About Us

I am the owner of The Farmhouse Label. In 2021 my husband and I bought our little 3 acre parcel in Central Alberta. Born and raised in Calgary, the both of us never saw ourselves living in the city forever. The idea of raising our kids there was never appealing, but we were working with what we had. In 2021 we were spending an outrageous amount on rent, in a huge house, with huge issues. Our wallets were looking bare. We started budgeting and looking into ways to save money. The idea of starting a garden and being able to harvest our hard work sounded exciting. We ended up with some pests intruding on our space and that wasn’t the only problem. The garden isles were bare of any and all pest control options. So we did what any sane person would do…. We got ducks. And no ducks in the city isn’t allowed. Rebels we were.

During covid while the younger kids were having a sleepover at grandma’s and everything was closed; we found comfort in spending date nights perusing acreage properties for sale. Shortly after we were offered an opportunity that we couldn’t say no to. This offer allowed us the funds to purchase a property as long as we could qualify ourselves. So we started the process of looking for our new home. Unfortunately with our budget we couldn’t have a huge wants list, the wiggle room to have demands was just not there. We settled with a few needs; within an hour of the city as Kyle still worked in Calgary, at least 3 bedrooms and a house that wasn’t falling apart.

We found the one. It was a little more than an hour away. But we would make it work. So with our 4 kids, 2 dogs, one cat and two ducks in tow…. We sold 1/2 our things and moved to the middle of nowhere. Within the first full day of living in the country we became the proud parents to 2 piglets and 6 chickens. Housewarming gifts from our realtor. We didn’t have a pen for them, or a house yet here they were. So mad dash to build a chicken run and pig pen. This was the start of the never ending honey-do list. Oops. At that point I was on two weeks of vacation from my fulltime 9-5, completely engulfed in the peace and tranquility of our new little slice of heaven. It wasn’t until my vacation was nearing its end that it fully hit me; I couldn’t go back. The Monday that followed i brought my computer in, handed in my resignation and that was the end to my 9 year career in diagnostic imaging. What would I do now.

Fast forward a few months and we are now at 2 dogs, 4 cats, 2 pigs, 6 ducks, a donkey and a pony. oh my. We were buying feed in bags from the store, hay from a neighbour and trying to maintain our sanity. At this point we came across the Loop program. A program for farmers to receive grocery products no longer sellable and use it towards sustenance for our funny farm animals. A saving grace; we just didn’t know it at the time. We started getting the gist of the money situation, our flock of chickens had grown even larger, and between them and the ducks they had started earning their keep. The bags of food were not practical or serving us any longer so we looked into bulk feeding, and took the plunge, and it was a huge one. It was a $500 upfront cost that we hoped and prayed would be paid for by selling fresh farm eggs. We purchased these large totes three times over the course of a year and the price was going up exponentially each time.

Next on the list was goats, 7 of them, but in my defence they were free. Free is good right. No. You’re supposed to say “NO”. Why did i need goats? Because i wanted them of course. They came with two large shelters, and our neighbour supplied us with cattle panels and helped us orchestrate an escape proof goat pen. So this is where I failed. This isn’t’ when I realized obviously… but I’m just foreshadowing an inevitable event.

Moving on… So we are moving into spring of 2022. We decided to get broiler chicks or meat birds. I bought 25 chicks to start, expensive broiler specific feed from a feed store, and we were on our way…. Downhill. What i didn’t do prior to starting was consider a budget, loss and how long my half of these chickens would last me. I’m going to plead the fifth and say it was our first time and we would do better next time. So we got another 30 from someone else. Did great in the beginning, but eventually realized how stupid meat birds really are and that I again was not prepared. I’ll get into the nitty gritty of meat birds later. But let’s just say i learnt my lesson. And planning, budgeting, and a lot of consideration needed to be put into place before we did meat birds again.

The one thing people need to realize as a homesteader is it’s an ever adapting journey. If you’re not always learning and seeking better and more efficient ways of doing things, then you aren’t adapting. Success in homesteading requires you to be flexible, and acknowledge the challenges that will 100% be thrown at you.

Now the chickens didn’t deter us from wanting to raise our own meat, but did teach us some simple tricks. Firstly you can’t just raise meat for yourself and expect to save money. Second spending large amounts on feed will put you into debt. So we implemented these tips into growing meat pigs. It wasn’t 100% a success but we came out with freezers full of meat, and a new lesson learnt that raising meat pigs through the winter is AWFUL.

So with all this going on Kyle and I still managed to find the time to get married. And no having your wedding on your property does not make it cheaper! I promise you. But again I’m frugal, I cut costs where i needed to and we had a well executed wedding for under $8K with only 3 months of planning. Now to be fair our family went through a lot of changes but i won’t get into all that. Some things are meant to be kept quiet. We went on our honeymoon for 10 days to Mexico, Kyle’s 2nd time out of Canada and our first time ever on a vacation together. We had a blast! It created a new found goal in our life to make sure we take the time for a vacation at least once a year, even if it’s not all inclusive. We need to get away.

We can’t forget about our first garden on the funny farm. There was never a garden here before so we had to find a space and dig up the grass. But how? Luckily we met a great neighbour who helped us with this process. He brought his GIANT tractor pulling a GIANT 26ft cultivator. I didn’t even think he was going to make it up the driveway but he did. I was amazed. He got it down to dirt, left and came back later with his little kubota lawn tractor and a tiller. It looked great when he was done. We shovelled a giant mountain of compost into it and we got to work planting. Unfortunately we were a little late on getting this going so it was a rush job. There was no time for planning. But once things started growing i already had a plan for the next year. Again not a 100% success but i felt accomplished. I even learnt how to can and preserve and i fell in love.

Fast forward to winter… I hate the cold, the animals hated the cold, and we are just going to skip it all together. We had a great Christmas, and wished for spring. I researched till i was blue in the face and created a new plan for the upcoming spring.

Now are into February of 2023. And since i forgot to mention it before I’ll mention it now.. we started babysitting my friends pigs, two unaltered males, and while we were in Mexico those boys and my girls got cozy and you know the rest. We started noticing the girls looking a little round. So i started looking up info on pig pregnancies, and i was getting nervous. I told Kyle we needed to separate the girls because it seemed to be nearing baby time. We shopped around for lumber and my framer husband got to work building a big pig birthing house. We finished the house… we meaning him and moved the girls in the next day. And when i say we finished in the nick of time, i really mean it. Our first mama gave birth to 4 babies (2 boys and 2 girls) literally the next day. Long story short our other girl never gave birth to any babies. We assume a sudo pregnancy and I’ll talk about that later on as well.

Fortunate enough 6 weeks later all the babies were sold the same day they were posted. At 8 weeks these babies went to their new homes and we kept one female we named Greta.

So now we have 6 pigs, 2 of which we were babysitting. A crap ton of chickens and ducks, turkeys, a donkey and a pony and 7 goats… just kidding… see what i did there. We came outside one day in April and there was two freshly born baby goats. Back story while we were in Mexico friends of ours asked if we wanted their bucklings, we agreed and they were unexpectedly dropped off two days after we got back from Mexico in middle of -30 weather. I had no idea what to do with them. They were 6 months at the time. I threw them in my pen, first mistake and figured out what to do with them. The following weekend we got them sorted into a pen and continued on. Well in that week these tiny little bucklings had bred not one but two of our three does. We had twin boys born April 18 and twin girls born April 19. I’ll explain the family dynamics later.

We got our garden sorted out again, and again the moment i planted and things started growing i was regretting my choices, not to mention I forgot to plant beans and carrots. Silly me.

We got our meat birds organized again. With planning of course, we were money conscious and we did well with the costs of raising these birds as well as in turn our birds are considered free minus the time we have put in. We should have enough to last us a year without having to buy any chicken from the store. Yay! I’ll go through the whole process of how we managed this in my blog. I can’t give all my secrets away.. this is just how we got started remember.

So here we are… September 2023. We have a huge canning stockpile, freezers full of meat. Our animal situation has yet again changed and you can meet them HERE.

I’ll be posting consistently on my blog, social media platforms and surprise I’m in the process of creating some “Homesteaders 101” digital and physical products which you will be able to find in my store. These will be homesteader essentials; e books, journals, planners and more. As well as my print on demand clothing. I’ll be continually posting new items as often as I can.

You can find all our social platform links on our homepage or search @thefarmhouselabel. If you made it this far kudos to you and I look forward to taking you on our journey.

- Jordon