How I got here...

In 2022 we were living like most middle class Americans.  Established  in our careers, we made enough money to buy a home, two cars, a boat, and a few vacations a year.  We felt very blessed.  We had three happily married adult girls and a few grand-babies.  We had good health.

Like most, our Monday through Friday was a blur.  Alarm blaring at 7am.  Work from 8-5:30. Home by 6.  Contemplate what leftovers were in the fridge vs ordering delivery.  Throw in a load of laundry.  Wash some dishes.  Walk the dogs. Then plop on the couch to unwind before bed, only to do it all again tomorrow.  Saturday and Sunday were our catchup days.  To-do lists, errands and the occasional event or social outing.  We had a good life.  Summer weekends would look like a few hours of boating with family and friends.  Winter weekends looked like shoveling our way out of our house to head down the mountain to Costco.  We lived in a beautiful mountain lake town at that time.  And we were, from what we had calculated, 15 years away from retirement.  

 

Then came the fire.  Living in the mountains we were surrounded by Pine trees.  A fire can easily grow out of control with all that tinder.  For a month, daily life was rushing from house to car and car to office trying not to inhale too much smoke.  Then it got so close the air was literally orange.  And it was coming for our town.  We got word a mass evacuation was on the horizon.  We piled our dogs and what we felt were must haves like family photos and legal documents and drove down into the valley with 22,000 other townsfolk’s in toe.  It was a terribly stressful 9 days.  

 

On day 10, we were notified the town evacuation was lifted.  We immediately headed home.  When we arrived, it looked as if we were the first to come back.  It was a ghost town.  Driving through our smokey empty town was surreal.  The firefighters risked their lives to save it from the destruction that so many others had suffered.  Our house would still be there.  We were praying we didn’t have smoke damage.  Praying no one had broken in while we were gone as police were reporting.  We opened the door to our home and all seemed just fine inside.  We dropped what was in our hands.  Let the dogs into the back yard briefly and poured two stiff cocktails.  

 

Inflection point: In mathematics, an inflection point is where the curvature of a function changes its direction, either from concave to convex or vice versa. In the real world, it is any key event that dramatically changes the trajectory of a business, industry or economy.  In our world it meant, lets get the hell out of here pronto!

 

We listed the house on Zillow For Sale by Owner, that very hour.  Loaded pictures of the house from our iPhones.  And picked a price we both agreed would make us sell.  This was definitely reactionary.  Some would say flat out crazy.  We had no plan.  But we both knew, if it was meant to be, we’d get the offer we asked for and figure it out then.  If it was not, we’d stay.  Well the first visitor gave us our asking offer and true to our word, we took it.  

 

The next two years we lived like gypsies.  We talked through countless ideations of what we wanted in a home.  We moved 5 times.  We lived in four different towns and three different states.  We both had secured remote jobs that allowed for this.  We lived out of boxes and ate on paper plates for TWO YEARS.  It was equal parts maddening and equal parts invigorating.  We knew, based on all the impossible happenstances during that time that we were being lead.  We also know now, that it took the whole of two years for our ideations to become a clear vision.  I won’t get into all of that here but I’m sure there will be reflections of those times in our blog posts as the miracles and outright shocking blessings were guiding us right to Woods Family Farm.  

 

Now here we are.  It’s been exactly one year of life on this little farm and we wonder often, how the heck two urban dwellers like us ended up owning a farm.  It has been the most rewarding and exciting undertaking, outside of kids and grandkids, of our lives. We have NO IDEA what we are doing.  But we know for absolute certainty, this farm was waiting specifically for us. Again, those insane stories I’ll leave for the blog.  What in the world are we going to do with a farm?!  Well we are figuring it out, one mistake and one success at a time.  

 

The purpose of this website/blog, and whatever ideation comes of it as we grow with our farm, is to share this adventure with our family, friends and you, the visitor.  I hope to plant a seed of hope in those who feel like they’ve taken the path worn wide and endless from the millions before them.  Waking you, our visitor, to new possibilities outside of the grind we were groomed for.  This farm life is not for everyone.  But neither is the corporate grind.  Being content was a country mile from being satisfied.  I know that now.  Thank you for visiting.  I hope our journey opens your eyes to your own possibilities.  Please come back again soon. You are always welcome.  

 

Sincerely,

 

Woods Family Farm

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