I am wrapping up my writing project for 2025 and starting to think about what 2026 will look like for me. I know what I do not want – daily job searching on LinkedIn, Idealist, and Indeed. My brain needs more than that, especially after a year of this daily routine. As I was doing my morning river walk, it came to me. My next book needs to be about my year of homesteading on the Chicken Creek Compound. I learned so much – about myself, gardening, and accepting the quiet, mostly alone. Just like my Smooch book, I have so many stories from that year and so many positive memories. This book feels like a good closure activity for our time in South Carolina, and a way for me to remember that time in a way I want to remember.

I spent most of the day working on the outline in my head – solar panel struggles, learning geothermal heating and cooling, all the snakes, my writing pond space, all the new plants in garden zone 8b, my eccentric neighbor, the hunting dogs, wild boar, red-cockeyed woodpeckers, my hydroponics “growing room,” my brother from another mother friend, Mister Cocky, swamp life, eating something I grew with every single meal.

My working title – My Year on the Chicken Creek Compound: Chickens, Soil, and Starting Over.

I experienced so many changes during that time period – becoming an empty nest parent, moving to rural SC with no friends after almost 3 decades of living in a liberal bubble that I loved, and living mostly solo with my pandemic puppies. I found creative ways to find friendships online (hello National Newfoundland Rescue), leaned into my writing in a way I never had before, and l learned a lot about myself as an aging woman with adult children.

I am researching by reading the book Cross Creek. A good friend said I reminded her of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, which I took as an AMAZING compliment.

I truly believe that life lessons come to us when we need to learn them. I will always treasure my year of homesteading at Chicken Creek. And now it will become a book.

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