Welcome to Misfit Farm

Six years ago, I came crawling back to Maine, fed up with Hollywood but still needing an adventure. I thought Nashville would be the perfect new chapter, but instead I started working as a vet tech, rented a farm house and bought my first chickens of my adult life. The chickens multiplied quickly. Then came the ducks and geese. Then the Nigerians. Then the mini horse. I was collecting animals, mostly because working as a vet tech people offered them to me, but partially because I dreamt of a farm. It seemed like a fantasy. I didn’t think it was something I would ever really achieve. But there I was anyway… collecting animals. Just after Christmas a few years ago I met Brendan for the second time in my life. After a 6 month romance I moved in with him… and brought the menagerie. That move in day was an exciting one. I had been temporarily staying with my Grandma since she had a cute little timber frame barn I could keep the animals in until I was ready to move everyone to Brendan's. Brendan was staying up the majority of the night for close to two weeks getting a solid fence up for the animals. I was there on weekends helping, but he was an hour away. The final day, all we had left was the gate. We decided we were close enough and would have it finished in time for the animals. The coop was already there with a small private fence around it for the chicks and Grandpa Cordon (see "farming is hard" for a brief story about our Grandpa rooster). My mom, stepdad and I loaded a horse trailer and our dog show truck (a box truck with windows) with all the animals, totaling somewhere around 50. We had crates stacked on each other, the goats and mini horse, Henry, loose in the trailer. It was crazy. When we pulled in, Arty just opened the door and said, ‘See ya later!’ and left all the animals running around like crazy. (He’s from Long Island, farm animals aren’t his thing.)

We were scrambling to finish the gate and keep the goats in our yard, which wasn’t working. And that was how I met our neighbor… luckily her son loves farm animals and she was a trooper about my animals in her yard. Three years later, she would be one of my bridesmaids when Brendan and I tied the knot!

What we thought would be a quick final day ended up taking hours more, but by dark, everyone was accounted for and inside the fence. Not that those bad Nigerians would stay there. But thats a story for another day. Now that Brendan’s property had an insta-farm on it,  we started dreaming about a self sustaining life together.. A life where we would raise our own meat, raise poultry for eggs, goats for dairy and live off our 5 acre land. But it's just not that simple.

The hard part about homesteading is doing it full time. There is so much to do, but when you first start you have no money to support it. We both continued to work our full time jobs and struggle to do all the things a homestead required.

We supplemented this lifestyle with Airbnb rentals, had a lot of difficulty with neighbors to live this crazy lifestyle and worked out an agreement with the town so our rentals could help support us. We don't plan to rely on it for the rest of our lives, but it has helped us immensely to get by.

Over the last three years, the farm has continued to grow, but has still not proven to be helping towards us being self sufficient. I know what I need to do to get it there, but I am still working full time and there just aren’t enough hours in the day. A 9-5 job would be one thing, but working as a vet tech, having some days close to 13 hours, the majority of which are emotionally and physically exhausting, I just haven’t been able to make it work yet. But we are going into 2020 with new vision. We had a hell of a year last year. We planned a wedding, built our venue for 200 people, built a barn, finished our house and now are expecting our first baby in June. This year, I am focusing on making the farm and homestead work for us. This year, we started with a goal of making $1000 from the farm. And this year I decided the farm comes before work… I have had too many instances where I ignore my instincts, go to work and exactly what I thought would happen, happens. This year is going to be our year for a new beginning.

Edit: This post was written early spring 2019. Life has been crazy since Penelope was born. I am no longer working full time, but one day a week.