Many people assume when they first meet me that I grew up on a farm or come from a farming family. But that is simply not the case. Today, I want to give you a little backstory on how I went from a suburban kid to becoming a farm girl.
Growing up in the Suburbs
I was born right outside of the Twin Cities. I grew up in a suburb called Maple Grove.
We had our nice little neighborhood blocks. I loved playing with the neighbor kids on the play set, and I played soccer in the summer and basketball in the winter. Overall, I led a fairly normal life.
Of course, our family did have our quirks. Both my brother and I were homeschooled. We lived in an RV for two years after selling that wonderful suburban lot. And I grew up vegan, so I was vegan for the first 12 years of my life.
Now, those are three very separate discussions, so you’ll have to tune in later for videos on that.
But anyways, I guess you could call us fairly normal. I didn’t really give much thought to farm life to be honest, until I was eight years old and I attended a horse camp with a couple of my best friends and that changed everything for me.
I fell in love with horses and in love with being on the farm and the other farm animals and just being in the country. I became obsessed with horses.
From that moment on, pretty much everything I played with my friends was horse related. We had a horse-riding stable where I pretended to train horses. I pretended to teach horseback riding lessons. I created lesson plans. I created a curriculum for my friends. We played horse college.
Everything was around horses and teaching. And that’s when I decided that I wanted to live on a farm when I grew up.
Of course, that seemed like a super far away dream. We were on our tiny neighborhood lot and so I sort of scratched that horse itch by playing with my friends and attending horse camp one time a year.
I did that for four years. I rode one week out of the year for four years, and that’s when my parents saw that this was really a deeper passion of mine, so I started getting more regular horseback riding lessons. Then leasing a horse.
Moving to the Country
Now around this time, when I was 11 years old, my family started to toy around with the idea of selling our home. Now I was all on board because the talk was that we would move to acreage where I could get a horse.
However, instead of moving straight to land, we were sort of in limbo for a while. We bought an RV, traveled around for a couple of years. We rented a house for nine months, and then after three years in limbo, we finally moved to the country.
But during those three years, I spent so much time researching, reading and watching videos all about horses.
Now my interest had expanded even further to chickens and goats. I spent my days sketching out farm plans and researching what I needed to have in the chicken coop and what I needed to do for at home dairy and how to build horse fences and all sorts of crazy things.
We Bought Goats, Laying Hens and a Horse Without Any Prior Experience
Now when I say the country, I mean five acres just outside of Maple Grove. So we’re living probably about 20 minutes from where I grew up as a kid, but we had land and we had a barn.
Within two weeks of living here, we got our first laying hen flock and within two months of living here we got our first two dairy goats. And then one month after that, I brought home my first horse, Joe.
Neither I nor any of my family members had any experience raising livestock before, but we just decided to jump in and give it a go. It was so much fun. I was living my dream.
Then, a couple years after moving in when I was 16 years old, a friend asked me if I would give her daughter horseback riding lessons.
Why not? I had a great horse. He was very beginner friendly and I had practiced teaching all those years in my basement, playing with my friends.
So I decided to give it a go. And that eventually snowballed into offering horse clubs and riding lessons at a farm camp and farm kids and leasing out my goats to 4H-ers and tours for moms groups and homeschool groups and all sorts of crazy things.
Interning at Polyface Farm in Virginia
After experimenting for six years, I decided to take a break and go out to Polyface Farm in Virginia to intern there for five months and learn their whole system of doing things.
Now that I’m home, I’m trying to figure out what in the world I want to do with the farm. It could go so many different directions.
Do You Want to Raise Your Own Livestock or Start Your Own Garden?
So I want to highlight a few key points for those of you who are considering making the leap from suburban or urban life to living in the country and raising your own livestock.
No Experience Necessary
So, number one. First is a mindset thing. Realize that you don’t have to have any experience to get started.
I was clueless. I was 14 years old and I could figure it out. So I think you can too.
Do Your Research
Number two, I spent a few years gathering information. Do a lot of reading, researching, watching YouTube. There are a lot of ways to learn.
Then Act!
And number three, do not stay in the information gathering stage for too long. I think people tend to read and think they’re not ready. And so they question themselves.
No. Just do it. The best way to learn is to go out there and get experience.
So I hope for my story going from not knowing anything about farming to now having a farm-based business inspires you to be able to make the leap.
So have you been sitting on the fence about trying something new? Make 2020 the year that you are going to start moving towards that thing.
Thank you everyone so much for listening today. I hope it encourages you to go out there and get started. We’ll see you again next week.
