While not necessarily a business venture, homesteading is none the less part of That’s Awesome! Designs and Services. Homesteading is a way of life. It is the way, my partner and I want to live. We both have home-based businesses that allow us to plant an extensive garden and keep animals happy and healthy.  All this provides us the opportunity to have most of what we need to eat and to live.

In the spring and summer, we start more seeds and cuttings than we need and share the rest of it with the community through our roadside stand. The fresh fruit and vegetables get eaten and sold at the market. While the “excess” food gets preserved or dehydrated.

Not much gets wasted because whatever the animals won’t eat, gets turned into compost, which in turn goes back into the soil to grow food for the next season.

This time of year is definitely awesome. There are baby chickens and brand new baby bunnies.

There are fresh peas to be picked and strawberries, huckleberries, thimbleberries, lettuce, fennel… The flowers are just spraying the garden with colour.  I love how they take turns exploding into bloom. Every week, the colours are different and because we let a lot of flowers self seed, most of the colours are a surprise!

None of this would be possible for me without my partner, Noah. He keeps everything alive and happy during the week. While I am in town working for someone else, Noah keeps it all together. He waters the garden, he waters the roadside stand plants, he waters the seedlings, he waters the mama plants, he waters the cuttings, he waters the plants in his Tomato Village. He feeds the animals and makes sure they are safe and happy. He chases chickens out of the garden and pets baby bunnies. He makes awesome hanging baskets and flower arrangements. He cooks amazing food, all that while running a successful garden centre and continuing to build the homestead.

This year, we are learning which plants are deer resistant here. A lot of plants and flowers that are deemed “deer resistant” elsewhere cannot be graced with that description here. I am slowly crossing out plants on this extensive list I found online. Click here for the list.

Today, we’re testing sunflowers. If the deer leave them alone, we will be planting sunflowers by the road for many years to come…

If you know of any other deer resistant plants, just list them in the comments.