About/Bio

Common Sense Homesteading is using common sense to be more self-reliant, with an emphasis on home food production.  We’ll share stories, recipes, ideas and hopefully a few laughs. Your homestead can be anything from acreage in the country to an apartment in the city – it’s a mindset, not a location. It’s an attitude that says, “I can do that!”

We share information that is:

Practical: Martha Stewart is a domestic goddess, but we’re not all going to have specialized sauce pans and meticulous table settings. With standard cookware and basic tools for the yard and garden, you should be able to tackle most of what I do. Kitchen gadgets and more power may make it easier, but I prefer multi-task workhorses to uni-taskers.

Durable: If I recommend an item, such as an appliance, it’ll be something that lasts and gets a lot of use in my home. I hate “throw away” items.

Wholesome: Recipes focus on seasonal, local ingredients and “real food” – not processed items from a box. I’ve added live culture foods (like kefir, kombucha, yogurt, sauerkraut and other ferments) to my kitchen to improve my family’s health and preserve the harvest, and I hope you will, too.

Traditional: Folk wisdom became part of the culture because it gave results. Before modern labs and fancy test equipment, people tried things out themselves and shared what worked. Herbal lore has been passed down for generations. We feature new twists on old favorites, too, like preserving with honey and less sugar.

Innovative: Living “green” and energy efficient have become trendy, but they make sense economically and environmentally, too. Our home is Energy Star and Green Built certified, and when I compared the numbers, we were in the top 10% of homes in the U.S. for energy efficiency. Many of the features in our home can be included when remodeling or updating, as well as for new construction.

Welcome to our homestead! We look forward to getting to know you.  Let’s roll up those sleeves and get to work.

A little more information about little ol’ me…

Me, at around age one, out in the garden.

I was raised on a Northwest Wisconsin dairy farm where frugality and providing food for the family were a way a life. My mom was a great inspiration to me. She always cooked and baked from scratch, gardened extensively, and kept the pantry well-stocked with home preserved foods.

I earned my BS in Mathematics at UW Superior, and attended graduate school at UW Madison, where I studied renewable energy. After graduation, I moved to Green Bay, married my college sweetheart, August, and began work at Public Energy Systems (PES). PES provided repair and installation of solar hot water and solar heating systems for homes and businesses, and operated the world’s largest flat plate collector solar thermal array. Unfortunately, circumstances change, natural gas was cheap for a time, and the giant collector array was torn down. At this point I was also expecting my first child, and so I came home to be a fulltime mom. Baby one was followed by baby two, my beautiful boys, August and Duncan, whom I now homeschool.

We spent nine years in the suburbs of Green Bay where we cultivated large vegetable and flower gardens as well as fruits and culinary herbs. The boys were able to graze their way around the yard. In 2005, we relocated to 35 acres in Kewaunee County, where we designed and built our Wisconsin Green Built and Energy Star certified home. The home has an array of “green” features, including:

• Solar Water Heating and Passive Solar Design
• Insulated Concrete Form construction
• An Attached Greenhouse
• A Root Cellar
• Handicap Accessibility
• Environmentally Friendly Materials

The large organic gardens contain over 100 varieties of fruits and vegetables, most of which are heirlooms. We freeze, water bath can, pressure can, dry, and ferment to preserve food, and use the root cellar, cool storage, cold frames, and green house to extend the harvest without additional energy inputs. I am also interested in natural health and wellness, including herbalism, wildcrafting, homebrew probiotics and ferments.

I’m a mom, a researcher and an occasional “gastronaut”.  I suspect I now qualify as a “domestic engineer”.   I appreciate appropriate application of duct tape and bigger hammers.

I have written for a number of local and national publications including Taste of Home and Countryside magazines, The Healthy Independent and Healthy Thoughts.

Questions?  Contact me at laurieneverman@gmail.com.