I became a Feral Forest Women™️ - (A guide to diving head first into your dreams and someone else's herd of sheep)

I was born and raised in the city, even living in downtown Montreal before landing in Manitoba. But I grew up spending my summers camping in Northern Saskatchewan where I fell in love with the forest. Other than my aspirations to make a tiny home under tree roots with moss for my bed I had absolutely no experience living rural or animal husbandry (unless you count my childhood guinea pigs).

Waskisiu Lake, Saskatchewan

I was in my mid-20s and my husband and I lived in Winnipeg, we spent our weeks working and looking forward to going camping on the weekends. We had a house that looked directly at another house and one of those neighbours who waited for you to come home from work every day and trap you in conversation in the driveway for 45 minutes before you could get into your house (introvert nightmare).

But when we would get out to the woods we felt alive again. Like the world was full of pine trees, wood smoke, possibilities, and dreams.

So we dreamed, we thought about off-grid living, we looked at vacant land, until one day we stumbled upon a weird little log cabin in the woods that was JUST on the edge of too far away. It was the only agricultural listing in a decidedly not agricultural area. The couple who built it were retiring from farming sheep and market gardening.

It was the kind of place you needed to see the potential in, when we first saw it it had a home made light fixture made out of a 5 gallon bucket lined with tin foil. We were determined to turn that 5 gallon bucket light house into a 5 gallon bucket light HOME.

5 gallon bucket light fixture in it's natural habitat

So we did what any rational, reasonable people would do. We sold our house and moved out to this wacky log house which came complete with 13 sheep in the middle of nowhere with no idea what we were doing. Thanks to the internet for teaching us things like "what to do when your ejector system breaks" and "fly strike?!” (don't Google that).

The OS (Original Sheep)

Living out here and being a first generation farmer is not without hard work and sacrifice. But it absolutely feeds my soul.