what my homeschool homestead looks like in May 2020

I would have been in my garden anyway, with or without self-isolation, but I’m thankful for my homeschool homestead even more now.

Therefore, I’ve got a reason to be outside: it is presently the most impactful self-care strategy I have in my physical world.

The spa has nothing on the great outdoors. Mornings walking around my gardens with a cup of hot coffee, a journal, a pen, my Great Pyr, Violet, and a view of the Kootenay River: my favourite kind of self-care.

Let’s chat about what it’s like to experience 2020 on a homeschool homestead.

---

---

---

---

Our homeschool homestead is a blank canvas here at Giverny of the Mountains (aptly named for Claude Monet’s famous French gardens).

Why Giverny? The impressionist colours of blues and greens are apparent here, and with loads of lavender, and just because I love Monet, I chose this name.

I’d be welcoming bed and breakfast guests at this time of the year. Nothing more I love than introducing my little world to interested travelers. A resounding description of this place: peaceful oasis. So many have described it this way. I have to agree.

So, I knew it the first time I stepped on to this piece of land with the real estate agent and my four kids. I was smitten: landfatuation. From bare, raw land, we designed and built a home (with the help of an architect and builder, of course). And from bare, rocky land, I built perennial gardens, a vegetable garden, a fruit orchard, a chicken coop and fence.

---

So, my plans for the homeschool homestead this year:

• Plant more veggies: especially tomatoes and peppers.
• Find places to replant strawberries (the hillside?)
• Create tiered raised beds for potatoes and raspberries.
• Find a place to plant a whole bunch of Echinacea, snapdragons, rudbekia, and calendula.
• Succession seed like I’ve never done before.
• Leave no earth unturned and unplanted!

---

---

A bonus of the CP Rail train moving into our lovely mountainside town across the Kootenay River.

---

---

Of all the places I could live in May 2020, I am most grateful for our little homeschool homestead piece of the Kootenay Mountains.

---

---

People also ask:

• if you’re getting started: how to homestead in any home
• fresh from the homeschool homestead: building my fruit orchard
• Perfecting our Homestead Sourdough Loaf: Comfort of Carbs
• what my homestead looks like in May 2020
• Fresh from the Homestead: Tomatoes so Tasty
• Fresh from the Homestead: Gardening for Newbies
• fresh from the homestead: soil building
• homestead in any home

---