Homestead Helpers - Helping Others Put Food On The Table

Jemma Dooreleyer | Mar 06, 2024

According to Statistics Canada, Canadian Nurseries and sod retailers have seen an increase in sales by 7.5 percent since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020. Google Trends shows that along with the steady increase in the search for the term “inflation” since 2020, the search for the term “vegetable garden” increased with it showing that there is a trend in people wanting to pay less for their food, so they turn to starting their gardens.

Drew Smith 24, Dave Matthews, 25, and Taylor Merrithew, 25, the co-owners of the Homestead Helpers, were part of this uptick in self-sufficient gardening and have noticed the trend themselves, however, they have noticed something else as well.

“People our age don’t realize how easy it is to grow your own food,” said Matthews. “It is absolutely as simple as putting something in the ground and watering it every now and then.”

With this ease and obvious interest, all three of the co-founders found themselves questioning why more people weren’t doing this and furthermore, what could they do to help?

This question took Drew Smith overseas to Sweden, then to Ireland and Scotland where she lived and worked with small-scale vegetable farmers, learning everything she could about urban farming, sustainable growth, rewilding and urban agriculture. She had grown up in the garden, watching and helping her family tend to crops and share these crops amongst friends and neighbours within the village of Battersea for her whole life. This fueled a natural passion and curiosity that made her want to learn everything she could about sustainable agriculture. Little did she know, it was her neighbours in her hometown that would help bring the vision she’s had for years, into reality.

“They (Matthews and Merrithew) became close with my family while I was gone and everytime I had a phone call back home my parents would tell me ‘you have to meet these people they align with all of the stuff you want to do’,” said Smith. “I was basically everywhere else meeting like-minded people but here they were right in the village I had just left.”

This is where Taylor Merrithew and Dave Matthews, a couple new to Battersea, come in.

Merrithew, a recent sociology graduate and Matthews, a long-time worker with perennials and annuals at nurseries, were feeling very helpless at the looming state of the world and it was ultimately, their rising grocery bill that caused them to turn to gardening as a source of relief.

“Honestly, going to the grocery store made me want to cry,” said Matthews. “The prices were really causing me to question how much I needed something and forcing me to make sacrifices that I might not have made.”

Merrithew, self-proclaimed “gardening rookie”, simply wanted to feel more connected to the food she was consuming.

“My entire life I’ve grown up completely disconnected from my food for me this is about re-connecting people with their food source,” she said. “Also with the grocery prices going up summers were actually a relief from our grocery bill and that was the first thing we noticed.”

Which brings back the question, why aren’t more people starting their own rewilding, sustainable horticulture projects? The answer, the Homestead Helpers found, came down to time, energy, money and worry that the hard work to implement these plots would not come to fruition.

According to the Helpers, they will use their knowledge, combined with the client’s knowledge of their land to design a plot specific to the client’s land/needs for rewilding (a term that refers to “letting nature take care of itself” by allowing plants natural to the area take over the lawn in a controlled manner), vegetables and fruits after a free consultation. Once everything is implemented, although they are always available to answer any questions the client may have about their plots, their goal is to allow the client to be empowered to take their food sovereignty into their own hands and let the plots take care of themselves.

“We are not trying to be a traditional business in the sense that we will drop them when the job is done,” said Matthews. ”However, although it may be a crappy business practice, we want our clients to be so secure in their gardening journey that they won’t need us anymore.”

The shared knowledge that the Helpers gain from their clients is one of their favourite things about their business.

“There’s a mutual exchange of knowledge that keeps things really exciting,” said Matthews.

Merrithew’s passion for food also gets her excited when speaking with clients about what meals they are going to make with their garden. For Smith, it’s the connection with the Earth and knowing that she is doing something to help in the long-run that makes her love this business so much.

“There is a deep satisfaction in knowing that we are helping people with food sovereignty and security,” she said. “Plus I really like playing in the dirt.”

The Homestead Helpers want clients to know that this is a movement that will help not only their homesteads but their mind, body, spirit and community.

“You’ll feel better about your food, it will taste better and you will have learned something along the way.”

For more information on the Homestead Helpers’ services and pricing visit their website thehomesteadhelpers.ca or email them at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..