nurture, love and meet the needs of your beloveds with beauty, it will make a difference in how they face their whole day.”
― Sally Clarkson

I ended up sharing my journey on Instagram and creating a really amazing community there. It’s funny because I was never into social media all that much and am fairly introverted. I go back and forth on how I feel about even putting myself online. But creating content has truly become a creative outlet for me and I enjoy taking beautiful pictures and videos and sharing them. I stay online (with many breaks indeed) because of the community I’ve formed and when you find the beautiful side of the internet, there is so much to be inspired by. Looking back, the Lord has really used slow living, creating content, and building our farmstead to bring about a lot of healing in my life, especially from my past.

So to that I say, welcome world! Welcome to my little slice of the internet! I’ll be sharing much more in depth topics on cooking, canning, baking, gardening, animal husbandry, homemaking, and getting to know me personally a little bit more! Please subscribe to my blog to get updated on when a new post goes live and drop a comment and let me know you’re here!

xo

Taryn