Farm Goals: Why We Started A Farm
I was listening to an online homesteading summit recently and the speaker gave some homesteading stats. She said historically 1 in 3 homesteaders failed. For new farmers, 80% of farmers don’t make it past 2 years and only 2% make it to 5 years. This is pretty shocking.
It’s a shocking statistic because we moved across the country and changed our entire lives to become homesteaders 2 years ago. We have many friends in our community who are also homesteading, and we are all learning how intense this lifestyle can be. Add on a very complex case of my health problems to add some “fun” to the mix, and now we have to ask ourselves if we’re going to be the farm that fails, or if we are going to push through to make this a long-term, sustainable gig for us.
What do we have to come to terms with about our homestead dreams if we’re going to make this work? Homesteading is not for people who want a comfortable, easy life. It might be simple, but it’s definitely not easy. It’s totally contrary to the typical modern life that hinges on fast-paced comfort and convenience. And that’s exactly why we’re doing it. We want what’s going to manifest tangible and wholesome meaning in our lives, not just ease.
Why we Started our Farm
I’ve recently been revisiting why we started the farm in the first place. I don’t regret starting our farm. Not one bit. Rather, I realized that I never formally decided for myself WHY Ephraim and I started a farm. The first thought that popped in my head when I thought about why we started our farm was because Ephraim wanted to start a farm and so, more than anything, I wanted to help make his dreams come true. It’s not bad to do things for another person, especially your husband whom you love and cherish. But I would also say that with something as life-changing as two suburban/city kids taking the next step into adulthood by starting a farm, I would hope that I have a better reason than just because I want to support his dreams. If this farm is going to be a sustainable and long-term lifestyle, then I personally think that I need to have my own reasons for starting (and continuing) this farm. I want to be “all in,” and that requires a strong sense of self that isn’t shaken when the hard things come. So if you happen to be interested in why I do what I do as it relates to our home and our farm, here they are.
My Goal for Our Home
My ultimate goal for our home has always stayed consistent in the 6 years of our marriage. I want to create a beautiful home for my husband, our family, our friends, and our community. By beautiful, I mean a safe, welcoming, peace-filled, organized, sustainable and fully equipped home that is genuinely a place where we love to be. I’ve worked very hard to accomplish that and I am extremely thankful for the home we’ve built together so far.
My Goal for Our Farm
The reason I started this farm is to be an active participant in a simple lifestyle where I am intimately acquainted with the skills it takes to live and thrive in the way that God intended humans to live. Past generations knew how to live well with the resources they had. We want to do the same by relying on our own lived experience and the other people in our community to meet our needs, not just the resources of the internet and the supermarket. We want to know how to put up our own food for long-term storage, raise our own animals, and heal and care for our bodies using the herbs in the ground.
I mentioned that I want our home to be “fully equipped” and “sustainable.” This means that we believe it is also important to have our farm be as self-sustaining as possible regardless of the external circumstances in the world. Another way to look at it is by the questions I’ve asked myself before. If “the world shut down” (internet, modern conveniences, etc), could we successfully live in such a way that our lives were barely affected? Could we share out of our abundance with others in a time of need? Do we have enough nutritious food, water, and resources to sustain ourselves? Do we know how to cook, grow things, and raise livestock in such a way that we could survive? Do we have connections to our local community where we could share our goods with each other to fill in the gaps for the things that we don’t yet know how to do? Do we live basic and beautiful lives like our ancestors so that if all the superstores closed, the internet went out and I couldn’t look up how to do something on google, we would still be okay? Not even just okay, but thriving?
We haven’t “arrived” and I honestly don’t think we ever will stop learning how to do these basic things. But I would also like to clarify that we are not against the internet nor are we against supermarkets. I frequent both on a very regular basis just like everyone else does. To further drive home my appreciation, I am so grateful for the internet because it is where we have learned the majority of our traditional skills as well as how we get paid (thank you remote jobs!). I just think that there’s more to life for every single person and family than our modern lifestyles have led us to believe. Read any statistics or current research about the effects of the “information age” on the relationships, imaginations, emotional, spiritual and physical lives of children and adults today. You’ll quickly see that we are living more in a façade more than a reality if we give in to the convenient, comfortable, AI-driven lives that are being offered to us. Like I said, we have by no means arrived. We’re trying just like everyone else how to live well in our current situation.
Why do I want own a farm?
Because I want to live in the full reality of what it means to be human. It’s hard, it’s messy, it’s not super glamorous or “high tech.” But it’s good, it’s slow progress, it’s abundant, and it’s fulfilling. In a world that is increasingly reliant on computers and technology and fake realities, Ephraim and I decided that we want nothing more than to do the opposite. To find real, deep meaning in EVERYTHING we do. Eating, sleeping, working, how we spend our free time. This is what makes us feel alive.
