OUR STORY

Thanks for stopping by! My name is Danielle, and I am a chicken-crazy, garden-loving, sheep herding, beekeeping, horse girl! It has always been my dream to run a farm, and in 2020 the missing pieces I needed to follow my dream fell serendipitously into place.

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Aberdeen Acres. To me, the definition of "Aberdeen" is simply a place of peace and happiness that calls you back home, no matter how far you may wander. This is what I want the farm to not only embody for me, but also for those who visit. Our goal is to cultivate a space where our guests/customers feel safe, happy, and in awe of the incredible beauty that comes with farming. And, we want to use this space to educate about sustainable agriculture.

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Animals and nature have always been a significant part of my life since childhood. From the age of 8, it had always my dream to own a farm (though at that time, it was my vision to fill my barn and pastures with horses). 

As I grew older, moving through elementary school, high school, and later university, I was drawn to the topic of sustainability. My sense of responsibility and stewardship for our planet grew, and thus I began searching for tangible ways that I might fulfil the void I felt regarding sustainability in my life.

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It was in university that I stumbled across the "tiny house" movement. I recall sending a link to my mother, which was to a video featuring a woman who had a tiny house on wheels and had named it "Dolly". I was astounded that there was an alternative to mainstream housing, and more so one that reduced the ecological footprint. It felt as though I had finally solved the problem I had been searching for answers to for so many years prior.I was vibrantly passionate about this, and began looking into how I could make this a reality for myself after graduation.

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Shortly thereafter, I discovered the concept of traditional foods through a cookbook I had found at the dollar store. From this book, I learned just how disconnected we are from our food, and its origins. I learned how raw, natural, home-grown, and hand-raised food was possible, and even better than food that comes from the grocery store. I learned about the importance and health benefits of whole foods, and how unsustainable monocropping and commercial production industries truly were. The knowledge I had gained seemed to fit hand-in-hand with my vision for tiny house living. If I could be sustainable in both my food choices and habitation, it would be a leap towards my sustainable living dream.

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Eventually, through my tiny house and whole food research, I began to come across the homesteading videos. One of these such videos was by a creator called "A Chick Called Albert", who had hatched quail eggs from the grocery store in an incubator. Shortly after watching that video, I purchased my own incubator and gave it a go. From that experiment, I raised two happy and healthy quail hens. The complete and utter joy that came with seeing them hatch and come into the world truly changed my perspective. It was magical. The day that those two hens started laying eggs was the day my dream became solidified. I held in my hand a perfect, tiny sphere, speckled with brown and tan flecks. An egg that had come from a bird that I had raised from its own egg. I had been there since this tiny little bird was born, and now it was blessing me with one of the greatest gifts of nature - sustenance. 

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Needless to say, there were many more hatches after that. From silkies to ducks, I hatched them all. By the time I was graduating university, I had a small urban flock of chickens and was frequently making my own bread and butter. I had switched to drinking whole milk, and cooking as many meals as I could from scratch. It was at this time that I was offered a job position that would allow me to live on a beautiful 75 acre farm, owned by an elderly Irish man named Charles Boyd, who would become a dear friend of mine. I purchased a travel trailer that spring to convert into my own tiny house, completed renovations to the trailer, and moved onto the farm.

 

Over the next couple of years I started my first market garden in a corner of a farmer's field, expanded my flock of chickens to include many more breeds, and adopted more farm animals. However, not everything was happy and perfect. Unfortunately, the job I had taken was not meant to be and about a year into life on Charles' farm, he fell terribly ill with cancer. The disease ravaged his body and after only 6 months of fighting, the battle was lost in fall of 2020. 

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Moving was a bittersweet adventure, as I had just purchased a real tiny house shell to replace our travel trailer and we were making plans to renovate it into the house of our dreams. But we had to leave, and we took this opportunity to purchase our current 7-acre farm in Flesherton in fall of 2021. A true blessing in disguise, these sad events had gifted us our freedom to full expand our new homestead.

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That brings us to present day. We continue to work to cultivate our sustainable homesteading dream, expand our business, and create a home we don't need a vacation from.

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Thankyou for being here. We are deeply grateful for your support and following us on our homesteading journey.

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Danielle, Gordon + Calder + Jack (our farm dogs)