I live in the Central San Joaquin Valley, near the International Agri-Center (www.internationalagricenter.org) home of the World Ag Expo (www.worldagexpo.com).  I’ve been living in Tulare county since I left the Navy in 1987.

I’m a Navy Brat, Veteran and mom of a Navy Veteran.   I’m not native to California.  I was born is Clinton, South Carolina and was raised all over the U. S. and Cuba.

I never knew the way I was raised had a “name”, homesteading!   What I mean is I was raised cooking from scratch, in cast iron pans.  My mom taught me to sew at the age of nine.  By age twelve I was cooking meals from scratch for a family of six.  I learned to can throughout my teen years by my parents.  Most of what we put up was jams, jellies and preserves.   other skills include fishing, both fresh and salt water, frog gigging, and some gardening.  My dad insisted I learn to drive a car with a manual transmission.  Thus I learned to drive our family’s 1964 Ford Fairlane with three on the column. I’ve driven almost every class of vehicle from ambulances to tractors and cotton pickers.  I own  1989 GMC 1 ton dually and a gooseneck trailer.

I have an A.A. in Liberal Arts, an A.S. in Health Science and a B. S. in Dairy Science.  While my son was in Pony Club, I taught horse nutrition, maintenance and well-being.  Also did formatting of horseshow programs the club was involved in on computer.