Save Money, Retire Debt-Free & Lessen Your Environmental Impact: 4 Ways Our Annual Sustainable Farm Conference Can Impact Your Life
Our 8th Annual Sustainable Farm Conference is coming up on Saturday, October 7 — and we want to see you there for a full day of learning and meeting like-minded folks.
But why should you attend?
If the idea of saving money…
Retiring debt-free…
Living healthier…
and lessening your environmental impact…
… appeals to you, keep reading.
Learn how to grow your own pesticide-free food — and save money on your grocery bills.
70% of produce sold in the U.S. was found to have pesticide residues on them — even after washing.
That’s a shake-in-your-boots statistic—and one of the reasons we’re on a mission to teach the community how to grow your own healthy, pesticide-free food.
By growing your own pesticide-free food, you lower your grocery bill and avoid harmful chemical residue that is found on grocery store produce.
Save money AND stay healthy? Count us in.
Worried about fresh food going bad? Preserve your produce through canning methods to help it last longer. At the conference, you’ll receive an overview of canning, preserving and fermenting foods.
We can our summer produce and are able to enjoy our bounty for months after the growing season has passed!
At the Sustainable Farm Conference, you’ll learn all about how to successfully grow your own pesticide-free food, whether you have a big plot on an acre of land or a small backyard garden.
Learn how to retire debt-free.
Debt for Americans over aged 70 has grown more than 543% over the past two decades.
Retiring debt-free can seem like an impossible wish for some.
But it doesn’t have to be.
When we decided to get serious about sustainable living, we laser-focused our attention on paying off all our debt.
When we purchased Stoney Creek Farm, we had a farm loan on the land, but we purchased the house and barn with cash—not credit.
We relied on sustainable living practices to keep our costs down, like buying all used farm equipment, growing and preserving our own pesticide-free food, repurposing items, and being intentional with every dollar we spent.
We never relied on credit or loans to fund our business, only investing profits into new ideas.
In 2013, I was able to leave my corporate job to focus my full efforts on sharing Stoney Creek Farm with the community through our U-Pick Garden, sustainable farm conference, and more.
My husband, Olin, retired a few years later, and now we both get to spend our time enjoying a slower life on the farm.
All while being debt-free.
Whether you dream of owning your own farm or simply living sustainably right where you are, the practices you will learn at the Sustainable Farm Conference can help you pay off your debts and retire debt-free.
Learn how to leave the world a better place.
Americans are trashy people.
And by that, I mean this startling statistic: we produce 4.43 lbs of trash per day—EACH ONE OF US.
That’s 250 million tons of trash per year created just by our own country, let alone the entire world.
Sustainable living doesn’t just save you money and help you live healthier—it also leaves the world a better place.
When you recycle, repurpose, and reuse items, you lessen your trashy impact on the world.
And by growing your own pesticide-free food, you avoid adding detrimental chemicals to the environment.
At the sustainable farm conference, you’ll learn how to leave a smaller footprint on the world, ensuring that future generations are able to enjoy our beautiful land.
Avoid costly mistakes by learning from our 16 years of sustainable farm experience—as well as from other sustainable experts.
We’ve spent nearly two decades learning how to live sustainably at Stoney Creek Farm.
But when we first started out, we made our fair share of mistakes.
For example, when we started Stoney Creek Farm, we were looking for income streams to help us meet the $1500 Tennessee gross income requirement to maintain greenbelt status, which would offer us significant tax benefits.
We looked at cutting hay, raising meat goats, and other options. We finally landed on an orchard. People could come pick produce, or we could sell the fruit ourselves. We were so excited to begin.
We bought a bunch of trees, investing quite a bit of money in our orchard dreams. We planted granny smith, red delicious, crabapple, pears, peaches… all sorts of fruit trees.
Fruit production can take up to 5 years for some trees, but we were so excited to finally enjoy the fruit of our efforts—literally.
There was one issue. And it was a major issue.
Our whole property is covered in cedar trees.
We hadn’t done our research to realize that fungal spores from cedar trees could infect fruit trees, like our beloved apple trees, with cedar rust.
You can guess what happened: most of our trees didn’t produce any fruit at all, and the ones that did produce weren’t exactly edible. To treat the rust, we would’ve had to spray them with all types of fungicides and pesticides, and we didn’t want that.
We learned our lesson the hard way—and lost out on a bunch of money in the process.
By arming yourself with knowledge, you can avoid these costly mistakes.
At our sustainable farm conference, you’ll learn from our 16 years of sustainable living experience — as well as from guest speakers who are long-time experts in their industry.
We’ll have experts in pastured raised beef/pork/chicken, organic farming practices, and growing your own sprouts & shoots offering info-packed presentations.
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Living sustainably has given us a life of more joy and less stress.
We want that for you, too!
We hope you’ll join us on October 2 for our Sustainable Farm Conference in beautiful Franklin, TN.
