Name. That. HOMESTEAD!!!

H Uilis wrote:I am loving reading other people's clever names and fun storied. The name of our little homestead is 'Ina Bpraiseach Aoibhinn' which is Gaelic for 'In a Beautiful Mess' (Talk about folk not knowing how to pronounce it!) We are both heavy on the Irish and Scottish ancestry and well our land was (and is) rather a mess...no neat raised beds or straight rows here! Most folk, even our other homesteading friends, seem to want to tidy the place up. But she is lovely and productive and we feel blessed in our beautiful mess whether other people 'get it' or not.

I'd LOVE the correct pronunciation, please? Hubs And I are both of Scots/Irish descent, so I'm always curious. The last word looks (to me) like it might be pronounced 'Avynn', or similarly...?

My parents named their house HYPHKA which in Greek is pronounced Eureka which of course means "we've found it".  It used to amuse them the few people who would understand what it meant.

Reckless Anticipation. I just blurted it out one day and loved it 😊

I'd LOVE the correct pronunciation, please? Hubs And I are both of Scots/Irish descent, so I'm always curious. The last word looks (to me) like it might be pronounced 'Avynn', or similarly...?

Close!
Ee-nah bprah-shook ee-yah-vyn
(We named our dog in Gaelic too which is cause for hilarity when the vet tries to pronounce it!)

H Uilis wrote:
Close!
Ee-nah bprah-shook ee-yah-vyn
(We named our dog in Gaelic too which is cause for hilarity when the vet tries to pronounce it!)

Very cool, thank you! My kids all have Celtic names, too. The most Gaelic being Keelin Siobhan, my youngest.

Tereza Okava wrote:Kali, my mother was a big fan of Crockett's Victory Garden. She always had a garden, although she usually got distracted from it between all her responsibilities and it didn't yield much. I didn't learn til I was much older that as a girl she pretty much survived on the garden of the neighbor lady who took her in when her own mom split (lots of stuff we didn't talk about in our family when I was little). The garden represented safety.
I also get very emotional thinking about people who come together to grow food when things get tough- I've lived in a few countries where people did this, independently feeling they needed to take responsibility for making change, and I think it represents the force for good that still exists.

Tereza, thank you for this post and your stories. I get emotional over the same things. My mother abandoned me as an infant and my paternal grandparents took me in. Lots of stuff in my family we never talked about either, and never will be spoken of. Also lots of beautiful stories out there of people who cared for others. Sounds like your mother was a lucky woman in that sense.

We bought mountain land 16 years ago, with no intention to do anything other than have fun up there (we're still weekenders, but have slowly improved the property in a permaculture-inspired way.) Around that time, my grandmother turned 100 years old. I called her on her birthday, and told her we bought land. Somehow "land" turned into "farm" and she told all my cousins that we bought a farm. A few weeks later at her birthday party, all my cousins were kidding me about slopping the pigs and such  A few weeks after that, we were wandering around the pasture and found an old plastic pink flamingo. Years before, someone (not me) decided I liked flamingoes and people started giving me flamingo things. My mother-on-law was an antiques dealer, and she was constantly showing up with flamingo things. So we ended up with Flamingo Farm.

I finally moved from the city life when I was 60 yrs old.  Got 8.5 acres with a home and shop.  Put in an RV pad with electric and seasonal water.  Rigged a dump station.  Have a greenhouse foundation, posts in for a garden.  A hundred yard shooting range.  Everything I'd dreamed of all of my adult life is here or will be.  It took a long time so I've named it "Bout Time Acres".  I'm truly Blessed!

Inn Flagrante Delicto......till the wife looked it up.

Bought our place 20 years ago or so as a get away/future retirement home. Life in the city/military/tech industry was fast and complicated.   It is called Simple Haven.  

We are a mile and a half off the county road so to get to it I named the two tack road "Mt N Plain View Road" (One can seen each depending on whether you're coming or going) And our 1/2 mile driveway, "Simple Haven Road".   We put up  the green street signs on steel poles, like in the city. Ha!  We had a hand carved sign on the cabin porch but it blew away.  

After a wild fire took all the tree wind block  we may have to change it to Insane Winds.

Our name was easy. The "neighborhood " we live in has been called Blooming Grove since the region was settled.  We are Blooming Grove Farm

Pig's Landing! I love it! We live in a sailboat with our two little darlings and, as is tradition with boats we necessarily find our selves naming them.
Golden Goose II is the name of our 30' ship. Her predecessor was Golden Goose... a minivan that I built a campertop on and that housed our wee family for 5 months in 2018. The van was gold-ish in colour and had had proposed names of Tickety Boo and... Abomination.  The fable of the Golden Goose is dear to me as it is a metaphor for the beautiful simple life we lead... being cautious to not kill the Golden Goose to get more gold faster. Great thread! Thanks!

The naming of our family homestead was inspired by the South African "Afrikaners". While visiting there from Canada a couple times I was amazed at the knowledge that was shared with me, including food, land, health, fire (braii) and so much more. They also had names for their homes (not only farms and homesteads) and usually a nickname as well. And when they spoke of there home they always used the name like the home was a family member not a material possession.

This really stuck with me and when I finally moved to the country and acquired this piece of paradise about 10 years ago, I searched for a name but had no luck until recently. When I moved here we had lots of wildlife but no wild turkeys. Now they have migrated here from northern Idaho they tell me and there is lots of them (now the turkeys outnumber the gophers). So it dawned on me that maybe as a tribute to those Dutch South Afrikans I would name it "Kalkoen Hoek". I don't speak dutch and I had to use a translator online but If I am understanding correctly this translates to "Turkey Corner".

I am proud to be a turkey in this corner...

Our place has  railroad tunnel directly under the house about 400' below it.
You hear the trains down there and the sound stops as soon as the engine is within the tunnel. On the opposite side of our property is the exit, and you hear the train come out and blow the horn while traversing the short bridge to the tunnel on the other side of the river. No matter which side you're on, the point where the train vanishes, is where our property begins. So we called it The Vanishing Point from the start, many months before we bought it.

We've leaned heavily on Wind In The Willows and Winnie The Pooh for names. The house and outbuildings are Toad Hall, favorite spots around the property are Pooh Corner, Tigger's Repose, Eeyore's Gloomy Place and Pooh's Thoughtful Spot.

Being up in age, we both have aches and pains daily. We commiserate all the time and arrived at the name 'Belly Acres' for the homestead to forewarn visitors of what they will have to listen to.

This thread is golden! I’m so glad I found it! Our two acre, hope-to-be homestead is being planted in various nut trees. I really wanted a name from the best animal story ever written (Watership Down) so I’m thinking Nuthanger Farm? My daughter says it’s a disaster area out there and wants to call it Farmageddon.

My two children are named Joyce and Vassili; kingdom in Greek is vassilio; soooo... The greek name is To Vassili'o tis haras (which is Greek for joy) and Joy'ce kingdom in English
I loved reading all your stories, thank you

i’ve actually got a different farm name that i use to market produce i grow, but we’ve been calling our property The Taco, because ‘it folds up on the sides’ - it’s a long thin appalachian valley with a creek down the middle and fairly steep sides.

After living on these suburban 3 acres for about 7 years, the place needed a name. I kept trying to think of something bird-themed.  But that year saw a wave of red hawthorn seedlings like nothing I have seen before or since.  So Hawthorn Farm it is!  I reflexively say "Hawthorn-Farm-no-E-at-the-end-of-Hawthorn" when people are asking about my farm or writing a check.  

The name ties in nicely with our motto "Hawthorn Heals The Heart," since hawthorn is a great herbal heart medicine.  And our somewhat-covert mission here, along with growing great food, is the healing of the heart.

So tuning in to the land gave us a name that has grown beyond what I could have come up with on my own!

F Agricola, did you end up with a name? Because the one that jumped out at me from your post is Morningside, when you mention the record, plus with everyone gravitating to the eastern side of the house.

Carla, I adore your Pig's Landing story!

Love everyone's stories. Our tiny piece (maybe 1/10 acre?) of productive suburban land full of plants raises mixed feelings in those more used to the sea of tidy mown lawns surrounding us. Those who love it stop by to tell us how much it reminds up of their grandma's long-gone cottage garden. Those who hate it call it "the jungle". So my personal nickname for the garden is The Jungle, in a non-disparaging way. I'm glad to have helped create a little piece of jungle in the former lawn monoculture. The birds and hedgehogs now living here seem to think the same.

I still hope to steward a larger piece of land some day. I don't have a name planned. Once I find the land, I'll also find the name.

When we were looking for our forever place, we worked hard at obtaining two different properties where unfortunately the deals fell through.  The first was a former hunting lodge on 14 acres of property alongside a creek and included a large pond with a nesting island.  The 'shack' on the property was a large hunting cabin with a huge old Franklin woodstove in it.  Fell in love with the place.  It was well shaded and we were quite disappointed when we weren't able to finalize a deal on the place that to this day we still refer to as 'Shady Shack'.  
The second was in a small waterfront community alongside a canal and plenty of wetlands in the nearby Conservation Land.  There were always geese and ducks around and the shack on the place needed to be torn down and rebuilt.  The owners who hadn't used the property in years, did not want to part with it though.  We had rough plans drawn up for the property that we nicknamed 'Ducky Dive' because it needed so much work.
Many years later, we have finally moved into a place that has about 14 acres of trees behind us.  Lots of wildlife - deer, wild turkeys, coyotes, owls, etc.  We started calling this place 'The LaSalle Branch' which was the town name where it was located and was our second home for a while during renovations.  Whenever I needed a tool, it seemed it was always at the 'The LaSalle Branch' and not at our other home 45 minutes away.  When friends would ask, where we'd be at any given time, it finally got shortened to just 'The Branch'  As we get more settled in, I think we'll find a better name that fits the property better.

Our homestead here in Belize is named Rancho los Amigos.

We're still unnamed because "Squalid Acres" is apparently ridiculous and I have to come up with something better.

We live between the Sheepscot and Damariscotta rivers on the Boothbay peninsula in Maine, so we've named our homestead Between the Rivers. It's wooded and rugged, but we've cut out our gardens and raise chickens and for the first time this year pigs. We love it here. Merry Christmas to one and all!

My late sister named the farm Bizarro Acres (Where superheroes go to retire)... She really was a superhero!

Where we will be moving to, in Western West Virginia with my youngest daughter and her family of 4 children and 4 dogs (2 are wolf dogs), it seems ive hit the proverbial nail on its proverbial head. HOWELL HOMESTEAD.  Their last name is also.... Howell. So the howling "dogs" and children and plans of raising our own food and (alternative)  herbal medicine.

The Purple Dragon Inn and Retreat

I had decided I wanted to name my home a few years ago. I'd been living in the same home for about 7 years. It was a 750sqft ranch style house on about .3 acres; full of perennial gardens including a wide variety of herbs and edibles. It took me a long time to decide but I finally settled on 'Comfry Cottage' we sold the house a few months later. I'm now mulling over the new property and just staying open for the name to come to me. I like 'Our Avalon' but that almost feels to commercial?...I'm not sure... I think I'll sit with that for a bit.

Humble Beginnings... because that's what it was for us when we started and what it will still be when we're slowing down or dead. It's a recognition that our dreams and ambitions for the place will always exceed what we're able to get done there but that it's ok because it's just the price of having big dreams. Not everything will get done and we will never know all that we want to but we'll keep working towards it regardless. It causes us to reminisce about where our journey started, what we've accomplished, and inevitably keeps us dreaming about what to do next on our humble homestead.

We called our farm “Bright Lake Farm” because, at the head of our long driveway in the late afternoon when the sun is low in the sky, you can see the bright reflection of the sun shining off the surface of the lake on the farm blazing through the dark forest.

After a lifetime of wandering, I have finally come to rest, so..... "Soldier's Rest Farm"

We looked for a farm for a long, long time. Not as long in actual years as some of you but it felt like an eternity, especially since our family was growing and our little townhouse was not.

And one night in reading God's Word, I came across:

[Gen 26:18-22 NKJV] And Isaac dug again the wells of water which they had dug in the days of Abraham his father, for the Philistines had stopped them up after the death of Abraham. He called them by the names which his father had called them. Also Isaac's servants dug in the valley, and found a well of running water there. But the herdsmen of Gerar quarreled with Isaac's herdsmen, saying, "The water is ours." So he called the name of the well Esek, because they quarreled with him. Then they dug another well, and they quarreled over that [one] also. So he called its name Sitnah. And he moved from there and dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it. So he called its name Rehoboth, because he said, "For now the LORD has made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land."

We are Rehoboth Farm: our own little corner where the LORD made room for us, and where we pray that we will be fruitful for Him.

We're starting out on 1/5 acre lot in a fairly rural suburb. Our raspberry bramble has taken over the corner in the past 7 years. And we just got two Nigerian Dwarf kids! I've been calling it Smajordbruk in honor of my Norse ancestors since we moved in, and now we're finally making progress in making it an actual smallholding.