Bluebird Homestead Has Landed in Arkansas

It has taken me many years to get here…

I left Florida after 15 years and moved to the countryside in Booneville, Arkansas. There was too much stressing me out there and I needed a clean slate; mountains, seasons, and a bit more freedom to explore and create. After raising a newborn during the pandemic and experimenting with a regenerative flower farm in Florida, I yearned for my roots and radical change. I knew that my parents would be able to help me bridge the gap in the ways they knew how – because they know me and my immense curiosity.

Through subsistence farming and medicinal gardening, it has been a way of life for my parents and ancestors. I knew my mother would be the key to my heritage. There are mornings when she goes hunting or days she spends harvesting bamboo and canning. Every morning, she cares for the livestock and every night she waters the garden. When she’s not driving my dad to dialysis, she is tending to her farm. The knowledge she has is not imparted all at once. My mother is like the dry creek bed that only fills when it rains. If you want to know something, you must ask. She is great at practicing the unspoken word.

Since moving here, my mother and I have bonded as adults and shared our knowledge and strengths with each other. We talk about plants and the uses of medicinal herbs in her garden. She will tell me about a new type of white ginger she heard about that she wants to grow. When I came across an ad for kunekune pigs, she came over with her trailer and cages to pick the pigs up with me and my 5-year-old in tow. I gave her one of our piglets as a “thank you for helping” and to diversify her herd. Whenever my poplar tree produces oyster mushrooms, I always bring some to her since I know they are her favorites. I can’t see myself doing what I’m doing without her.

So, when I dry my goldenrod or transplant the motherwort that I got from my mom’s garden, I feel that a part of her is growing here with me. It’s funny how that happens with this cycle we call life. It seems that no matter how far I’ve traveled or the places that I’ve lived, I return home with a renewed sense of purpose that is not that far from how my parents raised me and strive for themselves. I guess sometimes we take the long road home.