About Us

Welcome to Slow and Homesteady!

This is our homesteading blog where we share our journey to a more self-sufficient, sustainable lifestyle. Although we currently live in a small house with literally no land, we’re doing what we can with what we have as we work towards our dream.

We are Roberto and Melody Joy, along with our daughter Tabby and our two pets, Livy the cat and Molly the parrot. Keep reading to find out our stories!

Roberto

I was born and raised in Managua, Nicaragua. For those who don’t know where that is, Nicaragua is a small country in Central America. It’s actually Costa Rica’s neighbor.

Although I grew up in the capital city of Nicaragua, I have always dreamed of having a farm. However, as the years went on, I completely forget about this dream and I focused on college life.

After I graduated from college, I had an unhealthy lifestyle between eating poorly to not doing any physical activity. It was so much easier to grab a burger with fries and a large glass of pop then lay on my bed to watch my favorite show. This was super convenient for me since I’m an introvert and that’s how I recharge my batteries when I have a long exhausting day.

I continued my unhealthy ways without realizing I was hurting myself. I was careless about my condition. I never really stopped to think about what I was doing. I was just in auto-mode, living like a robot. Every day was the same routine: go to work, eat junk food, watch TV, and back to sleep.

It was a vicious cycle. Then, the possible impact of my unhealthy habits hit me.

A tragedy struck my family. My grandma was really sick. She was diagnosed with a terminal stage of diabetes. We were all shocked. How in the world did my grandma get diabetes? She always looked fine and never show any symptoms.

At least, that’s what we thought. Grandma was a strong, tough, inflexible, and direct woman. She hid her sickness so nobody would see her weak or worry about her.

Sadly, several years of hiding her diabetes, not seeking treatment, and an unhealthy lifestyle cut my grandma’s life short. She died at 45 year old.

Shortly after grandma died, literally all of my uncles and my dad were diagnosed with type-2 diabetes. This chain of events started to worry me. I kept thinking about it. I realized, “I’m overweight, I consume a ton of sugar, and I don’t do any physical activity. I’m going to be the next person diagnosed with diabetes.”

I was overwhelmed. But it the midst of my worries, I found hope: my forgotten dream of having a farm.

What better way to change my unhealthy lifestyle by eating healthier and engaging in physical activities? And the best way to make sure my dream became a reality was to record these moments and share them.

This homesteading blog was born out of my own need to live better and healthier.

– Roberto

Melody Joy

Although I grew up in the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan, I always had a love for the farming life.

My favorite family vacations were to Oregon where we visited my grandparents’ farm. Three days straight in a van with my two younger brothers was worth getting to watch the cows graze in the field, pick fresh raspberries off the patch, and peek in at the tiny bunnies buried in their mother’s fur.

I first found the opportunity to stretch my farming wings as a teenager, volunteering in the barn of a summer camp for a couple weeks. I woke up with the sun, helped feed the horses and petting farm animals, and played with the barn kittens. I was hooked. I later went through a Christian discipleship program there and spent a year working as the barn manager.

During that time, I brought chickens and ducks to the barnyard, and then started breeding rabbits. I bought a dairy goat to add to the little herd of petting farm goats, a wonderful mixed-breed who gave birth to healthy quadruplets the first time I bred her. I was living the dream, but God had other plans for me.

He sent me to Honduras, where I lived in the second-largest city and taught English at a bilingual school (you can find many of my adventures there at my old personal blog). But that didn’t stop me from pursuing my farming dreams. I grew a container garden on my balcony and then got my students on board to grow tomatoes and sunflowers at the school.

After that, I found myself living the dream once again, this time in a small mountain town in Honduras. There, I helped start what we called “Horse Bible study,” where we incorporated Biblical principles into horse care and riding lessons. You can find a really cool story about that here.

Unfortunately, that dream became a nightmare shortly after Roberto and I got married. Long story short, within a few months, I found myself jobless, homeless, and all alone except for Roberto. Then we found out we were pregnant.

So we panicked and made some decisions we now regret, the primary one being building a house on his parents’ property. We were only given the land on which the land sits, so we have no yard. Plus, we had to build a 2-story house which was significantly more expensive than we budgeted for, so we’re now deep in debt.

To self-soothe, I began dreaming of a homesteading life, and came across articles like this one that changed my mindset about my own personal dreams.

I took a good, hard look at my life and realized something: I’m already a homesteader. I didn’t have to wait until we had enough land for chickens, goats, and a massive garden. I could start right now.

So, I made a to do list. It’s massive. And we may never actually be able to do everything on it while we’re here. But, it’s something that we can work on together to be homesteaders right where we are.

I also realized it’s a process, and it’s ok to take it slow and steady. So that’s what we’re doing. One day at a time, we work towards our goals of self-sufficiency.

We just take it slow. Slow and homesteady.

This is our journey. Thank you for joining us.

– Melody Joy

 

The Other Members of Our Homestead

Tabby

This is our beautiful little girl, Tabby. She was born on Christmas Eve and has brought us so much joy already. She’s stubborn, curious, expressive, and affectionate.

She’s also a huge part of why we’re doing this. We want her to grow up with a life we only dreamed of, one filled with nature, animals, and all the adventure a child could want, right in our own backyard.

Livy

Olivia “Livy” is a torbie Melody adopted from the ministry in Honduras. She was abandoned by her mother at 9 days old, so Melody raised her on goat’s milk.

Now she’s a crazy, active, and truly unique cat who loves turning boxes into pieces of artwork and chasing the pigeons off the balcony. You can follow her on Twitter if you want to keep up with her adventures.

Molly

Molly is our homesteading Amazon parrot. Both of us have wanted a parrot for as long as we can remember, so once we were settled into our new home, we decided to get one!

She certainly keeps things interesting as she’s adventurous, friendly, and sassy. She loves playing with Livy and demanding to be fed. Although she can’t talk yet, she’s working on it, so she should get even more interesting soon!