Welcome to our farm! We are so happy you’re joining us to get a taste and feel for all natural, real, and hand-crafted products. This has been a dream in the making for quite a long time. Our logo says we were established in 2022, which is partially correct. But to get to the heart of it, we have to go all the way back to the late 1960’s. At that time, three high school friends and a tag-along little brother found a beautiful piece of land about an hour outside of St. Louis. My dad was the little brother. Through the eyes of four families, they took these 300 acres of raw land and it turned it into heaven on earth. They took the old corn field and turned it into a lake. They created two other smaller lakes, a share-cropped farm field, roads, barns and a horse pasture. Then they each chose an area on the lake where they each decided to make a home, and the rest is history.
When I say heaven on earth, I mean heaven on earth. Although we didn’t live here full time, it was close enough to home to come to on weekends and summers. We were able to swim, canoe, waterski and fish in the lake. We all had mini-bikes and would ride the trails for hours. Some of us got horses and would ride the trails. Some of us would hunt (not me though), and some of us would simply explore the acres and acres. We were let loose on Friday night, and weren’t expected back until church on Sunday. We found hundreds of arrowheads, grinders and even a blunt hammer. We had at least two Bent Oaks on the property. And there were several log cabins on the property that we would carefully climb through. I remember one of the old cabins in the farm field had an old corn cob mattress on the floor and a completely rusted old stove in perfect condition. We found old newspapers that were written in German, with dates going back to the early 1900’s. There was also a patch of daffodils that would bloom every spring – and still do to this day. As I got older and visited these old homesteads, I’d begin to appreciate the way the cabins were built. You could see the marks from the logs being hand-hewn, and I was fascinated by the square nails.
But as always, life goes on, interests change, you meet someone special and you’re pulled away from your little slice of heaven. We’d still go there on weekends, but as you have kids and they get involved in their things, those times get fewer and further between. This land, however, would always be in my heart.
In 2000 we followed my parents to Florida to help them and to have a change of environment for our kids. We had just had our third and final child. It was definitely a change of scenery, and we had fun, but as our last child graduated from high school we were on the brink of Covid. Both of my parents were suffering from Alzheimer’s and dementia and it was getting too much for me to handle on my own. So with my last one heading off to college, we decided to move back “Home”. Back in 2000, when my parents decided to move to Florida, they sold their house at the farm, but we kept our interest in the remaining land. That year was also the year that one of the 3 friends passed away. His wife didn’t want to keep it so it was sold to the other 2 owners because my dad didn’t want to purchase his lot. Knowing this when we decided to move back, gave us the perfect opportunity to move to our little slice of heaven. Hence the established 2022.
In the ensuing years, I’ve had the wonderful opportunities to try out many of the things that I love now. We started a garden, got chickens; I started teaching myself all of the herbs, plants and “weeds” that God has bestowed on us and their healing abilities. I’ve learned to preserve foods and have gotten creative with jams and jellies, including Dandelion, Honeysuckle and my favorite – Redbud jelly. I even learned beekeeping! (Not very well, since I lost the whole colony during one of last years mega-freezes – but we’ll try again next spring!) I’ve learned to make wine from picking the grapes to bottling the wine (and of course drinking it), and Limoncello from scratch.
I adore this life, and now we are so excited to share our knowledge and talents with you. We make everything by hand. The majority of our wood products come from logs felled on our land, and sometimes we’ll purchase old authentic barnwood. My herbal concoctions come from organic sources, many of which are wildcrafted from this land as well. Please check out our website for a full array of products we’re proud to make, and check back on this blog to learn about the many uses and remedies that come from our local plants.
Welcome to our farm!!
