Why hopeless?

Since I was a little girl I have always bought into the romantic notions of the good ol' days.  Summers were filled with games of pioneers, in which we collected water dripping from the drain spouts and "canoed" in the ditches on inner tubes.  We even turned our play house into its own little homestead.  Every spring we washed the windows with freezing cold melt water, hung our rags out to dry on a make shift clothesline and emptied our play house of all its winter contents.  (We called this spring cleaning.  It usually involved removing all of the patio furniture my mother was attempting to protect from the winter elements.  I'm not sure cleaning is the word she would have used for our homesteading attempts).

When highschool came along, I had the good fortune of joining a special program called outdoor school (link).  Besides teaching the importance of environmental protection, we learned a lot of random skills - how to start a fire with a bow and drill (I never mastered that one), how to navigate with a map and compass (mastered that one, but didn't use it again and have now forgotten) and how to forage for some edible species (mostly when we were stranded on an island in northern Saskatchewan with no food).  It isn't hard to see how this experience nurtured the budding homesteader instinct from my childhood.  But the critical moment for me was when we visited a straw bale house.  The house belonged to a retired veterinary professor and his wife.  Both were actively involved in their community, grew much of their own food, were well educated and thoughtful about many topics and had built their own beautiful straw bale house complete with composting toilet.  This life immediately became my dream.

Years later I met my partner to be on a dating website.  I won't go into the details, but suffice is to say that half his profile was about composting, including composting toilets (the other half was about how he liked hot women...). I knew (ok not right then) that it was a perfect match.  And so we embarked on a journey to start a family and our own "homestead".  We were going to build our own eco-house with a composting toilet and it was going to be everything our suburban house was not.  As it happened, Gus's parents owned a beautiful plot of land just north of Waterloo.  The land was divided by a rocky river and littered with Waterfalls.  The scenery was breathless and the price cheap, with a homestead site just waiting to turn into our dream.  But there was a hitch.  We had no way to make money.

Now I know if you are a radical homemaker you are suppose to get by on little money and lots of skills.  The skills tend to be mostly farming and husbandry skills, of which I have few.  More importantly, I have little desire to be a farmer.  But, we told ourselves, we could still homestead.  We could have some chickens and a small garden and .... Gus could be a telecommuting programmer working for the man.  After all, working a job you don't like for someone else so you can build your own eco-house is what homesteading is all about, right?

And then there was the problem of building the house....we wanted to do it ourselves (probably because we've never tried), but couldn't figure out where we would get the time if Gus was working 40 hours a week.  We also have 2 young kids, and it was clear to us that we would need to neglect them for at least 5 years in order to get the house built.  Ok, so you work a job you don't like more than you want to and ignore your children...but you build your own house, and a really cool one, on a really beautiful property with the best chickens you've ever met.

By now, I'm guessing you can see where this is going.  I wanted, in fact I still do, a life we did not have.  A life I felt embodied freedom and careful choice.  A life where we could be examples of less consumerism and live in a home that we felt proud of...something we had created.  I wanted to be a hub of thought and intentional living.  And I was willing to give up all those things to get there.

Time to rethink.  I've heard of Urban Homsteading.  In fact, my sister has an urban property that she has turned into a nice getaway for growing food.  Maybe we could too....

This is my house in suburbia:

It is a typical 70s suburban bungalow with a poor layout and neighbors that are appalled at the state of our lawn.  The back yard is lovely and private, but mostly shaded and while the front yard has slightly more sun, growing things is still a stretch.  The region has bylaws preventing chickens (even the best ones), poor public transit and mandatory rental licenses.  If I give up on my amazing house in the country, this is what I will have to work with.  Hopeless.   

But my husband and I can keep pursuing our academic jobs (which we love).  I can work part time and spend time with my children.  Our commute to work is a short bike down a nature trail.  Our house is nestled right next to a conservation area with loads of nature, great nature programs and even a beach and lake for swimming.  A trail skirts the conservation area and leads straight from our house to the library, YMCA and an early years playroom.  We are a short bike to pick up Ultimate games, a community garden and Max's preschool, and a short drive to Gus's parents and sisters houses.  We can rent part of our house for extra income (or we could if the stupid bylaw didn't get in our way) allowing us to work less, and we can easily attract Au pairs from different countries to help with the children and responsibilities on our "homestead".  

Our great location

And so I am left with this 70s bungalow to work with.  I am somewhat disgusted (and disappointed) that it has turned into a better homesteading option than the oasis getaway in the country, but so be it.  And so begins the saga of the hopeless homesteader.