First, a little bit of context to help you understand this journey. We are British Ex-pats, we moved to B.C. in October 2009. We have 2 daughters, Jessica aged 5 and Lauren, 13. Life had been busy and emigrating had been hard on us but we had jobs, the kids were in school, we'd made friends, settled in and had no debt outside of our mortgage. Life was generally good.
But then 2 years ago my husband Ian sailed closer to the threshold of divorce than he had ever done before. For my 33rd birthday he gave me a book. After faking delight in front of the kids about "The Back to Basics Handbook: A Guide to Buying and Working Land, Raising Livestock, Enjoying Your Harvest, Household Skills and Crafts, and More", I promptly confronted Ian at the first available opportunity. I felt shocked and bemused that we had gone from growing a few veggies in the yard to homesteading without any warning. I felt that this gift represented a void in how we envisaged our future. I was particularly perturbed by the chapter on how to raise, kill, skin your own rabbits and then make them into moccasins (I kid you not). I saw a future of home grown veggies and he appeared to picture me wearing gingham and rabbit moccasins selling jam to the city folk.
I feel excited, I've willing walked away from a career in Social Work and Non-Profit and I'm ready for a new and very different challenge. I'm anxious, the mortgage is huge, there's tractor loans, the land needs completely re-working and I have no idea what I'm doing. But the plan, arrh the plan, is for Ian to continue to work while I will run the farm. Even I'm shaking my head in disbelief as I type so I can imagine what reaction this idea evokes in you, the reader. Other than that, there is no plan! There have been plans....many, many ever changing plans from vine yards to shooting ranges to growing pot, but right now, we don't really have a clue. There will be some sort of produce, there has to be an income from the land otherwise we could be homeless by next year! The only certainty is a desired outcome for self-sufficiency.
There is one other thing, the objective. We have made a commitment to be mortgage free by the time I'm 50, whilst maintaining a certain lifestyle. That gives us 15 years and 5 months from when we move. I plan to record the changes, challenges and successes - warts and all. I don't want to give up my lifestyle totally and become some crazy eco-hippy recluse. I am prepared to make sacrifices and change my attitude and approach for the greater good, but there's a limit, right?
And so, let's call it a learning curve, shall we? Let's see what happens, approach this huge goal with no clear plan and just see how it goes. I expect to have to work hard (physically and emotionally), laugh a little, cry a bit, drink a lot and try to adapt and survive. Wish me luck!
