Homestead Heritage — Restaurant in Texas

I will admit I live very close to Homestead Heritage and have the opportunity to visit frequently. Yet, evey visit brings me back in time and reminds me to slow down and take pride in whatever I do. Within each building you go into whether it is the community grocer or quilting store as you first arrive, or the Brazos cheese store (with outrageously divine organic cheeses), down to the barn , and all the other buildings on the homestead you will see nothing but handmade, high quality items. The prices may seem absurdly high to someone who is use to shopping at big box stores where everything is mass produced and shipped, BUT you will NOT find that here. The prices that are high here reflect the actual time it took one person to work on that item, plus the cost of the materials, plus their education/knowledge of how to make that item. Some people from the homestead have lived here their entire lives and you can see they love what they do by their craftmanship. When you purchase anything from here it will NOT fall apart in a day or two, it could last you your entire life (it all depends on the item and how you wear and tear an item through everyday usage). Every animal product here is organic, grassfed so for example if you want to purchase some ground beef, if you are lucky enough you may actually see the butcher carving a hanging cow and have literal fresh ground meat from farm to hand. It cost no more than going to the store and paying for bison and yet this meat has no nasty smell when you remove it from the package. It is nice and red because it hasnt been sitting through the processing phasw, then shipping, then frozen, and thawed on the shelf just to get to you the consumer. If you need quality baked bread or olive oils with flavors, or local honey it is all available here on the homestead. Kitchen towels, woven blankets woven on the looms that will last forever and are not just beautiful but so soft you will never want to put it away. Homestead heritage is also a place to take classes such as sewing, wood working, pottery, iron working and even more. Homestead Heritage has so much to offer and you are not required to be a member to the homestead. Also, if you can block off your Thanksgiving one year and enjoy your Thanksgivinf day festivities at Homestead Heritage where you can do crafts, projects, eat sorghum until your hearts content, make coasters or a towel, creat a key ring, all kinds of things for the kids to do, basket weaving. There is tons of food, horse carriage rides, and shopping. You cannot go wrong bringing your family here for a day trip or a couple of day trips. Right next door there is a tiny rental home village for people to rent outside of the hustle and bustle of Waco, TX. (I am not affliated with anyone, I just love this area...

Just got back from their 2 day intensive cheese making course and it was a really good class. There was plenty of hands on time; the teachers are knowledgeable and friendly and the book that goes with the class is extraordinarily well written. Other students also commented on every time we went to write something down they'ld find it already noted in the book. I have to admit I was a little concerned as I'm both from corporate America and not Christian how comfortable I would be but the class was great. It did tend to skew towards conservative housewives but we also had a college professor and a sustainability blogger. By day 2 I felt perfectly comfortable walking around and talking to people. They're very open and friendly and religion and community traditions were only brought up when people asked them. I left completely comfortable with the thought of making any of the cheeses we made in class at home. Definitely try your hand at these classes if you're interested. They're refreshing targeted to practical things.

I think John needs to take his head out of a certain body area because from what I saw these people were no more a cult than the Amish or Mennonites. Some families do live inside the homesteading area but plenty of their church lives outside too and you'll see people walking around with cell phones and email. They have private homes and businesses. They acknowledge that some things are hard to do without but most religions have things that they want their followers to avoid be it meat on Fridays or bacon year round. It's up to the people themselves to decide how they want to live. Personally it's not for me but I didn't see anybody pressuring anyone or anybody there who wasn't there happily and voluntarily. In fact they gently discouraged a couple of people who were asking about houses on the grounds that they didn't really know enough and that you shouldn't rush in to...

I’m so disappoint in my experience here. The website looked so promising and I had read somewhere that it can take you about 4 hours to experience everything. My sister and I decided to go for the day and we were honestly done with everything in under 2 hours. We thought we would be able to observe the cheese making process. All we saw was a plaque explaining a bit about the process and we could see through a glass window the big machinery where the cheese is fermented. That’s it. Same with pottery. We were under the impression we were going to be able to observe people making pottery but nope, just a big room with mugs for sale and we were told we could come back later for a pottery class for $100. Basket weaving was a room with baskets for sale, nobody was weaving anything. We were however, able to observe a woman spinning wool into a dish towel. The general store had some yummy homemade bread but the gift shop, although interesting to look around at everything, was really pricey in my opinion so I didn’t buy anything. I will say the cafe exceeded my expectations. It was rustically decorated, very beautiful and the burger I ordered was tasty. We were going to try the ice cream at the waffle restaurant for dessert but we learned they would be closed until 7pm. The people who work/live here were not rude but definitely not overly friendly or helpful. This place has a lot of potential and could really benefit from some PR help to make it great. I just wanted to leave this real review in case anybody else was planning on spending the whole day here and would...