Hello! 

We are Wild Thyme Homestead - also known as Summer MacDonald, my 3 children, a spunky German Shepherd, some cats, and an ever changing number of chickens and honeybees.  We live in the Lanark / Middleville area of Eastern Ontario.

After many years spent in Toronto, running a home health care business to care for a severely disabled family member, we were finally able to move out of the city and focus on our life goals of self-sufficiency, stewardship, and a deeper connection with the land.  

Summer grew up as a city girl, disconnected from where her food came from and disconnected from the land around her.  This began to change in her 20s and she quickly learned to love growing her own food, making her own plant medicine and experimenting with cooking, baking, canning, fermenting and all things "kitchen".  

We  practiced urban homesteading while living in Toronto and took courses in beekeeping, herbalism, cooking, fermenting, wildcrafting,  foraging, and nature connection to further our knowledge.  We have been able to apply these principles and learned skills to our life here in Middleville, as well as continuing to learn new things and take on new projects.

While many people choose to specialize in one area, we have chosen to be a "homestead".  To us, a homestead means diversity and reciprocity.

We value diversification as a means of security for our family, our community and the land we live on.  We also believe in taking good care of the land and the livestock and respectfully using what the land and livestock give back to us.  

We started out here in 2018 with a few chickens, a moderate garden and two bee hives.  We have now expanded each of those aspects of our homestead to several large gardens and plots to grow food, additional bee hives and working with local conservation authorities to be good stewards of the land.  

We hope to keep expanding and working with what we have to create a happy and healthy family, land, and community.