Realizing God’s Vision For My Life

One of the awesome things I love to do is help others realize God’s vision for their lives. I do this through business and life coaching, an online course about discovering vision and purpose, and online training to start and grow a home business. All these things are a result of me realizing God’s vision for my life and I truly love it, but I have to admit that there are some other awesome things I love to do that give me the ultimate fulfilled feeling.

Since May of 2022 me and my family have been living the dream! We made a big move across a couple of provinces to the land that God guided us to so we could fulfill our calling to live more simply and love more animals!

The Push to be Homesteading on the Prairies

My husband and I have had the farming dream in mind since we met over 16 years ago. We’ve always lived in the country; first, in rural southern Ontario on nearly 50 acres of mostly bush, then to central Ontario on an acre and a half on a major highway. Each place had their pros and cons, but we always strived to live off the land in some way and strengthen our family life by focusing on home.

Both my husband (Rob) and I have almost always been self-employed and valued things that weren’t common with the masses. We decided that educating our children at home was the smart decision, we enjoyed the extra work of getting quality food from animals we raised and food we grew, and (mostly) looked forward to the wood splitting week-ends and harvesting wood for self-sufficient heating.

We’ve had the homesteading mindset for years and have had plans to live off the land and the many resources God has given freely more and more each year. Then in spring of 2021 both Rob and I had the same feeling that now (then) was the time to really take on the homesteading adventure. We would sell our property that we just purchased two years before and find our 50-100 acres of paradise.

The housing market was pretty inflated at the time and God prompted us to take the leap and get living more of that vision he planned for our lives sooner rather than later. Our thought before this was to stay in this home for 3-4 more years then strategically plan for our transition to a full-on homesteading lifestyle.

As you may know, our plans and God’s plans aren’t always the same. He put this desire for a certain family lifestyle on the hearts of Rob and myself and we were both of a similar mindset about it, but bringing this vision to life came about in a very sudden and unexpected way.

God’s Ways Are So Much Better Than Our Ways

When we first started looking for our dream property, we only looked in Ontario. That’s where we’ve both lived our whole lives and that’s where our extended family is. Location wasn’t a big concern–we were fine moving an hour or two more north, especially to find the right property. While we spent the majority of the summer renovating our house, we constantly searched real estate and found some viable options, but we wanted to wait to get really serious until after we listed our house.

That happened in late summer after the housing market cooled down a bit, but we were ready to take some serious views of property and trying to see where God was leading us. In retrospect, I don’t think I was very in tune to where God was leading us, but maybe He was also giving us an experience to tell a good story about and be able to give Him the glory for giving us a property that was waaaaaay better than what we were thinking was right back in the summer and fall of that year.

We thought we wanted several acres of trees. Self-sufficiency (or better stated, God-sufficiency) in wood heat was what knew. We thought that if we found land without much for buildings then the price would be better for our budget. We thought that way northern Ontario was a good fit for us and our budget, so at a certain point we were only finding great options at a minimum of 10 hours away from our home at the time.

Then time went by and our house didn’t sell in the fall so we spent the winter where we were. It was ok. I got to enjoy a fabulous new kitchen, bathroom and many of the other upgrades we made to the house. Over the winter we were still looking at real estate quite regularly and somewhere over those months our perspective changed. Or shall I say God revealed some better options for us!

Just When You Think You Know What You Want . . .

Living our dream on good workable land for growing food and raising animals didn’t look like the prairies. I don’t know why because it’s pretty near perfect here! Perhaps my purchase of the DVD set of the TV series Little House on the Prairie back in early 2022 was a hint from God?

I will say that it was the price that got us looking outside of Ontario. Even the prices in remote northern Ontario were more than the real estate for what we were looking for in provinces to the east and west of the Ontario. I had in my mind that we could pay off our current mortgage, pay for our new property in full and still have tens of thousands to buy what we needed to get our homestead established. This wasn’t going to happen in Ontario, but it could happen in another province.

So our search spread out! As soon as the snow melted we listed our house and it sold within 24 hours. That’s God’s plan!

We did a lot of online looking at property, but didn’t have a place to live by the time our house closed and it actually felt ok. We saw so many good options for what we were looking for that we felt confident we wouldn’t be homeless for too long. In fact, God took care of that too. A friend had a cozy little cabin just 15 minutes away from our old home and that’s where we lived for two weeks.

By the end of the first week we found our property. We had a nice video tour and made the deal. The home wasn’t occupied and the current owners were good with a 2 week closing date. Our property was on the market for several months just waiting for us to get our thinking in line with God’s thinking – and for winter to be over.

We got all our stuff together, got rid of a lot more stuff and set off for Saskatchewan. We are mortgage-free and established quite a lot on our homestead. Rob and our two boys spent the summer replacing the shop roof with a red steel roof, setting up one of the fields with fencing for goats, fixing up the barn, and various other homesteading-type activities. We worked up a big plot of land for a garden and had a pretty decent harvest for our first year. Our new red tractor was a blessing for many tasks in the summer and the magnificent snow blower attachment has been working wonderfully.

We have a nice little herd of goats. We bought 4 and had one born on the farm. Our bunny count has increased nicely and we had a nice growth with our chicken flock. We had two pigs from June to October and accomplished our first large animal processing on the farm. So many new experiences for our family in 2022!

At one time we were thinking we would be roughin’ it in a barely cleared acerage, living in a small cottage and starting our homestead from nothing. God’s vision for my life was a solid 5-bedroom, 2 bathroom house, a large shop and a good sized barn, fencing around all the fields (for cows or other animals that aren’t as rambunctious as goats), and an old, but useful cattle cover (which is making an excellent covered ice rink!). The house is dated, but we like the idea of doing a complete reno over the next few years. The out buildings haven’t really been used for decades, but they are cleaning up quite good.

There are so many other things I could share to glorify God with where he has placed us, but I have to stop writing at some point My hope is that you are opening up your mind and heart to the great vision God has for your life. I know He’s not done with me yet – and He’s still got amazing things for you.