Dee Porter of The Porter Homestead in upstate New York is our first homestead mama takeover with no babies on the homestead although she was pregnant with her first. As an update, she and her husband welcomed a beautiful baby girl to their homestead on August 8, 2020. The following is an excerpt of a previous Instagram takeover.


Okay guys. Let’s talk gardens. And gardening while pregnant. Number one. The next baby I’m going to have will not be when a pandemic is happening. Not that that can be planned but that would be my preference. And number two, maybe not being so pregnant during gardening season. I dubbed this year as the weedy Garden of Eden. We do the Back to Eden Gardening Method which worked fantastic for us last year.
If you’re not familiar it is a no till gardening method where you lay cardboard down, then 4-6 inches of compost then 4-6 inches of wood chips. We had a great first garden last year with tons of produce! This year we were supposed to add another layer of compost and another layer of wood chips. The problem was I felt too guilty making Jayson and my dad doing all of the work, so I didn’t add the extra layers. And because of that weeds have been crazy this year. And weeding while almost 8 months pregnant?! Are y’all crazy! Pulling one weed is hard enough yet alone doing the whole garden.
For weeks I would come to the garden and get so upset looking at it but then I realized. It doesn’t need to be perfect y’all. This garden is still going to give us plenty of fresh fruit and veggies even if there is lots of weeds in it. The world isn’t going to end because I don’t have a beautiful Instagram garden this year. And it took a while to realize that. But growing a baby is hard work and if the garden slacks this year because of it the world will keep revolving. So here’s to all of the homesteading mamas with weedy gardens because we are busy growing and raising babies.

