They say that chickens are the gateway drug of farming. I don’t know who “they” are, but they’re right.
But let me back up.
A lot of people ask if I always knew I wanted to farm. They’re pretty surprised when my answer is “Actually, no.” I thought I’d be living in the city, within walking distance of my favorite coffee spot, a library and preferably my job. I thought I might end up in a European city, maybe Basel or somewhere in England. But I went to college in the US and I did what a lot of girls do. I met a boy.
This boy had short hair, always wore cowboy boots and jeans and a tshirt. Oh, and he had a large belt buckle that he won at a rodeo.
He was the opposite of who I thought I’d end up with, and yet I fell in love.
By the time we got married, we had talked about the future, and I had fallen in love with the back country roads and starry skies.
I knew then that we’d end up with a farm. I just didn’t know when or where.
In 2014, we found our farm. It had just under 5 acres, a chicken coop, a large shop and a little farm house. It was perfect. We closed on it in December 2014 and moved in just before Christmas.
Justin didn’t waste any time with his farming dreams and we had chickens by February 1st. We knew we wanted some larger animals, but with the amount of rock we had on our property, we couldn’t have horses. We decided that goats would be the next best thing and by June, we had goats.
Well, with goats and chickens, we had become a real (albeit mini) farm, so we needed a name. I threw out a lot of fun names like Farm 431, Bushel and Peck Farm, but Justin wanted to go with something traditional that really described the land. We have a creek that separates our house from the pastures that was lined with cedars, so Justin proposed Cedar Creek.
Somehow, it just fit, and so it stuck. And thus was born Cedar Creek Farm. Since then, we’ve added quite the menagerie of animals, because when you have fresh eggs and [goat] milk, you obviously need bacon. So now, our farm has chickens, goats, pigs, cows, dogs, guineas, rabbits and our newest friends, turkeys. With so much going on, we realized that we needed to focus on what we want to do down the road. But to do this, we needed to verbalize why we wanted a farm in the first place.
We wrestled with this for a while, and came to the conclusion that it was the tradition of it all. We both love history and the idea of knowing what some might consider “old-fashioned skills.” Justin’s a farrier on the side (trimming horse hooves) has been trained as a blacksmith and can build just about anything out of wood. I, on the other hand, had learned how to cook, quilt and make jams and jellies. We both have farming in our blood, from both of our families on both sides. It seemed appropriate that our history would become our legacy.
So that’s our vision. We want to be a resource for traditional farming methods and the way of living that accompanied that. We want our friends, families and neighbors to be able to visit, to see where food comes from and learn some of the old-fashioned skills that are so important on a farm. We want to teach you unique things, like how to milk a goat by hand, or how to catch a chicken. Most of all, we want you to see how fun a farm can be, because we’re having the time of our lives.
Won’t you join us?
But for real, we want you to join us on the farm for our Fall Family Fun Day! We'll have games, activities, farm fresh snacks and of course, all the animals to play with. Hope to see you there!
