Along the way we have met many people, online and in person, who have told us they also want to live off the grid, grow a garden and to live off the land. We think it is great that people are looking to simplify their lives, want to live a more meaningful life, and some are doing it for fun because living off grid has become quite popular. The latter, we were not.

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It was in the winter of 2013 when we sat down together and realized the life we were living wasn't meant for us. We were a family of four with two vehicles living in a three story townhome near Toronto. Money was tight and we lived paycheque to paycheque, never getting ahead. I was a stay at home homeschooling mom while my husband was the sole bread winner when he lost his job and an $800 power bill came in the mail, it was also the holidays. We were defeated. 

We knew there had to be more to life than just carrying on day to day to work, to pay bills. We knew we wanted to spend more time together as a family unit and wanted our children to become deeply rooted in love and family. So we dreamed up a little dream. My husband liked the idea of solar powering a home, I wanted more space to grow a garden and have a backyard flock of chickens, and we both wanted to live a small and simple lifestyle. We settled on a cabin design and I researched every evening while the children slept. I wanted to know how to raise chickens, how to grow a vegetable garden, and how to butcher a chicken.

We couldn't afford to leave and start building because we had credit card debt, car payments, and student loans that kept us living paycheque to paycheque so we started by downsizing and selling all our belongings room by room and started paying off the debt. We also moved from Ontario to New Brunswick where the living expenses we half and property was more affordable. We started a blog with ads about our story to earn income from ad revenue and opened an Etsy shop to sell seeds, handmade items and downloadable printables. 

We spent 4 years downsizing but never really getting closer to living our dream. It was like the world was against us by design so we took another leap. In 2017 we purchased a 24 foot Class C motorhome that needed a lot of work. I'm sure our family and friends thought we were crazy but we thought if we could just drastically reduce our monthly expenses, we could finally pay off our debt and actually buy land. After a few weeks of renovation, we were able to move into our new home on wheels, his name was Nelson.

We thoroughly enjoyed our time living in an RV full time as a family. We were able to park for the day at various playgrounds, nature parks and beaches. To sleep we would park in Walmart parking lots, other parking lots, and have sleep overs in a friends driveway. We also took advantage of any farm sitting opportunities that were close to my husbands workplace so we could be stationary for periods of time to connect to the grid and internet. It was a great experience and we learned a lot about being off grid, solar power and living in a small space as a family of four. It was a relief knowing our home on wheels, although tiny, was literally ours and we didn't have to pay anyone to live in it.

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We lived in our RV for over a year while my husband continued to work full time, the debt was gone and we were building a nest egg to buy our property. We felt like we were finally in charge of our lives, like we finally had a say in how we lived our lives and spent our time. In the spring of 2018 we found a property we were able to purchase without acquiring more debt and started to clear trees for our drive and cabin. 

We still weren't rich in the sense of having a lot of money, but now we were land owners and we owned a home on wheels, we had assets that could actually get us closer to accomplishing our dream. If it wasn't for the fact we lived in the Great White North, we probably could have parked our RV and continued building our homestead, but we needed a warm cabin before the Canadian Winter settled in so we took another leap. We sold our newly renovated RV for more than double what we paid for it. We were able to buy a cheap car, pop up tent trailer and all the lumber we needed to build our home and within a couple weeks we had moved in. We used our passive income to complete the cabin and continue developing our homestead which is what we are still doing to this day, growing, building on our foundation and becoming deeply rooted.

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We hope our story inspires you to do what you need to do to make your life off grid dream a reality. If you want to follow our homestead and our life off grid, find us on Facebook or Instagram.