The Aspiring Farmer Blog

Whew, it's been a little longer than normal since my last Farm Dreams post. We've been going through quite a transition over at Little Seed Farm. Not only are we still adjusting to living and managing a farm in the middle of nowhere in TN, we're also adjusting to having no direct source of income.

As of the end of September the…

The Aspiring Farmer

This post should really be titled "Making Something Out of a Giant Blackberry, Honeysuckle, Wild Rose and Poison Ivy Bramble". 

When we first found our place a year ago it had been uninhabited for…

One day I was riding out to feed the pigs in the back pasture and I saw a yellow burst of color above the tall grass. "What the heck is that?", I thought to myself. As I got closer I could see it was a sunflower. Not only one sunflower, but a whole patch of them. At least…

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This is something we probably should have "googled" before we got started. But we didn't. More and more that seems to be the case, and I'm proud of us for that. Back when we first moved out here (and a long time prior to moving) we'd pretty much "google" everything we did. Just to be sure our idea wasn't completely insane and/or wouldn't kill us. Now we're a little more comfortable and kind of free-wheel it a…

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After just over five months on the farm we’re slowly chipping away at providing the day-to-day essentials for ourselves. By day-to-day essentials, of course, I mean things like bread and beer. Baking and brewing are two things I’ve taken to doing on nights and very early mornings when I have a little bit of free time. Until a neighbor dropped by with a book on breadmaking we were still eating stale baguettes…

The Aspiring Farmer Blog



FINALLY we got a day out on the town together. In celebration of Sweetbread’s birthday coming up this week I planned a day-trip between milkings to the big city of Nashville. Until this point, nearly 5 months into the move, we had yet to take a “full day” and explore Nashville. It was great to decompress for a few hours and relax and talk about all that’s changed. We talk about it a lot at home too, and with…

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Last week I was debating what to do with the pigs. They were outgrowing the pallet pens I made, but they were still small enough and crazy enough that I didn’t want to put them out on…

The Aspiring Farmer Blog



A few weeks ago we wrote on our blog about the great piglet…

The Aspiring Farmer Blog

Two people stopped by over the weekend. A friend and a neighbor. Both of them talking about water and how bad it’s getting out there. Our friend was saying how he was out hunting on a farm in a nearby town and the farmer’s well went dry that day. The farmer’s wife was in the yard crying when our friend arrived. Shortly thereafter the farmer returned home. The wife told the farmer that the well went dry. The…

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When Dusty first asked me to write for Farm Dreams he asked that I write about the emotional side of moving away from the city and starting a farm. It's a huge transition and one that comes with a lot of responsibility. Previously, we literally had no responsibility. Paying the bills was about it. No car, no home, no kids, no pets, just us and our day jobs. Sounds nice to some, but that lifestyle drove me…

The Aspiring Farmer Blog

When we first moved out here we were so busy that we couldn’t even find time to visit farmer’s markets on the weekends. We were shopping at the typical grocery stores, reverting back to foods…

The Aspiring Farmer Blog



I don’t know why, but I had some perception in my head that farmers didn’t really do much yard work and that it was all about farming. Yards didn’t really exist. For some farmers that may be the case. In the future, I hope that’s the case for me. But right now some form of yard work takes up at least a few hours of my time each week.



The major culprit is mowing the lawn. The people that lived here…

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There aren’t too many male animals on our farm. I can count them on one hand. I like to joke with Sweetbreads about “my team” of guys around here. The house cat (Levon), the male guinea (Guinea-Cent), our Silkie rooster (Elvis), and that’s about it. Until Saturday we also had a little buckling that was still nursing off one of our milking does (Mayday). Mayday came to us with two one month old kids and for the…

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In New York we loved cooking, it was a nice way to relax after a day at work. Frequently, we would cook together. Going out to eat was always a good way to try new foods and drinks, but it was never a pressing desire. It was taken for granted. If I look back at our time in NY I was generally eating about 5-7 meals per week outside of the home, which was FAR lower than 99% of everyone else we knew. Now that we’re…

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If you’ve read our personal blog recently you know that we recently lost a cat to a curious guard dog. It was a tough loss, particularly because the cat was given to me by my sister and we had only had her for a few weeks when it happened. I decided to post about the incident on…

The Aspiring Farmer Blog

When we first started down the road of small-scale farming I thought we would be alone in our battle. In many ways we are, but over the past few months we’ve found out that there’s some people on our side, and they all have practical experience. These wonderful people are Tennessee’s extension agents.



Extension agents are the folks that work for the state universities and are dedicated to helping out…

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Our goats are out in the pastures every day and every night. At least that’s the plan. It’s been tough to figure out a solution for portable shelter in case a storm rolls through, or to provide shade during the hot summer heat. Since we have large fields and we use managed rotational grazing we can’t always be sure that there are trees and/or bushes in each new paddock. Because of this, we need to provide…

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Dogs, after escaping, decide on a little nap near the well-house.

Before we got our LGDs we…

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Like everyone else that works a M-F job, I always look forward to the weekends. Back in the city it was a time to hangout with friends, go out to eat, get some beers and genuinely relax. I volunteered for a few charities and by most standards led a productive life. For some reason that drove me crazy. I felt extremely unproductive. The weekends were fun, in a way, but they weren't a good way to make up for a…

The Aspiring Farmer Blog

This weekend we got busy laying out the garden for the two of us. We are planting ~50% more than we think we will need so that one of two things happens. Either 1.) We get too much for us, and our neighbors, friends and animals…