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Social media influencer blends the traditional with the cutting edge

Kate Schat shares old-school home-making tips on a modern platform
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Kate Schat outside on her farm in Quick where she creates content for a social media page with 100,000 followers. (Marisca Bakker photo)

A traditional homesteading Instagram influencer almost seems like an oxymoron, but Kate Schat has managed to mix the two worlds.

Kate has found that balance in creating a lifestyle for herself, her husband and five children on a farm in Quick by making as much as possible homemade while documenting it on social media. It seems to have really resonated with people — nearly 100,000 to be exact.

It started about 10 or 11 years ago with what Kate called “productive procrastination.” She was doing online college courses and started a food blog for fun shortly after her and husband Marius’s first child was born.

“I was sitting there and thinking what am I going to name this blog? And I look on the counter and there’s a package of venison thawing on the counter. We ate venison, like, five nights a week because there was so many deer on Salt Spring Island,” she said. “And between Marius’s and my bag limit, we could get enough to feed our little family of three, like, for the whole year. So we ate venison pretty much every night. So we were Venison for Dinner. And then it kind of just stuck.”

Her following started slowly, but then quickly grew during the last couple of years. Her food blog has expanded into a social media empire with a six-figure following on Instagram.

“Seven years ago, I remember hitting 1,000 followers and being, like, wow, I’m at 1,000 followers. And then when Rowan [their fourth child] was about one — she turned one during the pandemic in 2021 — then I hit 10,000 followers. And so now Rowan’s just about four and we’re closing in on 100,000.”

She credits the pandemic for her sudden growth. People were at home, looking for new hobbies and looking to try new things, like making sourdough bread or soap. Kate decided to start a monthly subscription membership that she now calls Homesteading without the BS. She and her husband teach focused topics on all things homemade. It was launched June 2020.

“We were at peak stress time. I thought we can’t be doing what I’m doing plus Marius working full time, plus our four kids plus our farm. We couldn’t keep doing what we were doing, something had to give, so either we had to make it a go or abandon it,” she said. “So I put in about a year of working pretty hard at it, after working on it for 10 years. I thought this is my job, and I put serious hours into it.”

Her husband quit his construction job in 2020, and now works for Vension for Dinner.

The couple shares responsibility around the house with the kids and with content for the blog. They live on a farm in Quick now with their five children, dairy cows, chickens, honey bees and gardens.

“We thought that having two adults at home would get twice as much done,” she added. “It didn’t work out that way, but we have better margins in our life, we no longer have to burn the candle at both ends. And that makes a big difference.”

Running a business, homeschooling children and owning a farm is a lot, but Kate said finding a balance is key. And also planning and having boundaries. She turns Instagram off on the weekends. She also has two office days a week where she gets a lot done while the children’s grandma takes them.

Kate credits her lifestyle working well for her family to teamwork.

“If everybody’s eating, everybody’s helping, everybody’s working together, it’s not like just a mom and dad thing. The boys go out and milk the cow in the morning while I’m making breakfast and that sort of thing.”

She also said having specific jobs assigned to everyone in the family is also crucial to keeping things running smoothly on the farm.

“If this is your job, this is your job that you get done,” she said. “And this is my job that I get done. And I think that saves a lot of mental energy. There’s no question about it. There’s no debating it. It’s just, ‘hey, it’s milk time.’ It’s morning you do it. It’s evening, I do it.”

Having a farm and producing almost all of your own food isn’t for everyone, but Kate said anyone can do something homemade or from scratch.

“Pick something you buy at the store, and learn how to make it,” she suggested. “What could you make instead of buying? It can be hard at first, especially if you’re used to buying the cheapest, on-sale thing. You may not feel like you’re saving any money. But you’re skipping a lot of additives and preservatives when you’re doing that. We eat a lot of really basic food, but we eat a lot of delicious, amazing food. Last night, we had canned green beans, canned beets and potato salmon patties. Every single thing we grew. So when you have that attachment to your food, because you grew it or made it, it nourishes not just your body but your soul.”

For those gardening, she said, growing potatoes is fairly easy, as well as snap peas and lettuce.

And Kate’s advice for doing hard things is thinking about the end result.

“I talked about making decisions based on the outcome, the desired outcome, not your feelings on doing it. Because not every day, are you going to feel like milking a cow. But your desired outcome is to have as much butter, cream, cheese as you want. So therefore you milk the cow every day.”

Right now, with her members, they are doing a mead-making class. Marius shared his recipe— sort of a honey, wine cider — and Kate is doing the step by steps online along with their monthly subscribing members.

Those following along only on Instagram do get a small taste of the experience but the tutorials are saved for members. They also have done soap making and pressure canning, things you don’t necessarily need to live on a farm to do. But they also have gardening tips and cheese-making classes that might require a bit of property.

“So no matter where you live, we’ll meet you where you’re at,” she said. “We try to just have something for everybody. And there’s now coming up on three years of archives of all this.”

Having social media platforms isn’t always for the faint of heart. It does take a lot of work to maintain the pages and always create new content.

“It’s hard to turn off,” Kate added. “Even when I log off Instagram, and don’t check my email for the weekend, my brain is still working on it. I’m still, like, ‘oh, I should take a photo of that’ or ‘I should take a video of that. My brain is constantly just still thinking of things because there’s a lot of creativity that goes into it. But the creativity has to be followed through on as well. It can’t just be, like, this was interesting. And then that’s it, I have to, like, draw out and plan out that creativity.”

Her advice for anyone wanting to get into creating their own profitable social media accounts is to have a focus, find a niche.

“Pick a few things you want to share about. And then just really dig into sharing about those things and teaching about those things in however way you want to do it. It’s easy to want to just share about everything. But it kind of just ends up being really messy.”

She also tries to respect her children’s privacy, sharing her perspective of mothering them but, not sharing intimately about them.

It’s all part of learning what to share while balancing home life and a social media presence.

“I’ve gained a lot of momentum in the last few months,” she added. “And I’ve had the best boundaries I’ve ever had, like, I delete Instagram off my phone from Friday afternoon to Monday morning. Because if it’s my job, I’m not working weekends. I’ve set the strictest boundaries, showed up less and gotten farther.”

READ MORE: From small town crafter to instagram influencer


@MariscaDekkema
marisca.bakker@interior-news.com

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Marisca Bakker

About the Author: Marisca Bakker

Marisca was born and raised in Ontario and moved to Smithers almost ten years ago on a one-year contract.
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