Building Our Farmstead

Hi there! My name is Jenesse and I am a wife to Nathan, a momma to four kids, and a homesteader. We currently live in East Tennessee and are in the process of rebuilding our farm.

We bought our first piece of property in Northern California when our 1st child was only 6 months old. In no way did we look at the property and envision getting livestock or farming. There were fruit trees and space for a garden so I figured if we did anything we would start there. I had killed a few potted plants at our last home so I was certain I didn't have a “green thumb”. The purpose of our move was to bring me home full time to raise our daughter and have my husband’s woodworking shop on our property, to cut costs and live minimally. When people would joke about us having farm animals my husbands reply was “no way, we want to put in a vineyard!”

Fast forward a year and we are bringing home our first dairy cow and her two twin babies. It was the first purchase on our homestead, there were no gateway chickens for this family! I don’t know if it was the desire to have fresh cream, raw butter, or what but we decided to just go for it. We had the space, she had babies that could keep her empty while we figured out what the heck we were doing. Did I mention we had never milked a cow before?

After Olive (our cow) came chickens and pigs. We were a full blown farm! Raising meat for ourselves and others, operating a herdshare with the excess #rawmilk. We had everything set up and never envisioned leaving our little slice of heaven.

Come 2020 and God told us to leave, to walk away from our my husbands successful business we had of building custom furniture and cabinetry, walk away from our farm that had a wait list of families wanting products from us, walk away from our community we loved so dearly. We fought it, we didn’t want to leave but ultimately God made it clear he wanted us to move.

A few short months later in October 2020 we packed up our home and set out for East Tennessee! We purchased a home sight unseen and moved to a town we had only driven by on our brief trip in June to look at the area.

So now we are here and the rebuilding begins!! We did bring two of our dairy cows with us from California! We are restarting our flock, our garden and of course our business!