I am Veronica Toft, and my husband is Sven Toft. We live in Sherwood Park, Alberta, in the middle of Suburbia.
And we want out. By “out” I mean that our dream is to live in the Middle of Nowhere… although some trees around the place might be nice.
We are Urban Homesteaders.
I almost feel like a pretender claiming that, because Sven and I only started this journey toward self-sufficiency a few years ago, and we have a LONG way to go before we can really say we’re homesteaders (urban or otherwise). We buy our groceries at the store. We don’t have solar power, or a wood stove. We both work full time jobs, and we use the internet mercilessly.
But…. We hunt. With our own hand-loaded ammo. We have two deep freezers full of meat we butchered ourselves. And we have a deep pantry full of our own pressure-canned foods. We do have a garden, small though it is. We are learning bush craft and outdoor survival skills. I am learning to make my own herbal remedies.
Maybe that makes us Homesteaders, or maybe we are Preppers. There is quite a fine line between the two, I know, and I guess we identify somewhat with both. I don’t know precisely what we are prepping for, but most likely our retirement. Our kids are grown, and on their own. We aren’t rich; in fact, we’ve had some really hard financial times that we are striving to recover from. A retirement plan for us does not involve RRSP’s. It involves a homestead – a real one – where we can have a big garden and some chickens. Near some good hunting grounds. Maybe we could harvest some of our own trees and build ourselves a little house. That’s about it.
We have a ways to go before we can get our own land; we have a debt to pay down first. I am employed in Oil & Gas, and Alberta’s economy is struggling. We feel it’s just not the right time to make a bold financial move. So we are “sheltering in place” for now, and probably the next few years.
It’s hard for us to be stuck in the urban jungle. Both of us are very avid outdoors people, and we long to be in the Wild as often as we can. Camping season is year round for us, we are very fortunate in that we have an annual base camp. Our TOAD (Trailer Old as Dirt) is parked out there year round, and we are out there at least every other weekend. It’s therapy for us. Actually, its home. Every Sunday, when we pack up camp, both Sven and I ache, because it feels like we are leaving our real life for a fake one. We spend 5 days a week feeling like we are walking in shoes that don’t fit.
We’ve decided to make the best of it, because this is the situation we are in and we cannot change it right now. We will drive ourselves crazy wishing for what we don’ have. So for now, all we can do is learn. And learn… and learn.
We need to learn how to grow our own food. Even if all we have is a few flower beds and a raspberry patch, and least I can learn that. So that when we do move to Valhalla (aka Homestead Toft) I will at least know the basics of gardening.
And we need to learn how to hunt. We started hunting together in 2014 and although we had our share of heartbreak and failure, we have also some wonderful successes. Some of that is due to luck, but we also work to improve our skills every year. We butcher all of our own meat, and the learning process has been awesome. It is a truly amazing feeling to eat meat that you took from the Wild to your plate; I cannot describe it other than to say it’s deeply satisfying in a primal kind of way.
The purpose of this blog is to both record and share our experiences with others. I don’t know anyone that actually homesteads in Suburbia. Yes, people garden, and people hunt. But I don’t know anyone that wants to actually become less dependent on the Grid. I suspect there are a lot of people out there like us -and that also like us – they are hesitant to talk about their dream, for fear of being labelled as a Nutcase Doomsday Prepper. That is not who we are. We just want to be independent, and have the ability to take care of ourselves.
We want to help build a community of like-minded people, where we can all feel free to share what we’ve learned, and assist each other in learning new skills. Sven and I have only been at this for a few years now, and it’s kind of lonely out here. We welcome all who want to stop in and see what we do, and share the journey with us to a better life.
Vee/ TrueNorthWild