About Dani

Inspiration for a simple life, practical advice, pasture rotation in action and farm photography tips to help you be an awesome modern day homesteading family!

Welcome to Desolate Homestead! My name is Dani Welton. Providing wholesome nourishing foods for my family is my passion. Helping and inspiring other families to do the same brings me such joy! My husband, Curtis, and I have 3 beautiful (human) kids. I want nothing more than for them to live joyful, healthy lives. It is so important for our society to return to being connected to the food we eat, and it starts with us. You and me.

Desolate Homestead is the place for encouragement, inspiration, and motivation for your own homestead, and real food journey. I also share ideas and personal experience about restoring deserted land to lush pasture, and caring for animals like my Grandparents did. Desolate Homestead was created to inspire you to raise food with your family, and enjoy the little things in life, like a perfectly cooked lamb chop from a lamb you raised, and carrots that grew in your garden.

We have big dreams for this life, and encourage you to dream big.

What You’ll Find at Desolate Homestead

Recipes

Farm to table recipes – I strive to create recipes that utilize in season food. We follow the Wise Traditions diet, and my recipes will also follow the guidelines. I use raw dairy from my goats, einkorn wheat, real butter, fresh eggs, fruit from our orchard, veggies from our garden and utilize every part of the animals that we raise.

Pasture Rotation

Pasture farming is another passion of mine. We strive to raise our animals on grass, and improve the soil while we are at it. We are small scale compared to many others that we learned our strategies from (Gene Logsdon, Joel Salitin just to name a few), so we are sharing our journey. I mean, raising lush pasture in the middle of the Desert that will support our herd year round is something special. If we can do it, anyone can do it!

Photography

Good photos have helped us share our story with others in a way we weren’t able to before. While I was striving to improve my photography skills we learned that it helps us sell our animals and produce better. Farm photography is fun, and something I want to share with others who want to learn how to capture their favorite homestead moments.

Farm Life

While we love to be productive, sometimes life is tough. I love to write about life on the farm. The good, the bad, the inspirational, and the ugly. I hope that these stories will help you connect to another real homesteader. Life is REAL, it’s not perfect. Life with animals, a farm, and kids is crazy.

About Our Property

In 2013 we got serious about searching for a little acre that we could have chickens and some dairy goats on. We found a 3.5 acre property about 40 miles SE of Pheonix, AZ. Only 1/4 of the 3.5 acre property was being managed by the previous owner. It was dry and covered in weeds, but we could see the potential in it. We wanted a fixer upper, and we sure got it! We have water rights (irrigation) to water our property. We raise Nubian dairy goats, Katahdin sheep for meat. A few varieties of rare breed chickens, heritage turkeys, and it’s my dream to have a jersey cow.