Tyler grew up on a 10 acre acreage in Alberta from the age of 8-14 and his grandparents had a farm nearby where they raised Hereford cattle. They retired and moved from the farm when he was about 11 years old, so he did have some prior experience being around livestock and a farm setting. Cassandra grew up in a small town south of where our farm is now and didn’t really have much to do with livestock until we moved to our first acreage.
We met in 2007 in Lloydminster where we both lived and worked, Tyler as an electrician and Cassandra as a bookkeeper and were married in 2010.
In 2011 after we had our first son Wyatt, Cassandra started looking into baby food, wanting to feed him as healthy as possible. That led her down a path of discovering how our food was grown and processed. Wanting to avoid all of the chemically sprayed, highly processed, commercial baby foods she got a baby bullet and made her own baby food using healthier, organic produce. Around the same time, we decided we wanted to sell our small house and get something more suited for a family. Tyler suggested looking at acreages as some of his fondest memories were growing up on his childhood acreage. In the summer of 2013, we were able to find one just North of Lloydminster. It was 12 acres, had a beautifully treed yard, nice two story farmhouse, huge garden area so we could grow our own vegetables and an older barn and corrals for keeping livestock.
After moving, Tyler started looking into different livestock for small acreages and also doing a lot of researching about homesteading. This led him to find a podcast called The Survival Podcast where he was first introduced to permaculture. He was immediately hooked and after that we went all in trying the new things we were learning about, in the garden and with the animals. We bought a couple yaks, some mini cows (and one Hereford in memory of Tyler’s grandpa, which we still have today, Tilly, our lead cow), some pigs, chickens, ducks and goats. The acreage was already divided into 4 pastures, so we rotated the cattle and yaks between paddocks. We bought electric net fence to move the pigs around the pasture and Tyler and Wyatt built a chicken tractor to move the chickens around the yard.
In 2014 our second son Everett was born. Each year we learned a little more and tried a little more. We butchered our own chickens and ducks and also butchered our first pig. Tyler even cured and smoked the ham and bacon himself. We were absolutely loving our new lifestyle but as we learned more about our property and more about permaculture we realized that our land was not ideal for what we wanted to do. It was situated right in the low spot of a conventionally farmed grain field so all of the chemicals that were being sprayed onto the field would run and settle on our property and in our dugout. We thought, if we are going to move, maybe we could look for a bigger piece of land where we could build our own permaculture farm and be able to grow healthy food for ourselves and for others.
After almost 2 years we finally found a place. It was close to where Cassandra’s parents lived so her mom could watch the kids but still close enough to Lloydminster where we both had to drive to for work everyday. It was a full quarter section with a good amount of water on it but was bare crop land so would need a lot of work to become what we envisioned! In the summer of 2016 we finally moved to our new homestead farm and got started developing the property of our dreams, a permaculture farm where we could raise healthy, nutrient dense food while working in harmony with nature. Click the link below to read more about moving to our new farm.
In 2019 our daughter Edith was born. She was the first girl born in 67 years on the Preston side of the family!
In 2020, we purchased a small flock of hair sheep and in 2021 Tyler was finally able to complete his first permaculture design course. He designed our farm property for his final project and we are excited to start implementing it!
