Blairsville, GA |

For Erika Nolan, this is her happy place, this is her passion, as several years ago, she became interested in growing plants and vegetables that are healthy, wholesome, and nutritious; not just for her though, as she says helping others do the same is without a doubt her calling.

“I was so obsessed with plants, and I was so obsessed with spreading the word of how to grow food and optimize your health, that I came to a place where I decided this is how I can change the world, is through health and through growing your own food. Because whether it’s meat or eggs or vegetables, none of it is the same at the grocery as it is when you grow it on your own homestead. The nutritional value is optimal. So, in order to optimize your health and get everything you need, learning how to do it, even on a small scale, is empowering,” says Erika Nolan, Garden & Homestead Consultant.

Nolan says she became so obsessed she decided to start her own business called Instar, in which she consultants anyone, anywhere in the world that is interested in starting their own homestead.

“I realized that I was able to connect with people and communicate to help them individually, and that as my social media was growing, I could help people virtually from anywhere. So at that point, I started consulting and I’ve worked with people in almost every state of the United States. I’ve worked with people out of the country, from Australia to Egypt, and it’s all just taken off from there,” says Nolan.

According to Nolan, interest in homesteading has become popular over the last decade or so, but the COVID-19 pandemic really peaked people’s interests as shelves became empty and fears about health became reality.

“I think the pandemic did have such a huge influence on the homesteading movement. One because of health, but two because of the lack of resources and people getting freaked out by seeing grocery stores empty and needing to provide for their family. So, there was this sense of urgency to figure it all out. I’m optimistic about it not just being a trend, because there was a point in time where this was just a lifestyle. So as soon as more people hop on board and see the value in homesteading, which a lot has to do with health, a lot of it has to do is straight up independence. Then I could see us kind of returning back to our roots,” says Nolan.

As you can see, Nolan and her family are very much living out her philosophy, something she finds extremely important as she wants to show people what a sustainable homestead can look like.

“I often relate eating home grown food to watching a movie film in color for the first time, which I know a lot of us can’t necessarily relate to, but if you could imagine only seeing movies in black and white, and then all of a sudden seeing The Wizard of Oz in color and thinking, ‘oh, there’s a whole another world out there,’ that’s what it’s like with tasting your own homegrown food, raising your own eggs with your chickens, or anything else. So, it’s very important to be able to demonstrate what I’m doing through some educational content, and also just plain up inspiration,” says Nolan.

By: John Holcomb