Homestead chicken coop plans

We eat lots of eggs and our soil is depleted, so in 2023 we started raising chickens. They will play a key role in our regenerative homestead. First step – designing a place for our new flock to call home. We decided to build our own coop. We considered buying a pre-made coop, but the ones we found online were too small for the number of chickens we wanted to have. Plus, my husband was keen to try building a...

Can we grow ginger in Canada?

We can definitely grow ginger in Canada – The real question is… how? We eat a lot of ginger in our house. It’s so good for calming tummy troubles, which we’ve had plenty of, and we just love the taste. What we don’t love is that when we buy it from the grocery store it comes from very far away. Most recently, ginger from Peru is what has been available at our local grocery store. So that ginger traveled thousands...

Water wise home – grey water

What if we could use a drop of water twice? Once to wash our hands or take a shower, and then again to water some fruit or nut trees. Here’s how we designed our grey water system to do just that.  We live on an island that has limited fresh water supply, so when we were building our house last year we prioritized designing and building water systems for our homestead that are as regenerative as we could afford. We...

Unschooling resources I’m loving

A friend recently asked me what homeschooling/unschooling resources I like. Not necessarily things to plan our days, or instructions about how to do it, but things that inspire me, change my perspective or really shake things up. I love sharing resources. Many of my favourite things that I’ve read or watched (you know, the ones that have a big impact on your life?) have come to me as recommendations from friends. So let’s share the love! My Favourite Unschooling Resources...

Holding space for our kids’ big emotions

Holding space for big emotions is hard. I heard Janet Lansbury interviewed recently and she said… ‘Allowing a child to be mad at us, or upset, frustrated, sad, any emotion a child shares with us is the most quality connection that we can have with them. This is because it’s based on trust. It’s based on, ‘I’m not afraid of you sharing all sides of yourself,’ and ‘You have a right to feel however you feel.’ It’s the most positive...

More joy, less stress in our house build

Our vision of a regenerative homestead  includes that its human inhabitants (that’s us!) are nourished and find joy in the process of building it. Finding joy in building a house? Really? I know, it sounds nuts. And it sounds nuts because when we hear stories of people building houses we hear negative things – it was exhausting, stressful, financially overwhelming, or worse. What we’re curious to know is…does it have to be that way? Are there ways we can approach...

Our Modern Homestead Vision

We’ve started a challenging journey into waters that are unfamiliar to us. What stars will guide us? We’re building a house on Salt Spring Island, in the Salish Sea. We are on the unceded, ancestral lands of the SENĆOŦEN and Hul’q’umi’num speaking peoples. We are conscious of our place as settlers here and are listening to the long time caretakers of this land. Before we embarked on this journey, we discussed how we would navigate, when the seas inevitably get...

Write the Rain

Writing takes me a long time. The ideas are there, and getting a first draft down is easy breezy. But then I absolutely agonize over the finished draft – the thing I share. I get bogged down in making what I write juuuuuuuuust the way I want it – in other words, perfect. What if they are terrible? What if they offend someone? What if no one likes them? OR, what if there’s another way to go about it? I’ve...

Resting Rebel

I’m a do-er, a strive-er, a take action kinda gal. Hearing a challenge turns me into a toddler who has just been instructed not to do something, and so wants to do that thing with every fibre of her being. I’m also learning that doing less and resting have some magic to share with me....