Welcome to the Homestead!

life lessons, love letters, and recipes

Hi, I’m Kelin! I teach rhetoric and writing at a public university. I’m a gardener, former chef, wannabe real farmer, and a person with anxiety who is passionate about people.

My husband, Brian, is a project manager, former engineer, former fine art painter, and a person on the autism spectrum who is passionate about making.

Together we have two children, Chloe and Liam, who are now entering their teen years.

Together as a family we go through funny and hard things. We learn and we grow. We share it here to make connections and community.

Recent Blog Posts

It’s Tree Tapping Season! A Quick Guide to Homemade Pure Maple Syrup

Syrup season heralds spring. It’s the first early spring food, a sweet reward for making it through another cold and gray winter, arriving with those first bursts of 50 degree, sunny days, just when the forest feels like it’s coming back to life. Sap flows when it’s freezing at night, forcing the tree to take in more water and nutrients from the ground and then around 45-50 degrees during the day. It needs to be just warm enough to unfreeze those nutrients on the inside of the tree, but not so warm that the tree starts to bud, generally speaking at least 42 degrees. Here in Indiana, as a result, the season lenth varies greatly each year–sometimes giving us a heady month, and others, just a few short days.

by kelinmchull

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We are slowly but steadily unpacking and making home here in our new homestead. Today Brian is finally able to expand the temporary coop we purchased for the move while the ladies get some much needed exercise (with feline supervision—yes our cat herds chickens). 😹😻 #hullfamilyhomestead #newhomestead #moving #charleskitty Dawn in our new home. The chickens are still asleep in their new coop but the birds are up and singing an opera. 🥰 #hullfamilyhomestead #thenewhomestead #newhouse #newbeginnings Moving update: One final bloom post from this home, where we have made Hull Family Homestead go from young-couple dream to reality over the past 11 years. We move to a new home on Thursday!!! While we weren’t able to build in this market, nor could we afford a vast amount of land, we did wind up with more land and a cute little home we feel happy in. The best part? It still backs up to forest, just like this home we have loved (and labored endlessly on). 💪😊 We’ve been working nonstop on prepping to sell and on moving, and so I’ve been remiss in updating. Rest assured, I’ll be blogging about it soon. 💚 We are excited to be so close to a new chapter and to share this new journey with all of you! #hullfamilyhomestead #moving #springgarden Charles brings us snake friends and we take them back to the meadow. Repeat. 😬🤷🏻‍♀️😸 #charleskitty #hullfamilyhomestead #catsofinstagram I’ve been sick all week and am still not well. Today, though, I felt hungry for the first time in days. After nothing but toast and tea all week, I decided to go full-on comfort food and tossed together this broccoli cheddar chicken casserole, no cans of soup required. If I’m feeling up to it, I’ll blog about this and the finished maple syrup tomorrow. 💚 #hullfamilyhomestead #comfortfood We have 4 1/2 pints of finished maple syrup out of around 25 gallons of sap. We may yet get more after the temperatures this week, so we’ll see. #hullfamilyhomestead #maplesyrup #maplesyrupseason #homesteading When my fingers are dirty, you know it’s been a good weekend. 🌱💚 Sap@is boiling down, bulbs are popping up, and spring crops have been direct sowed. Even with cooler temps and more frost on the way this week, these seeds will be just fine. #hullfamilyhomestead #springgarden Time open the greenhouse doors! Hard to believe it was covered in snow not that long ago. 💚 #hullfamilyhomestead It's officially tree tapping season! Syrup season heralds spring. It's the first early spring food, a sweet reward for making it through another cold and gray winter, arriving with those first bursts of 50 degree, sunny days, just when the forest feels like it's coming back to life. Sap flows when it's freezing at night, forcing the tree to take in more water and nutrients from the ground and then around 45-50 degrees during the day. It needs to be just warm enough to unfreeze those nutrients on the inside of the tree, but not so warm that the tree starts to bud, generally speaking at least 42 degrees. Here in Indiana, as a result, the season lenth varies greatly each year--sometimes giving us a heady month, and others, just a few short days. #hullfamilyhomestead #sapseason #treetaping #maplesyrup #zionsvilleindiana

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