This is us...
We are a family of four living in the Fingerlakes region of upstate New York. Home to Cornell University, Ithaca College, lots of waterfalls and well... us! We are Simon and Monica and we are Cornell graduates that never left. We both have graduate degrees in Plant Pathology but now earn our living running a property management company. Monica also moonlights as a design consultant for renovations and new builds. We have been married since 2006 and bought our first house together just before our wedding and have been here renovating ever since! Our two kids Liesl and Oliver are in elementary school and love all things nature! Liesl is our animal lover and Oliver is our adventurer.
We have always dipped our toes in the homesteading lifestyle. We established our first garden in our wet, North facing backyard (yes I already know what you are thinking!), in 2008. So surprisingly we couldn't grow anything but powdery mildew back there. We revamped it into our current chicken run setup in 2017. I mean the fence was already there! We then threw in some fruit trees and voila I guess we have a homestead! Although, we never called it that. Bees and rabbits came a couple of years later. Simon is our resident bee keeper and the honey is fantastic! Monica is the resident bread, cleaning product, beauty product and soap maker. Simon likes to build things out of wood and hunt. The kids help wherever they can and generally cheer us on!
So then came COVID. Our tenants left en masse, everything was closed, and we were left with some time on our hands. It was early spring so what could we do? We started a front yard (South facing and dry) garden. Yep, we learned from the last one that location is everything. Since our garden is now in the public sphere we do get a lot of really positive comments about what we are doing. We love to talk to people about our homesteading lifestyle (I guess we can really call it that now) We also started our own meat supply with meat rabbits and meat chickens as well as future dairy production with our two Jersey heifer calves.
Fast forward to January 2022. We went all in on the homesteading lifestyle and bought a beautiful 35 acre piece of land only 15 minutes away from our current house. The property already had a wonderful but empty Morton barn on it and 20 acres of woods. The house on the property has been torn down and we are busy building our dream home. All our livestock and bees got moved to the farm in 2022 and we are loving being out there. Our animals are so much happier with the new setup. We have a newly planted, extensive orchard with 28 varieties of fruit and nut trees and 15 varieties of grapes and berries. 2023 saw the addition of 2 dairy cows, establishment of a large vegetable garden. In the future we hope to incorporate pigs and grain crops. We moved into the house in early 2024 and have plans to add mushroom cultivation, a stocked fish pond and maple syrup production.
We are a family that just likes to make stuff. COVID has shown us that self reliance could really make all the difference in this ever changing world. We also love that our children know where food comes from and have a connection to that process.
Simon & Monica
We have always dipped our toes in the homesteading lifestyle. We established our first garden in our wet, North facing backyard (yes I already know what you are thinking!), in 2008. So surprisingly we couldn't grow anything but powdery mildew back there. We revamped it into our current chicken run setup in 2017. I mean the fence was already there! We then threw in some fruit trees and voila I guess we have a homestead! Although, we never called it that. Bees and rabbits came a couple of years later. Simon is our resident bee keeper and the honey is fantastic! Monica is the resident bread, cleaning product, beauty product and soap maker. Simon likes to build things out of wood and hunt. The kids help wherever they can and generally cheer us on!
So then came COVID. Our tenants left en masse, everything was closed, and we were left with some time on our hands. It was early spring so what could we do? We started a front yard (South facing and dry) garden. Yep, we learned from the last one that location is everything. Since our garden is now in the public sphere we do get a lot of really positive comments about what we are doing. We love to talk to people about our homesteading lifestyle (I guess we can really call it that now) We also started our own meat supply with meat rabbits and meat chickens as well as future dairy production with our two Jersey heifer calves.
Fast forward to January 2022. We went all in on the homesteading lifestyle and bought a beautiful 35 acre piece of land only 15 minutes away from our current house. The property already had a wonderful but empty Morton barn on it and 20 acres of woods. The house on the property has been torn down and we are busy building our dream home. All our livestock and bees got moved to the farm in 2022 and we are loving being out there. Our animals are so much happier with the new setup. We have a newly planted, extensive orchard with 28 varieties of fruit and nut trees and 15 varieties of grapes and berries. 2023 saw the addition of 2 dairy cows, establishment of a large vegetable garden. In the future we hope to incorporate pigs and grain crops. We moved into the house in early 2024 and have plans to add mushroom cultivation, a stocked fish pond and maple syrup production.
We are a family that just likes to make stuff. COVID has shown us that self reliance could really make all the difference in this ever changing world. We also love that our children know where food comes from and have a connection to that process.
Simon & Monica
