family

What exactly are we doing here anyway?

/ Adventure This Life / 9 Comments

A question I ask myself every day. And each day into this adventure I find myself facing paralyzing fear and doubt (more to come on this later).

The thing is, we don’t know 100% really what it is we’re doing. We may not even know 10% of what it is we’re doing. What we do know is we’re chasing a dream and conquering our fears.

The light between the trees

The dream we’re chasing

Joy. Freedom. Connection. Sustainability. We’re seeking a way of living that is adventurous, courageous, and authentic — a life that nurtures the land along with our creativity and passion. A life that allows us to be present more as a family and more engaged with nature.

Homestead. Market garden. Hobby farm. Business. These are many of the names we’ve called this dream, to ourselves, our neighbors, our friends, and our family.Family w/the Christmas tree

The fears we’re conquering

Failure. Poverty. Inability. Complacency. We have no idea what we’re doing and we’ve just uprooted our lives completely. We’ve only ever lived in the cities or suburbs. We have no background nor personal connection whatsoever in farming or homesteading. We’d never heard of permaculture until a year ago nor did we know what a market garden was, and I didn’t even know homesteading was a thing. But here we are on our own 16 acres of land in rural Wisconsin preparing to make our dreams a reality. Gulp…Fearless Townes

 

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City girl gone country

/ Adventure This Life / 2 Comments
November 3, 2017, I moved to 16 acres in a tiny town I’ve never heard of before in the middle of nowhere, Cumberland, Wi.

Born and raised in St. Paul, I was never more than 10 minutes from, well, really anything, except for maybe a farm. As an extrovert, the constant commotion of the lights, movement and noise energized and awakened me. I was happy in the city and I liked it — still do. It’s all I’ve ever really known. But there’s something I’ve always liked, perhaps even more than the city — the country. Maybe because, until now, it’s been a novelty to me. Nevertheless, I was enamored with it and it inspired me.

Fog

Every summer as a girl I’d spend two weeks on a bee farm (not sure that’s really the technical term for it) located 30 minutes outside of Alexandria, MN*. Over 360 acres of rolling hills, woods, prairie and a pond. It truly was, and still is, heaven on earth. Those two weeks each summer were what dreams were made of (minus the ticks, I hate ticks).

I spent hours on end outdoors with my little cousins making forts in the tall prairie grasses, racing through the woods on ATVs, catching gardener snakes for a local pet shop, and then frogs to feed the gardener snakes, exploring an old dilapidated barn that defied all safety regulations, and seeing how close we could get to the pond before our feet would get sucked into the mud.

Christmas lipstick

I grew up, and spent significantly less time in the country, but the magic and wonder of the outdoors never left me.

This blog is the story about how I left all I knew in the city to start something I knew nothing about, a small scale farm and homestead in the country.

I hope this blog will inspire you, not to move to the country, unless of course that’s what you want to do, but to live out your childhood dreams and further explore your passions.

Enjoy!

*The bee farm I spent my summers at is actually the Reece family farm. It’s owned by my mom’s cousins and they make local raw honey. It’s delicious.