Farm-Raised Kids Parenting Strategies for Balancing Family Life with Running a Small Farm or Homestead

Essential parenting advice and practical strategies for engaging kids in farm life—to create opportunities for play and learning, to foster resilience and independence, and to keep kids busy while you're running your farm or backyard homestead. 

In this first-ever book on the topic, author Katie Kulla offers her own hard-won wisdom, gleaned from more than a decade of raising kids while running a CSA farm with her husband. The book also features invaluable advice and insights from other farmer-parents and a wealth of practical tips and ideas for how to engage children on the farm—including activities for learning and play, and suggestions for how to enlist kids in chores and other farm responsibilities. Included are experiences and stories of diverse farm families encompassing a variety of identities and backgrounds across geographic locations, race and genders, family sizes, and farm scales, to represent the real face of farming today.

Katie Kulla and her husband, Casey, own and operate Oakhill Organics, a CSA farm in Yamhill, Oregon. They have two children, ages 10 and 13, both of whom were born on the farm and are homeschooled. Katie holds a master’s degree in creative nonfiction writing; she regularly writes for Growing for Market and has also been published in Farmer-ish, Geez, and GreenPrints. 

Foreword by Lynn Byczynski
Introduction: Life on Our Farm

Part 1: The Farm Family Lifestyle
Chapter 1 Why Mix Farming/Homesteading and Children?
Chapter 2 Play and Fun on the Farm
Chapter 3 Living the Seasons
Chapter 4 Chores and Farm Work
Chapter 5 Learning and Homeschooling
Chapter 6 Finding Balance and addressing stress

Part 2: Ages and Stages in the Farm Family
Chapter 7 Preparing for the Parenthood Journey
Chapter 8 Pregnancy, Birth, and Postpartum Healing
Chapter 9 A Baby on the Farm
Chapter 10 Arranging Childcare
Chapter 11 Navigating Work and Family Dynamics
Chapter 12 Starting a Farm after Having Kids
Chapter 13 The Needs of Tweens and Teens
Chapter 14 Farm Kids All Grown Up

Afterword
Featured Families and Farms
Suggested Reading and Other Resources
Acknowledgments