Welcome To Homestead Acres!
I’m so glad you’re here.
I’m a Kim a mother of 6 children, living in Ontario, Canada.
I’m a mom just like you who really wants to simplify life. I’ve experienced many of the same challenges, dreams, disappointments, failures, and successes that you have every day.
My goal is to encourage and help you to live a simple life and reach your dream of homesteading right now, anywhere you live.
After living in many different areas I’ve learned that you can be a homestead whether you live in the country, town, or even an apartment.
Simple living is about you, not where you live!
If you are taking an active role in making your family’s food, making your own cleaners, or trying DIY projects to save money you are a homesteader at heart.
Life’s ups and downs have led me to live in many different places over the years. I want to share a quick overview of the different places I have homestead on to encourage you that you really can homestead anywhere you live!
Getting The Homestead Bug
Do you remember when you were bitten by the homesteading bug?
I’ve often wondered why living a homestead lifestyle is so ingrained in my blood. I think that it really started with my father. My early years were spent on his farm and dear dad had a real love for the land.
I have very early memories of “helping” him pump water for the livestock. Our pump house had a large old-fashioned hand pump and it took a while to fill up that water trough!
The jingle of chains still brings my mind back to watching him logging in the bush. He always used his team of draft horses to pull the logs out, favouring his horses over using a tractor in the bush. After my father passed away I found myself living a very different life.
Homesteading In Town
I lived on the edge of town, close enough to see the farm fields and hear the roosters crow. I fell in love with the zucchini relish and other canning my Aunt would often bring over for us.
I started to have the desire to learn to can and of course, if I wanted to can then I wanted a garden. You see where this is going right?
My first garden I hand dug a small 6 x 6 foot square in my grandmother’s backyard. I grew zucchini, cucumbers, tomatoes, beans, and peas. The garden bug bit me and I was doomed forever to want to get my hands in the dirt. 🙂
The next year I expanded my little garden in Nana’s backyard to take up nearly half of her yard. It was a lot of work and very productive! I started learning how to can my own relish, pickles, applesauce, and jams.
Of course, my garden needed fertilizer so my next step was to get some rabbits. I started with a mini rex and later added a variety of meat rabbits to my herd.
It wasn’t long before with help from friends I was learning how to build rabbit cages, breeding rabbits and using that wonderful manure for my garden. Then I brought home some chickens…
Ok, I’ll stop there because I think you see where this is going, right?
Gardening is addictive and it can do crazy things like lead you to try 20+ tomato varieties in 1 year or dive deeper into homesteading and natural living.
How To Start Onions From Seed (Tips For A Big Harvest)
How To Save Cucumber Seeds From Your Garden (Easy Tips)
Zucchini Blossom End Rot (Cause & Treatment)
Homesteading Off Grid
A few years later I met and married my best friend, who has the same homesteading dreams. We started off living on an old neglected farm.
It was in very rough shape but we were renting and hoping to buy it in time. We did not have electricity or running water, that is unless we rain to get it from the spring-fed well! No indoor plumbing at all.
Coming from living in town this was a big change, a challenge for sure but I also found a peace and joy that I hadn’t had before.
That first summer we did most of our cooking outside on a small wood stove, including all of my canning. We expanded our livestock to include calves, sheep and goats, a larger flock of chickens and goats.
We grew large gardens and started clearing the old overgrown fields to bring them back to use.
We had many trials but also many joys.
Near the end of our 3rd year, we knew that it was not the Lord’s plan for us to stay at this place and sadly moved on.
Homesteading In An Apartment
Eventually, we were living in an apartment in town for a few years and yes that was a big change again! We now had our first child, life was busier but we still wanted to keep things as simple as possible.
Thankfully I had access to a large porch and yard space to garden.
See I just have to have a garden of some kind! I grew herbs in the flower beds and we hand dug a 6 x 8 garden in the backyard.
This helps a lot with vegetables for fresh eating and a little canning. To help keep up with stocking our pantry we found local market gardeners and bought from them.
We spent the next few years working very hard to get out of debt, save a down payment and we bought our little urban homestead where we now live.
Back To Urban Homesteading Again…
Our current urban homestead is just under an acre and we’ve been working hard to get it to produce as much of our own needs as possible.
We raise chickens and rabbits, have a small orchard and hope to expand it this year. Our gardens are our main focus and take up much of our property.
We are actively working on turning our gardens into successful market gardens.
Yes, our hearts still desire to live further out in the country again. I hope that someday the Lord will make that an option for us. In the meantime, we are joyed to have a wonderful place to grow on!
Our family has lived in many places and always kept a homesteaders heart.
I truly believe that homesteading is a state of mind, a desire to live simply and does not depend on where you live. There is so much that you can do right where you live now!
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As a thank you here is a printable garden journal. I use this daily in my garden, I hope you love it too!