
Am I Really a Homesteader? (How I Got Here & Where I’m Going)
Warning: This post is a little long, and at first it might not seem homesteading related. But I want to start to really tell my story and my truth as I move deeper into the homesteading lifestyle and share more of myself here with my readers. This is the story of how I evolved into the person I am today: a homesteader, writer, country girl, punk rocker at heart and so much more.
I turned 31 yesterday. It was uneventful. I blogged and worked all day. I mommed. My husband worked on our new house. Our old house where we still live was quiet and I spent most of the day alone as my daughter slept and my phone lay dormant with a dead battery.
It certainly doesn’t compare to my 21st birthday, full of drinking and debauchery and meeting new friends in foreign lands (I lived in Europe when I turned 21). Instead, 31 is peaceful, and this birthday has been a time of reflection rather than a time of raucous celebration. And that’s just fine with me. Because that’s the life stage that I’m in right now:)
But as I reflected on my life until now and on all of the stages I’ve gone through, I thought hard about this homesteading journey that I’ve found myself on. Is it really a forever thing? Is it just a phase? A stage in my life? Will I still want to live this way at 41? 51? 81?
Ten years ago, homesteader wasn’t even a part of my vocabulary, let alone a title I gave myself. Back then I defined myself as a world traveller, a University student, a writer and a bit of an anarchist. Today I am much, MUCH more of a homebody than a traveller (homesteaders often are, but funds and family circumstances don’t exactly allow for a lot of jet setting these days either).
Two degrees and tens of thousands of dollars later, I’m finally no longer a University student. I am definitely still a writer. That I have always been. And deep down I’m still a rebel at heart, although I don’t know that I would use the term “anarchist” anymore.
Somewhere along the way, I stumbled upon this homesteading lifestyle and fell in love. And the rest, as they say, is history. It is now a piece of me and a large part of how I define myself. Have I changed? Did I used to be someone that now I’m not? Am I someone now that I will no longer be ten years from now? Of course! But I prefer to use the term “evolve.”
Related: The Difficult Path to the Simple Life
On Rebranding Myself
A family member with a career in marketing said to me the other day “you should do something where you teach people how to rebrand themselves, because you’ve rebranded yourself many times over the years.”
She continued, “you used to be a skater girl, then a punk rocker,” and as she trailed off, I filled in the rest…

In my “punk rock” days, I was definitely more into music and straight up rebellion than gardening and self-reliance, but I’ve realized over the years that they go hand-in-hand and those days helped shape who I am today and the values system I continue to live by.
I was a punk rocker for a good few years. It was during the “anarchist” days throughout high school and my early twenties. I was really only ever a wannabe skater girl. I was too scared of hurting myself to ever actually ride my skateboard. Go figure… This country girl at heart has just never done well with concrete!
But I was most definitely a punk rocker. I was angsty in my teenage years, like many others of a similar age. I was also a writer for a local youth newspaper because I had always been a writer. I’d been writing since I could hold a pen -anything and everything. And this continued throughout my teen years. I used this gift to write music reviews of bands I loved, listened to and even got to meet. I used it to write social commentary on the ills of society. And I used it as therapy, because writing has always helped me to organize my thoughts and clear my mind.
I was also aware and engaged in politics and social issues and held a deep disdain for authority figures who abused their power; For unfair laws and practices that benefitted the rich and while taking power away from the poor and marginalized; For social conventions and accepted norms that brought harm to our planet and the people on it, and for so much more that I thought of as wrong with the world.
I dealt with it by rebelling and wearing my contempt on my sleeve in the form of studded leather arm bands and tattoos. I listened to punk music where others used their guitars and microphones to reinforce the message that society was doomed, governments were corrupt and there was basically no hope for the future, so let’s all get drunk. And I did. I drank too much and did whatever I could to get out of my mind and forget that the world was as shitty and unfair and unforgiving as it appeared to me in the sober daylight hours. And it worked. For a while.
But as I aged and matured, I began to grow out of this angsty teenage stage of life and look for meaning and identity in other places.
When I went on to University, I had the opportunity to do a study-abroad program in Vienna, Austria. I snapped it up and went off to Europe for a few months. I travelled across 16 countries while I was living there and had the time of my life. Travelling started to open up a whole new world to me.
I caught the travel bug bad, and when I got home I was already planning my next trip. But I was still a punk rocker at heart. And I was still a writer. I was enrolled in journalism school after all and was still writing social commentary about all of the things that pissed me off when I was fully entrenched in my “punk rocker” stage of life. I just didn’t wear studs anymore.
My Travelling Years
In my early and mid twenties, I became a world traveller. It’s sort of what I was known for at this time in my life. I had done my stint in Europe, and it wasn’t long after I’d returned home to Canada that I was invited to participate in a volunteer program in Africa for a few months. Of course I jumped at the opportunity.
Related: Living “Off the Land” in Africa: Finding Homestead Inspiration In An Unlikely Place
I ended up living in West Africa for a few months and it changed my life and perceptions in so many ways. Read more about my time in Africa here, and how it helped shape me into the person (and homesteader) I’ve become today.

This is called “African Homesteading” 😉
I was exposed to a completely different way of life and the culture shock was like a defibrillator to the heart. My experience living in West Africa changed me in profound ways that I only now understand as I reflect back on my experience almost a decade ago. But when I returned home, I was still that punk rocker at heart. Africa had only reinforced to me that the world is divided among unfair lines, that the unequal distribution of global wealth is one of societies greatest downfalls and that ignorance can dehumanize even the most beautiful people because we fail to look past the surface and only know what we hear from others who are like us.
I was still a writer too, and now I had started documenting the world through the lens of a camera. So I guess you could say I was a photographer too. Not a great one, but it became part of my arsenal nonetheless.
And by now I was definitely a world traveller. I couldn’t wait for my next big trip.
The Corporate “City Girl” Days
I had always grown up in the city, I was born and raised in Vancouver, BC, and that’s where I always came back to. So when I returned from Africa, that’s where I returned to.
I finished up the last few requirements of my journalism degree and by this time I was itching to get a job in the “real world.” I ended up getting hired on as a travel consultant with a major agency and got assigned to an office right in the heart of downtown Vancouver. I felt like a big kid now.
I had finally moved out of my mom’s place in the suburbs and was living in the south end of the city. I took the train downtown to work every morning, enjoyed drinks and appies at some of the hottest spots after work on many an evening, and took the train home at night.
I worked in travel sales and looked at brochures and flight routes day in and day out for a year and a half, and my heart still ached to see the world.
At home, inspired by the self-sufficiency and cooking skills I’d picked up and been privy to in Africa, I started to learn to make a few meals for myself and even grew a small herb garden and a few tomato plants (although I honestly don’t remember if they ever even bore fruit).
A piece of me wanted nothing more than to travel forever, and another piece of me yearned to create a life for myself and (one day) a family in a comfortable home where I’d spend my days in the kitchen creating things from scratch. I guess it was the first real thoughts I had had about anything “homestead” related, but those thoughts were in a stage of infancy back then and I had no idea what they would lead to.
At 24, I was still a world traveller. I still had places to knock off my bucket list, and that was my priority. But being a travel agent downtown was stressful. There was always pressure to sell more, mark up higher and work longer hours.
One time, I went to visit some good friends (my friend whom I had lived with and travelled around Europe with and her new husband) at their new home on a small, rural island off the west coast of B.C. I remember the feeling I had as soon as I got off the ferry and met my friend. I had an overwhelming sense of peace and calm come over me. And as we stood on her balcony later, overlooking gardens and forest and deer roaming the backyard, enjoying the silence of the forest with no traffic or city sounds to interfere, at that moment I knew that at some point in my life, I needed out of the city. I needed to be here, or in a place much like this.
But I returned to the city and to the traffic noises and to my stressful job and planned my next move, which, at this point in my life, was not to some small, rural island, but to the very large and exciting island of Australia. I would travel there to see my other good friend (whom I had lived with in Africa) and would spend a year there working, travelling and gathering more incredible experiences to fill my memory bank with.
How I Met My Mister
I had also recently met my now husband, Ryan, and we maintained a long distance relationship while I was there. After four months of flying solo, he joined me in Melbourne, and we’ve been together ever since.
We split the rest of the year there between living in Melbourne (sometimes in a tent in our friends’ backyard and other times in a rooming house with a bunch of strangers), travelling all over the country (from the East Coast to the West Coast and the Outback in between), and living in a trailer park in Byron Bay, where I worked as a maid and ran home daily screaming about cockroaches and big, disgusting spiders.
Ryan did the occasional repair job or got a travel sales gig in town every now and then (we had met working at the same travel agency). But between maid work and his occasional paid gig, money was always really tight. So this is where we really learned to live frugally as we needed to get creative about making our money stretch.
One of the main ways we did this was by cooking almost everything from scratch. We would make our weekly trip to the grocery store, load up on all of the basic, staple items that were on sale for a reasonable price and walk back a fair distance with a shopping cart we had “borrowed” from the store. Then we would cook up all sorts of meals from scratch with the basic meat, veggies, bread and dairy products we had purchased from the store. Sure we weren’t baking the bread from scratch, but I loved the empowering feeling I got from creating a tasty, nourishing and overall satisfying meal with our own two hands from a few basic ingredients.

Ryan and I ready to cook up a meal for a visiting friend in our doublewide trailer in Byron Bay. This is where I learned the true value of frugality and how to make a dollar really stretch. P.S. Check out those tans!
Other than the occasional tin of soup or package of cheap ramen noodles, this really was when my love for cooking from scratch grew from the seed that had been planted during my time in Africa to a healthy seedling waiting to be nurtured into something bigger.
Home Is Where My Heart Was
When we finally returned home from Australia in 2012, we began settling into domestic life in our new condo back in the suburbs of Vancouver. For the first time in years, I couldn’t wait to put down some roots in one place and start nurturing my newest passions, which included cooking from scratch and setting up a comfortable home.
And that’s exactly what I did. And a couple years later we got married. And I went back to school to get my teaching degree because, even though I was still a writer, and a punk rocker at heart who had now earned a gig writing social commentary under a pseudonym for an edgy new local magazine, I was now in the market for a more stable life with a stable job that would give me enough time off to do the things that now called to my soul: Domestic activities like cooking and crafting and creating and keeping house.
So I became a University student once again. But quite honestly my heart wasn’t in it. Not fully anyway.
In my downtime, I started watching cooking shows that inspired me in the kitchen, and both Ryan and I started watching a lot of documentaries about the food industry and factory farms and how it’s all produced. And the punk rocker in my heart watched in contempt as a fire burned in my belly that urged me to do something about this injustice, this deceit, this awful practice of pumping out pesticide-ridden, hormone-injected, horribly raised and treated, overly-processed food (some of which can hardly even be considered food) in order to turn a profit and feed the world’s population for a cheap price tag (but a very hefty cost to our overall health and well-being).
And so I started down the path of wanting to know where my food came from and how it got to my dinner plate. And that eventually led me to my local farms and farmers markets. And to watching shows about farming and homesteading and self-sufficiency. And it got me really excited, because for the first time, I felt like I could make some real, tangible life choices that were in line with my beliefs and with who I was and always had been deep down.
Related: Why I Homestead
Homesteading aligned with the writer in me who knew deep down that I wanted to share what I was learning with the world. It aligned with the punk rocker in me that was disgruntled with the status quo and wanted to be a force for real, positive change in the world. It aligned with my quiet, rural soul that longed to find peace somewhere out in the country, closer to nature and far away from the traffic sounds and bright lights of the big city. It even aligned with the traveller in me who was never afraid to pack up and lay down roots in a new and unfamiliar place. And I figured I could be a teacher and a homesteader at the same time, so why not?
As we learned more about the homesteading lifestyle, we made plans to move to a more rural area of our province and even set a rough date to do so, but we still lived in our condo in the suburbs for at least a couple years after we even started talking about moving.
In the meantime, I learned as much as I could about this lifestyle I wanted to lead. I took out cookbooks and homesteading guides from the local library, tried new recipes and grew a few herbs (although growing anything on our north-facing, shaded balcony was tough).
I became really familiar with our local farmers and farmers markets and started learning more about cooking with organic, local foods, what grew well in our area (and in the area we planned on moving to), what wild edibles were available to us and how to forage for them, and even how to preserve seasonal foods in the most basic ways, like freezing and infusing them in oils and alcohol.

I fell in love with cooking healthy meals from scratch with local, seasonal ingredients. This was the slippery slope that eventually led me down the homesteading path I’m on today!
Eventually, the time came to move. And while the move itself was actually quite traumatic (which I plan to write about someday in a future post), when we finally settled into our new home on Vancouver Island, I knew we had made the right life choice.
For the past three years we have lived here, in the same place where we started out: in a 100-year-old farmhouse on a one-acre lot with a small garden we put in and an equally small greenhouse and a few fruit trees and a huge yard that we share with our neighbours who free range chickens and sell us their eggs.

Our current house that we will be moving from soon. We’ve learned so much living here in just 3 short years. We grew our first gardens here, learned how to can food here and acquired many other valuable skills we will take with us as we continue to evolve on our journey.
During our time here, we have really dove in deep to the homesteading lifestyle and continue to dive deeper. While we don’t grow nearly all of our food at home, we do grow a variety of fruits and vegetables each year and have acquired all sorts of homestead-y skills over the past three years, like organic gardening, canning and preserving foods, baking bread from scratch, candle-making, DIY-ing many of our home and body products, building our own garden beds, greenhouse, composter, hoop houses and indoor growing stands, and much, much more.
This year, we purchased our first house as we now have our second child on the way and need to move out of this wonderful “starter homestead” that we’ve been renting. We’re actually downsizing to 1/4-acre lot, but one with much, much more established garden space than we have here with huge potential for food production.

Our new house. Small but mighty and brimming with homesteading potential!
No, we still won’t grow all of our food for the year on our little plot of land. And no, we still aren’t quite in a position to have livestock yet. But with every day, week, month and year that passes, we continue to move deeper into this homesteading lifestyle, and even on the most difficult days, I never doubt that this is the right path for me and my family.
The writer in me has found a niche as well, and has flourished with passion ever since I launched this homesteading blog a year ago, on my 30th birthday. The punk rocker in me feels like I’m sticking it to the system by increasing my self-sufficiency and making conscious life choices that align with my core values rather than willingly lining the pockets of the people and corporations that I loathe. The quiet, rural soul in me is finally finding peace out in the country, doing what she loves best: gardening, cooking, creating and living a slow, simple life. The University student in me is glad to have finally found my true calling in life, and to be able to put those writing and photography skills from journalism school to good use.
As for my teaching degree, while I did work as a teacher for a few years, I decided that’s not for me. But I do know I want to homeschool my own children, and I feel confident that I have the skills to do that. And the traveller in me? She’s fulfilled having seen much of the world already and is happy to be in one place for a while, putting all of her experiences, learning and skills to use in this new stage of life.
So as I sit here, now 31, reflecting on my past and on all the things I’ve done and people I’ve been, I wonder “am I really a homesteader?” And I know that the answer is yes. It’s a piece of me now just like all of the other pieces of me. And it always will be.
Sure, I may evolve over time. My passions and interests and talents and skills will grow and change and adapt, but I will always be all of the things that make me who I am, and I am proud to add homesteader to that list.
Because at the end of the day, I’ve never rebranded myself. I’ve built my character over the years. I’ve spent time really getting to know who I am and what my purpose is. I’ve travelled the world in search of myself. I’ve studied, rebelled, experienced and written for years trying to find the right path for me and my soul. Now I’ve found it, and while I don’t know exactly what that path will look like 10, 20 or 50 years from now, I know that I’m headed in the right direction, and that, in fact, I always have been.
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If you haven't checked-in lately, the last week or so, we've sorta been in the trenches of homesteading and life over here. While some make it out to be glamorous all the time there are high's and low's just as there are in life.
With all that's going on, I've been making a point to find my way back into the garden, which is not only needed to feed my family, but also for some personal spiritual nourishment.
I just want to take a minute to love on my favorite veggie today, Broccoli! 🥦 It's one we plant over-and-over and I'm leaning into its abundance this year.
Not only is it one of my favorites, but we've also found it's one of the easiest veggies to grow so if you haven't tried it or added it to your garden yet, there's no better time than the present.
I've got an entire post on How to Grow Broccoli from Seed here: https://thehouseandhomestead.com/how-to-grow-broccoli-from-seed/ if you're looking for any tips or tricks.
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Can I be honest?
Sometimes you've gotta take a step back and look at the life you've created for yourself and ask yourself "is this truly what I want?"
The other day I shared about losing two of our rabbits this week to Rabbit Hemorrhagic Disease. The stress of losing them comes amidst a backdrop of heightened tensions around here...
From work pressures for Ryan to me trying to run a business and handle a very fussy, colicky 2-month-old (and a very busy 6-year-old), to things ramping up in the garden again and all of the other million things that need to get done (including multiple loads of laundry a day thanks to more spit up than I ever knew a baby was capable of producing), I finally felt like I was ready to crack this week.
Oh, not to mention we're doing this all on next to no sleep thanks again to our sweet boy.
I know this is all part of what we signed up for, but when it all happens at once, it can feel completely overwhelming. And when I'm completely overwhelmed and stressed out, that's exactly when I get sick too, which is exactly what happened a couple days ago.
Then yesterday (Saturday) I woke up feeling awful and decided to scroll Instagam as I nursed Noah. I saw other mothers with 6, 8 or even 10 kids somehow keeping it all together getting three square meals on the table every day while managing to keep a tidy kitchen and find time to Instagram about it.
I saw other homestead bloggers reaching new levels of success in their business that I can only dream about right now. And as I sat there in bed, covered in spit up with a ravenous baby nursing off me as I tried to console him, I felt sad for myself in that moment that I couldn't live up to the folks I was comparing myself to.
Later in the day I had to work, so Ryan took the kids to the beach and I stayed home. And I felt sad once again; Sad that I was missing out on yet another weekend with my family because I had created a life where I now have to work weekends just to keep up.
But the silver lining was that the work I had to do yesterday forced me out into the garden, and it was probably the most soothing thing I could have done for my soul.
(Continued in comments…)
Sometime homesteading looks like homegrown vegetables and freshly laid eggs and sourdough rising on the counter.
And sometimes it looks like tears when you have to bury one of your animals 😔
Ryan went out to feed the bunnies yesterday and Flopsy -our little black and white bunny- was laying dead in the pen. There was no blood, other than a little bit by her mouth. Seems like something internal happened. We’re not sure what.
Evelyn helped lay her to rest yesterday. It was a hard weekend for her. First she stayed with grandma and went with her to put her sick, 17-year-old cat down. Then she came home to the news that Flopsy was gone.
But I believe she’s more resilient because of it. We talked to her about how death is a part of all life, and allowed her to go through the stages of grief and process it however she felt she needed to.
Homesteading isn’t always sunshine and rainbows and snuggly barnyard animals. Homesteading teaches us hard lessons and helps us to become stronger and more resilient by challenging us daily.
Yesterday was a sad, hard day. But I’m glad we got to experience it together as a family.
A few years ago, Forbes published an article titled Dear Homesteaders, Self-Reliance is a Delusion.
Let’s unpack this…
What does self-reliant really mean? Is it actually achievable, or just a pipe dream?
Over on the blog today I'm unpacking all of these thoughts, and the things I do know for sure as a homesteader, mother and member of a strong and self-reliant community.
But I really want to hear from you! Post in the comments below what self-reliance means in modern times, or what steps you're taking to be more self-reliant.
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It’s that time again...
The time when things begin ramping up in the garden, the barnyard and the home.
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In the spring issue, we cover a diverse range of topics from how to trade your skills for land to the realities of going off-grid, from seed-starting to what to do with too many eggs, and from the simple joys of a homemade herbal cocktail to the sometimes heavy emotional toll of raising meat animals.
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Visit modernhomesteadingmagazine.com to login to the library and read the spring issue (current subscribers) or subscribe for just $19.99/year to read this issue and gain instant access to our entire library of past issues!
#modernhomesteading #homesteading #selfsufficiency #springonthehomestead
If you grow plants from seed (or if you want to), you’re likely going to want to start a few of them indoors. And if you start your seeds indoors, something that will make your life so much easier (and make your seedlings bigger, stronger and healthier) is an indoor growing stand with grow lights.
I've got a post I'm sharing with you today that will walk you through choosing the best type of lighting for whatever you're growing and then a step-by-step guide of how to make your grow stand, along with product recommendations if you want to make yours just like mine!
Ours can accommodate up to about 200 seedlings, but you can make yours as small or big as needed:)
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Theme of the Month: ADIDAS
No, not the textiles brand, it stands for: 𝗔𝗹𝗹 𝗗𝗮𝘆 𝗜 𝗗𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗺 𝗔𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗦𝗲𝗲𝗱𝘀 because it's officially March and we are in full swing around here!
Before you just start throwing seeds in the ground or into red solo cups on your windowsill, it’s important to take some time to read your seed packets and get to know each crop’s specific needs.
Understanding the information on a seed packet is super important when it comes to gardening, especially if you want your plants to get a strong, healthy start and produce an abundance of food for you. And what gardener doesn’t want that?!
Set yourself up for success and take a minute to read through my 𝘏𝘰𝘸 𝘵𝘰 𝘙𝘦𝘢𝘥 & 𝘜𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘚𝘦𝘦𝘥 𝘗𝘢𝘤𝘬𝘦𝘵𝘴 𝘎𝘶𝘪𝘥𝘦, before your weekend gardening plans begin.
Grab the guide link in my bio, or get it here: https://thehouseandhomestead.com/how-to-read-seed-packets/
Happy Planting:) ✨
This all-natural homemade toothpaste recipe is made with just four simple ingredients that are good for both your body and your bank account!
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The benefit of making all-natural toothpaste at home is avoiding the unhealthy additives found in most commercial toothpastes by substituting ingredients with proven benefits for oral health.
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I will walk you through, planning, sowing, containers, watering, lighting and more, and if that's not enough you can download my Seed Starting Cheat Sheet at the end to lay it all out.
I hope you're as excited as I am for the beautiful Spring season that lies ahead:)
You can find the list here https://thehouseandhomestead.com/before-starting-seeds/ or at the link in my bio.
What are you planting this year? Anything new you've never tried before? Share with me in the comments!
Ever thought about growing mushrooms at home??
A great EASY way to get started is with one of these mushroom grow kits from @northsporemushrooms
All you need to do is cut open the pack, spray with a little water (the kits even come with a handy little spray bottle), and then sit back and watch the magic happen!
And seriously, watching mushrooms goes does feel a little like magic because they grow so fast you can practically see them growing, no time lapse necessary!
The mushrooms are ready for harvest in just a few days. No gardening experience or land necessary! Even a newbie homesteader in an apartment in the city can grow these babies!
This is a great way to dip your tow into the much bigger world of mushroom growing and harvesting, and to try out a few new varieties that you probably won’t find anywhere else.
I grew Pink Oyster Mushrooms, Lion’s Mane and Blue Oyster Mushrooms (all pictured here). I’ll be using the Pink Oyster Mushrooms in a rigatoni pasta for dinner tonight. I turned the Lion’s Mane into Lion’s Mane “crab cakes” and the Blue Oyster Mushrooms are delicious as part of a stir fry or sautéed in butter and spooned over sourdough toast.
If this reel intrigues you, you can grab your own mushroom grow kit (along with time of other mushroom related products, including fruiting blocks, outdoor log kits, medicinal tinctures, capsules and more) at northspore.com. Use code HOUSEANDHOMESTEAD for 10% off your order!
And if you haven’t yet, be sure to check out my interview with Louis Giller of North Spore Mushrooms in the winter issue of Modern Homesteading Magazine. You can also find my recipe for Lion’s Mane “Crab Cakes,” along with other delicious mushroom recipes and an in-depth feature on medicinal mushrooms including Lion’s Mane, Reishi, Chaga and Cordyceps in the winter issue.
Visit modernhomesteadingmagazine.com to subscribe or login to the library and read the current issue.
Mushrooms really are pure magic, don’t ya think? 🍄 ✨
#mushrooms #mushroomhead #shrooming #eatyourshrooms #mushroomsaremagic #modernhomesteading #urbanhomesteading #homegrown
If you’ve been following me for any length of time, it probably comes as no surprise that I don’t exactly love relying on the grocery store to provide for me and my family, and that sentiment is only getting stronger as time goes on.
Between supply chain issues, rising food costs and the plethora of unhealthy ingredients, chemicals and GMO foods on grocery store shelves, I’d rather toil in the garden and kitchen all year to grow and preserve my own food than have to rely 100% on grocery stores to provide for me.
But that being said, we are in no way 100% self-sufficient so when I do go to the grocery story, I haveI have some ingredient guidelines in mind that I use when shopping for my family.
Check out my shopping tips, what I do and don't buy, and where and who I like to buy from here at this link https://thehouseandhomestead.com/healthy-grocery-shopping-tips/ or at the link in my bio.
Usually by late February/early March, right about nowish, I’ve pretty much had enough of winter and the thought of enjoying a tropical fruit platter and a cold adult beverage on a sunny beach in *insert tropical vacation destination here* seems to be just about all I can think about...
But with a newborn at home that's about the last thing on our to-do list right now! So this year, I will be visiting my tropical escape via my favorite Low-Sugar Mango Jam recipe.
If you do have tropical vacation plans, have a piña colada for me 🙏🏼, but if you don't then this recipe may be just what you need to "escape" for a few minutes into that tropical paradise:) 🥭🍹
Check out the recipe here https://thehouseandhomestead.com/low-sugar-mango-jam-recipe/ or at the link in my bio.
Let me know how the recipe works for you, and if add in any additional fruits to change it up!

Very inspiring!