Our Testimony
We are the Stephenson Family
I’m a wife and mom of three, living the homestead life with my family. Our days are filled with tending the land, raising animals, and teaching our kids the values of faith, hard work, and simplicity. We’re passionate about living close to nature, growing our own food, and nurturing a home rooted in love and Christian faith. I am Kendall, the wife and mom of the Stephenson family. I am the one behind all the posting. Although my husband, Ryan, is very supportive in our new blog journey, he is busy usually fixing something/ building something on the farm, catching a loose animal, or at work. We have been married for 10 years and together for 15 years. We met in 8th grade when I moved to a small town called Anza, CA(population of a whopping 1959). We started dating in 11th grade because I thought he was a skater punk before he cut his hair and I found out he was cute! After graduating high school Ryan enlisted in the Navy and left for bootcamp the following February of 2012. I started cosmetology school in the evenings while teaching swim lessons during the day. We continued a long distanced relationship for only 4 months before Ryan proposed to me at Sea World, June 19th, 2012. I was only 18 when we got engaged! Ryan did get my parents permission, but now that we are older, I can only imagine how stressed this made them. Watching two kids starting a life together. Luckily, we had a wonderful foundation grounded in faith. We decided to put God first and let His plan follow. Ryan was deployed for 10 months and I continued my schooling, job, and planning our wedding. We got married July, 18th 2014 surrounded by all of our family and friends. After our wedding, I moved up to Bremerton WA, where he was stationed and we rented our first home. A cute, little 800sf cottage that you could see the space needle from the top of our street. It was where my passion for homemade goodies began. One of my first homemade desserts I learned to make was a blackberry cobbler because our backyard was overflowing with wild blackberry bushes. I then learned how to make jam and it kept snowballing from there. We got plugged into a local Calvary Chapel church and it was such a blessing. We were both in such an unfamiliar place, with no family locally. That church became our family. I joined the woman’s craft group, although I don’t think anyone in that group was under 60 years old except for me, they welcomed me with open arms, became true friendships and taught me so many crafting tips and tricks that I still use today. In fact one of them gave me my first sewing machine that I eventually upgraded, but learned most of my sewing on. I have always been into crafting and even baking with my mom when I was a kid. But it wasn’t until I was in my own home with my husband, that my interests turned into a true passion. I perfected old skills like; crocheting and making cookies, and learned new skills like; gardening, baking cheesecake, and eventually diving into ingredients and learning more about natural living. Ryan has always been such a huge support in the things I love. He would proudly take the latest dessert I made to work with him and brag to his coworkers. He’d even take the crocheted blankets to his bunk or barracks and display them on his bed. Anything I wanted to learn, he was right there with me headed to Joannes fabric or Hobby Lobby, patiently waiting as I strolled the isles. Of course he had his own interests too. Ryan’s always been into the outdoors. He loves mountain biking, hiking, and camping. Which we got to enjoy plenty of that while living in Washington. We lived there for 3 years. We like to think of it as the place where we really became us. Not only did we live in a new state that was so unfamiliar, but neither of us really knew how to do any sort of adulting, we learned together and grew together. Then once we got news our prayers had been answered, Ryan was stationed in California on San Clemente Island, we decided to start growing our family. We got pregnant with our first baby in 2017, and moved back to my parents house in August of that same year(which was not part of our plan, but it was part of God’s plan). We were devastated when we got the news his Naval Fire Academy was getting pushed two months back, because that means he was possibly going to miss the birth of our first child. But, like I said God had a plan. We wanted to find a home to rent, settle in, and have our baby after he was done with his academy. It sounded like a well thought out plan in my mind. Instead, we had to move back down to California when I was 7 months pregnant, and move in with my parents until Ryan was done with his academy, have our baby (which he made it for the birth by the way, but had to return back to his academy in Texas when she was 4 days old) then found a home to rent. In our small town, rentals are basically nonexistent so when my best friend’s parents were renting out their home and offered it to us at such an affordable rate, we definitely took them up on it! We got to stay by family and help out family friends. It was a win-win. We figured, this is a great opportunity to save up and buy a home in a few years. But little did we know, that timeline was a lot shorter. We only lived there for 9 months before they broke the news that they can no longer rent their home to us, they needed it for their son. At the time we were extremely stressed. Our daughter just turned one and we are about to be out of a home once again! We couldn’t help but wonder what God’s plan was and how on earth can this work out? Ryan was a veteran so we had the amazing opportunity to use his VA loan! We found a home we absolutely loved, toured it and put an offer in. But instead of getting the call to say our offer was accepted, we got the call saying they accepted someone else’s offer and it was officially in escrow. Again, we were devastated, we thought what are we going to do? There were no other houses on the market and all the houses to rent were so expensive, we’d never be able to save up for a house. A couple weeks later we got another call saying it fell out of escrow and the house is ours if we were still interested. Five weeks later we were moving into our first purchased home. In that home we grew our family with two more babies(plus one in heaven) and lots of animals. Our first animals we added to the farm was a Queensland heeler then two Sulcata Tortoises. After we had some time to see that we could keep those alive, we got chickens. Which let’s be real, is always the first step down the rabbit hole of homesteading. We started a garden, got a pig, ducks, got goats, then got rid of the goats (lets just say they were not on our team) so we got sheep instead and finally became a true farm when we got our first dairy cow! We felt like we were truly living in God’s plan. It wasn’t perfect but it always seemed to work out. Throughout those years, we completely renovated that home, we bought an outdated little vacation home and turned it into a little farmhouse that we absolutely loved. We lived in that home for 3 1/2 years then finally realized we wanted to really farm, we wanted to get serious with it. Our goals started to change from just keeping the animals alive to having the animals and farm have a purpose. And to do that, we knew we needed to move. Luckily we didn’t have to go far, we stayed in the same gated community but got a bigger house that fits us better and a piece of land that is completely flat and set up to fulfill our homesteading goals. It has a fence so our dogs can have more space, greenhouse to take our gardening to another level, and a workshop for all of our DIY projects. We have been in this home for a year and have already grown so much. Of course we have done a bit of home improvement projects, but in addition to improving the look of our homestead we have grown a lot in how it functions. We learned how to raise and butcher our own meat pig, meat rabbits, and now turkeys. We also rescued another dairy cow. We have a farm stand in our driveway and started selling some homemade goods at our local farmers market. But our ultimate goals for the farm are to honor our Lord and Savior, provide healthy sustainable food for our family, and to teach others how to do the same. We are well aware this lifestyle is not for everyone, so we love to share what we can with those that don’t have access to their own farm fresh food. We decided to start our blog to not only document our journey we have been on, but to encourage others that even when everything seems to be crumbling, God does have a plan for you, and when you lean on Him, it’s amazing to see it all work out and fall into place. A lot of times social media forgets to document the real struggles in life. It’s always fun to share the pretty pictures and the successes. But I think the real growth happens in the failures and the moments you have to really have faith. I will do my best in sharing that, not only to prove we are human and our lives are so far from perfect but to also share some things we’ve learned in hopes we can help someone learn through our mistakes. Farming and life in general is not easy, the point of this page is not to pretend we have it all together, trust me some days we can be a huge mess, but to share our journey in hopes it can teach someone or simply just bring you joy, even if its laughing at our latest mishap. Thank you for reading this far, we are truly so happy and grateful you are here. We hope after reading a bit of our story, you feel encouraged to stick around to learn about homesteading, home cooking, and of course some DIY’s.