About 6 years ago, my family had a life altering experience. We were a typical family of 4. My husband and I went to work every day without fail. We had debt, kids to take care of, living paycheck to paycheck. We ate the “standard” American diet of processed everything. The terrible thing is, my husband and I knew better. We both grew up “homesteading” but for us, it was just life.
In 2017, our lives completely changed. Our daughter, who was only a year and a half old at the time, caught viral pneumonia at day care. Someone had to be at home to take care of her. My husband had the higher paying job, so we decided that I would stay at home until she recovered. Two days later when I returned to work, I was terminated, regardless of my work excuse. As parents, we were tired of handing our children off to someone else, only for them to become sick nearly every month. A light bulb went off, we sat down as team and discussed the need for change.
We both decided that I would stay at home with both of our children and he would go to work. For the next year, I brainstormed ways to save money, to get us out of debt, being extra frugal with materialistic things, taking classes, studying money. Since I grew up homesteading and had a little knowledge, I started a garden, which led to chickens, I began to preserve our own food and forage the front yard for herbs and goodies that could serve as medicinal items for our family. We began to see that we had something great happening on our half acre.
Within two years of our journey we began sharing food with our neighbors in abundance. We were selling extra produce and eggs online. I decided to start a small hatchery, selling my chicks and eventually adult fowl. I began giving advice to other homesteaders and helping them thrive! The joy and excitement I felt to help others, was something I had never experienced before in any other job that I had ever worked. I quickly learned that this was my passion in life and I was really good at it.
Over the next couple of years, my husband and I would sit down, budget, make goals, and plan for the future. We began to realize that we would eventually outgrow our half acre. The spring of 2019, is when I decided to transition “Bonny Oaks Homestead” into “Bonny Oaks Farmstead“. We did extremely well during our first year of business as a new start up and our dreams of being profitable came to fruition. Our fears and doubts, ” can we do this?”, ” is it too much to handle?”, ” what if we flop?”, were no longer in the back of our minds.
In the year 2020, things changed again for us. We were really in too far over our head. We didn’t have the room to grow and we had a lot of demand. As word of mouth got around, people were knocking on our door wanting our goods but we were constantly sold out. With no room to grow, and no extra product to offer, we lost a ton of potential sales.
We began to go to banks just to borrow money for land. No one wanted to loan us any money because I was a “new” business with no credit under my business name, there was too much risk involved for their establishment. From previous years of being in debt, our personal credit wasn’t the best. Every interest rate we received was ridiculously high, a mortgage just wasn’t what we wanted to do at the time, nor did we have a budget cut out for a home and land.
We went home that very night and made a plan. We were going to save money like our life depended on it. Eating what we grew, no new clothes unless it was necessary, everything cooked was homemade, we didn’t go out to eat, almost everything we did as a family was a free event, we cut out our entertainment subscriptions, and switched internet plans. Everything changed. I homeschooled the kids and that was our biggest expense for the next two years. We budgeted every last penny! Of course we had set backs and unforeseen circumstances, but for every set back we had, it would just drive us to do better. At 32, I was completely debt free!
Now, over the past year, we have moved onto our new Farmstead. We are no longer on a half acre and we are still getting settled in. Since we have been here, it’s been on my heart to start this website to help people who may be starting their homestead, farmstead, or farm for the very first time. I wish when I started this journey, that I would’ve had a mentor. Someone who could answer my questions, someone who could’ve saved me time and money spent. Someone with resources. That’s why I wanted to start this online community. I’m so glad you’re here!