I’ve lived in my current house for almost 6 years now. From the ages of 17- 31, before we bought our current homestead, I moved 23 times for work, school, and jobs. Twenty-three times!  And that’s just what I remember. That’s essentially moving every 7 months.  I’ve lived in a tent, a trailer, an apartment, multiple dry cabins with no plumbing, basically out of my car, and all kinds of ramshackle houses, from Northern California up the west coast to Alaska.  So aside from the house that I grew up in, this is the longest place I’ve ever lived.

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  The house I grew up in.

Now I admit, I have a bit of the travel bug, it’s lessened now that I have kids, but sometimes the urge to move to a new place hits me, new faces, new people, new weather, new food, new lifestyle, it all sounds good. Shake things up a bit and get outside my comfort zone.  But…..I like my place, I’ve always wanted animals, to raise my own food, be kind to the planet, learn some old-timey skills (I love Foxfire books), and teach my kids to be self-sufficient, and now that I’m somewhat staying put, it’s a lot easier to do that. I also really enjoy knowing so many people again, and them knowing me.

I grew up in a rural town in Oregon, the kind of place where almost everyone is related and you graduate high school with the same people you went to kindergarten with. I didn’t know how nice it was living where everyone knew your name until I moved all the time and nobody knew me. So because of all those reasons and more, it seems like I could be at my current house for a while, although you never know, so I decided I need a name for my homestead.

Now I’m pretty bad at naming things. Let me give you two examples. My first son, Finnegan Liam Scurr, did not have a name until day 3 after he was born. I’m pretty sure he finally had a name because lacking sleep I may be slightly yelled at my husband, sister, mom, and dad, ‘That name is good enough, who cares!’.  Turns out, not only was it was good enough, it was a great name. Case number two, I had twins in 2014 and they were called Baby A and Baby B for at least 5 days in the hospital until we picked some names. Even the nurses were giving us grief. Annabelle Hayden Scurr and Imre Augustus (for the main character in Lonesome Dove) Scurr, just in case you were wondering. So with that reputation, it is no wonder I have not picked a name for my homestead. You just can’t name things on a whim, it’s for life.

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Back to homestead naming. I need something that fits me, could potentially travel with me if we change places that we live in, and represents my lifestyle choices. That makes sense.  Here are some ideas I came up:

1. Black Rabbit Farm ( I have so many black rabbits, always black rabbits).
2. The Scurr Homestead (sounds like we’re a bunch of pirates).
3. Maybe something with an Alaskan word in it: Arctic, Taiga, Tundra, Cold, Fen, Mountains, Denali… Wolverine sounds pretty tough….permafrost, Aurora, frost heaves, tussocks, glacier, Amanita,  ……..
4. Or maybe a bird name, I do study birds: Plover, Blackbird, Warbler, Thrush, Snipe, Woodpecker, Gryfalcon those are cool, Ptarmigan (nobody from out of Alaska would be able to pronounce it)……
5. Or plant names: Black Spruce, Fireweed, Rhubarb or some latin names…Salix (willows), Betula (birches), Alnus (alders)……..
6. Family-centered type names: sustainable, farm, home, busy…

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That’s it, I’m out of ideas.  I’ve been percolating on the idea of a homestead name for a couple years now and writing this post for over a week, and yet I  have not made it very far on the whole naming thing.

So now it’s your turn. I need inspiration or suggestions to help me put down roots and give my homestead the name it deserves.