Our Story
It all began with the desire to eat good food and teach our children where it came from. In late 2021, with our first baby on the way we decided it was time to take the leap and move back where our family was from.
So we sold our home in the city, packed our bags, and embarked on our dreams of country living. We knew we had a long haul to revamp our new home located on a retired veal farm. With almost 10 acres to make our own, we got started with our first set of free-range chickens in 2022. Wyatt and a few friends helped build our first indoor coops with a door to free range during the day. Shortly after our chickens, we wanted to expand into duck eggs, so in March 2022 we took home our first flock of Khaki Campbell ducklings. Not only was this a great egg layer breed it started Brianna’s interest in waterfowl with their fun personalities and nice temperament.
In June 2022 we started our first round of meat chickens with great success! Eggs were great but being able to fill our freezer with soy-free organically fed chicken was a big moment of accomplishment. We had something substantial to show for our initial homesteading efforts. With this, we wanted to learn more ways to be more self-reliant, which included hatching out a few of our own birds. The very first set of hatching eggs we tried was Quail! This was an exciting and educational process for not only us but our first son. He was able to experience his first of many hatchings. By the end of 2022, we had happily hatched a few rounds of Quail and 10 Khaki Campbell ducklings.
As 2023 rolled around we were happy to be expecting our second son, due that summer. This year was one of growth not only in our family but also in our homestead. We started adding to our apple orchard by planting, new apple trees, cherry trees, and peach trees. Started our first small garden filled with pumpkins, lettuce, tomatoes, broccoli, and potatoes. We learned a lot and although our harvest was very small we gained a lot of insight on how to make the next year’s garden better. The chickens and ducks found their way into our freshly planted seeds, digging them up and eating many before they had the chance to sprout. That summer we did another round of meat birds, filling our freezer with another year of homegrown chicken. We continued to make progress toward eating clean ingredients and less processed /store-bought meals. This sparked the goal to stop buying commercial bread and continue learning to make many of the processed items we loved from scratch. Brianna started her first sourdough starter, which failed twice before success. With the creation of her new sourdough starter came a whole new adventure of learning how to make sourdough bread and baked goods.
This brings us to now, 2024, 3 years after buying our homestead. We have accomplished so much to be proud of. In March, 2024 we were finally ready to take on our very first dairy calf. We drove 4 hours to Virqurioa, WI to purchase Hortense, a calf from an organic dairy farm. We began bottle feeding her and learned how to treat our first experience of scours (also known as calf diarrhea but can turn deadly without proper diagnosis & treatment). Hortense aka Hortie was our first, but not our last new addition to the homestead. We took in 7 Rouen ducks from a local family at 2 weeks old, our second breed of duck now! Later that month we also added one of Brianna’s favorites, three Toulouse geese. We continue to strive toward raising our own meat, which at this time is most feasible via poultry. After two successful years of meat chickens, to try a high-quality meat bird breed called Breese. This breed is known for tender and marbled breast meat, which is highly sought after. By adding higher quality meat chickens we also wanted to try a heritage breed turkey called Blue Slate Turkeys. They have excellent meat and finish at a good size. Our goal is to provide the best options possible for not only us, but our community. We hope by learning and putting in the effort toward these higher-quality birds our community can also enjoy meats not easily accessible in our area.