“How I Fell in Love with our Farm”
OK, I have to admit that I fell in love with the place immediately. A creek with a stone bed winds almost through the entire farm, and lends its identity to the name of our property: Stoney Creek Farm. In the spring we have about a quarter acre of yellow daffodils (otherwise known as buttercups) growing all around the creek. In the summer the native Yucca plants bloom a field of white. We are abundantly rich with native wildlife, trees and plants and it’s a beautiful and peaceful place to live.
Our residence is actually a pole barn design, complete with steel beams and stained concrete floor, finished inside as a house. Olin has always enjoyed repurposing and recycling materials, and this barn/house was the perfect experiment for him. One of our biggest conversation pieces is the pair of 100-year-old barn doors lining the dining room wall. He also built two full 12’x60′ porches on the front and back of the barn for more outdoor living space, and a three car garage on the end of the barn with lots of room for a freezer, extra refrigerator and storage. Later, Olin finished the upstairs hayloft into a large bonus room bedroom and third full bathroom in the barn.
This hybrid barn/house has proven to be comfortable, simple, and very sustainable. By building a pole barn with metal there is very little maintenance for at least 30 years. The only maintenance is replacement of the screws that hold the metal every 10 years.
The concrete floors are also very easy to maintain and keep clean. Olin also built a smaller barn and workshop with two more garage bays and horse stalls in the back. We determined that it was too much work and too much money for us to maintain our own horses, but sometime in the future we may be able to board horses as another source of income, so I’m glad we have the stalls.
We’ve experimented unsuccessfully with small fruit orchards (cedar rust and thieving raccoons) and meat goats (coyotes), but we still have a few goats for kids to pet when they come to visit, and may decide to breed again one day.
After these learning experiences, in 2011 we decided to offer rental gardens and a U-Pick Garden. In Williamson County there is a huge amount of people living in apartments, condos, and homes with small lots. We felt that many of these people would like to grow their own healthy food, and with our backgrounds in farming we were hoping that we could help them do so.
Our goal does not revolve solely around making money, it’s about helping people to see the benefits of sustainable farm living… benefits which I call less stress, more joy. As a former part of the rat race, I know the value of healthy living with lower stress, because my blood pressure went down almost immediately when I left Xerox to concentrate full-time on growing our sustainable farm model.
The farm has been full of surprises, allowing me to stretch my interests and create opportunities to teach those things no longer taught in schools, or even passed down in family traditions, things like Canning, Making Sourdough Bread, and much more. I have also taken painting classes and now sell paintings and teach painting (occasionally) at the farm. All these things simply bring us a great deal of joy, and we want to share our joy with you, whether you want to learn how you also can permanently get out of the corporate rat race, or just need a break from it on the weekend.
So stop by and see us, and see your kids laugh as they play with our silly goats, miles away from the nearest video game. Feel your body relax as you walk among the flowers and pick your own vegetables outside in the fresh air, and not under fluorescent lights while freezing to death in the air-conditioned maze of some anonymous big box store. Maybe even take your shoes off, and dig your feet into the dirt wealth that nourishes so many people, on so many levels. Whatever the reason for the city scowl you might arrive with, you’ll have a country smile by the time you leave.
