Not long ago, I posted that we celebrated our ten year farmiversary! It’s hard to believe we have lived here for ten years already, but there are times when it feels like a LONNNNG ten years!!!

**For my newest readers and friends, I am going to share some of our background story in the next couple of paragraphs. Those of you who have been following our journey may want to skip down a couple of paragraphs.**

Many of you know that I was not raised on a farm. I was born and raised in Houston, Texas since my dad worked on site at NASA my entire life. Sure, our family visited our great uncles’ farms growing up, but I had never taken care of a farm animal or grown a vegetable in my life until I was over forty! My husband, The Outdoorsman, grew up in a suburb of Houston called League City, but he spent almost every summer helping his grandparents on their farms in East Texas so he acquired a lot of skills and knowledge that have helped us tremendously over the years.

I had always dreamed of living on a farm and, thankfully, I married The Outdoorsman when I was 39-years-old and we both wanted to live on land and raise farm animals. For the first ten years, we were stuck in suburbia while raising our children and navigating a complicated blended family. We made the best of it and found a quaint house on a large lot in the Historic District of League City, Texas. Since it was the Historic District and people who lived there were “grandfathered-in” to raise livestock, we were able to raise chickens and even a couple of goats, Rudolf and Frosty, on our land. As The Outdoorsman would tell you, the chickens were a “gateway animal” to farming! Before we knew it, we had three chicken coops and over sixty chickens and I was completely hooked on the idea of owning our own farm!

After our two oldest children graduated from high school, we decided to look around for jobs and land in Central Texas near all three of our children. Our son was a junior at the University of Texas, our daughter was a freshman at Baylor University, and our youngest was in eighth grade in Bastrop so we went on the HAR.com website and drew a big triangle between the three of them and, voila!, dozens of farms popped up in our price range. The very first one we clicked on was in a little town we had never heard of before. We clicked on it and I audibly gasped at the beauty of the land. We couldn’t believe it was in our price range and immediately scheduled a showing and drove to see it. Within thirty days, we had a contract on the land and we had both found new jobs within a 50 mile radius of the farm.

That was the beginning of our story as farmers. The past ten years has been a learning curve that looks a lot like Mt. Everest!! It has been the steepest climb you can imagine for me in every way possible. I have been pushed and pulled and challenged in so, so many ways, but thankfully, we are still standing here today. There have been days and even months that have been so challenging that we have both questioned if we could continue on this path; however, it always comes back to the fact that THIS LIFE WE ARE LIVING IS TOTALLY WORTH ALL OF THE HARD WORK.

When we walk out our door every day, we are reminded of the tremendous blessings that come with the fact that we have been chosen as stewards of our beautiful land.

The lessons I have learned about the challenges of farm animals, the never-ending job of fencing, the non-stop need for hard work, the futility of complaining, and the full understanding of my own skills and abilities…..or lack thereof….have been priceless.

There are many, many things we have done incorrectly in our first ten years on Green Acres. At times, we have have had to change our approach with our animals, rebuild fences, or reinforce structures, but we are finally feeling the rewards of our constant efforts and hard work.

If you are new to farming or homesteading, I want to strongly encourage all of you to not give up if you are still struggling or things are going as smoothly as you had hoped or planned. Farming, tending gardens, and taking care of animals require long days and hard, hard work. If you are like us, you are also still working full-time jobs outside of your farm so that adds a whole other dimension to the situation. Yes, it is a beloved hobby, but it still angrily demands your “free time” every day of the week! In addition to the enormous time involved, it can be extremely expensive and difficult to get away and regroup since the animals require care 24/7 each week. Just to encourage you to keep working and to adapt a slow and steady mentality, we truly feel that we are just now hitting our stride and truly understanding what are strengths and weaknesses and our likes and dislikes are in the world of farming and animal care.

One of the things we have learned recently about life on the farm is that, in the farming world, following the ideology of “Go Big or Go Home” usually means you may, actually, go home!! lol! For example, we completely overbuilt our pig and goat pens. We made the pens so large that we couldn’t even catch the goats or pigs when we needed to because they had a veritable football field to scurry around while avoiding our attempts to capture them!! We have since scaled way back and just finished making our pig pen about one third of its original size. Also, we definitely overestimated our skills in gardening. This year, I’m going to plant only about one-third the amount of seeds I have in previous years and focus on fruit trees and perennial plants and flowers that return every year! After planting thousands of seeds in a HUGE garden area and having high heat and drought kill most of the plants for the past several years, I’ve learned that a smaller space that can easily be watered is the way to go!

We are so thankful for the last ten years on Green Acres and hope you enjoy reading about our adventures on the farm. We look forward to sharing our stories…..and our life lessons…..with you for many years to come.

The Head Hen