The Origin Story

It started with a swarm of bees, six chickens, and a small, round garden in the Hudson valley of New York. It was a small homestead that grew.  Six chickens became eight and we added goats. Just two for milk, but in order to have milk you have to have babies. Have you seen how cute Nigerian dwarf babies are?! Turkeys would be fun, and maybe a couple of pigs, and a puppy named Blue... Oh, and the round garden that started at 400 square feet turned in to 2,000 then 4,000 then 6,000 square feet with asparagus beds, and raspberries, black berries, and strawberries and some of the prettiest vegetables we could have imagined. The first swarm of bees absconded from the hive and moved into the big maple along the road so we bought some more bees and once again two (hives) multiplied and we peaked at sixteen.  Through all of this I found a love of helping things grow and an understanding of what that means. Our motto/slogan whatever you want to call it is There is Life Here. That was how I felt every time I would walk around our small farm. You could just feel it.  I also learned that there is no life without death and that everything we produce requires sacrifice.  Sometimes it’s a heartbreaking birth where the kids fail to thrive or survive, or the wonderful but ornery herd matriarch has a twisted intestine that can’t be healed. It’s the sweet hen that is killed by a hawk on Christmas Eve, or it’s the Japanese beetles on the raspberries, the slugs in the cabbage, or the squash bugs on the pumpkins. Now that we’re in Mississippi on twenty acres we’ve added a jersey milk cow, a steer, a few more pigs and we’re allowing the numbers of goats to increase.

and there’s still more to add so - To be continued…