Family, Faith and Farming!

Our Foundation

Where to even start…first of all, we have a big, blended family. All of us are involved in this homestead – some way more than others – but this website is my project with the help of most of my daughters. I hope this site is encouraging, entertaining, informative and realistic.

I am Mindy – wife, mother, full-time employee doing a completely different job than farming, and a suburbanite of a major metropolitan area relocated to the Southeastern US (very happily). I’m typically overwhelmed, behind on everything while starting something else. I love to sing, cook, eat, be outside, eat, be loved by animals, eat, read, sleep and did I mention eat? But, the most important thing I can say about myself is that I endeavor to center my life on Jesus Christ.

My husband, Ace, is one of a kind. Quiet, capable and inventive. A leader in any dad joke competition. Generally intimidating to anyone even contemplating wrong-doing, but immediately loved by animals and babies. He is a man of God and knows his Bible inside and out – he is a blessing to me and our family. We all turn to him for major and minor crises, as well as many false alarms.

Our faith is the foundation of our family and our farm.

Our Family

Each of us had a prior marriage that produced 3 kids – so when we got married we were often compared to the Brady Bunch (if you are too young to get that reference you probably won’t enjoy this website!!). The Wild One, The Adulting One and The Rerun, The Country One, The Crafty (in the good way) One and The Driven One ranging in age from 17 to 7 (at the time) became siblings and learned how to share a bathroom, adapt to each other’s traditions and tolerate a lot of changes as we blended our family.

Almost a year later (9.5 months to be exact) The Dreamy One came along and was followed 20 months later by The Literal One. So now there are 8 – and Eight is Enough (another old school tv reference!).

Each of the older crew is out in the world doing amazing things. A few of them have even reproduced – so we currently have several grandkids. Trying to keep up with just our immediate family and working our ‘real’ jobs would be overwhelming for most people (or so they tell me). But I’ve always tried to find out just how difficult I could make my day-to-day life, and Ace is usually up for a challenge, so during the COVID lockdowns we added ‘farmers’ and ‘homeschooling parents’ to our resumes.

Our Farm

Purists would tell us that we aren’t truly homesteading – we are not off the grid and still run through the drive through after softball practice – but we have goals! This website is intended to be an unfiltered, un-touched up, far from perfect, accurate representation of our learning curve – the good the bad and the ugly.

I keep seeing these beautiful homesteading sites and ‘back-to-basics’ reels on instagram and I’m so impressed! Gorgeous, young families in linen dresses surrounded by flowers in clean, greenhouse kitchens… but that’s not our story. We started this adventure older and with a lot of pre-existing demands on our time. So this website will include our flaws, our mistakes, the things we think we have figured out and the things we have learned that we most certainly do not have figured out. And if you ever see me portrayed here in either a dress or a linen garment of any kind, you will know that someone is trying to sell something!