A new section has been added to Modern Missouri Pioneers. Chicks from the Sticks is a collection of posts, projects and discussions created by myself and two of my best friends, Bree and Melody. While we are all in various stages of life, we all have a strong sense of family, a strong desire to provide a happy, healthy, country homelife for our families, and a desire to share our experiences and knowledge with others.
Bree lives in western Dade county, Missouri with her husband and three boys ranging in age from 7 to 13 on 26 acres where they raise goats, rabbits, quail, and chickens. Bree has valuable knowledge in the kitchen and spent several years cooking at a local school system. She is a whiz at organizing her time, budgeting, cooking from scratch, minimizing unnecessary clutter from her life to make cleaning a fast simple process. She has to be good at these things to keep up the active schedules of all the “men” in her life! In addition to this she also works at a local convenience store making donuts. She absolutely LOVES it when we get a brain storm and message her at night forgetting she must get up at 2:30 to get started on her day.
Lisa is the mother of two grown children and a grandmother to 7 wonderful grandchildren. She lives on 110 acres in northern Lawrence county where her husband of 34 years was born and raised. They raise rabbits, pigs, chickens, and beef to process all the meat their family eats. From curing bacon and ham and smoking it in the smokehouse to grinding and seasoning sausage, it is all done in the area they have designed and set up for home processing. Lisa gardens and preserves fruits and vegetables for year round use by canning, dehydrating and freezing. Her use of home grown herbs includes teas, tinctures, infusions and salves. Lisa is a former public school art teacher and loves to sew, crochet, knit and create crafts of all kinds that can be used on the homestead. She enjoys teaching others what she knows and has learned that the more she learns the more she realizes how much there is to learn. She works full time as a Paramedic Supervisor in Dade county. Though Lisa sometimes refers to herself as Jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none because her interests are so widely varied, Bree quickly states that “she proves to be a real asset to anyone who she is close to.”
Melody shares a 20 acres with her husband of 3 years and her mother and father-in-law in eastern Dade county, Missouri, where they raise pigs, beef, chickens, and ducks. They also have a garden and a small orchard and several bee hives. Mel and her husband have 5 daughters between the two of them, ranging in age from mid-twenties to 6, and 2 grandsons. She makes some of the best jellies and jams in southwest Missouri, and sees that nothing goes to waste. She utilizes the things that most would throw away to make homestead necessities like apple cider vinegar, from apple scraps, bone broth from the bones of beef or chickens and according to her husband, her best chicken broth was made from the feet of the last butcher chickens they raised. Mel raises herbs for culinary and medicinal uses, pieces quilts and loves to make household projects from recycled items. Melody teaches 1st grade in a small rural Missouri public school. Melody can stretch a dollar farther than anyone else we know.
We hope you visit us often as we add our activities in the kitchen, the gardens, craft projects, sewing lessons and anything else we can think of to explore and learn about. As we learn together, we will share what we’ve learned, our successes, our failures, our laughter and our tears. We aren’t fancy. We are just three ladies, living real lives, with real families in the real world, trying to make each day better for our friends and families and be better ourselves each day. We sometimes have messy houses, weeds in our gardens, poop on our boots, tears in our eyes and are completely overwhelmed. But, with all that comes a love for each other, love for our families, joy in hearts and a faith never ending. Come join us, hang out awhile, and let’s get to know one another. After all, when country girls get together it doesn’t get any better than being with other Chicks from the Sticks.