Sweet Grown Alabama Blogs

I was born and raised in Center Point, Alabama, practically Birmingham. I lived in a fairly large neighborhood with houses side by side until I was 11-years-old. My idea of the country was visiting my grandparents cattle farm in Walker County and seeing all the cows my papa was raising at the time. Endless trails and back roads, barn kittens, and even the occasional free-range chicken running through the yard was all I knew of farming.

Fast forward to 2015 while my husband and I are finishing the construction of four, multi-million-dollar mega poultry houses awaiting a New Year’s Day delivery of almost 250,000 baby chicks. Picture me in my brand new Muck Boots picking up trash and metal left behind from the construction crew, three babies at my feet, while my husband learns the ins and outs of the new systems that run each house.

We dove headfirst into the opportunity of living the "farm life” with not a clue of what the farm life really was. We just knew that the life of running to a 9 to 5 job while leaving the kids and each other behind was not the life we wanted. So, we pursued the opportunity to make a living together.

I won’t go into every detail that led us up to the point that we are today, but what we learned along the way was humbling to say the least. We went through a lot of turmoil in some of those years and each lesson taught us things that we needed to know and understand as young adults to grasp what we truly wanted for our family.

There is no get rich quick scheme, there is no paid time off and sometimes there is little to no profit after a lot of work. The average age of a farmer in the US is 57 years old and farmers only account for 1% of our population. There is a reason for that. However, once you get a taste of life on a farm, it’s hard to let go of it.

So, what is it that we love? I can only speak for myself, but what I have learned in just eight years of full-time farming is more knowledge than I learned in the 25+ years before it. I learned that there is a system in which most Americans are far removed from. I learned that there are more important things to care about than financial gain. I learned that children remember and grasp onto what they see and experience, not just what they are told. I’ve learned some patience (some). I’ve learned how to milk a cow and how to make butter. I’ve learned how to help a sow in labor and get a stuck piglet out of her birth canal. I’ve learned how to truly pray for rain. I have learned that as a farmer, you rely on God more and more each day—and that’s the type of reliance I want to have.