Thinking about growing more of your own food? Calgary homesteader says you're not the only one

Jennifer Shkolny gets a sense of pride when she watches her seven-year-old son go out to the garden and identify all the plants. 

In 2017, she bought land in a hamlet near Grande Prairie, Alta., to get her kids away from the hustle and bustle of city life, having previously lived in Calgary and Airdrie. 

Since then, the family has built a home on their property and raises chicken, ducks, turkey, rabbits, grows vegetables, and sells flowers.

Shkolny lives a lifestyle some people call "homesteading" — a term they associate with growing and preserving food, often to become self-sufficient.

"We just felt that maybe it would be almost therapeutic for [the kids] to get out into the country and the fresh air and learn about animals and gardening and sustainability," she said. 

The family still visits grocery stores — less often in the summer and more often in the winter — but Shkolny has learned canning and storage to make their summer produce last longer. 

Shkolny documents her homestead online through her Instagram Little By Little We Go.

She first noticed a "huge shift" in interest in the lifestyle during the pandemic, but it's something that's continued, she said. 

"After that, with the supply chain issues, there's a lot more people interested and even just learning something as simple as growing potatoes in a bucket in their backyard," Shkolny said.

"I think there's a lot of interest in learning these skills and maybe moving toward this, but it does take a lot to get from the city out to the country." 

Carmen Lamoureux, owner of Urban Farm School in Calgary, teaches people who live in the city how to grow more of their own food. 

She added that what it means to be a homesteader has changed. Now, it's not necessarily a requirement for people to meet 100 per cent of their food needs on their own property. 

She said high grocery prices, concern about food quality and access, the COVID-19 pandemic, and wanting to connect with food systems are all reasons why Albertans have reached out to her to learn how to produce more of their own food. 

"I'm definitely seeing a greater interest amongst people from the age of about 23 to 35 to 40." 

Lamoureux said she's seen a "huge" uptick in students for the permaculture design certification she teaches. She said the course used to run twice a year in-person to less than 30 students, but now it's offered online to around 300 students every session. 

"I know for a fact through the teaching that I do with the permaculture design certification course that there are a ton of people out there of all ages who are really, really wanting to build more resilience," Lamoureux said.

She also started a new workshop this year called the Urban Homesteading Boot Camp, which she said has been popular with younger people.  

"Who may be somewhat disenfranchised about how our current society is moving and also they just want to make decisions that work for them, and not maybe follow the old model of what equals success," she said. 

Lamoureux said high grocery costs have influenced people to seek out her programming. 

The market concentration of Canadian grocery stores has come under scrutiny in recent months, as food prices increased at their fastest clip in 40 years.

Five companies — Loblaw, Sobeys, Metro, Costco and Walmart — control three-quarters of grocery sales across the country. Those companies have faced accusations of profiteering, with executives summoned to testify before a parliamentary hearing in Ottawa where they were grilled by MPs about higher grocery bills.

"You can buy a package of seeds for very, very little and create a whole abundance of food," Lamoureux said. 

Last year port delays, storage issues, rail capacity and a trucker shortage played a part in supply chain issues, which meant longer wait times for producers for consumers.  

Homesteading has also attracted the attention of real estate body Remax, which recently published a blog on the best places to homestead in Canada, listing Alberta near the Canadian Rockies as a prime location. 

Lamoureux said there are also community developers who are mindful of the "trend." 

New Calgary community focuses on food production 

Lamoureux was consulted on a new Calgary community created with the idea of promoting "farm to table living." 

Calgarians started moving into Rangeview in southeast Calgary in 2021. The area has a community greenhouse, community gardens, a planned orchard and is staffed with an urban agriculture educator. 

The produce is distributed through the community's homeowners' association. 

Sarah Fehr, marketing coordinator at Section 23 Development and Baywest Homes, said the company's founder wanted to do something meaningful on his family's ranching and farming land. 

Fehr said the community was in the works before the pandemic, but added that it brought issues forward that remain. 

"We really wanted to be innovative and create something that was important for things like food scarcity and things like that have become kind of at the forefront recently," she said.