How did we end up here?

 

OUR path to Farming... with (Almost) all the details.

We are two former suburbanites raised in Surrey in the Lower Mainland, just outside of Vancouver. Justin and I travelled extensively when we first got married, I did part of my university in Italy and we both worked in Dubai for a year.  When we got back from living abroad, we felt a bit over the "city" life.  We decided we really wanted a lifestyle change. We started with two chickens in our small city backyard, which at the time was taboo.  We felt that we needed more land.  We searched all over the lower mainland (which is very expensive to buy land) and ended up convincing my parents to go halfers with us on a 5 acre piece of property with a tear down house on it in Langley, another suburb of Vancouver. There, we lived in a trailer on the property and built our "dream home" which was a big house with space for both families, with a lovely big covered deck overlooking the property. It was perfect in many ways.  I even got my first pair of Nigerian Dwarf goats (in 2013), which I'd always wanted. However, to be able to afford this mortgage and new build, we both worked full time outside of the home (I am a teacher, and Justin owned his own insulation company).  We started our family and with that came lots of responsibilities and social events, that were taking away time from the farm, which we desperately wanted to spend more time developing.  I remember on the way to a friend's kid's birthday party asking Justin "hey, do I smell like goat?" and laughing. But, it was getting harder and harder to be dragged away.  The breaking point for me was when my goat gave birth to the first kids on the farm, and it was quadruplets!  But, regretfully I missed the whole thing because I was teaching that day. We wanted out of the busy traffic-filled commute that was taking longer every day, we both wanted to be at home more, be with our kids more, be with our animals more. How could we do this?  We had to get out of the lower mainland (for land affordability reasons). So we started casually looking all over B.C. and figuring out what would make sense. We eventually after many months found this beautiful spot on Vancouver Island! It was just what we were looking for. Not too far from the lower mainland (a 2 hour ferry ride), space to roam and grow, and the opportunity to hopefully make an income from farming.  The story of how we were able to actually acquire this exact farm is long enough on its own... probably a whole other post. 

We took a big risk, sold our house, sold the business, quit our day jobs, and literally bought the farm! In February 2018 we packed up our two young kids and ALL our animals (we were all on the same ferry!), and moved to a small farming community called 'Yellow Point' between Ladysmith and Nanaimo, on Vancouver Island. We know we couldn't have picked a better location, we feel so blessed to have stumbled upon this quaint, small-town, farming community.  Truthfully, we felt more at home here than any other home we'd lived in. 

With our two kids, they are 4 and 6 right now, you can imagine we are keeping very busy raising them, as well as taking care of all our livestock (we have 3 breeds of miniature livestock -goats, sheep, and pigs, as well as various poultry), which have all grown exponentially in numbers since living here. Oh, and we also grow blueberries and other produce, which is a full time job in itself. We have now expanded to start offering some of our products online, as well as at the farmer's markets and farm stand seasonally. 

We moved here 3 years ago as of next month.  It has been a huge learning curve and has taken this long to streamline our path.  We now have a clear vision of the future, and it is scary but it is also exciting.  We know we got lucky many times throughout this life.  However, luck is definitely not what got us here. It takes hard work,, perseverance, willing to take risks, flexibility, and adaptability. The thing I would say has made this life possible the most, was our real estate investments and choices.  Again, another story.  But in a nutshell it involved going from buying the most inexpensive little apartment in Surrey we could afford in 2007, to this farm in 2018.  

My one piece of advice is, if you have a dream for your life, take the chance, take the risk. Because the saying "With great risk often comes great reward" is true... 💛

The whole "Farmily" summer 2019