Six years ago I never imagined I would be starting this blog.  Nick and I had recently re-adjusted our lives 180 degrees.  We both resigned from our well-paid, with complete benefits, full time jobs, sold our home and moved from our close community of love and support to a 16ft trailer on a half-acre of raw land on a small island, where we barely new our neighbors.  Our goal was to simplify our lives and begin to homestead, a dream we had discussed for the previous 13 years.

Luckily, the month prior to me moving I did a job search online and seamlessly fell into a full time position without much effort.  Nick worked day and night building the walls, ceilings, floors, pantry, cabinets, loft bed and closet for our new home, while I commuted by ferry to another island M-F to my new job to support our recent move.

Our home was a purchased cedar yurt kit that was constructed in one weekend with the help of our family.  The yurt construction weekend followed many days of figuring out which spot on our tiny 1/2 acre would work best, falling a few alders from our forrested land for our round cedar home to rest, chopping and stacking the newly-cut wood for our future heating and cooking in our outdoor kitchen and in our wood-burning cook stove in our home, and planning, digging holes and pouring thirty cement footers, followed by building the yurt decking foundation.

Two years later we moved into our small paradise-like round home.  A deck and separate bath house still to construct, our home and property creations began to move at a snail’s pace, due to both of us now having full-time work.  Our plan was to do all of our building without accruing too much debt, using recycled materials as much as possible, thanks to our local “Take it or leave it”, “the pit”, and local de-construction sites.  By weekday we would work to pay for our building projects.  By night and weekends we continued on our homestead building journey, slowly crossing of the checklist of “to do’s” on our property.

Over those two years our learning curve was steep.  We constructed our composting toilet and rainwater catchment systems and milled our own lumber.  Nick became proficient in using a variety of carpentry tools, for all of the many home-building projects, walls, ceilings, floors, window sills, etc…  An artist by nature Nick turned our once raw land into his artist palette, creating our lovely round home, and outdoor kitchen.

For the time being we didn’t (and still don’t) need running water.  We adjusted our previously modern daily shower lifestyle to once or twice a week.  Hauling water from our rainwater cistern, heating the water over the campfire, then hauling it up to our ‘temporary’ shower house were (and are) the chores that precede our rainwater showers. Nick creatively engineered our shower system to pump water from a 5-gallon bucket up through water hose and out through a shower head, using a battery to power a boat’s bilge pump.  Genius!  One of our friends still tells us her favorite shower ever was in our tiny 4′ x 4′ shower house.

Then, about four years ago a local community member approached us to inquire about us possibly gardening on her and her husband’s agricultural land, since we lived amidst tall evergreens and a few big-leaf maples, blanketed in greenery without much sunlight.  At our first business meeting with the property owners, we shared our vision to create a labyrinth healing garden planted with medicinal herbs and flowers.  The charming couple interrupted us with full smiles stating “You’re never going to believe this.  We have been talking about wanting a labyrinth on our land.  Look at these labyrinth books we’ve been reading”, showing us their recently purchased books.

From that synchronistic moment in time to present day our lives have not slowed down for a moment.  Between working on our home property, our labyrinth healing garden, our own vegetable and fruit gardens and our paid jobs, life never ceases to be dull of either of us.

Our daily experiences are filled with simple tasks, chopping wood, hauling water, watering, weeding and harvesting in the gardens, along with both of our deep commitments to serving the world with love and support through our other rewarding work with others and the land.

Our once set goal of simplifying our lives and homesteading has become our way of living now.  Bodies strong and healthy, we feel very blessed to have taken that ‘Leap of Faith’ into the next part of our life journey together.