About this project
Next steps...how to get your FARMSTAY:
As our campaign comes to a close, it looks like we will not reach our Kickstarter funding goal to build the Tiny House Farmstay. But we came up with a different plan to make The Farmstay a reality even without the funding so make sure you are on our list below to find out how you can still book your Farmstay at The Chittle Homestead (and get the "special perks and first dibs")!
Welcome to The Chittle Homestead, a small modern homestead in the Pacific Northwest...
By pre-booking your farmstay with us, you not only get an awesome intentional vacation in a tiny house at the homestead, but you also get to be a part of building the sustainable funding source that will allow The Chittle Homestead to become truly a space of learning, collaboration, sustainability, family connection, and creative life & business design!
Which vacation will you choose?
You wake to a faint rooster calling. You gaze at the tall trees out one window and since you are in a loft it feels as if you are swinging in their branches. Out the other window the dew is glistening on the field of flowers as the sun peeks over the trees. You leave your feathery nest and make your way down stairs to a wall of windows. As you fill your tea kettle you see the sheep are waking too across the meadow. You sip your tea overlooking the homestead and imagine the breakfast soon coming to you …..the smell of fresh roasted coffee and the comfort of food from the very land on which you now sit. The day beckons with total freedom for all your heart desires…. long beach walks, kayak adventures, and shops filled with antiques. You feel alive, connected, inspired. Man, this is what life is all about.
Upon waking and eating a hearty breakfast from the homestead, you meet with the Chittle family to tour the homestead and learn about the days activities. Feeding the chickens, ducks, and sheep, collecting eggs, milking sheep, watering the garden and harvesting ….veggies, fruits, nuts, berries. Depending on your interests and the time of year, some other items on the agenda might include making sheep cheese, preserving the harvest (canning, drying, freezing), learning about the aquaponics system (maybe catching a fish for dinner!), baking bread (gluten free!) or some other yummy thing, learning to make natural products (soaps, cleaning products, medicinal teas) from the homestead, pruning trees, mowing grass, scooping sheep poop…if you really wanna be a farmer :) If you’ve brought the kids along, they will have endless fun picking up chickens, playing in the forest, picking their own veg and fruit, and swinging on our swings. Once chores are done, head to the beach nearby, grab dinner in town, and come back to gourmet s’mores around a campfire.
This is the moment to indulge deeply in those crafts you have pinned on your pinterest board. Bring your girlfriends or hubby or make it a mother daughter weekend, send Tessa which crafts you want to make and your craft table with all your supplies will be waiting for you along with your cozy little tiny home on a homestead that will foster your creative genius during your visit. Feel what it feels like to create with time and space and all the inspiration you could want. Be nourished by food grown on the homestead, stroll the flower gardens, take a trip to the beach, say hello to the sheep, laugh at the chickens as you drink your beverage of choice…a cocktail, wine, tea, or cup of hot cocoa. Just an idea….make all your christmas gifts this year or bring your bridesmaids and make all the decorations for your wedding (and maybe even pick some flowers for your wedding bouquets!)…your wedding can cost less and be pinterest worthy. And what a bachelorette experience of wine and gossip around a campfire after a day of sitting around crafting….way better then drunk dancing on tables at the club :)
Ever need a time-out from life to create your life...or business for that matter. A time to get clear, get inspired, and figure out how to do things differently? Whether it be parenting, marriage, business, or life, sometimes things just need a pause button and the Homestead offers that moment of peaceful intentional pause. Engage in any of our coaching programs (The Manifesto, The Bold Family, Revolutionary Life Design, Revolutionary Business Strategy, The Bold Life project) in-person on the homestead. Do it solo, with the love of your life or bring the whole family for some deep re-connection back into what is important to you, what inspires you and what your next steps are to make it all feel simple, joyful, and fun again. Maybe even grab some fellow big dreaming girlfriends or revolutionary mamas for a retreat. The beautiful gardens, slow pace of life and expansive beaches nearby will ground you to the earth for focus and clarity and offer quiet spaces to hear what your heart is trying to tell you. Your Chittle Coaches are here to offer you the personalized structure and resources to turn that whisper into an actionable plan. This is truly a vacation with intention.
When food has become an exhausting foe to battle each day, you may want to come for a visit to the homestead to reset your relationship to food and body. For a weekend or a week, stop dieting or cleansing or even using your brain to select your food choices. Instead, surround yourself with foods in unprocessed form, engage in sensual slow eating, and connect with your food and body on a deeper level. You will discover how this burden of food and body hatred can be transformed when you start EATING and LIVING in alignment with your values. Pull your food from the earth rather than from plastic packaging that has calories counts and health food claims on it. Eat whole healthy food that actually tastes good and treat yourself to an indulgence in food in a whole new way than your pint of ben and jerry’s. Get clear on what you want to stand for in the world through what you spend your food dollars on…a powerful form of voting with your fork while also integrating a new set of beliefs that will guide your food choices based on your values rather sugar grams or a dread of fat rolls. Got food battles with your kids? Bring the whole family out to the Homestead to build the foundations for everyone to have a lifetime of peace with food...a true gift to those we love of the younger generation.
Design your own mix of NW adventure, farm activities, coaching, crafting, luxury, learning, business, and fun. Want us to book you a family kayaking trip? Wanna basket of fresh food from the homestead to cook your own dinner in the tiny home kitchen or a picnic to take to the beach? Are you a foodie wanting to gather your fellow mamas or big dreamers around a gourmet dinner in the apple orchard? Craving a game night with a bottle of whiskey and gourmet s'mores? Looking for a place to bring a small intimate group for creative brainstorming or retreat? Interested in a unique bachelorette party experience or girls weekend? Or maybe you want to go deeper as an apprentice in some project we are doing on the homestead. You will fill out a form (where we have lots of clever ideas for you!) telling us all about the experience you want to have at the Homestead and we will provide a customized price quote. Believe me, just filling out the form is fun.
Quick tip: You can have up to 5 people in any of these experiences so split costs by bringing your family, gathering a group or bringing your own VIP clients out with you!
And check out the perks you can get such as an elegant farm dinner in the orchard, campfire s’mores, and sunset cocktails when you choose to stay for multiple days and up your donation a bit.
The Location
Whatever Farmstay you choose, your free time will be in the beautiful Gig Harbor, WA, a quaint old fishing village upcycled with gourmet restaurants, antique shops, breweries, and wineries that is 1 hour south of Seattle, close to many beaches and state parks, a skip and a hop to the Olympic Peninsula AND Mt Rainier, and surrounded with opportunities for outdoor activities like kayaking, paddleboarding, farm touring, clam digging, fishing, sailing, and hiking.
Click here to learn more about The Homestead and surrounding area! Or check out our Pinterest board of things to do around here.
Already ready to pre-book your Tiny House Farmstay vacation?
Choose which one from the right side of this page and hit the big green button!
Or keep reading to learn WHY we are doing this, WHO we are, and the details about the tiny house design, budget, and timeline.
Why we are building a tiny house
As a counselor and coach, husband and wife team, with a tiny sidekick named Aza (our daughter), we have been drawn to creating a beautiful oasis for taking a time-out from life...to create your life.
Perhaps you are drawn to similar values as us!
The tiny home incorporates so many of our values. Lessening our environmental impact. Creating beautiful and functional design. Being close as a family. Reducing expenses to create financial freedom.
We are dreaming big by choosing small.
- A smaller income that allows for a wealth of time.
- A smaller house that allows for a wealth of connection.
- A smaller footprint on our planet to allow for self-sufficiency and security.
- And the creation of smaller boutique retreats and farmstay experiences. So that we can have a big impact on creating the world we want to live in one family, one entrepreneur, one partnership, one mama, one papa, one kiddo, one zucchini, one beautiful farm to table meal, campfire s'more, and intentional weekend vacation at a time.
Why?
Because being a parent while earning a living and keeping a marriage happy is freakin’ hard; because starting a business or getting your big idea into the world is freakin’ hard, and because living a simple life of contentment without being sucked into consumerism, dieting, or over-working is freakin’ hard…
We believe that the struggles of modern life can be solved by taking an intentional timeout to get your creative juices flowing, getting your hands in the soil, slowing down, nourishing your body, and engaging your passions. We have seen how discussions and experiences while crafting, sitting around a campfire, enjoying farm dinners in the orchard and long walks on the beach are the key to discovering the creative solutions and magical shifts you are looking for...
...More effective than any counseling session in a stuffy old office or impersonal online program.
By going small we are bucking the trend of bigger, faster, richer, and more automated in order to recapture the healing, connection, problem solving, and creative collaboration that happens in a small intimate space...whether it be between families, entrepreneurs, or even just you and that voice in your head.
Our Story
That day the pee stick said pregnant almost 3 years ago, something shifted.
The impending future of 9-5 jobs, a consumption based lifestyle, never-enough-time schedules, once a year vacations, and a ships passing in the night marriage just wasn’t for us.
So we quit our grad school programs, bought 6 acres of land in an area we could afford, but had never been to in our lives, and started to homestead.
As new parents there was a sense of wanting security. But security to us meant something different than the mainstream.
Security for us means that our lives are designed to provide a wealth of time and space to actually live our values daily. It means reducing consumption and expenses to a level that we can cover them without dependence on any specific job, and the confidence to create anything we need ourselves whether it be the food we eat, the energy we consume, the toys we play with, or flexibility for our ever evolving marriage, family, creativity, curiosity and experiments. This to us feels like freedom.
In a world where it's a struggle even for educated hardworking folks to make ends meet and large numbers of folks are depressed, anxious or not having much fun in life (especially parents! and those of us who dont like to fit in any pre-defined box!), we knew we needed to re-imagine the American Dream in a way that worked for us.
We hope The Chittle Homestead can become a place where others come to re-imagine their own version of The American Dream, whatever that may look like for them.
What we have done so far
In the past 2 1/2 years we have planted 12 fruit trees, dug up a lot of grass, planted a large garden of vegetables, eaten a lot of zucchini, made a rather dingy manufactured home into a cute farmhouse, fixed a broken barn wall…. And raised 8 chickens, two ducks and a beautiful little farm girl. All DIY, all on the cheap, all according to our values.
It's a hard balance to strike between creating time for homestead projects that ultimately reduce your expenses, and creating income that funds those projects! In order to work less and have time to homestead we have designed our life to be sustainable on a 5 figure income so that we can both work half-time….Ian as a counselor and Tessa working from home in her coaching business.
This land has touched us deeper than we could have ever known (seriously, everyone who comes here can feel it's magic) and this mission to live in harmony with the land in a self sufficient way has become a value entrenched in our souls. We want to go further with making this homestead our “job”….diving head first into all the permaculture, aquaponics, and sustainable living that we know will be better for the earth with live on. That means we need to come up with a sustainable way to make money that is in alignment with us being "full-time" homesteaders.
Why we need help
We are modern homesteaders. Like those in the past needing a little help from neighbors to raise the barn walls, we need YOU to be our modern-day barn raisers!
We don't envision ourselves making our money off CSA boxes or farmers markets like the typical farm and homestead do because thats not where our skillset lies (at least not yet!), but we are committed to the homesteading lifestyle.
What makes us unique, is that we are a bold husband/wife counselor -coach team with years of experience in helping people tap into their values in ways that improve their experience of living, and here’s what we think we are good at:
- Our genius is making spaces pretty and inspirational and serving up delicious healthy comfort food from the farm.
- Our genius is talking real, seeing people’s strengths when even they don’t see them and painting a vision of how they could make a living and life out of living by their values and being exactly who they are.
- Our genius is supporting a mindful way of living, even for parents with young kiddos
- Our genius is helping families and partners connect and communicate and co-create
- Our genius is facilitating groups, creating curriculum, and bringing together mentors and teachers to provide a whole learning experience.
- Our genius is in creating experiences that change people’s whole approach to living so when they return from their intentional vacation they return to a whole new life where living by their unique values is possible…whatever that may look like for THEM.
- Our genius is strategy and boldness, and a love for beautiful design.
So this husband wife team sat down to brainstorm through our Family Manifesto writing process, how do we become financially sustainable through standing for the world we want to live in and offering our zone of genius?
The answer came in a whisper from Tessa’s childhood of off-grid, tiny, unconventional living:
A tiny house.
Well designed, beautiful, functional, and inspirational. Small. But not so small that only a single 20 something could live in it. Beautifully designed to work for families and small groups (think girls weekend or intimate work retreat) to have boutique and intentional vacations.
We need your help to build this tiny home that will provide an ongoing source of income for growing the homestead and create space for others to springboard their bold life projects whether it be through a weekend of creation, crafting, or connecting as a family or partnership.
With our tiny home and homestead, we can create experiences that are more effective in shifting lives than any counseling session and therefore leverage the deepest impact we can have through one family, one entrepreneur, one beautiful farm to table meal, one campfire s'more, and one intentional weekend vacation at a time.
And thus create the world we want to live in and you want to live in.
The Tiny House Design & Why it's unique (and awesome)!
From my extensive research into tiny homes (yes, I have a slight obsession!), one thing I think is missing from the market is an affordable tiny home that is functional for families with children. With all the stresses of modern parenting, families need this option more than anyone!
Also, as a business strategy coach I work with a lot of amazing folks who want to offer retreats so I would like to create a model of how to use a tiny home for intimate boutique retreats that buck the ever growing trend in the self help industry of moving towards “bigger, higher priced, and more automated” which misses out on the power of intimate connection to heal individuals as well as the world.
For these reasons, we are working with Tiny Living Homes in Vancouver, BC to design The Chittle Tiny Home specifically to work for families and small groups including stairs instead of ladders, comfortable gathering spaces, privacy, extra sleeping space, storage, etc. It is planned to sleep up to 8 people in tight quarters so people can gather up their friends to share the cost of their visit, families can come out and connect in a farmstay experience, and coaches can bring out small VIP groups for intimate boutique experiences.
In line with our values of self-sufficiency, sustainability, and also beautiful design, the home will be off-grid (solar power and rain water catchment) but will have all the luxuries.... hot water, lights, heat, full kitchen for cooking, full indoor bathroom with a composting toilet (don't worry it is doesn't smell at all and is better for the environment!).
Here’s a draft of the Tiny Home Plans as they stand in this moment (design tweaks still being made!):
The Chittle Homestead Floorplan – Draft
Here are some pictures of other homes built by our builder of similar style but different floor plans:
A photo I was inspired by for our floorplan:
To see more of our vision visually, check out our Pinterest boards. Imagine with us…
The Farmstay Breakfasts, Meals, Treats & Fancy Beverages.
The Farm dinners in the orchard.
A crafting weekend at The Homestead.
Future Projects at The Chittle Homestead.
Our Fundraising Goals
$50,000 – is the magic number that will allow us to get the basic structure of the family friendly tiny home built and functioning. However, at this level of funding we will need to do some work ourselves which could delay a few features and the overall timeline of accepting guests. So we are hoping to meet our stretch goals that will allow us to get not only the house done more quickly but also some of the other projects we have planned to make your homestead farmstay an even more amazing experience…
Our Stretch goals…. $65,000 – Will allow us to build the tiny house completely off-grid and totally luxury from the beginning….Full solar power, rainwater catchment, wood stove, fully decked out with Tessa’s rustic industrial farm chic design. Plus, this will allow us to fence in our goat/sheep/llama/pig/duck/chicken family and start our organic flower farm and medicinal herb garden…all of which you will be able to see from your tiny house window. Plus, we will get our aquaponics greenhouse experiments up and running for year round produce and fish for your farm orchard dinners!
$85,000 – Will allow us to complete all of the above plus take on our next project of building a covered gathering space (reclaimed barn, sustainable cob or strawbale building, or perhaps a yurt) with commercial kitchen for food prep and classes and a wood fired pizza oven (cob building workshop anyone?).
Doing these stretch goal projects will allow The Chittle Homestead to offer classes to larger groups for a wider array of activities especially in rainy weather when yoga, meditation, farm to table dinners, and coaching in the meadow just ain’t gonna cut it.
This also would allow other coaches and experts to more easily use the space to offer boutique workshops and retreats so if you are a coach, call in your tribes and help us create this communal space just an hour from Seattle for your future retreats!
For everything we do we share our learnings in some way…workshops, tutorial videos, blogs, etc. so the more projects we can do the more learning we can put out there!
The Detailed Budget (for those interested!):
The Chittle Homestead Tiny House Farmstay - Detailed Budget
The Project Timeline
January-April 2016:
- Find our supporters, partners, collaborators, sponsors and other lovers of what we are up to.
- Orchard Pruning, seed ordering, and garden planning
- 20 new chickens (for our first year of meat raising and expanded egg production), new chicken house and fencing.
- Seed planting - vegetable garden, perennial edible garden, medicinal herb garden
- Craigslist hunting for aquaponics set up, sheep/goat fencing, and tiny house build supplies :)
- Finalize tiny house design
May - June 2016:
- Kickstarter Campaign - blogs, podcasts, interviews, magazines, news media, social media, press releases, storytelling, connecting, community building and experiments in rallying a movement.....and a lot of finger crossing & positive thinking :)
- Transplant baby plants into garden from indoors
- Aquaponics system build and public workshop with expert in aquaponics (May 21st, join us!)
July - August 2016:
- Start Tiny house build process with Tiny Living Homes, Inc
- Prizes redeemed: Manifesto Guidebooks, Coffeetable books, phone strategy sessions and programs. Start Taking exact date reservations from those who pre-booked Farmstays or Homestead classes.
Sept - Nov 2016:
- Site prep for the tiny home
- Organizing workshops, group campouts, and farm dinners.
- Sheep, goats, chicks, pigs, garden, aquaponics, fencing, weeding, harvesting, canning, dehydrating, bread baking, cheesemaking, jam making....and the homesteading list goes on :)
Nov 2016 – Forever
- Finish up tiny house on site – decor, siding, flooring, solar panels, site prep, rainwater catchment, deck, clawfoot tub under the stars, outdoor sitting area, etc.
- Prizes redeemed: First Farmstay Visitors and group Homestead Classes
- Keep collaborating to create a beautiful homestead space that fosters connected families, sustainable slow living, gatherings of mamas/entrepreneurs/creatives, outside-the-box thinking, connection to the land and our food, creative entrepreneurship, and empowered kids and adults who can create anything they want in their lives whether it be food, toys, decor, income, or vision for a lifestyle & gift to the world.
A Modern Day Barn Raising…for a Tiny House
Just like homesteaders throughout history need some help from their neighbors to get through the season…through barters, and trades, and pre-payment for the season’s bounty, and an extra pair of hands to raise the walls of the barn…
We need YOU!
To be our modern day barnraisers…
To vote that The Chittle Homestead is something you would like to see exist for you, your Family, your kids, your clients, your fellow big dreamers and revolutionary-livers.
We invite you now to pre-book your farmstay with us!
Have you ever paid a farmer ahead of time for a box of their crop each week throughout the growing season? Well, we are the modern farmer and this is a tiny house CSA. You pre-book your vacation (or grab one of our other prizes to give you an experience of the homestead in person or from afar). Your prepayment via the kickstarter campaign will give us the funds up-front to build the house, and then you get to come out and enjoy it!
We believe that by pre-booking your farmstay at the Chittle Homestead, you are committing to a time-out from your life that will reset your experience. At the same time you will be making this vision of The Chittle Homestead all become possible.
We want every human to know they can do life, business,and parenting differently than any norm that does not work for them. But we can’t get the word out alone. The Chittle Homestead tiny home is a modern-day community build, leveraging the power of technology, individual strengths and values, and the magic that happens in coming together.
So after you book your vacation (or grab another prize) by hitting the big green "Back this project" button, please share this with everyone you know. Post the link on facebook, Instagram, Twitter. Send an email to 10 people who you think would be into this. Tell your mamas group.
If you really want to crusade, email us and we will tell you about special perks for the VIPs who spread the word.
Let's take a stand together.....grassroots style!
From our family to yours....a deep thank you for being in this with us!
The Chittles
Tessa, Ian & Aza
Risks and challenges
We are working with an established tiny home builder nearby in Vancouver Canada, so we expect all phases of the build and transport to the Chittle Homestead to go smoothly. As in all building projects, the timeline is subject to change depending on unforeseen delays such as busy-ness of the builders and inclement weather. We are in close, frequent contact with the builders to avoid such delays and have given a few months of wiggle room to get everything ready for our first farmstay visitors next spring/summer.
Depending on the amount of funds raised, certain components of the tiny home may be added at a later date, such as the deck and full off-grid capabilities (i.e. solar panels, water catchment and storage).
Sourcing of food for farm dinners is somewhat dependent on weather, time of year, and organic pest management, which may result in reduced harvest. While we plan to use Chittle Homestead produce for farmstay meals, in the event that food items cannot be produced on the homestead, they will be purchased from other local, organic producers.
Since our builder is based in Vancouver Canada, the price of the tiny home is dependent on the exchange rate. However, it looks like the rate is only going more in our favor and will continue to do so. We are also resourceful creative people prepared to deliver on your Farmstay experience regardless of any unforeseen price changes...or anything else!
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Funding period
- (47 days)