Why Am I Doing This?

I am a child of the suburbs, a veteran of the U.S. Army, and a manager of complex systems. By all accounts, my life should be defined by concrete and code. Instead, I am choosing dirt.

I have no idea what I’m doing, but I have the grit of eight years on active duty and a background in engineering that tells me our current systems are fragile. I am not a "prepper" hiding from the world; I am a realist trying to build a better one. I believe the rise of AI and automation will reshape our economy, leaving many behind. My response isn't to fear the future, but to insulate myself from it.

To me, homesteading isn't just about growing food; it’s about reducing dependencies on supply chains I cannot control. My goal is total food self-sufficiency within two years. By year three, I intend for this land to turn a profit - not to live extravagantly, but to live freely.

If you had told me years ago that I’d be obsessing over wood chips, chicken predators, and excited about collecting seeds, I wouldn't have believed you. This is an exciting journey and I want to document it.

To me, homesteading isn't just about growing food, it is more about closing the loop. Reducing dependencies on supply chains that I don't and can't control.

As of the first year of homesteading, my garden area is over 1800 square feet. I'll be trying different techniques like Back to Eden, square foot gardening, and any other techniques that I can test. This is a large enough area to produce enough fruits and vegetables for sustenance for myself and more to sell.

I will be planning my 2026 garden this winter. Look for a blog post coming soon.

I currently have 7 chickens (lost 6 to wildlife, unfortunately). As I'm new to this area I'm not exactly sure what took them - it could have been wild coyotes, hawks, eagles, raccoons, or any other predator out here, we even have bobcats and mountain lions. It is a little disheartening but I'm planning on adding somewhere around 12 new chickens every year until I get maxed out where I'm replacing non-laying egg chickens. I've already managed (with the help of some friends I've made) to automate watering and a system (that I need to improve) to where I have to spend less time feeding them.

Sometime between next January and March I plan on getting 2 pigs and rabbits to provide meat for sustenance. This is as much as I can get with the land that I have I think. Every year I will slaughter a pig and replace it and hopefully kill a deer. I think one deer and one pig will be plenty enough meat for a year especially supplemented with rabbits and non-laying chickens. I will miss beef, though - maybe I can try bartering.

I've been tinkering with microcontrollers and microprocessors off and on for awhile now.

Things I'd like to accomplish:

• Smart Home with AI integration (oh the irony)
• Digital Twin of my house and possibly the entire property

I also do software and web development. I plan on being able to self host everything at some point as well so there will be IT projects. During my Ph.D. studies, I was involved with AI and Digital Twins/Threads. I'd like to apply what I can to the gardening and quantify and trace the product lifecycles of my food. It will be data and hardware intensive and with enough time and data, maybe apply some machine learning for predictive analytics.

I also plan on tackling a lot of what I do (I'd like to do all it'd be too time consuming and I want to eat!) with the scientific process as well. I'm new to this area and as far as I know this land has never been used to grow food. I want to test what I can to increase product yield.

The stack I've been thinking of is Home Assistant as the "brain" of the system on my local network that can talk to and display the data from the various sensors I have throughout the property.

This site will also act as documentation for all my projects and knowledge that I gain so that I can continuously improve the process and share useful information for others looking to homestead.