Hello and a big welcome to the Old Walsh Farm!
Not long ago we were a couple of wannabe homesteaders who foolishly wisely sold the home they spent five years building to buy 12 acres of abandoned pasture in Upper Coverdale, New Brunswick, a crumbling charming, century old homestead and a 200 foot barn (with only some major minor structural issues).
We had never mucked out a barn, milked a cow or even preserved a single food. In other words we wanted to start a homestead, but we didn’t know where to begin, where to start or what to learn.
And then it hit us. Why not challenge ourselves to learn 52 homesteading skills in one year? So we started this blog where week after week we shared the skills we were learning.
After the success of our “great farming quest”, we’re now wondering if we can turn our homestead into a profitable farmstead. So we have begun interviewing local farmers who started out as homesteaders to find out how they made the transition, what worked for them, what didn’t and most importantly – Can you really earn a living from small scale farming?
Here on the blog we also love sharing our own homesteading misadventures with our Khaki Campbell ducks, honeybees, 32 heritage chickens, garden, orchard and Babydoll sheep. We’re always experimenting in the kitchen with farm fresh ingredients, working on 10,000 DIY projects at once and generally getting into a whole lot of homesteading mischief.
So how about you? Do you feel like chucking it all to live the simple life? Or maybe you’re looking for ways to earn money from your homestead? Or maybe you just want to laugh at us as we try and build a farmstead?
Either way we hope you’ll find what you’re looking for and stick around for what is sure to be a bumpy ride full of mud, manure, sweat, tears and (fingers crossed) some joy and laughter.
Thank you for reading The Old Walsh Farm,
Kimberlee A.K.A. Wife and stay at home mom to two rambunctious rascals well-behaved children
PS. Want to read the story about how we got started on this crazy adventure? Click here.