Welcome to the Rohdehof Homestead! We are glad that you took the time to stop by!
Perhaps you’d like to know a little bit more about who we are and what we are all about.
Nathanael
grew up partially in the Northwoods of Wisconsin and partially in Latin America. His life-long passion has been his German and Swedish heritage, ancient and Medieval history, working with his hands, and escaping into the backwoods as much as possible.
He has a double major Bachelor’s degree in German and Scandinavian Studies with a minor in Anthropology. He loves languages and researching obscure historical facts and traditions about how folk lived a thousand years ago.
Amongst other things, he has spent time working on unconventional organic farms both in Germany and Great Britain, logging in the woods, doing historical reenactment, and working on an archaeological field school dig.
Over the years, he has developed a love for working with hand-tools and trying to make the things he wants instead of buying them. He carves wooden utensils, builds longbows and crossbows, forges steel bushcraft knives and ancient-style skis. He also dabbles in archery and historical sword and buckler fencing.
He also likes brewing odd, rustic farmhouse-style beers and hard apple cider on an open fire in the backyard.
Needless to say, he has built up his own perspective of the past centuries and how it relates to us in the 21st century. He looks forward to sharing that with you!
Emily
grew up moving around the Midwest and living in a total of six different states. Where she felt most at home is where she had field and forest to roam around and silence to take in.
She has a Bachelor’s degree in Theology from Benedictine College and has worked as a Catholic missionary for college students. She loves reading and learning from the writings of St Thomas Aquinas and seeking how they apply to her life now. Deep down, she always knew that she simply wanted to be a wife and a mother.
She also has always loved history which was a mutual interest that first connected her with Nathanael when they met at college.
She is fully committed to home-schooling her children: a task that is beautiful, but by no means easy or as idyllic as one may think. The rewards of this commitment include an intimate understanding and interaction with each of her children and a freedom to allow them to learn organically and naturally in a home setting.
Emily has also developed an interest in “honest food” that is healthy for a growing family. She bakes sourdough-based recipes and is a big proponent of milling flour fresh to capture all the benefits of the grain.
We are blessed with a vibrant and growing family; and through that blessing comes the equal challenge of defining what sort of environment we wish our children to grow up in. Starting with our traditional Catholic faith, our lives and identities are further moulded by the exploration of our Scandinavian and German heritage, the natural world around us and deep love for history and the cultural past. All that we learn, we wish to integrate into our lives of today.
We are attempting to share what we have to offer the world. We seek to enrich the culture of the home through the rediscovery and experience of ancient ways and methods of everyday living and translate them into the modern domestic life.
Bushcraft, homesteading, baking, sewing, historical cookery, woodwork and simple blacksmithing are examples of ways we seek flavour our lives and the lives of our children. It is our hope and prayer that they will grow up knowing that adventure and exploration start, not in far-off exotic places or in extraordinary circumstances but within the sanctuary of the Home.
VALUES TO GO BY…
- Tools are just as important as books; and you can’t have one without the other.
- You are not meant to bring the Past back. Nor are you meant to break from it.
- Look to utilize what is unique and readily available in your locale.
- Exploration starts in your own backyard. Don’t miss out on it while it is so close at hand!
- Seek to learn and create things you will actually want to use and integrate into your life and not just show off to your peers.
- Modern technology is not necessarily your enemy. You just need to be the complete boss in that relationship.
- Living constraints frees the imagination! Learn to make do with what you have or you’ll never learn to fully use what you have even if you ever got your dream circumstances