Heritage Springs- How it all Started
My husband Neil and I bought our northern Virginia farm in Feb 2022. Our single goal was to move our family of 5 (along with our 3 big mutts) out of our cramped town house and into a larger home so we could breathe again. It just so happened that the house we found has a barn and I quickly learned something new about myself- I do not like owning an empty barn.
About eight weeks later, a tick crawled across my daughter’s cheek at dinner. I snatched it, killed it, and announced we were getting guinea fowl. A little research later, I found out that guinea fowl do better with chickens, so I added chickens to the list. On the way into the farm store to purchase our new feathered babies, a man in the parking lot let my daughters hold the baby bunnies he was selling. Add two bunnies. That’s pretty much how it started.
Olivia holding one of her favorite hens
In July that year, I deployed to the Middle East for 6 months. In my downtime, I read about farming and animals, listened to homesteading podcasts, and took a second beekeeping course. It didn’t take me long to decide it only made sense to get some cows for pasture management. If we were getting cows anyway, they might as well be adorable, so I put two mini cows on my list. Goats seem so obvious to me that I can’t remember exactly why I added them to the list. Maybe for their nutritious and digestible milk, the possibility of making goat milk soap, or knowing me, it could have just been their floppy ears. Add 5 mini-Nubians. We had already started beekeeping, but I did some quick calculations and decided in the next four years we could easily multiply our initial investment for a total of 50 hives.
My husband and I don’t have much farming experience. Neil’s dad kept sheep and bees in Maine for a brief period and Neil helped him when he was a kid. That experience amounts to the entirety of our knowledge base. I grew up in the city and the closest I came to livestock was the guinea pig I had in third grade. I had to google the difference between straw and hay. If you’re wondering, straw is the stalk after the good stuff has been removed (like wheat) and is normally used for animal bedding. Hay is alfalfa or grass and is used to feed animals. Even with no background in agriculture, I was drawn to this new adventure with inexplicable confidence that we would figure it out.
We have lived on the farm for almost two years now, and we have zero regrets. It grounds me to be out in the early mornings feeding the animals. We feel proud when we eat a meal we produced on the farm. I love talking to people about our animals and seeing them light up when one of our tiny cows eats grain from their hand.
Neil holding Sweat Pea- one of our mini nubian doelings
We get asked about our farm often and people are almost always surprised by my answer when they ask something like, “Aren’t chickens a lot of work?”. I’ve learned there are a lot of misconceptions out there about the small farm lifestyle. Misconceptions that might scare people away from getting a few backyard chickens or a flock of tick-eating guinea fowl or even starting a garden. This blog is to share our real experiences in an honest way. Has there been a learning curve? Absolutely! I invite you to cozy up and get comfortable- I am going to tell you everything.
