Brent and I bought a house that was falling apart on 5 acres off Mopac, which is the local highway of Austin, Texas. My daughter had had celiac and myself, an auto-immune disorder, and so we read about how we do food in America and how the soil is so very depleted and we decided to raise pastured poultry on our land which puts so many good micro-organisms back into the soil which could then support an orchard.
The problem was that my anxiety disorder/OCD was somewhat exacerbated in the move and I went through a three-year "falling apart phase" (which actually then led to me realizing the cause of my anxiety disorder and since then I have been without symptoms for almost 3 years.) However, we never finished the house and currently live in a one bedroom apartment which was the mother-in-law attachment to the house.
Brent has built all the infrastructure for runs of 150 meat birds and 30 egg chickens and we have worked with a local gardener to come up with plans for an orchard. However, thus far, we have done this with our own money--raising a bird cost about 25 bucks for the resources, not even counting for our labor. We just haven't had the wherewithal to finish the infrastructure so that we can make money much less do anything for the freaking reno (I chose this picture to show how awesome Brent has always been as a husband and specially as a dad--we haven't had a bath you know for the last four or five years. We have a great shower but no bath so as a joke Brent kind of put some structure around the blue bathtub (from the house) and the girls got out there in their bathing suits and took a bath!) That's just how he rolls-- he just brings fun and compassion to every project!
Anyway, so we want to use the space to build community here around regenerative agriculture (The art of using animal poop to regenerate the soil and fortify fruits and vegetables with the nutrients we need versus what industrial agriculture has provided us).
I'm also doing this for my husband, because he has been my absolute best friend to go through life with me and he stood up for me when I had terrible anxiety and depression at our wedding and fell apart...And then for 13 years until I found healing. I just want to do something to support him and his efforts for me and on behalf of every underdog!! (The way we change how we raise chickens could be the biggest the underdog story.) Shit, we ALL are an underdog story at some point!
