About Common Sense Home – Who We Are and What We Do
Common Sense Home started as a way to share our story as we moved out to the country to pursue a more self-reliant lifestyle. Over the years, we’ve helped millions learn about growing your own food and medicine, food storage and preservation, emergency preparedness, and more.
Our Homestead
We began our marriage staying with family while we built our first home in the suburbs. We filled the yard with dwarf fruit trees and gardens, but we always dreamed of our own place in the country.
In 2004, we decided to take the plunge and move so our sons would grow up on the homestead. We found our land when Laurie spotted a “For Sale” sign tipped over in a ditch. The home was built in an old cow pasture after we swapped land with a neighbor for a driveway to get to the landlocked pasture.
Our family’s Green Built certified home includes an attached greenhouse, root cellar and canning pantry, which extend the growing season and allow us to store food for year round use. We also built a coop/greenhouse complex, for chickens, ducks, and growing more food. Eventually we added two ponds, solar panels and a workshop.
The Gardens
The raw land was rough, with compacted soil closer to the house and thick grass roots farther away. Our first garden was a sad, weedy mess, planted with a few leftover transplants from Laurie’s mother.
Over time, we added many garden beds, two orchards, nut trees and shrubs, and other edible and medicinal plants. We went from soil that the boys had to use a pick ax to break up to soil that looks like chocolate cake.
Learn More About Our Homestead
Our Homestead – Then and Now – How Things Have Changed
Overcoming Adversity
Things haven’t always been easy, but we’ve made it through as a family. In 2008, August lost his job during the economic downturn. After a year of freelancing, he found a full time position – an hour and a half away.
We debated selling the homestead and everything we’d worked for, but decided to hang on. August came home on weekends, and Laurie and the boys kept the homestead going. After five long years, August finally found a position back in the area and the family was back together full time again.
Then, in 2015, Laurie had a debilitating attack of psoriasis, with peeling, blistering skin over about a third of her body. When the “experts” told her to live with it, she took matters into her own hands, and figured out a way to clear her skin.
At the end of 2023, August’s full time job ended. He started a consulting business, but things are different from the first time he lost his job. Now, we have other revenue streams. We also produce most of our food and electricity. No matter what happens, we can make it through together.
Laurie Neverman
Laurie Neverman is the creator of Common Sense Home (formerly Common Sense Homesteading). She was raised on a small dairy farm in northwest Wisconsin, and worked in the family catering business as her summer job through high school and college. She has a BS in Math/ Physics and an MS in Mechanical Engineering with an emphasis in renewable energy.
Her gardening adventures include companion planting, wildcrafting (using weeds for food and medicine), vertical gardening, herbalism and permaculture. She hasn’t found a wild edible she wouldn’t try (including quackgrass wine), and grows over 100 varieties of fruit, vegetables, herbs and flowers in her garden each year.
Laurie was a professional caterer during the summer months of high school and college, and earned her bachelor’s degree in math/physics and her masters in mechanical engineering with an emphasis in renewable energy. Before coming home to raise her family, she operated the world’s largest solar water heating system. Learn More About Laurie Neverman.
August Neverman IV
August Neverman currently does Broadband, I/T, Cyber Security, DR/BC and Business Ops Consulting. He was the Broadband and BCCAN Director for Brown County, Wisconsin.
His primary interests include: emergency preparedness, all things I/T related, cyber security, and building design and architecture.
August designed both our homes and has assisted on the design of other homes. He was the CIO for Brown County for 7 years, the I/T Director for the Medical College of Wisconsin for 5 years, and 16 years in I/T with Hospital Sisters Health System.
While attending college, he served 9 years in the Minnesota Air National Guard, which included emergency response training and cyber security work. He has a bachelors in Management Information Systems and a minor in Physics from the University of Wisconsin Superior.
August and Laurie live with their two sons in Northeast Wisconsin.
Duncan Neverman
Duncan Neverman is focused on regenerative farming/gardening and permaculture, and incorporates both on the family homestead. He works with sound healing and energy healing, too, as well as healing plants and animals.
Our resident handyman, he works with his brother on repairing things and building projects. They’re in the middle of building a workshop for woodworking and storing his new tractor.
Ducks are his favorite farm animal, as they can always make him smile. He helped rehabilitate a duck that couldn’t walk and did surgery on another duck with a foot injury.
August Neverman V
August works with his brother to help keep the homestead running, tackling building and repair projects and ongoing tasks. He’s our primary technical support guru for the website, and is more comfortable behind the camera than in front of it.
He enjoys working with the chickens, and helps troubleshoot the solar electric system and all things technical, electrical, or computer related around the homestead.
Contact Us
You can reach us via email at laurie at commonsensehome dot com. We do not accept unsolicited guest posts. Visit here for advertising inquiries.
Just in case you’re wondering about the plant in the Common Sense Home logo, it’s common plantain, Plantago major. My grandmother called it medicine leaf, and it was one of the first wild plants that I learned to use. I chose as a reminder that the help you need might be found where you least expect it.
At Common Sense Home we share our experiences, and we hope to inspire you to create a more resilient mindset. With hard work and determination, you can create abundance wherever you are.
