When I Almost Gave Up on the Farm Dream

If you've been reading my emails for awhile you may have heard this story before, and I’m not sure why I never made it a blog post before now!

In August of 2019 I pretty abruptly left my off-farm job. I had reached a point of burnout and childcare struggles that I couldn't do it anymore.

It was a risky decision. That job paid our bills, provided our health insurance, the vehicle I drove every day, my cell phone plan, retirement account, all of it.

It hadn't even been a year since we had our second baby and took out 2 mortgages to buy our farm, but somehow I knew it would be ok.
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I knew the farm wouldn't be replacing my income anytime soon, but I had a specific financial goal for the year.

One of our mortgage payments is due as a lump sum on January 1st every year. I wanted the farm to make that payment 100% on it's own without having to put any of our personal off-farm earnings towards it.
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So I'm at the last winter farmers market of the 2019 season. The market closes in 20 minutes. The farm payment is due the following week. I was SO CLOSE, but hadn't sold enough to cover the rest of the mortgage payment.

We had the money in personal savings thankfully, but not hitting that goal was leaving me with so much doubt about whether I made the right decision and if I should give up and go find another job. ​
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What happened next still brings me to tears every time I think about it.

One of our customers showed up 15 minutes before the market closes, picks out a few items, then hands me her credit card and asks me to also load 12 gift cards. Those gift cards added up to almost exactly the amount I still needed to make the mortgage payment.​
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There was only $11 left in the farm bank account after the check cleared, but I made the mortgage payment with 100% farm income dollars.

I took this as a sign I was exactly where I needed to be, doing exactly what I was meant to be doing, and that I needed to keep going.

We can't thank you enough for being a supporter of our farm and family.

You're not just another order number or sale to us. We see you, we appreciate you, and we would not exist without people like you who value the work we do and go out of your way to shop with us. ​
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We are honored that you choose to help us keep a roof over our heads, farmland under our feet, and give our girls the opportunity to grow up this way.

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Winter Hibernation Reading List

I’m not going to come right out and say that I dislike Winter, but there are a few things about it I don’t love.

I don’t love when it’s so cold I feel like my contacts have frozen to my eyeballs.

I strongly dislike wearing Carhartt bibs or a real coat because I feel like I can’t move (#shortchunkypeopleproblems) so I just wear a bunch of inadequate layers and half freeze because somehow that’s actually more comfortable.

I do have to say that I am so thankful to whoever created toboggan hats with the hole for a messy bun at the top though. Those are a game changer.

One thing I do love about Winter is curling up on cold evenings with a good book. Sometimes a mediocre book. If it’s really bad I move on though because there’s no sense wasting valuable reading time on a boring book.

There are so many great things out there to read, but I picked out a few that have found their way into my home library that I’ve really enjoyed. Some I’ve owned for a while, some I acquired this year and instantly loved them.

My Christmas present to myself this year was a used book shopping spree (I love the bargain bin at Better World Books), so hopefully after this Winter I’ll have some new titles to add to my favorites list for you!

A few of my current favorite books:

Present Over Perfect by Shauna Niequist

Better Off by Eric Brende - if I had to pick a favorite of the favorites, this would be it!

Redefining Rich by Shannon Hayes

Backyard Pharmacy by Rachel Weaver

The Homesteader’s Herbal Companion by Amy Fewell

From Scratch by Shaye Elliot

The Prairie Homestead Cookbook by Jill Winger

Long Way on a Little by Shannon Hayes

No Risk Ranching by Greg Judy

The Lean Farm by Ben Hartman

Balanced and Barefoot by Angela Newscom – I don’t own this one yet, but when I find it used or on sale, I’m for sure adding it to my collection!

And yes, I included cookbooks in my favorite books list, but these aren’t just any cookbooks. They’re full of stories and info along with homestead and kitchen inspiration. They’ve been a huge part of teaching me to cook, and are just relaxing to flip through!  

Have you read any of these or do any sound interesting? I’d also love to know if there’s an amazing book you love that I should read!

Hope you’re warm, cozy and getting time to curl up with a good book too.

~ Dana  

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If You Aren't Living Your Dream Yet - This is For You

Are you living your dream or dreaming of a life that's different than what it is now?

If you're not living the life you want to be yet, I want to tell you my story with the hope it will encourage you to start today to build the life you want. 

Life is short. You deserve to be happy, fulfilled, and doing something you're passionate about!

When Jesse and I met 12 years ago our lives looked nothing like they do now. I was just out of grad school and I was BROKE with tens of thousands of dollars of student loans to start repaying.

Jesse and I were both making minimum wage harvesting tobacco. I was basically homeless and couch surfing. We owned nothing except debt. 

The world and all the practical advice I'd ever been given said I should find a career with benefits and be content with that until I was 65 and could retire comfortably.

It took awhile, but I eventually got a "good" job, I advanced in my career, I had amazing experiences and mentors, met some of my very best friends, and accomplished things I never thought I would be capable of.

But it quite literally broke me. I couldn't accept that as my reality for the next 40 years. 

I knew I was being called to do something different with my life, but I kept staying. It was safe. It's what all the people around me were doing. I had a family to support. 

I made it 10 years in the agricultural lending world and I was a burnt out mess. 

Everyone told me I was crazy for even thinking about leaving my "cushy" job to do something as unpredictable and risky as farming, but I didn't have it in me any more to stay.

In August of 2019, I made the decision to somewhat abruptly leave my job - the one that actually paid our bills, provided our health insurance, had all the so called "perks", so I could farm, be with my babies, and just try to put back together what all the stress of that life had broken in me. 

It was terrifying, but I also had this strange peace that it was all going to be fine even though no matter how I penciled out the numbers the money in did not match the money out.

What I learned from this experience is that by letting go of that job I thought we couldn't live without, it opened up a whole new life for myself and my family.

The right people and opportunities came to us when I stopped letting fear of the unknown control me and took the leap of faith. While our income may have been cut, the abundance that has found us in other ways has been nothing short of amazing. 

Maybe now is the time you let go and follow that dream. Make a change. Do the thing you're feeling called to do with your life even if it seems impossible. We only get one chance, my vote is that you go for it.

While I'm not going to say we live in some perfect utopia where there's no stress and everything is rainbows and chicken hugs, I love what I do. I’ve gotten to experience so many things I never would have if I hadn’t taken the leap to leave that job.

Maybe this won't be what my life looks like forever, I might need/want the stability of a steady income, health insurance, and a faster growing retirement account someday, but for now… this is exactly where I’m meant to be.

I’m excited for the possibilities. I have such a feeling of purpose and fulfillment. And I especially love all the connections and friendships this farm has brought into my life. I want you to have this too!

Leave a comment or send me an email to let me know - are you living your dream? Do you need some encouragement to get started? I'm always up for a lively chat about following a wild dream most people don't understand!

Thank you for your part in encouraging and supporting me as I've chased this farm dream. I love being your farmer, I love being able to serve our community by raising great food, and I am so beyond thankful you're part of our journey.

~ Dana

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Bringing Back the Victory Garden

Bringing Back the Victory Garden!

Have you ever heard the history of Victory Gardens?

I had never heard of them until I took a pastured poultry course at a northern Ohio farm a few years ago. They had what they called a “victory garden” and when I went home I had to google it to find out what exactly that meant.

The condensed history of the Victory Garden - these were gardens grown during World War I and especially during WWII when food was scarce. A lot of the canned goods being produced were shipped overseas to troops, food supplies were being rationed, and the government encouraged anyone who could to grow and preserve some of their own foods to take the pressure off the public food supply. It was also a morale booster since it gave families something to work on and everyone felt like they had a part in feeding themselves, helping to support their country, and feeding the troops overseas.

At that time, 40% of the nations vegetables were being produced by home gardeners! They even encouraged people to have their own backyard chickens instead of creating zoning regulations to prohibit it. There were information books, plans for what and how much to grow for a family, and they had the coolest promotion posters! Seriously, if you have a minute to do a google search on Victory Gardens, the pictures of their posters are amazing.

I think I partly fell in love with this idea because my Grandfather was a WWII veteran. He just passed away a few weeks ago at 94 years old. He was a radioman in a B-24 bomber and flew over 20 missions. Our family has always had a special interest in WWII history and a special appreciation for the people like my Grandfather who truly risked everything to give us the opportunities we have today.

A few years ago I had the chance to take a short flight in a B-17 with my Grandfather. It was such a powerful moment in my life because as we were taking off I let myself feel what these young men must have been feeling - as that airplane left the ground knowing they were going to be in danger, understanding that each mission they flew decreased the chances they would make it back home alive, knowing that many many of their friends didn’t.

We took a short 20 minute flight and I was hot and airsick. My Grandfather said he flew over 20 missions that lasted hours.

At the time I’m writing this blog post our country is at war with COVID-19. In most of our lifetimes, this is the first time we’ve really felt uncertain about what life will look like tomorrow, next week, or next year. Everything changed in the blink of an eye. The things we took for granted like grocery store shelves full of endless supplies of food, the opportunity to work and support our families, abundance, freedom, travel, security, the ability to buy whatever we wanted from Amazon and have it delivered in 2 days - some of that is gone now.

But I also feel a deep sense of pride watching our communities and our country come together. I’m choosing to see the positives of what’s happening despite my fear and I have zero doubts our country will recover and our communities will be stronger because of this experience.

While our specialty here at our farm is raising forage, livestock and eggs, this year we will be expanding our vegetable and fruit growing areas and raising our own Victory Garden. I hope that it will not only feed our family, but that we can share the surplus with our neighbors and community.

As a farmer, I’ve been very aware of the food security issues this has caused across the country. I think that we all need to take back some control over our own access to food. In the last couple weeks we’ve seen grocery store shelves cleared and the global food system struggling to shift resources to keep up with demand. In any major weather event, disease, war, etc. it’s easy for these supply chains to be cut off and food doesn’t get where it’s needed.

Having a strong local food system helps to solve these issues. The food is here already, and small farms and businesses can quickly adapt to marketplace changes. Farms that were selling to mainly restaurants and schools quickly switched gears to fill individual customers freezers. Farms that were already selling direct to consumer made some quick changes to how customers accessed their products and kept on rolling. Our area has farmers raising meat, eggs, milk, fruits, vegetables, and more.

I know our farm and others have seen huge demand for our products in the last couple weeks. We are doing the best we can to keep up, scale up, and keep everyone fed. The struggle for us is going to be - will this continue? Our greatest fear is investing in growing more products only to be left behind when the grocery store shelves are full and more convenient to shop from.

We want to feed you. We want to be here for our community in the good times and in the uncertain times, but this means we need the support of our communities more than just when the grocery store shelves are empty.

I want to encourage and challenge you to continue supporting your local farms even when we go back to “normal” and to do what you can to take back some control over your food security. There’s still plenty of time to start your own Victory Garden!

While this entire situation is tragic, I hope it changes us for the better. I hope we remember to value the time we get to spend with friends and family, the food on our plates, unlimited supplies of toilet paper, and the luxury of peace and security more than we did before.

Our country and my grandparents went through harder times, we can do this. They were a level of brave and selfless most of us can’t fathom. Let’s come together and prove to those who risked or gave their lives for us that we are a country and a people who were worth fighting for. Stop hoarding the toilet paper, go wash your hands, give your elderly neighbor a call to check on them, and let’s take care of each other.

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Our 5th Year of Farming - Why This is Actually a Really Big Deal

It’s finally feeling like Winter on the farm!

Eliza and I lit a fire in the woodstove over the weekend. It takes awhile to get the whole house warmed up, but it's nice and toasty now. Wood heat is the best! It's actually been so warm most of the winter we haven't burned much wood because it gets too hot in here. Plus we ran out of hours to cut enough firewood last year, so we've been conserving until we have a day to go cut and split more.

In other news, our family is entering our 5th year of farming!! I know that doesn't really sound like a big deal, but the fact that we've survived this long is actually pretty huge.

80% of new farms don't make it past the 2 year mark, and only 2% survive to year 5. Isn't that an absolutely heartbreaking statistic?! Thankfully we are part of the 2% that have stuck it out and managed to not bankrupt ourselves yet.

Just in the short time we've been farming I've watched multiple farms around us go out of business or massively scale back for a variety of reasons. Even though the circumstances were all very different for each farm and family, one of the big underlying reasons for changing direction is that it is extremely hard to make enough money to survive without working another job off the farm. Especially with a family to support. It can also be really, really stressful trying to do all the things.

As farmers we are all so incredibly passionate about providing the highest quality foods for our communities, raising our animals humanely, being good stewards of the land and resources, supporting our local economy, building relationships and community that our culture is very much lacking right now, and all the other reasons we are called to this work. We can do so many great things as a small family farm, but at the end of the day no farm is truly sustainable unless it is financially sustainable for the families operating it.

Our food system is in a precarious spot right now. The average age of the American farmer is 55+, which means a huge percentage of our farmland will be changing hands in the very near future. If small farms like ours can't afford to purchase and operate the land (typical cost of farmland in our area is $5,000+ per acre just to give you an idea), it will end up in the hands of developers or investors. Increasingly these are foreign investors.

Our communities need more family farms taking care of the land, but they need to be profitable and financially sustainable family farms so they can stick around for awhile, thrive, save farmland from development, protect and grow safe local food systems, become leaders and mentors for new farmers, support other local small businesses, and provide the healthy food and opportunities for community and connection that all of us need.

My challenge to you as we enter a new year is to support your small local farms as much as possible. Whether you're buying from our farm or others, the majority of your groceries or just a dozen eggs once in awhile, our purchasing decisions today will have a huge impact on what our communities and food system look like in the very near future.

I know it can be less convenient to shop from us and often not your cheapest option. We do our very best to find and create efficiencies to keep our costs low, but we just can’t compete with mass produced and vertically integrated products found in grocery stores. What I can guarantee is you won’t find a higher quality product or one raised with more integrity, passion and purpose.

Thank you for being the hero in our small farm story. We couldn't have made it to our 5th year of farming without you believing in us, valuing what we do, and spending your hard earned food dollars with us. It means so much to our family, and we can't ever thank you enough.

We are just getting started and have so many great things planned for 2020 and beyond. Thank you for being on this journey with us!

~ Dana, Jesse, Eliza & Brynn

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Love Your Farm

For as long as I can remember, I have dreamed of owning land. I’ve never been into big fancy houses, expensive vehicles, clothes, jewelry, etc. Jesse and I have never even had cable or satellite TV in our adult lives.

Even before we knew this little farm thing would become our purpose in life, we knew we wanted land and we’ve worked towards that dream for the last 10 years. In September 2018 we purchased our 45 acres and have slowly been loving it back into the beautiful and productive farm we know it can be.

I saw this essay posted on Facebook before we had ever even found our farm, and after buying this place I thought of it again and just had to find it and share. I also want to make sure this essay is preserved. Even after quite a bit of time on the Google, I was not able to find it posted anywhere else.

Part of our excitement and challenge right now is learning this new piece of ground so we can make plans for how to utilize it all to the best of it’s capabilities.

We are learning where water flows, which areas the soil needs the most help, where there are plants or trees we want to save, and where we should lay out fence lines, buildings and gardens.

My impatient self wants it all to be perfect now, but we have a lifetime to continue making improvements here. And it will probably take that long!

I love this farm. I love watching it’s transformation, I love watching my babies, family and friends enjoy it, I love it for raising delicious healthy food for our family and yours, and I love knowing that this is my little piece of heaven on earth to tend.

Love Your Farm

Love your farm. Every farmer should not only love his work as the artist loves his work, but in this spirit , too, every farmer should love his farm itself as he would love a favorite horse or dog.

He should know every rod of the ground, should know just what each acre is best adapted to, should feel a joy and pride in having every hill and valley look its best, and he should be as much ashamed to have a field scarred with gullies as he would to have a beautiful colt marked with lashes; as much ashamed to have a piece of ground worn out from ill treatment as to have a horse gaunt and bony from neglect; as much hurt from seeing his acres sick from wretched management as he would be to see his cows half-starving from the same cause.

Love your ground - that piece of God’s creation which you hold in fee simple. Fatten its poorer parts as carefully as you would an ailing collie. Heal the washed, torn places in the hillsides as you would the barb scars on your pony. Feed with legumes and soiling crops and fertilizers the barren and gullied patch that needs special attention; nurse it back to life and beauty and fruitfulness.

Make a meadow of the bottom that is inclined to wash; watch it and care for it until the kindly root-masses heal every gaping wound and in one unbroken surface the “tides of grass break into foam of flowers” upon the outer edges.

Don’t forget even the forest lands. See that every acre of woodland has enough trees on it to make it profitable: “a good stand” of the timber crop as well as of every other crop. Have an eye for the beautiful in laying off the cleared fields - a tree here and there, but no wretched beggar’s coat mixture of little patches and little rents; rather broad fields fully tended and of nearly uniform fertility as possible, making of your growing crops, as it were, a beautiful garment, whole and unbroken, to clothe the fruitful acres God has given you to keep and tend.

And so again we say, love your farm. Make it a place of beauty, a place of joyous fruitfulness, an example for your neighbors, a heritage for your children! Make improvements on it that will last beyond your day.

Make an ample yard about it with all the old-fashioned flowers that your grandmother knew; set a great orchard near it, bearing many manner of fruits; lay off roads and walks leading to it and keep them up; plant hedges along the approaches, and flowering bulbs and shrubs - crape myrtle and spirea and privet and roses - so that your grandchildren will someday speak of their grandsire, who cared enough for the beautiful and loved the farm well enough to have for them this abiding glory of tree and shrub and flower.

Name the farm, too; treasure up its history; preserve the traditions of all the romance and adventure and humor and pathos that are in any way connected with it; and if some of the young folks must leave it, let them look back to it with happy memories of beauty and worthy ideals and of well ordered industry.

Love your farm. If you cannot be proud of it now, begin today to make it a thing you can be proud of.

Much dignity has come to you in that you are owner and caretaker for a part of God’s footstool; show yourself worthy of that dignity. Watch earnestly over every acre. Let no day go by that you do not add something of comeliness and potential fertility to its fields.

And finally, leave some spot beneath the shade of some giant tree where at last, “like as a shock of corn cometh in his season,” you can lay down your weary body, leaving the world a little better for your having lived in it, and earning the approval of the Great Father (Who made the care of the fields and gardens the first task given man): “Well done thou good and faithful servant; enter into the joy of Thy Lord.”

-Clarence Poe

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Hamburger Helper in the Singlewide

When Jesse and I first met, he invited me over for dinner at his place. He was a 20 year old bachelor so my expectations were not high. We ate Hamburger Helper and green beans in the romantic setting of his singlewide trailer in rural Highland County. I think we also watched the hunting channel sitting on his camouflage couch. I wish I was joking. Anyway.... I laugh at this memory, but honestly my cooking skills weren't much better.  

Second date - the Highland County Fair!

We've come a long way since our days in the singlewide! I still hesitate to share with you what our meals around here are really like. I feel like there's a lot of pressure when you're a farmer selling a high quality product to be some sort of gourmet cook. The truth is - we eat well, but it's nothing fancy!

Jesse and I both work off farm jobs in addition to our family and farm responsibilities, so we are just normal working parents in survival mode most days. I love to cook a huge feast (especially with my Mama and Sister in the kitchen with me), but 99% of the time that just isn't practical. By 6pm the toddler is circling us, and if food isn't in her belly by 6:30 there's some serious drama happening. To avoid hangry toddler mode and still have enough time for evening chores, we create simple meals with high quality, locally grown ingredients. 

We hope you will join us on our journey to drama free dinners! Meals are built around our pasture-raised meats and as much locally grown produce as possible. We focus on real food for real people requiring minimal effort, no weird spices or ingredients you'll only use once, using foods you can feel good about feeding your family. If we can make the change from Hamburger Helper to cooking with real foods, so can you! 

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From our kitchen to yours, Happy Cooking!

Dana