Q & A | Homesteading Full Time, Going Vegan, Garden Plans?
Time for our first Q&A! I’ll answer questions from followers all about our life. Have more questions? Post them in the comments and I’ll do my best to respond.
About the Sunshine Farm
We’re Jenn & Chris. We are millennial homesteaders on a small plant based hobby farm and modern homestead in Upstate NY, where we focus on sustainability, loving on all our animals, and enjoying wide open spaces. We’re in our mid-twenties, balancing full time jobs, and also trying to share our lives with you along the way. Thanks for joining us for this video, we’re excited to have you along for the ride.
Follow our Adventure!
If anyone is interested in being a part of community around plant based homesteading/farming, or wants to learn more, we have a facebook group going, which you can join here 🌱: https://www.facebook.com/groups/387033235176504/
Blog and website: https://sunshinefarmny.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sunshinefarmny/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sunshinefarmny/
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/SunshineFarmNY/
Our Amazon Wishlist: http://a.co/bqsq245
23 Comments
I’m so excited for you and all your plans for your place! It sounds awesome!
I love when you sit and chat! Can you speak more to the process of starting a non profit, in the future? My goal is to start a nonprofit to give others the skills and resources to grow their own food, and improve the overall quality of life on our province, from a morale standpoint. I live in an extremely low income province and I feel as if more people felt for filled in their lives, and feel as if that can provide for their families and gain independce. Obviously, the process of starting a nonprofit is going to be different up here in Canada, but I would still absulutely love to have some guidance through the process.
Stay gold, girl 💕
keep your heart on the right path!
I also wanted to speak to the seed thing! I notice a lot of people buying seeds from the US and the west coast, and I feel like people fall victim to hype. I also believe we need to buy regionally adapted and local companies! So for me, that's Halifax Seed, and other smaller local seed companies! There's also great swap groups on Facebook!
I lived in Hudson Falls a while back and thought about looking for a house or property there and omg the taxes were insane. I've never seen such high prop taxes and some houses looked like they needed to be torn down and they wanted 75k and it would have had 4k in prop taxes. I definitely see where you are coming from on that. If you ever decide to move a lot of Maine has cheap land and way better prop taxes. That's one of the reasons we moved this way.
I'm not going vegan but I do want to grow and raise my food ethically. Even for those who do eat meat we can also do our parts.
It use to be more common place for people to grow and raise their own. Factory farming plants has a lot of unethical practices as well all around in turn hurting the wildlife and the environment. Growing and or raising our own as much as possible where we are, going local, trading etc I think would be good to catch on whatever people eat.
Big factory farms are based on most profit even at the sacrifice of quality of life (for the plant based factory farms it would be environment and wildlife and heck even the way they treat people too) but we cant blame it all on them and their business practices. Also most people today just want to throw money at people to get food, they dont learn to respect their food (plants too were alive to me it's important to respect life plants and animals) which means they waste so much because by the time they get it it's just an object there is no correlation it had to die whether it is a slab of meat or the veggies they buy. So maybe they eat half of that or they let it go bad in the fridge an buy more than they actually need. Even if people only bought what they ate and there was no waste it would be difficult with the factory farms to provide all that food so all this cramming animals together and all the dousing of pesticides it's all stemming from the demand for quantity. We can blame it all on greed but it's also the consumers fault for that reason.
There is no balance because that falls on the few (as a whole for our population there really arent many farms) farms that are selling to the public. Demand raises the price so now the demand for others to grow our healthy food without all the pesticides means healthy food is out of reach for most people because of our consumer mindsets.
The biggest changes you can help make in general is to keep encouraging people to grow as much as they can. And if they are going to eat meat to raise what they can.
As far as chickens and eggs go they were bred this way for so long like dairy animals they produce far more than they did before we selectively bred them so long to produce more. So the chickens you have will lay them regardless. Some people think you need a rooster to get eggs lol. It's more like us with our cycles as women. We cycle out unused eggs and so do they. So it's not that you are using them they live at your farm if you dont clean them out they will get sick they only have so much land to lay those eggs. To me wasting resources is disrespectful (just like tossing meat or veggies in the garbage because too much was bought then people go buy more. Something died so we could live even the plants so dont waste it. With eggs I see it as that chickens body is going to produce it anyway but it took so many resources for her to be able to none the less it depleted her in some way. It's good you are finding things to do with them even if you arent eating them. Also some animals you have may also eat them like if you have pigs, they would eat some of those eggs for you too.
I dont think anyone would blame you saying you are using that chicken or dont appreciate that chicken if you did eat eggs though for the record you make it obvious where your heart is with them. Oh also the eggs can be good for plant growth too skme people crack eggs at the base of things like tomatoes before they transplant? Just saying lots of options and the girls will lay regardless so it's best not to waste their efforts.
They didnt choose to produce eggs like they do they were bred that way but it cant be undone now and if they are going to be there they gotta get cleaned up. Just a thought.
Thank you for answering my question. There were many great questions. You had many great answers. Thank you for your help, opinion, and time!
Stay safe and God bless you my friend. 🌱🐷🐐🐇🐄🐓🌱
Hi, Can you do some videos on your desserts? The pumpkin tart sounds delicious. Thanks
Have you considered partnering with Best Friends Animal Sanctuary? We live in Utah where BF is based, and we recently toured their facility and it's wonderful how the care for animals. They said that they have joint facilities in other locations, so I thought of you. https://bestfriends.org/
How is it going whit your debt free journey?
Awww ❤️ I can relate so much to your answer to my question. We didn’t originally intend on Colorado ( even though we love it) it’s just that we were already here due to the military & so it just kind of stuck
"Don't judge me. Or judge me. I don't care." I love it!! Thanks for all your honesty and sharing your life with us.
Learning to embrace that the garden should reflect who you are is wonderful. I always look at all the "dead" stalks and dried up plants in the winter and I know that a lot of people will dump them out of their containers and try to make things look more "alive"…but I love the whole cycle of what changes happen to nature. I have NEVER been a nature person or into gardening until the last few years (I'm 52 years old now!! :O ) and I do think part of it was that I thought it all had to be constantly maintained and pretty and look like it should be in a magazine. When I started my own raised bed and containers I figured out that I like the rustic and wild look, and then letting it all reflect that part of me (rustic and wild:)) has made it so much more enjoyable. Thanks for sharing!
Yessss another secret bachelor fan 😂 Every year I say I’m not going to watch it then I get sucked in. Great video!
do you have chickens?
eggs are great for your dogs
new friend Ruthie – I love gardening not vegan but we love vegtables
I’m watching right now and you said you watch the bachelor! Yess! Fellow bachelor/bachelorette fan! ☺️😂
Honestly, I live relatively close to your farm and that sanctuary idea is really inspiring for me. I would visit and contribute, absolutely! I'm also interested in starting my own sanctuary homestead, so I can't wait to see where this goes.
Are you against keeping honey bees? Isn't there some vegans who eat honey and some that don't?
Are your B12 levels low or deficient? If so do you supplement your diet with vitamins?
I love, love 💕, love that you are a plant based homesteader! I support you 💯 % and am so proud of you both! Thank you so much for the channel and putting yourself out there. I’m sure it isn’t always easy in the community and i applaud you both for your efforts and ethics! Again thank you 🙏🏼🌱
I'm so happy I found your channel!! You're very knowledgeable and I'm in NY too 🙂 on Long Island! Cant wait to catch up on all your videos 🌻
ouu, do you have a playlist on your garden journey?
Love the idea of turning it into an animal sanctuary and homestead. F.R.I.E.N.D animal sanctuary in england are slooooowly learning about growing veg so that the food they feed their animals can be as self sufficient as possible because the expense is one of the main barriers to sustaining an animal sanctuary.