Part One: The Shift

I Didn’t Wait. I Built It.

I was raised on a working farm. My mom stayed home. My dad hunted, worked, and tended the fields when they called for it. It wasn’t aesthetic. It wasn’t curated. It was real, and it stuck.

I knew I wanted that life. I just didn’t know if I could have it. Not alone. I spent years thinking farms were for families with generational land and backup. I had neither. Just obsession and a gut-level refusal to settle for less.

In 2017, the homestead movement cracked the door. People—women—doing it solo. Not pretending. Not blogging for show. Just living close to the land, on purpose. It lit something I couldn’t put out.

But wanting it and earning it aren’t the same thing.

In 2021, I started driving for Uber and Lyft—50+ hours a week. On top of my full-time IT job.
Up at 5am. Driving until 8:30. Logged in by 9. Out again at 5:10pm, driving until midnight. Weekends were 12-hour shifts. I didn’t complain. I had a number in my head and fire in my chest.

Seven months later, my debt was gone. Credit cards, cleared. Every dollar I made went to securing the one thing no one could take: land.

By the end of the year, I was house-hunting. I thought I had it lined up. I even rescued a bottle baby ram lamb in January 2022, thinking I’d have the land within a month.

That deal fell through.

But the lamb didn’t.

So there I was, in the city, with a plastic-lined bedroom full of hay and a baby sheep pacing the floor. He got lonely. I got him a baby goat. I spent five months raising livestock inside four walls while the world outside wondered what the hell I was doing.

That’s what commitment looks like. That’s what the dream costs. And I paid it.

In May 2022, I finally leased a small farmhouse and moved my mismatched herd to real dirt. One year later, I closed on 22 raw acres of my own—no pasture, no infrastructure, just the bones of a future I’d already started building.

Now I run a working, free-range farm.
Twelve sheep. Nine goats. Chickens that don’t care about fences. A couple turkeys. Farm dogs who earn their keep.
No one handed me this. No one showed me how.
I just refused to quit.

This was never a phase.
It was a reckoning.

Part Two: The Land Learns You

What Happens When You Stop Fighting It

When I bought my land, it didn’t look like much.

No pasture. No fencing. Just fresh-cut rawness and the scarred aftermath of timber crews. I didn’t care. I wasn’t here for easy. I wasn’t here for a turnkey dream. I was here to build something no one could take from me.

I knew I didn’t want animals dependent on grain bags and hay trucks. I wanted systems that worked with the land. I wanted to grow animals the way nature intended—moving, grazing, adapting. But I’ll be honest: I wasn’t sure it would work.

I trusted the goats would figure it out. They’re chaos on hooves. But the sheep? Everyone says they need pasture. Everyone says they’re delicate.

Everyone was wrong.

Those sheep didn’t just survive in the brush—they thrived. They browsed right alongside the goats, stripping limbs, clearing thorns, eating what no one plants on purpose. No grain. No store-bought feed. Just movement and rotation. By winter, they were parasite-free, well-fed, and healthier than anything I’d ever seen on a standard program.

That moment changed everything.
I stopped trying to “improve” the land.
I started listening to it instead.

I let it teach me what it wanted to grow. I let it show me what my animals needed. And once I did, the rest of the vision snapped into place. The old system fell away. I didn’t need control. I needed alignment.

Now, this farm isn’t just functioning—it’s thriving. And not because I beat it into submission.

Because I stopped asking it to be something it wasn’t.

Part Three: The Covenant

This Isn’t a Business Model. It’s a Line in the Sand.

Once I stopped trying to control the land, I started paying attention to what it was willing to give.

And it gives a lot—if you don’t get greedy.

I don’t use tillers. I don’t sterilize soil with chemicals. I don’t wage war against bugs, weather, or weeds. I plant what belongs. I grow what thrives. And I never ask for more than the land offers.

This isn’t about sustainability. That word’s been gutted and repackaged too many times. This is about respect. If the goldenrod’s too infested to harvest this year, we let it go. If yarrow’s growing wild and thick, we gather—but only half. Always half. Enough to leave seed. Enough to feed the soil. Enough for the wild things that lived here before I did.

We don’t spray. We don’t force. We don’t harvest anything with machines. Everything we offer—every herb, every blend—comes from a real hand, not a factory line.

Some years we’ll have more. Some years we won’t. If you’re looking for volume, there are plenty of places that will give you chemically managed consistency. This isn’t one of them.

We make what the land allows.
We sell what we’d use in our own bodies.
And when it’s gone—it’s gone.

This isn’t scarcity marketing. This is reality. This is what happens when you build something on truth instead of production quotas.

We won’t overharvest for a profit. We won’t compromise just to fill a shelf.
That’s not just a promise. It’s a covenant.

With this land. With this work. And with ourselves.