Johnson Home NC Blog- About Me

Hey there!

I’m Katie Johnson. Welcome to the Johnson Home NC blog where I’m finding joy in kitchen gardening and homemade recipes while learning how to homestead in North Carolina through trial and error. And I’m happy to share it all with you!

blogger in green tee shirt that says Mandate Vegetables, cotton painted on an old window framed by faux barn doors in background of her homestead

I’m a small town country living kind of girl who was raised the same but was too stubborn to listen as Mom, Nana, and my aunts tried to teach me things. Important things like canning, keeping a summer garden, and cooking homemade dinner with real food. They tried! I just didn’t listen and take notes. Now, I wish we had tried harder. But here I am in my late 30s teaching myself and asking those ladies again how things are best done.

They’ve got a few lessons to teach me and I’m finally ready to learn.

Generation to Generation

I want to teach my children what I’m learning as I’m learning it. Some days I do find it easier for them to be out of the kitchen or garden and just let me work through it alone. THAT is something I’m working through, too! 🙂

woman and small female child weighing whole chickens bagged — *packaging meat birds is a family affair*

Because I want to teach them how to grow their own real food and prepare it. My children need to know that just because something is conveniently located in the grocery store, doesn’t make it better than what can be homemade. Usually that can be done without all the additives, preservatives, and Lord knows what else. This is a big motherhood goal for me.

4 raised garden beds, white greenhouse on a sunny day with blue skies and fluffy white clouds

Willing to try new things and grow where we are

In this Johnson Home NC blog, know that we aren’t a perfect family of crunchy, healthy-always people but we try to be more conscious of what we are consuming.

I like to refer to us as half-crunchy.

Doing what we can where we are with what we have, learning new skills along the way. And I have the most patient husband on the planet who puts up with me and my “babe, look at this from Instagram. It looks simple enough, right?” ideas.

He brings them to fruition without complaint… and maybe a tiny bit of help from me sometimes.

blogger holding a thumbs up sign and husband who is smiling constructing chicken coop for their homestead from lumber, cattle panel, and hardware cloth with golden retriever and corn field in the background — *My ever-so patient husba*nd

What you’ll find in the Johnson Home NC Blog

In the Johnson Home NC blog, you’ll find me sharing some of my favorite recipes and new skills with you.

Sharing is caring and if we keep these things to ourselves, how will future generations know this is how people have survived and thrived since God created the world? Exactly! So I’ll be handing out that information and some gardening things, too. Ideas, tips, tricks, experiences I’ve had mainly by trial and error.

What you’ll find here:

raised bed kitchen gardening

greenhouse gardening

round white plate with stacked randomly baked sourdough discard graham crackers

composting

sourdough
faith in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ

simple homemade real food recipes

raising laying hens and meat birds

maybe a small craft or how-to

Homesteading doesn’t mean you need 25 acres and a dairy cow but oh how I wish I could have all of those! I’ll let you know how I turned my mindset of “homesteading imposter syndrome of 2020” into “anyone can be a homesteader no matter where you live if you try hard enough”.

Homesteading isn’t so much about “Self-sufficiency” here at Johnson Home, it’s about stewarding the land and animals God gave us to provide nourishment for our family. Because we can’t do it alone or by ourselves. We need the Good Lord’s provisions.

Here’s to sticking around these parts

Glad you’re here for the journey, friend. Feel free to pin recipes and share to your social medias anything you see here! Sharing what we know is how we grow.

Here’s one word of advice: don’t look at what you see in this blog and think you’ve gotta do it all at once.

Or look at any “homesteader”, gardener, influencer, whatever. That’s an unrealistic expectation of simple living and homesteading!

The best way is to make a list of what you’d like to try learning then take one thing at a time and get really good at it before moving on to the next task.