The Elliott Homestead Is Ending
Dear friend,
Lest you be confused, I wanted you to hear it directly from the horse’s mouth. The business that we’ve run from our home for the past sixteen years, The Elliott Homestead, will be ending… well, yesterday.
The Elliott Homestead received endless love and affection from our family, from our followers, from publishers, from television series, from magazines, and countless interactions around the country with others who shared in our vision. It was a forerunner in the homesteading movement, long before social media, reels, SEO rankings, and the word homesteading became commonplace.
I began The Elliott Homestead because I was obsessively interested in building a home that felt at one with the natural world — one that reflected the seasons in table and harvests and one that acknowledged our beautiful and symbiotic relationships with the animals and soil that provides for us. I wanted to know the taste of fresh milk and the smell of fresh bread. I wanted to focus on my home and make sense of this deep and affectionate desire I felt to make babies, plant fruit trees, and pickle beans. I wanted to exist in an online world where that vision made sense and where I could celebrate and learn from others alongside me. It wasn’t there quite yet (this was 16 years ago, y’all)… so I carved out a little corner of the online world and devoted myself to sharing our journey as we built and stumbled our way through the next decade and a half of being entrepreneurs, farmers, and parents to a young and growing family.
And then something happened…
Life.
The daughter that was a week old when I started my blog is now almost sixteen — and there are three more added into the mix. As they’ve grown up, they’ve been active participants in our farm life. They’ve learned to milk, to hoe, to harvest and have grown up with the taste of fresh milk and fresh bread as their normal. They know the names of the weeds, the songs of the birds, and the ebbs and flows of how the seasons affect what lands on our table. As beautiful as this is, it’s not lost on me that they also have their own affinities and affections. Georgia would happily paint away indoors for hours, opting to write novels and illustrate her poetry instead of trellising tomatoes alongside me. The boys, our middle two children, are wonderful farm hands and incredibly helpful. But even they have stepped into their own hobbies and schedules, filling days with woodworking, jiu jitsu, and piano lessons. Our youngest, Juliette, was the only one of our children who was born while we lived here at the cottage. This is the only home she’s ever known. It’s as natural to her to pluck a peach from the tree she’s gauged to be perfectly ripe as it is for her to breathe. But, beautifully, they are their own people. We are here to do right by them, which looks a lot more like navigating transcripts, drivers ed, spiritual growth, and math lessons these days than milking the cow or weeding the pepper patch.
It’s not that our homesteading life has stopped, though pieces of it have. We sold the pigs off years ago during a particularly overwhelming season, we now are able to find sources for quality poultry without the fuss of raising our own (a task neither of us particularly enjoyed), two diagnosed dairy intolerances made the economics of keeping a dairy cow tip in favor of selling her to another farm, and years of acquiring gardening knowledge meant we could harvest as much produce as we needed — too much. There’s still shelves to eat through.
Throughout all these years of sharing and growing, we’ve hardly stood still. At the invitation of the late (and lovely) Carla Bartolucci of Jovial Foods, we found ourselves in Central Italy in 2018. It had been 10 years since my very first visit to Italy — it was a trip that left me full and breathless and awestruck. Now, in 2018, I felt the same emotions bubble up again. I wept more times than I could count during that trip — I was overcome by the beauty I saw there and brought the inspiration to my home table. This became our primary focus: let’s help people fill tables with delicious food (regardless of whether they grow it on their homestead or not.)
In 2021, we were invited by a new friend we met on the internet to visit Sicily in Southern Italy with her and her family. It was a completely providential trip and filled our hearts in ways that we couldn’t quite express.
In 2023, we decided to work our tails off for a year so that we could explore a new region of Italy with our entire family. We settled on Umbria for, again, completely providential reasons. I hope to find the words and time one day to express just how kind the Lord has been in opening up these opportunities and pathways for our family.
In 2024, we went back — hosting a group of 10 guests and sharing with them the intimate setting of rural Umbria. (Will work for travel.)
In 2025, I went back again — this time with a dear friend to celebrate my 40th birthday. A last minute ticket, a free place to stay, and an easy-going travel companion made this trip economical and delightful. Again, God provided for me so kindly.
We sit on the brink of yet another trip in September — this time, with another 9 guests. We’re throwing profit to the wind and taking the whole family, even convincing my parents to tag along for the whole journey.
Our love for this place is woven into the bunches of oregano that hang on our walls, the Deruta pottery that holds our homemade pasta, and the sense of joy that time at the table brings us. It is a place that teaches me simplicity, contentment, stillness, and delight. Those are lessons I never get tired of learning.
(No, we’re not moving to Italy.)
Through the passage of time and distilling down the value of these experiences, we’re looking forward to a future where our work is focused on bringing beautiful stories, recipes, and habits from Italian kitchens into ours — right here at home.
The Elliott Homestead is now Shaye’s Italian Kitchen.
It’s important for you to know that I’m 0% Italian. For some, that may disqualify me, but I don’t mind. I’m an American cook with an Italian appetite and by God’s grace, I’ve been given a wonderful affinity and affection for this ancient land half a world away. I can’t explain why, but I’m excited to finally submit to the siren song.
Welcome to my kitchen, a place where for the past two decades our family has been learning, exploring, and (most importantly) eating well!
While a lot of the from-scratch world sees eating well as a discipline or regimen, I see food as a pleasure and a gift. I make dishes because they’re beautiful and because they encourage us to sit down at the table and savor them slowly. I believe food should delight us and encourage us to share our table with others. At its best, it nourishes both our bodies and our souls.
Much of this inspiration comes from Italy — a country that I fell in love with twenty years ago and that continues to inspire me with every visit and every recipe.
Benvenuti nella mia cucina! Welcome to my kitchen.
So that’s all. I just wanted you to know. I love all of you who have supported and encourage us over these past sixteen years and I look forward to another sixteen years spent bellied up to the table, sipping wine, savoring good company, and giving thanks for the many blessings we find there.
Love,
PS: “Rebranding” is something I’ve never done, so I appreciate your patience while “our growin’ is showin’.”
PPS: Cultivating the Beautiful Life, this newsletter, will now be “Confessions From My Kitchen.” As always, the long-form written content I share here will dive into my heart and life, through the lens of the kitchen and time spent at the table.
PPPS: Love you. Thanks for your support.
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