Kassandra Charby, a resident of Brome Lake, worked as a full-time hairdresser when she was pregnant with her first child and decided to make a change in her lifestyle. After shopping at a grocery store and seeing the state of the meat that was sold, Charby decided from that moment on that she was going to teach her children how to be self-sustainable when it comes to the food that they eat and the life that they live. With three boys ages 3, 7, and 9, she cut down her workload to part-time and she now spends the rest of her time educating her children on how to raise animals in a respectful environment to support their needs and how to live independently.
“We want them to be realistic; we want them to keep their childhood, but we also want them to know where food comes from and the work behind the food. I was pregnant with my firstborn and I was buying chicken at the grocery store. And thought, ‘how can they cut out the best part of the meat and sell the rest?’ I decided that I wasn’t doing this anymore,” explained Charby.
As someone who grew up on a farm, Charby wanted her family to be self-sustainable, imaginative, independent, and free of technology and she took some inspiration from the Wilderness Family movie; a film about a family that moves from the city to live off the land. “It is attractive for me to get away from chemicals, radiation, etc. I have a certain fear of this stuff. Life is meant to be pure, and I wanted to live life more purely.”
