5 years in the making…

The week of August we celebrated 5 years of living in Tennessee-this may not seem like much to a lot of people, but for us, it is a huge milestone! About 7 years ago (yes, before covid) we started feeling like living in the suburbs of OKC wasn’t where we needed to be. Kinda felt closed in and needed some space. We could basically touch our neighbor’s house and ours at the same time and life was busy. The feeling was that you needed to go-go-go til you couldn’t go anymore—and we were tired and ready to slow it all down.

I was already baking our bread and had learned how to can veggies and make jam, we had a little raised bed garden in the backyard and a great desire for more. More real food in our diets, more space, more freedom, just more intentional life. We loved our friends there, but we needed more living for our family. Once covid started closing everything down, we decided that we were (in fact) adults and could move wherever we wanted whenever we wanted! Check out this blog post for how it all began….

Why is 5 years such a big deal?

-We came to Tennessee knowing ZERO people and God has brought us a variety of incredible people who are now our community. Some from classes, some from church, some from the girls’ schools, some just random people who want to meet the new people in the pretty yellow house. Everyone helps as needed and knows that we will all come help if asked. People have brought us meals, gasoline during a power outage and helped bury a goat, and we’ve cleared trees and moved logs, worked cows, picked up hay from the field, and moved all sorts of things—that’s just how it works around here.

-We have learned so much. I had never had goats, chickens, cows, bees, puppies, a horse, a well, a big garden, survived without power using a wood burning stove, built a fence, or milled a tree—and now we do and we are doing it quite well! We have taken classes through UT Extension offices, online, and through the School of Traditional Skills—we are truly living proof that if you want to learn it, you can! You just have to be willing to try, and perhaps fail a time or two before you get it right.

-We know where our food comes from. This whole journey started with bread that seemed to never mold and joints that always hurt—what exactly were we putting into our bodies? Now my beef lives on my pastures eating grass and hay and rotating around to fresh ground. My eggs come from free range chickens who eat bugs and scraps. My milk comes from a beautiful cow down the street. Most of my veggies and fruits come from our farm (where we can eat it straight off the vine) or from the local farmer’s market (where it mostly comes from the Amish community). My pork mostly was grown by a friend. My honey comes from my flowers and bees. My flour and many other baking ingredients come from Azure Standard (our source for organic, healthy food sources!) We know what we are consuming and our bodies no longer hurt!

Pasture from the side porch

Sunrise from the front porch

-We have watched baby goats and puppies be born—and watched goats die as well. We have raised cows and taken them to the butcher to feed us and our friends. We have raised chicks and buried chickens who were attacked. We have experienced all the highs and all the lows of farm life, and have truly become better, more aware humans because of it. Our kids have become even more responsible because farm chores are nothing like city chores. And they are now incredibly hard workers because of it.

-We are also doing the thing I would have sworn I’d never do: Homeschool. I am now on year 4 and love it! It started with our oldest coming home for her junior and senior years of high school. Still in the midst of “let’s use technology for everything!”, that gets real boring real fast. So, she came home and finished here. Then, our youngest wanted to come home the next year for 6th grade—not really feeling challenged and very frustrated by the school mentality of punish them all for what one or 2 are doing. She is now in 7th grade and it has been absolutely amazing—she is flourishing and is loving being able to be flexible and learn so much during the days!

All this to say, we are quite proud of ourselves for not just sustaining this lifestyle, but thriving. Most of the time, we love what we do—it does get overwhelming and sometimes incredibly sad—but we wouldn’t trade it anytime soon. We haven’t done all this things we want to do yet because life just keeps happening, but we’ll get there eventually. Until then, we will look out at the fields and remember why we wanted to live like this in the first place.