I have been daydreaming about homesteading since I was a kid. Three years ago it happened; I was a couple years into my thirties, mid-career at the North Cascades Environmental Learning Center, and about to lose my apartment. I bought a 4-acre piece of land in Marblemount, Washington. On the property was one shoddy old cabin and a woodshed. Along the swift, green Skagit River, I put down roots for the first time in my adult life. Somewhere between hand-raising fluffy little chicks and battling a poultry lice infestation, I discovered that I can be as passionate about raising chickens as I am for climbing 5.12. And from the anemic looking apple trees, stuck hastily in the ground that first summer, I grew to appreciate how much care went into food by growing and harvesting it myself. Each bag of frozen berries or carton of eggs produced on the property was sustaining in an almost spiritual way.  Read More from “The Kinship of Climbing and Farming”