Welcome to our family blog where we bring you along on our journey of rediscovering lost skills and raising tough kids. Let’s get strait to the point. Our family isn’t soft around the edges. We’re strong in our faith and question everything. After the great toilet paper shortage of 2020, we realized our dream of being more self sufficient needed to be put into action. Where do we start? Back at the beginning of course… time to tap into our roots and bring our kids along for the ride. We needed to focus on raising tough kids.
My Grammie Was one Tough Lady
I often think back to my great-grandmother’s house on Roop Street in Carson City. We called her Grammie and she lived to be in her 90s. When I was younger, I remember her cold storage full of preserved jams with wax seals, canned vegetables, and fruit. My sister and I picked fresh apples from her yard and would watch her peel them in the fall. She had the best costume jewelry and a treasure chest full of dress up scarves. We would play for hours and listen to her stories about walking with pails down the street to the dairy for raw milk.
Grammie’s birthday was October 31st, which also happened to be Nevada Day, the date our home state was brought into the union. This also was the date of our annual Nevada Day parade. Our family would faithfully gather at Grammie’s house each year, walk down to Carson Street, and sit at the same corner to watch the parade. When Nevada moved the parade years ago to the last Saturday in October, Grammie moved her birthday too. She was one tough woman.
Our family has quite a legacy. South Carson was my family’s homestead and the streets bare the names of my great-great grandmothers. Somewhere along the way we lost the generational knowledge of my great-grandmother and embraced convenience. This couldn’t be more accurate in how we eat in modern times. From scratch cakes turned into box cake mixes. Raw butter became margarine. Food dyes and sugar additives became common in most foods. We lost touch with our roots in more ways than one.
Being a Tough Kid
I’m a first born daughter of 6 girls. Any other first-born daughters, granddaughters, nieces, or great-great granddaughters out there? It’s quite a responsibility. We were born to take charge. Not many people are more stubborn or hardheaded than a first-born daughter raised like a father’s son. We are the family managers. The bruisers. This is something I find very humbling now that my oldest daughter is naturally picking up these traits. For a little background, my 5 sisters and I started working very young in my father’s construction company. Who needs hired hands when you have 6 hard working girls? Tough was a badge of honor growing up.
The Pivotal Moment in our Journey
Fast forward to my late 20s and Grammie’s larder and homemaking skills were a distant memory. I had gone to college and graduate school and earned a Masters in Business with an emphasis in Accounting. My husband had served in the Marine Corps and had opened his successful martial arts studio. We had two kids and were living in the city while I was climbing the corporate latter.
One weekend in Barnes and Noble, my husband held up a homesteading book and confidently declared, “One day we will have chickens.” I immediately thought about our neighbors across the street who had a backyard flock. I laughed and asked, “Aren’t the neighbors complaining about mice in their garage from the chicken feed?” We bought the book and brought it home. I’m happy to report that Homesteading, as edited by Abigail R. Gehring, was the tender start of our homesteading journey and dive into traditional skills.
Fast forward 7 years and we now live in a small town. I retired from the corporate world and our family has grown by 4 more children. We have 20 chickens in our yard and raise and process our own meat birds. The kids and I are wrapping up our 4th gardening season and are working on expanding our garden footprint next year. This book still graces our home library. It was was the start of a growing collection of books on self sufficiency, lost skills, herbal medicine, and more. Our goal of raising tough kids still holds fast as a foundational goal.
Setting goals and jumping in!
Long before we moved to our property, we set the following immediate goals for our family: learn how to grow our own food, raise chickens, and learn how to preserve food. We found homesteaders who had paved the path before us and took to heart what they were teaching. Books, blogs, and podcasts were extremely helpful during this transition time for our family.
Starting where you’re at is vitally important. If you live in an apartment and want to garden, research balcony container gardening. If you want to learn how to can, go to YouTube for tutorials and search thrift stores or estate sales for canning equipment. One of the first things my husband said to me after listening to me express frustration over an annoyance was, “If you don’t like something, change it.” It rocked me to my core. It’s that simple. Want to learn a new skill? Prioritize the time and do it. Somewhere along the way our society sacrificed hard work for comfort. We refuse to allow that mentality in our family culture. We can do hard things. Kids can do hard things.
How do we get back to raising tough kids?
Let’s get the dirty laundry out in the open right now. We’re a family of 8 with big dreams and a calling to teach our children as many self-sufficiency skills as possible. I will eventually share our systems for managing a large family, but realize this changes with each season of life. We don’t have matching dining room chairs or a perfectly cultivated house. We’re in the thick of homeschooling 4 of our 6 children while my husband, Pierce, works outside the home. I have killed more sourdough starters than I can count. In fact, I just started another one three days ago so fingers crossed this one sticks. I’m probably going to name it the Godflour. Sometimes our attempts are epic failures, but we’re jumping in and doing it.
This blog will bring you along with us as we tackle traditional skills as a family. I hope you enjoy this journey and think to yourself, “if she can do this with 6 kids while homeschooling, breastfeeding a newborn, and potty training a toddler, I can do anything too.”
Welcome to the Toomey Clan my friends. This is going to be fun.
Kirsten
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