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About Deanna Talerico

Deanna Talerico, also known as “DeannaCat” or @deannacat3, is the CEO and creator of Homestead and Chill. She is a garden educator with an MA in Environmental Studies, over 15 years of experience in organic gardening and food preservation, and 10 years experience raising backyard chickens.

Hi, I'm Deanna!

I’m the main person behind Homestead and Chill (it’s just my husband Aaron and I running things here). My goal is to help teach and inspire others to live more healthy, sustainable lives by sharing easy-to-follow, well-researched and experience-based gardening tips, recipes, and homesteading resources. 

I am a passionate gardener, writer, crafter, and love to cook and fuel my body with organic homegrown food. I care deeply about the environment, clean toxin-free living, animals, and wildlife. I’m also a bit of a research nerd, have enjoyed photography since I was a little girl, and seem to have a natural knack for teaching. So, I started this website in 2019 to share those passions with the world!

You can learn more about my background, education, personal gardening journey, and other fun facts below, or learn more about Homestead and Chill here.

Thank you so much for stopping by!

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Fun Facts

  • Aaron and I are happily child-free by choice. 
  • We currently have 5 cats, 4 mini donkeys, and a dozen chickens. I’ve been a crazy cat lady my whole life, hence the “DeannaCat” moniker. 
  • We live on the Central Coast of California in San Luis Obispo County. I’m originally from Santa Cruz CA (yes, I say “stoked” and “gnarly”) but also spent several years of my childhood in the greater Seattle area. Aaron is originally from Chico, where we met working at a natural food store together in college.
  • I’ve had Type 1 Diabetes for over 22 years, and have been vegetarian for 17.
  • We just started weighing and keeping track of how much food we grow, and we harvested 1,297 pounds of homegrown produce in 2023! And that’s only counting what made it inside.
  • Beyond gardening, I love to read, do yoga, puzzles, play cribbage and board games (we love Wingspan), birdwatch, hike, and walk on the beach. I also love a good Netflix binge.
  • Music is a HUGE part of our lives. It’s something Aaron and I bonded over right when we met, and going to concerts is still our main excuse for a “date night” now. See our playlists here.

My Gardening Journey

My mom had a garden while I was growing up, and while I don’t remember being particularly involved, I DO remember being enamored with the juicy homegrown melons, peaches, cherries and grapes! Fast forward to young adulthood: I started my very first garden in 2007. I was 21, had just lost my Dad to kidney cancer, and was struggling to find my path in college (more on that below). I grew just a couple tomato plants, zucchini, and honeydew melon, but the garden gave me a sense of purpose and hope! Aaron and I were dating at the time.

After college, we moved into a rental house and immediately asked the landlord if we could add a couple raised beds to the small backyard. Thankfully, they said yes… “as long as we returned it to same condition we found it”. So when we moved into our very first home the next year, we packed up the soil and bed frames and brought them with us! Lol. 

In 2013, we bought our first home. During the house hunt, having a decent little yard and space for chickens was our top priority, even if that meant getting a smaller outdated home for our budget! We ended up with a 9000 square foot lot, and spent the next 8 years slowly DIY-ing and transforming every inch of it. We removed both the front and back lawns to put in raised garden beds, pollinator flowers, and fruit trees. We tucked a chicken coop, rainwater system and greenhouse in one side yard, and compost systems and tool sheds on the other. (You can see the before-and-after photos here.) There, we did and learned pretty much everything we’re doing at our larger property now, just on a smaller scale!

 

My Background & Education

You don’t need a degree related to gardening or agriculture to dig in, have fun, and be successful! However, my background certainly played a pivotal role in my journey to get here – both in gardening, and to start this business. 

I graduated with my B.S. in Sustainability and Natural Resources from California State University, Chico in 2010. I spent 6 years in undergrad, bouncing around between nursing, physical therapy, and nutrition at first. I started to realize (and become increasingly frustrated with) the disconnect between traditional health sciences, natural health, and the environment. Then in 2007, I also lost my dad to kidney cancer. As a “daddy’s girl”, I was shattered. But it also changed the course of my life forever for the better. Sparked with a new healthy fear of toxins and passion for clean, natural living, I totally switched gears that year: I changed my major, started a job as a Sustainability Coordinator with the university, opened a farmer’s market booth to sell recycled crafts and art, and started my very first garden. 

Next, I went on to pursue a MA in Environmental Studies at Brown University. Living on the East Coast for a couple years was a really neat life experience! We were living in an apartment in Providence, Rhode Island when I first read Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” and I was like THIS is what I want. To eat with the seasons, to raise backyard chickens, to trade in the excess for the cherished essentials, to keep it local… Even though we didn’t have a garden at the time, we started stocking up on fresh produce from the farmer’s market and practicing different preserving methods. And, we formulated a goal for the future.

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Starting Homestead and Chill

After grad school, we moved back to California and I got a job as an Environmental Health Specialist with the county. I started out as a restaurant “health inspector” (oof, the stories I could share!) and quickly worked my way up to Senior specialist in the water systems and land use programs. Parts of that gig were fun and rewarding, but as the years went by and older folks retired, they piled more work on my desk rather than filling replacement positions. I was out in the field less and less, and could feel the burnout creeping in fast. I needed an exit strategy. 

By 2018, I’d already been really active on Instagram for over 5 years. Sharing gardening tips, DIY projects, and backyard chicken shenanigans online had become my outlet from the grind of my job – especially since I didn’t have many “real life” friends with similar shared interests. Then a good friend gave me a hard shake and was like: “Helllloooo Deanna, you should start a blog!” At that time, I honestly had no idea how a blog could generate income – let alone become both our full-time jobs! 

So with zero website experience, I started building this site in late 2018 and launched with just handful of articles in January 2019. The next few years were arguably the most intense and difficult of my life, but also some of the most rewarding! Between my “real job” and the blog, I worked like a crazy person, pulling 12-15 hour days 7 days a week for over 2.5 years. As the site grew, Aaron came on to help with more and more tasks too. Finally by the summer of 2021, we were able to both go full-time with Homestead and Chill! We were also able to move to our new larger homestead at that time. Now, we’re busy as ever and still work 7 days a week (ha!) but at least it’s for something we both love and take great pride in. 

All in all, we are totally honored (and a bit mind-blown) that this little “side gig” of a website has evolved into what it is today – and that wouldn’t be possible without YOU, our valued readers and subscriber community. So from the bottom of our hearts, thank you for being here and tuning in! Keep on growing. ✌️

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Made with homegrown and certified organic ingredients, we offer a variety of natural skincare products including nourishing face oil, calendula and lavender salve, natural insect repellent, herbal bath salts and more! Browse our shop here.

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171 Comments

  • Jacqueline

    I’ve been struggling to grow garlic this year, and now I realize it could be because I planted a hard neck variety. I was pleased to see you are from SC. I live in Pacific Grove. Wish I could have a little more sun and space for chickens. I have a few raised beds, but mostly grow bags and tons of fog. And now, with climate change, we have lots of wind. I’m looking forward to reading your other posts and seeing what you have accomplished. Thank you for sharing! I will grown some soft neck varieties this year and use your preparations. Happy upcoming fall!

    • Aaron (Mr. DeannaCat)

      Hi Jacqueline, hopefully switching to soft neck garlic will result in some better garlic harvests for you, we have a lot of success growing the Inchelium Red variety. We have very mild summers where we are now with a fair amount of fog as well, fall/winter gardens are our favorite, you can grow a lot of greens (kale, bok choy, mustards, etc.), cauliflower, and cabbage to only name a few and we are typically still harvesting food come late February. Good luck with your garlic this year and have fun growing!

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