Hello and welcome to our new blog about living a self-sufficient lifestyle.
If I think back I realize that this idea was floating around in my brain for many many years. My hubby Frank and I were living in a fairly large town about an hour north of Toronto, Ontario. We were both working in jobs we did not like but it paid the bills so we stuck it out. We had a small century home that we had renovated to make it more energy efficient and we had put in a good size garden to grow veggies. We also had a couple of fruit trees and some soft fruit. But we were still in town and I especially longed to be in the country.
We had the "lightbulb over the head" moment when Newmarket held it's first EcoFestival. We went and found an exhibit that would change our lives. A fantastic woman named Tina was building a straw-bale doghouse to show the possibilites of this sort of building. Her company was called Camel's Back Construction. We were both utterly hooked.
That day at the festival began a 10 year research plan. We knew then and there that we wanted to build a straw-bale house. We knew that we wanted to be in the country. And finally, we knew that we would need to be near a ski hill as that was Frank's passion.
In 2008 we began to look for land. We had a completely amazing realtor to work with. Her name is Pat Forrest and she now has her own realty firm. She specializes in selling vacant land. She showed us so many pieces of property and walked a lot of land with us. It was not until May of 2010 that we found what we were looking for. It was utterly perfect. We put in an offer, written up on the hood of Pat's car. We were accepted and our adventure was beginning.
Because it is now 2015 and all this really started in 2010 I am not going to try to write about the entire process as it would be far too lengthy. I will be as concise as possible to bring things up to date.
2010 - We put in our offer in May, finally the land closed at the very end of August and we took possession. We bought a very old trailer that the seller kindly hauled to our land for us and we went to the property a few times that year, mostly walking the land to see where we would want to put the house and garden, etc.
2011 - We were working on the house design but things were taking much longer that we thought they would. Accordingly, we put up the fence for our kitchen garden. It is 110 feet by 180 feet approximately. We put in a 9 foot fence as the deer pressure here can be quite severe at times. We also planted fruit trees that year, about 15 of them.
2012 - In May of this year we began construction of the house. Frank had retired from his job and he moved full time into the trailer. I remained in Newmarket, still working, and would drive to the farm every Friday night after work, returning to Newmarket on Monday. Just to put things in perspective ... It is a 4 1/2 hour drive one way. I did this every weekend from May until November. Frank worked on the house with a lot of help from our amazingly talented friend Todd and I would work on the garden as much as I could. The farmland had lay unused for about 30 years. The area we had chosed for our kitchen garden had once been a hay field. Sadly, it had been reclaimed by weeds, perennial wildflowers mostly like milkweed, etc. These flowers are extremely reluctant to leave regardless of how hard to try to dig them out. I got in a couple of beds for Asparagus and also put in some raspberries, blackberries and some soft fruit like currants and gooseberries. We also put in some Rhubarb. Nothing thrived as well as the weeds. By the end of that year, we had the exterior of the house completed. It is a straw-bale house, just as we had wanted. I designed the house and then we had the drawings done and they were engineered as required by the building officials.
2013 - We sold our home in Newmarket and moved to the farm. We had no running water, no hydro, just an outhouse to use and there were two adults and two large dogs all living in the small trailer. We spent the summer and fall working on the inside of the house. Putting up walls, doing all the electrical, eventually having gas stoves and a woodburning stove installed so we would not freeze to death in there all winter. The day the man installed the insullation in the attic I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Finally ... warmth. And hydro. We are off the grid and had had a solar array installed by a fantastic firm called Ottawa Solar.
2014 - Work continued on the interior of the house and also most of the exterior work was completed like trimming out windows and doors, installing soffits and facia. We did a small amount of work in the garden but not too much. The large area that will be for the vegetables was covered with cardboard and then tarps in an attempt to kill all the weeds underneath. We did the same thing with a large area that will be for strawberries.
2015 - Fast forward 5 years and here we are. The house is mostly finished inside with just a bit of work left to do and is very comfortable to live in. As I write this, I am looking out our living room window at the garden, covered in a blanket of snow, waiting.....
This will be the year that we start homesteading in earnest. I decided to write this blog as a way to keep a record of what we manage to accomplish here. So I will begin today.
Tuesday, 20 January, 2015
Planted 200 Leek seeds. Placed my last seed order with a great company in the US who only sell open-pollinated non GMO seed for lots of heirloom tomatoes.
I will post lots of photos along the way to show our progress. Thanks for being a part of our journey.
If I think back I realize that this idea was floating around in my brain for many many years. My hubby Frank and I were living in a fairly large town about an hour north of Toronto, Ontario. We were both working in jobs we did not like but it paid the bills so we stuck it out. We had a small century home that we had renovated to make it more energy efficient and we had put in a good size garden to grow veggies. We also had a couple of fruit trees and some soft fruit. But we were still in town and I especially longed to be in the country.
We had the "lightbulb over the head" moment when Newmarket held it's first EcoFestival. We went and found an exhibit that would change our lives. A fantastic woman named Tina was building a straw-bale doghouse to show the possibilites of this sort of building. Her company was called Camel's Back Construction. We were both utterly hooked.
That day at the festival began a 10 year research plan. We knew then and there that we wanted to build a straw-bale house. We knew that we wanted to be in the country. And finally, we knew that we would need to be near a ski hill as that was Frank's passion.
In 2008 we began to look for land. We had a completely amazing realtor to work with. Her name is Pat Forrest and she now has her own realty firm. She specializes in selling vacant land. She showed us so many pieces of property and walked a lot of land with us. It was not until May of 2010 that we found what we were looking for. It was utterly perfect. We put in an offer, written up on the hood of Pat's car. We were accepted and our adventure was beginning.
Because it is now 2015 and all this really started in 2010 I am not going to try to write about the entire process as it would be far too lengthy. I will be as concise as possible to bring things up to date.
2010 - We put in our offer in May, finally the land closed at the very end of August and we took possession. We bought a very old trailer that the seller kindly hauled to our land for us and we went to the property a few times that year, mostly walking the land to see where we would want to put the house and garden, etc.
2011 - We were working on the house design but things were taking much longer that we thought they would. Accordingly, we put up the fence for our kitchen garden. It is 110 feet by 180 feet approximately. We put in a 9 foot fence as the deer pressure here can be quite severe at times. We also planted fruit trees that year, about 15 of them.
2012 - In May of this year we began construction of the house. Frank had retired from his job and he moved full time into the trailer. I remained in Newmarket, still working, and would drive to the farm every Friday night after work, returning to Newmarket on Monday. Just to put things in perspective ... It is a 4 1/2 hour drive one way. I did this every weekend from May until November. Frank worked on the house with a lot of help from our amazingly talented friend Todd and I would work on the garden as much as I could. The farmland had lay unused for about 30 years. The area we had chosed for our kitchen garden had once been a hay field. Sadly, it had been reclaimed by weeds, perennial wildflowers mostly like milkweed, etc. These flowers are extremely reluctant to leave regardless of how hard to try to dig them out. I got in a couple of beds for Asparagus and also put in some raspberries, blackberries and some soft fruit like currants and gooseberries. We also put in some Rhubarb. Nothing thrived as well as the weeds. By the end of that year, we had the exterior of the house completed. It is a straw-bale house, just as we had wanted. I designed the house and then we had the drawings done and they were engineered as required by the building officials.
2013 - We sold our home in Newmarket and moved to the farm. We had no running water, no hydro, just an outhouse to use and there were two adults and two large dogs all living in the small trailer. We spent the summer and fall working on the inside of the house. Putting up walls, doing all the electrical, eventually having gas stoves and a woodburning stove installed so we would not freeze to death in there all winter. The day the man installed the insullation in the attic I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Finally ... warmth. And hydro. We are off the grid and had had a solar array installed by a fantastic firm called Ottawa Solar.
2014 - Work continued on the interior of the house and also most of the exterior work was completed like trimming out windows and doors, installing soffits and facia. We did a small amount of work in the garden but not too much. The large area that will be for the vegetables was covered with cardboard and then tarps in an attempt to kill all the weeds underneath. We did the same thing with a large area that will be for strawberries.
2015 - Fast forward 5 years and here we are. The house is mostly finished inside with just a bit of work left to do and is very comfortable to live in. As I write this, I am looking out our living room window at the garden, covered in a blanket of snow, waiting.....
This will be the year that we start homesteading in earnest. I decided to write this blog as a way to keep a record of what we manage to accomplish here. So I will begin today.
Tuesday, 20 January, 2015
Planted 200 Leek seeds. Placed my last seed order with a great company in the US who only sell open-pollinated non GMO seed for lots of heirloom tomatoes.
I will post lots of photos along the way to show our progress. Thanks for being a part of our journey.
Thank you for sharing your journey with us. We miss you both, but isn't just fantastic to live out your dreams in real life. Now that is living! We don't miss the big town of Newmarket either. I can't wait to see more posts and pictures! We will get out for a visit once the nicer weather arrives. Keep Well Dan & Vicky
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