Welcome! A little bit about us.

Hi! We are Beth and Joe Doyen, creators of Mainely Homesteading.

As my husband and I are now starting this new blogging journey, along with many other new journeys in our life, including homesteading, I figured it might be fun to give readers a little backstory about myself, Joe and our family. 

We both grew up in the Midwest, Joe was raised in a small town called Glenwood in Iowa while I was born in Omaha Nebraska. In middle school, I moved to Colorado and lived there through college. Part of my life was spent in Omaha, but I really feel that Colorado is my home. I grew up in a small town called Gunnison, very close to a ski area named crested Butte, which has gotten more popular over the years. Living in Colorado really brought me closer to nature because of the sheer beauty around, so close and just waiting to be explored. It completely and entirely molded me into the person I am now, and I am so grateful for it. The outdoor lifestyle and healthy living that is so prevalent in Colorado really open my eyes to all of the chemicals in our everyday products from everything we use all the way to our food. This began my dreams of owning land, growing my own food, and learning to make my own household products. I also began an interest in herbalism, which I hope to continue to gain knowledge about.

My husband and I met in college at Western State University in Gunnison, Colorado. This is ironic because both of our families are from Nebraska/Iowa (Glenwood is only 20 minutes away from Omaha, Nebraska) but we ended up meeting in Colorado. This, I believe, was serendipitous as there are so many coincidences and circumstances that could have led to us meeting before having met in Colorado but, I won’t bore you with the details.

We finished college and had our first baby boy in Colorado, both graduating with bachelor’s degrees in biology, but we quickly realized that the cost of living in our town and surrounding areas was too high and a job opportunities were too slim. I wanted to stay home with our new baby as long as possible, so we decided to move back to the Midwest, AKA Iowa. 

We moved in with Joe’s mother to save up and buy our own home. Apparently, our attempt at saving money wasn’t a good plan either because within six months of moving back to Iowa in 2019, a devastating flood hit many areas of the country, including Pacific junction, Iowa. We evacuated just in time and by the next day floodwaters were up to the roof of her and our home we lost everything that we had, but it also made us realize that material possessions are not what is important to us.

This gave us real perspective on the dangers of climate change and the continued threat as we and our children get older. This really drove home for us that we wanted to begin homesteading so that we could rely on ourselves for all of our essential needs. We knew that we did not want to stay in the Midwest forever as we craved that feeling we had in Colorado and wanted to raise our children with that feeling. While the Midwest is a wonderful place to raise a family, it just wasn’t our place. 

However, now being homeless, we moved in with Joe‘s brother for a short time and began looking for a home to purchase so that we could build some equity and use that to move to another state and live out our dreams. Having lived in Colorado throughout college as well, Joe agreed that we wanted to move to a state with a more outdoor lifestyle and unmistakable beauty, with many options for activities within very short distances. We began looking for a home in the Omaha area. This was in 2019, and the housing market was very “hot“, but not as hot as it was about to get in 2020 when interest rates became zero during the pandemic. However, houses at this time were selling very quickly and we found it difficult to find a home that would fit our wants. We ended up choosing a home with a very small yard, the city of Bellevue, out of necessity and with very few options. My mother-in-law was without a home too, and she eventually moved in with us. I still feel very grateful we were able to purchase a home following such a traumatic event. Thank you, FHA loans with low down payment!

It was a great starter home but definitely on the smaller side and did not give us much room to garden. Unfortunately, the backyard was very shaded by a large tree, but we made it happen with what little space we had and started learning the ropes of gardening and canning our harvests.

We had our second little boy shortly after moving into our starter home and feverishly began to research a place to raise our family. we had originally thought we might move to a place similar to Colorado such as one of the Dakotas, Wyoming or Montana. However, many of the areas that we researched were again out of our price range. One day I happened upon a an absolutely beautiful blueberry farm in a very remote area of coastal Maine. The beauty of that farm got me to be begin research into East Coast areas. This beautiful place is called Josh Pond farm in Whiting Maine, check them out!

We were pleased to discover that there were many areas in Maine where land was quite affordable, and many houses came with multiple acres.

Fast-forward through a few more years of research, a visit to Bangor and surrounding areas, and saving to move across the country. I got pregnant with our third son and near the end of the pregnancy we realized we could very soon make this dream reality. We are a testament to the saying “there is no right time”. I was 34 weeks pregnant when we officially made the decision to follow through with the move, with the understanding that we would be moving cross-country, over 1500 miles, either heavily pregnant and about to give birth any day or with a very fresh newborn baby and two young boys. We dove in headfirst and went for it.

We went under contract for our new home and then sold our house in Nebraska within days. It must’ve been the stress of the situation or maybe just the way it was supposed to be, but I went into labor a little bit early at 37 weeks. We ended up on our cross-country moving trip with a four-week-old baby. My mother-in-law was all in with us and wanted to move too. She packed up her two horses in a horse trailer and set out on the long trip too! 

We bought a home in Newport, Maine outside of the Bangor area on 34 acres, site unseen. This was all an insane process and something I will go into more detail about in another blog post.

And that’s it, that’s how we made it here today and that’s how we decided to begin our homesteading and now blogging journey to document all of our progress on the new property. There’s a lot of it to be made, as we bought a neglected and overgrown property that needs a lot of work.

Now that I’ve blabbered on for long enough, hopefully you made it this far. If you did, we are so happy that you’re here and hope you will join us in our documentation of renovating and cultivating our property from square one and all things homesteading.

Thanks for being here!