What happens when a family moves to 30 acres; wants to provide for their children, raise them right and then try to help out the community by raising fresh eggs, meat and give the local children a place to see some farm animals. Chaos, jealousy, frustration, and a total course correction.
In this short 8 minute read you will learn the reason why we moved and the craziness we dealt with as a small family friendly farm.
The beginning:
Chris and I have always talked about raising as much meat, eggs, canned vegetables, and our own stock pile of groceries as much as possible off of our own land.
Then covid happened. Chris and I were pregnant with our little rainbow.........little baby Evelyn. In the first few months of covid... My job as a cosmetologist came to a halt(by the government) and at the same time Chris' job offered to let him"temporarily" go.
For the safety of his wife and future baby, not knowing what covid could do to either one of us at the time, Chris took the offer.
4 Months off with a pregnant wife
So we began the build of the farm. While we were building our new coop we thought a few things..as we often do with long discussions during physical labor.
What if we built our farm towards the front of the property so the surrounding community could come see the animals for free? The front of our property was a great place for a parking spot for cars and golf carts.
What if we planted enough feed (pumpkins for the pigs and dogs) so we could not only have feed for our animals but a local pumpkin patch?
Being a stay at home mom was getting a little rough with covid. Everything was shut down: including schools. So by taking our idea of providing for our family and transforming it into also providing for the community, the goals changed a little. How could we do as many free activity days as possible so families had something to do with their kids as well as providing typical groceries that were currently out or limited in the stores.
We built our own raised garden bed area, a greenhouse, a corral for some KuneKune pigs for meat (2), a corral for Mini Nubians for milk(3),
a new chicken coop. We painted them all to match. We also built a new area for quail and their eggs. Trying to become as self sufficient as possible.
The next item on the list was feed for the animals. The pigs and dogs love the pumpkins.. We planted a whole field. Which we would soon after invite families to come pick a pumpkin. The two weeks before Halloween we invited little ones to come trick or treat since Halloween door to door had basically been canceled. What a great way to create memories. We placed large cutout leaves at the top of the trees on a path through our woods and a plastic pumpkin at the base of the tree. The children and families that came out had a great time. They yelled trick or treat at the top of their lungs and left with a nice size bag of candy. Somewhere to wear their costumes to.
So now seeing there was a need and want in the community we became an actual business. We bought a farm store building. We sold dog treats, baked goods, eggs, soap and we were about to get our warehouse license to be able to serve the community top grade food essentials.
We checked with our local township and we were well within ordinance in EVERY WAY.
We sold everything with little to no profit. Intentionally.
We gave families something to do, we gave city children a chance to see farm animals.
Well soon the excitement of doing something great not just for ourselves but for others turned sour.
Our farm was on our 30 acres, we had deeded access to a "private road". We had already talked to two lawyers and done all of our leg work. We understood that the majority of the guests to the farm were going to be families in golf carts. We also understood that in almost a full year only 10 "outsiders" to the lake had driven in. Which is less than most families guests to their summer parties around the lake.
Then the harassment began.
We had several sections of the government out to our property because of complaints from approximately 20 people around the lake in front of where we lived.
EVERY SINGLE PERSON THAT WAS SENT OUT TO THE FARM LITERALLY ROLLED THEIR EYES AND LAUGHED.
THEY TOLD US:
"SORRY FOR BUGGING YOU"
" I DON'T KNOW WHY I AM HERE"
"NO YOU DO NOT HAVE MUNURE RUNNING INTO THE LAKE WITH YOUR 5 LIVESTOCK"
"I HEARD YOU BAKE CINNAMON ROLLS; NOT SURE WHY I AM HERE"
We also had MDARD out which is actually there to protect the farmer. They come out to your property if you offer to have them out and go over anything that you could get together or fix in order to me MDARD certified. So when someone tries to sue you, you actually have them in your back pocket as defense.
They sent a representative out(after we asked them to come out...just to see if we could do something better). Our whole intention was to help the people around there and to have people talk about us, call on us, and never have a single conversation face to face, one on one..it was shocking.
So day of MDARD. Our results were that we were well under the amount of livestock, that we had no way of our manure leaching into the lake, and that one of our houses could moved 40 feet to be MDARD certified. We refused to move the building. Moving the building was not going to make the people of the lake that were mad any happier. They wanted us shut down. So no we were not going to break our backs by moving a home for a our goats. He made a note in his report and that meant that in the future we could not use a MDARD certification to get us out or help us in court setting.
We continued our farm
We kept going. We finished building. Our goats had babies. We had free tie dye days, free craft days, free water ballon toss, we were about to have free drive in movie nights.
While there were some around the lake that did not like the farm or the use of the road.
A total of 172 people from around the lake had visited and loved it.
We had a total of 10 outside vehicles from the surrounding community also come to the farm.
"We had a blast at Wilson acres today! Thank you for being welcoming, warm, and so family friendly ! "
"Thank you for giving us a new pumpkin patch great for small children."
"Your animals are the best. Thank you for giving us a free activity today for the kids. Tie Dye was so much fun."
"You should charge so much more for your products and especially your cinnamon rolls; they are delicious"
We sold cinnamon rolls on Sunday mornings (no profits were made). We sold our homade products, kids came to the farm by the golf cart fulls to see the baby goats. We sold hanging pots(no profits were made). We sold meat chickens (no profits were made). We sold eggs (no profits were made).
Through out all of this, all of the months....we continued to have calls made against us. We had health department out, MDARD out numerous times, the township out (we called them out because we were putting up a fence and we didn't want even more issues), the police, and animal control. In one week we had 5 people, which meant no time with my children. This was not worth it to me. I love my children and when you are in constant interviews and walks through the property, on phone calls for hours...taking away from my family WAS NOT WORTH IT. Helping out local families and making them smile was not worth diminishing MY OWN FAMILY time.
So why did we do it?
For our family. For the kids. For the experience.
Unfortunately we were told by EVERY department that this happens all the time; not just to us and our 5 livestock but to several farmers in the area.
"People come here from the city and forget they moved to the country"
How sad.
We even volunteered to help out the "lake residents" by being a host for one of the fundraisers and they contacted the people putting it on and said that if we were involved then they would all collectively bow out. So we took the higher road and just said never mind. Not worth it to us. AT ALL. We didn't feel left out, we were sad that people are actually like that and living miserable fake lives.
4th of July weekend was always the "lake meeting". At this meeting even with all of our paperwork in hand from every department that had come to our house. We were talked to like children and not the grown, family orientated, positive people that we are. Sometimes people will try to make you mad and get your emotions going to try and make you "mess up". However when you have all the proof printed off and don't back down. It only gets worse.
One person actually said" If you think families are coming to the pumpkin patch, picking pumpkins and going home.. they are not. They are driving by and planning to break into your homes because they can see you are out of town.“ Literally a witch hunt and well VERY CRAZY.
Chris and I had several talks. Do we stay and fight for what's right? Do we just ignore the people literally staring at us from their back porches and yards while we feed our animals water? Do we ignore the grade school gossip? Do we ignore the drone that would not stop coming into our backyard? Do we ignore people leaving notes in our mailbox? Do we just keep going for the people that had good hearts like ours?
So we prayed. We prayed to the heavens, to the earth, to the all knowing. What do we do?
Chris had received an offer on a new job and decided to apply. We woke up one morning the next week, looked out the kitchen window with coffee in our hands and simultaneously said "I don't want to live here any more".
We made a phone call to our realtor, shut down the farm store for two weeks, put the house up for sale and Chris got the call. He was going to be starting a new job and it was far enough away that the move made perfect sense. Ours prayers were answered after we went with our hearts.
After our vacation we got an offer on our home. That next few weeks we found a new family home on 70 acres and they accepted our offer as well.
During this time apparently there were several meetings that the "lake residents" were attending at the township hall. The "lake residents " also contacted our realtor numerous times and were harassing them to try and stop the sale. They were trying to fight the farm and now that they found out we were going to sell they wanted to stop the possibility of another farm to move in. They knew they screwed up. What if someone moved in with 100 cows or 30 horses? They were trying to change the property to residential. The township called us and said that the property was staying agricultural. That they voted on it, it had always been agricultural and they are not going to be changing that for anyone anytime soon. BOOM
I replied with. "That's great but we are moving anyway."
It was our time to move on, more than double our acreage, start new job opportunities, rebuild the farm(even though we literally just had), raise our kids in a more loving area where they feel safe and people don't creepily stare at them. Our new neighborhood is full of awesome people/families.
From what we have heard. The new owners of our old farm have horses and a pig. We hope that they enjoy their AGRICULTURAL property.
We are happy, we feel safe, our kids are still being raised right. The experience of running the farm store, pumpkin patch and hosting free activity days is something we will never forget. To the 172 people around the lake, we miss you. Thank you for letting us put a smile on your faces.
To the rest, enjoy the new farm animals.
What have you had to fight for? Wilson Wonders
If you would like to donate to the rebuild of the new farm; we would accept with open arms and hearts. The Donation will be put to great use for the animals. Thank you.
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