Welcome to The Crocker Cottage!
Hey there!
If you are visiting this blog you are probably wondering who we are. Well, we decided to take this opportunity with our inaugural blog to give you a brief overview of our family, our home, and our mission.
The Garden
Where to start. The garden can be a powerful place, a place where I feel close to God, a place where I am reminded to be patient and slow down; similar to my time baking sourdough, it’s a place to embrace beauty and feel gratitude.
It’s been an interesting journey. As we head into our 9th year working through all the trials and tribulations as gardeners, I have to take a moment to pause; I am amazed at how far we have come. The evolution of the yard has grown from a wooded swamp, to a full blown garden. It’s amazing that our initial curiosity has lead us to where we are now. As of this writing, we can truly say “ We are gardeners and homemakers!”
Now, we do not claim to be master gardeners, but we do have a passion and desire to get back “down to earth”, as they say, and we have learned a few things over the years, embracing the failures, as well as the successes; and If we can pass along the joy of growing your own food from one little seed, then we have made a difference and hopefully that will result in passing that knowledge on to many generations to come.
How it Began
When we first moved to this over half an acre property in 2011, we did not really have any intention of becoming gardeners. In fact, our gardening journey did not really begin until 4 years later in 2015. But first, we had to convert the backyard from a swamp to a functioning yard, which culminated in 2015 with Brandon having the pool filled and using some of the extra soil from our property to start our first garden–I still miss that pool sometimes.
The garden was not much at first, just an 8x8 plot with raised beds I had found at Costco. But from then on, we got bit by the bug and slowly started adding more and more raised beds in the backyard. It was such a joy to grow our own food and to raise our daughter with an understanding of where her food comes from.
I would have to say that 2020 was the watershed year for our home. It was this year that we made a lot of life changing decisions; we decided to pull Fiona out of public school in order to homeschool full-time, I began my journey as a baker and we tripled the size of our garden, converting part of the front yard to garden space and building a 12x10 greenhouse. This brought many new challenges that we welcomed whole-heartedly. This was the moment we committed to making our home our sanctuary.
So, I guess that’s a short preview of our journey. The decision to start this website really began over the past two years as we were discovering that many of our friends were inspired by what we were doing and had many questions for us. Also, we loved sharing our harvest with friends and neighbors, trading eggs for tomatoes or giving lavender as gifts!
I am looking forward to seeing where this little adventure will take us. We have some big plans for the future that we look forward to sharing with you all. Our mission for The Crocker Cottage is to create a community where there is joy in the home and in the garden and where we all bear good fruit! So keep checking back in with us for future blogs and videos.