Introduction

Hi, I'm Taryn. I live in Central Texas near Austin in a very small town. I grew up in and around this town visiting my grandparents so it's familiar. I'm 42, have 2 sons, Blaise is 20 and Julian is 19. I have a husband, Colter, who is the absolute love of my life. We were high school sweethearts and broke up when he went to the Army and I went wild in college. He left the Army and I never finished college and here we are, married happily for almost 3 years. I've lived a lot of my adult life with privilege I didn't realize I had, and quite frankly, thought I deserved.  Colter is from a different walk of life and has opened my eyes to a lot of issues that I never left my house enough to notice, wasn't a problem in the area I lived and I didn't ever worry about. Issues such as homelessness, food insecurity among people with jobs, full-time jobs even, addiction and addiction recovery, the disparity of living conditions among the people of our country and on and on. What this has turned into, within me, is a fascination and need to be as self-sufficient as possible. Right now, we are not, except in a small way. I have major goals in this area, huge garden, canning, livestock raising and slaughtering and all the things that go with a homestead life, which we don't have yet. What we have right now is a small container garden, in a borrowed back yard, forays into canning, waterbath only so far, weekly meal prep with whole, unprocessed food and my hatred for paper towels.  Welcome to my world.