We’re about to launch our exciting project to turn our home from the 1800s and the acreage on which it sits into our dream home, complete with food self-sufficiency. I am an international bestselling and twenty-time published book author and blogger (for my own site DrMichelleCook.com as well as the highly popular health and environmental site Care2.com) and my husband Curtis is a long-time business consultant. We share a passion for great food and healthy living.
We’ve watched the food supply become increasingly degraded through pesticides, additives, genetically-modified organisms (GMOs), and more so we started growing an ever-increasing amount of our own food. We made the decision in 2017 to jump head-first into food self-sufficiency by purchasing an old farmhouse and acreage and committing to growing more of our own food. But, it took us until the end of 2018 to sell our house replete with manicured gardens and to find a suitable (and affordable) location and farmhouse. Before I jump into the exciting upcoming launch of what we’re now calling the “Food House Project” here’s a bit of the back story:
To say that 2018 was a whirlwind would be an understatement. Curtis and I spent weeks inside our house during the summer months as the wildfire conditions in the region had left white-out conditions from the intense smoke. Even indoors, we suffered from the horrible effects of smoke inhalation. We made a decision to leave the wildfire region after progressively worse smoke had affected the area over three of the nearly four years we had been there.
After working tirelessly to sell our house, we received an offer to purchase the property and within nine days we began our drive across the country to our new home 2700 miles/4300 kilometres away. After driving day and night through blizzards, icy roads, and temperatures plummeting to -10 degrees Fahrenheit/-24 degrees Celsius, we finally made it.
When we arrived, we were shocked to find a home and acreage full of junk (the people at 1-800-GOT-JUNK have since hauled 4 of their dump trucks of garbage away) and a filthy home more befitting of a haunted movie scene than a place to call home. Walls had been destroyed and the attempts at repairs were nothing short of atrocious.
We spent the first day in our home scrubbing the filth that permeated every surface, from walls to cabinets to floors, and everywhere between, trying to eek out some sleep in the few hours we dared rest upon these same surfaces. We called for backup from professional cleaners, drywallers, electricians (to fix a broken electric heater), and general contractors.
The final days of 2018 have involved more cleaning than I ever imagined possible, general household repairs, and being the project managers to the contractors who came and went, each time leaving noticeable improvements in their wake. We’ve hardly made a dent in the renovations we’d like to complete and we still don’t have a full kitchen as the house was used as a business and the kitchen was removed by the previous owner with a small kitchenette left in its place.
And, while all of this sounds awful (and, indeed, some of it was!) we’re getting to the point where the house is clean and repaired enough to live in, the movers have dropped off our belongings, and we’re beginning to call our century-old house our home.
Over the coming months, we’ll be sharing our adventures from the farmhouse as we add a kitchen, complete renovations, and begin growing more and more of our own food. We hope you’ll join us as we share the good, bad, and the ugly as well as our achievements and victories as we take this neglected old farmhouse and find ways to add an orchard, gardens, indoor growing stations, and much more. We have no idea where this journey will take us but we’re thrilled to share our adventures with you. Subscribe to our blog so you don’t miss a thing!