Where Our Story Begins
Chris, a professional skydiver, and I, a skin care specialist, never set out to buy the small decrepit farmhouse on 2.5 acres in a valley that we always dreamt about living in one day. But, after spotting it on a Sunday afternoon drive, we couldn’t stop thinking about it so we, somewhat irresponsibly, put in an offer the next day that was contingent on selling our home and to our surprise, it was accepted! We were more focused on our wedding, which was only a month away, and had no plans to sell, but there was this overwhelming feeling of enthusiasm that we agreed we should pursue. So, we somehow managed to finish our basement, sell our home, get married in Montana, and move onto a homestead in a matter of 4 weeks! Whoa! It was a whirlwind. It was perfect chaos!
So, now what?
I had already been down the food system rabbit hole for years prior and I had prioritized our budget to allow for the expense of buying organic and I felt it was the right thing to do, but after reading, the Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan, it flipped my views onto their head and made me rethink everything I knew about food; I’d never read a better explanation of exactly where our food comes from. It gave me the invitation to think through the moral ramifications of my eating habits and I knew there was a better way and that the food I sought out to feed my family didn’t exist in my community or local grocery stores and organic wasn’t all that I thought it was (although still better than conventional in many ways).
We were both frustrated by the food system and struggled to source local, non glyphosate ridden, non-monoculturely grown produce and felt deterred with how animals were raised for our meat. We sourced some of it through hunting, but it is not always our primary source of meat. The answer, for us, was not to change our way of eating to a diet that requires a lot of energy inputs, or the ones that is riddled with complicated ingredients disguised as “healthy”. The answer was, since we couldn’t find it, to grow our own. That way, we would know exactly how that meal got to our plate. So, that’s what we set out to do, but we had ZERO experience in what we were about to embark on outside of Chris’ time spent on his family’s ranch in Randolph, UT.
We had some ducks and geese that we inherited with the property but we had no idea how to take care of them, luckily, we live in the age of the internet and quickly learned. We bought a cow, a couple of pigs, took in some chickens, and got to work. We were ordering books, watching endless videos and learning by just doing. That’s when we came across Joe Salatin. Joel operates Polyface Farm in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley with his family. He is the author of several books on ecological, family-scale farming. The reason why Polyface deserves mentioning is because their methods heal the land. Over the years, numerous scientists have used Polyface land to study their farming principles. They’ve enhanced diversity in bird populations, biomass variety, pollinator populations, and soil organic matter development aka carbon sequestration.
As we learned more and more we knew, this was it. We wanted to model our homestead methods after theirs and we did. We decided to get meat chickens and start to replicate the regenerative, multi-speciated model on a small scale and the results were outstanding! Not only were we growing food that never left our property but we were using less water, building soil, eliminating the need for synthetic chemical inputs, and mitigating the need for animal medications, and our animals thrived in being allowed to express their natural instincts: chickens allowed to peck and scratch, pigs allowed to root and wallow, and cows allowed to eat lush grass from start to finish.
Not only was our homestead thriving, so was our family. With the addition of our daughter in 2017, the lure of being home on the farm together was stronger than ever. We are at our best while stewarding our animals and the land as a family. We were also learning firsthand the benefits a developing child gets from this lifestyle and that’s when we knew we could never turn back.
As things continued to grow we decided to attend our first Farm and Food Conference in Cedar City and that’s where things really changed for us. We were surrounded by like-minded people, not just farmers and homesteaders, but people who were just interested in their local food system, and the conversations were invigorating, thought-provoking, and inspiring. When it came down to it we all had the same goal: to know how our food was grown, where it was coming from, and to make local foods more accessible, not just for the consumer but easier for the small food producer to get it to your plate. After leaving there, we knew we wanted to make a lifestyle change, but we really weren’t sure how.
Then 2020. While we are no exception to some of the scares the pandemic left, it also brought us great opportunities. At this time Chris and I were both still working full time jobs in the city, both in which were shut down very early on in the pandemic. We were nervous and our stress levels were high. I was in the throws of trying to absorb any information coming out about this thing to make the right decisions for my other business that was still in its infancy. Just like everyone else, we were decently nervous. We had no idea what was in store for our friends, family and our society. All we knew was paychecks stopped coming in and any help we did receive through relief funds was not enough to cover our basic expenses.
Ah, but just like life does, within all of that, we learned something pivotal: how to live with less. What we realized was that we were really okay without our fancy coffee, weekly amazon deliveries, and paying for the endless amounts of activities to entertain us (or distract us). We didn’t need Netflix, Hulu and frivolous apps on our phones. We canceled everything. We simplified. We worked on closing loops by starting a family garden that benefitted from all of the manure we were accumulating. We started making our own bread, buns, tortillas, and pizza crusts. We turned our produce scraps to broth, our bones from our meat to stock, we utilized every single part of every food morsel that came into our home, we had a strict no-waste rule, and do you know what we didn’t experience? The sheer panic others were having when the grocery store shelves were empty. Sure, we would have to rethink things without stuff we couldn’t produce like sugar, but we had honey! In all honesty, we had everything we needed to continue to feed our family and at that time, that meant everything! We had built resiliency for our family at a time when the fragility of our food system was more obvious than ever.
The breakdown of the system as we know it made many folks rethink where they were sourcing their food and interest in what we were doing exploded. We decided to seize the opportunity to grow with the demand, while simultaneously trying a different method that doesn’t exist amongst the traditional, generational farms that surround us. Chris, the professional skydiver, hung up his gear and officially turned full-time farmer- a regenerative farmer.
Although, we were able to feed 40+ families from our 2.5 acres of land we were selling out fast and could not fulfill the customer demand. We needed one crucial thing, the one thing that was incredibly hard to obtain in our area that prioritizes development over farms, because we haven’t inherited it, and we don’t have a lot of money: land.
Then our paths crossed with the people that could help change this. Unbeknownst to us at the time, they came to tour our little farm and we ended up talking for 3+ hours about holistic land-management practices, sequestering carbon, soil health, water resilience, animal welfare, and nutrient density. Later, they would approach us about managing the land on a project they were working on nearby: Harmony Ranch. Currently, we are forging forward towards something we all truly believe in: A collective return to living in community lands, belief in the virtues of sustainable living, the value of regenerative agriculture, the principles of land-based education, and the practice of living in holistic fulfillment.
To get there is a long road building a farm from the ground up and it comes with a lot of red tape, bureaucracy, frustration, tears, hard work, sweat, and more perseverance and grit than we knew we had. However, We know that on the other side of all that is a meaningful mission; one that will enrich our community, provide more families with nutrient-dense food, and a place to learn about the symbiosis of our ecosystems and soil biology.
We look forward to the partnership with Harmony Ranch and the opportunity to holistically steward the land we all love in the Ogden Valley and we can’t wait to fill the bellies and souls of those who give us the chance.
Dealing with the Inevitable Hardships of Farming
Many times on the farm, even when you give your best effort, things don’t go in your favor. Mother Nature can be unpredictable and crops can be ruined and animals can be lost to predators or other events. However, dealing with factors outside your control will always teach you how to be a problem-solver and that’s always a good thing and Nothing builds our strength like surviving difficulty. Nothing forces us to leverage what we have, dig deep and come up with every ounce of patience and strength like a hard time. I’m not sure there’s another way to learn humility, either. You feel more, you observe more, you are involved more when you are challenged. All your senses are working to their best, laziness is not an option and oftentimes becomes an important catalyst for growth, new relationships, knowledge, and fulfilling experiences.
The only true wisdom you have is of experience; good and bad. Like the Buddhist story of the farmer: good luck. Bad luck. Who knows?
