My whole life I wanted to live on a farm, become a veterinarian or own exotic animals. I would rescue any little animal I could and try to save every little one I could. I have had birds, hamsters, gerbils, cats and dogs as a child. As an adult it was my dogs and cats. One day one of my dogs brought into the house a baby opossum. That was an exciting day. We raised Scooter in our house as a family pet until he passed away of a splenetic tumor just before his third birthday. He had his own Facebook page and I eventually wrote a children’s book about him. He was our sweet little boy. He had his own room with many places to climb and play. He was spoiled rotten. He is missed to this day.
Because of my love for animals, I am always finding places to ride horses or spend time with animals of any kind. We have stayed on ranches to be around animals. We stayed at a goat ranch in January 2022 right after we sold our house for almost two weeks. We fell in love with the goats and that sealed my decision to start our own homestead. While we stayed at the goat ranch, we went land hunting. At that time my husband and I were living in an RV park in a spot on the pond. We had ducks we fed out of our hand every morning and evening. I was hooked on the simple life. After days of looking at properties we found the one. We went to look at it and fell in love. We had to fight 14 other people for the property. We put in our offer the day after it went on the market. After a lot of back and forth and raising our offer we got the call. The seller accepted our offer, and we would be closing on the property Valentines Day.
We closed on the 5 acres on February 16, 2022. We moved in that night on air mattresses and camped in our new home. Immediately we got to work. We cleaned up the property and started clearing the ugly spots on the land. We hauled off trailer loads of metal and concrete. We bartered clearing for some electric poles that were on the property. We worked tirelessly rebuilding decks, painting the now tack shed, putting up pens for our goats and then our donkeys. We cleared out overgrown chicken coops and we put in a pond. Our back couple of acres were a big mess of trash and standing water in places. My son got his jeep stuck several times and my grandson got our golf cart stuck as well. It was a sink hole and unusable land. Day by day it improved and was becoming the place I always dreamed of.
We went through so much turning the property we purchased into a beautiful place to live. We made rooky mistakes that cost us money. We hired a pond company that day two on the job the police showed up saying the machines were stolen from Home Depot. Home Depot showed up and hauled off the machines and I freaked out. That company walked off the job and left our back acres a mess and killed one of our trees. We hired another company to come finish the job and now we have a beautiful pond. Let’s not talk about the recycled asphalt driveway. Just another costly lesson learned.
Now it was time to get my goats! We got our Top Goats Goose and Maverick, and life was great. I got my ducks and waited impatiently to get the pond done so they could swim and live their best life. Then we were blessed with two donkeys that were possibly both pregnant. We had the beginning of a farm. We were starting our homestead. My oldest son and his family were selling their flood house and looking for higher ground. We gave him his acre to put a home on and raise his family and be a part of this amazing new life we were building. He had his YouTube channel and started documenting our progress. We got more ducks for our pond and started adding rabbits, chickens, geese and turkeys. We added a mini horse and a mini cow. Now one of our donkeys had a baby in March a year after bringing our two donkeys’ home. We are getting another mini horse this week and we suspect our mini cow is pregnant.
While building our homestead and egg business by accident we wanted to share all our hard work and beautiful animals with others. We wanted to be a place where animal lovers could come and feed the animals and stay on our property. We enjoyed visiting farms and now we had our own farm. We began with a listing on Hipcamp so campers could come pitch a tent on the pond or bring a RV and drydock camp. Then we listed on Harvest Host and officially opened our doors as Big City Little Farm LLC. We are living our dream and sharing it with others.
It’s been 482 days since we closed on our homestead now hobby farm. It’s been a lot of hard work. It’s been a blessing for all of us. Every morning I wake up to a little piece of heaven on earth. Every evening as the sun sets, I marvel at the nights sky. Most days I have to pinch myself because I can’t believe this is our home. Every morning I am greeted by the donkeys braying, the goat’s baa’s, the chickens clucking, the horse neighing and the cow mooing. A beautiful symphony of farm life. They all follow us everywhere we go afraid they may miss out on something. They love to get love from us at all times, all 55 of them. We are living our dream and want to share it with you. That’s how Big City Little Farm was born and I look forward to years of sharing our dream with others.
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