Type of opportunity:

Sale (Owner Financed), Lease (1 to 5 Years), Lease (5+ Years), Lease with Option to Buy, Business Partnership, Employment. More info: Hello, we are a family of 5 (3 kiddos) interested in homesteading. We have 5+ years in education and agricultural employment and ownership of agricultural products with national distribution, and are looking to do less of the selling and more of the making. We have been in intensive training for the past year and are looking to stay in Middle Tennessee. We are interested in in regenerative agricultural practices, organics produce, beekeeping, animal husbandry, and go-to-market product creations such as continuing our barrel-aged honey business and others. I am also handy and enjoy remodeling historic properties, butchering and sharing meat, among other benefits.

Equipment & infrastructure:

Barn, Fencing, Well / Pond / Other water source, Greenhouse, Livestock facilities, Farmer housing, Farm equipment, Processing facilities, Cold storage (cooler/freezer). More info: We are looking to grow produce, grains, preserve and can, run plenty of natural beehives, butcher, hunt, make and build go-to-market products including a national distribution catalogue; as well as teach next generations to adapt traditional lost skills through education and homeschool programs. We would like to include chickens, at least one dairy cow, sheep, goat, and possibly a horse for recreation. A shop for repair and woodwork would also be great, but can build if needed. Any facilities that would meet these needs would be wonderful.

Current production on farm:

Aquaculture, Cattle (Dairy/Beef), Christmas trees, Fallow, Field crops, Flowers, Hay or pasture, Herbs, Hogs, Orchard, Poultry (Broiler/Layer), Sheep/Goat (Dairy/Meat), Vegetable production, Vineyard, Woodlot or forest products. More info: None are expected, but would welcome any and all.

Current farming practices:

Biodynamic, Conventional, Certified organic, Transitioning to organic, Ecological production but not certified, None, the property is not being farmed. More info: Non expected, but any welcomed. We have a long-view.

Previous farming experience:

Employee

Number of years experience:

7

Other qualifications:

Farm business training, Higher education in agriculture or related field. More info: I studied farming and agricultural practices at Tennessee State University. I went on to found Tennessee Peanut Company, as owner of a local, farmers-market business, we quickly went "viral" and ended up in national distribution, 400+ retail locations, amazon, etc. I began contracting with Tennessee Farmer's Cooperative and other food-based makers to grow their businesses through e-commerce or general marketing techniques. After all that - I still hadn't planted a thing. We've spent the past year in intense training online and building our own homestead 4 miles from downtown Nashville. Although Urban, we are making do with what we have and are happy to do it. That said, we long for land!

Production goals:

Cattle (Dairy/Beef), Christmas trees, Field crops, Flowers, Hay or pasture, Herbs, Hogs, Orchard, Poultry (Broiler/Layer), Sheep/Goat (Dairy/Meat), Vegetable production, Vineyard, Woodlot or forest products. More info: We have in mind quite an extensive daily operation that covers a multitude. We are starting with vegetable production, chicken broilers and layers, natural beekeeping for multitude of products, herbal remedies, shoots/starters/seed houses, butchering, woodworking, and other homesteading practices.

Personal experience and production goals summary:

We are a homeschool family of 5 that aims at teaching our children and future generations that we mentor and invest into, the traditional skills, lifestyle, and God-given design of working with your hands from a wholesome perspective. We started this journey 5 years ago, having wanted desperately to work with an honest product, compared to the plethora of fake goods, services and resources available on the market, and started a small boiled peanut business. That soon took off to a national distributed business containing all kinds of peanuts, where we were taught, incorrectly, to private label instead of growing our own. We continued a life of internet marketing the business, influencers, amazon, and all that comes with it as a result, thereby furthering our dependence on a broken way of life of screen-dependence and sedentary lifestyle. The stress from the business ultimately made me sick, in many ways, not the least of which was a body that desperately needed more movement and God's gym, as we call it, of outdoor work. The doctors told us to take a plethora of pills and change nothing. We rejected that advice, and instead started looking at our foods and lifestyle. We began eating, and feeding our family single ingredient Whole Foods (chicken, rice, veggies, etc) and began exercising and milling our own grains and making breads. We also leaned into remodeling and learning trade skills to build our home and produce a better property where we live in Nashville. I eventually decided to sell the peanut business this past year, and started honing my education and skills of opportunities to grow our own food, homestead, and get back to an agrarian way of life our grandfather's left for the city generations ago. We have studied beekeeping, and made a wonderful national distributed product of barrel-aged local honey. We have studies chickens, both broilers and laying. dairy cows, cheese, herbal remedies from Appalachian history, gardening, and more. In the interim, I took a contractual job with Tennessee Farmers Cooperative to help them get their stores online into e-commerce for the first time in their 80 year history. It has provided me ample opportunity to continue learning, visit homesteaders and farmers, and build our skills. We plan to begin natural beekeeping this year and building more garden beds, as well as using chicken tractors to produce some eggs. I have multiple go-to-market product ideas, as that is my history and skill, and believe we can produce quite a good income off of broiler chickens, barrel aged honey, vegetables and other homestead-made products. Instead of an e-commerce platform, we are going to attempt to do a traditional catalogue mailed out monthly or quarterly, and take orders via phone and possibly email. In many ways, as millennials, we are rejecting quite a few cultural normatives, even ones we have gained a living from and worked hard to become skilled in. That said, we have seen the shortcomings of a modern world dependent on a lifestyle we were not designed to take part in as humans, in our opinion, and it's an unfortunate sight. We attend Judson Baptist on Franklin Rd. in Nashville, TN, where my wife and I teach Sunday School, run children's ministries, and teach the next generation of young men how to build a family and a living in Biblical values. It's our hope to transition completely off of screens in the next 5 years and fully onto homesteading and and self-made/grown/produced products for a local market, following many of the agrarian principles we have come to study and love.