The story of us. It’s cliche to talk about life as a story or parts of a book. Seasons of life become chapters, only authored from a past perspective and not necessarily with an end in mind. Blank pages are written with life’s ups and downs, celebrations and sorrow, chaos and moments of respite. A journey, and one with twists and turns only the greatest of writers could imagine.
Our story began two decades ago this year. All pages blank, ready for ink. What will the words on the page say, and will they make sense to the reader years later? I’m sure we never asked those questions, but they were there. Lingering in our minds, wondering what our life together would become. Where would we live? What would our jobs be? How many children? and Would they be boys or girls? These are just a few, but what we really wanted to know was the answer to this question: How would our story be written?
Like many, our journey is one that’s probably best shared over a cup of coffee or across the table from one another eating good food and sharing in friendship. So for now, we’ll skip ahead to the part where we invite you along for the ride.
We are Betsy and Matt. The Little Farm On 46th is our home. It’s the place we chose 12 years ago to raise our four daughters and give them a slightly different childhood than what seemed to be the norm near a growing suburban area in Central Iowa. We wanted to give ourselves an opportunity to adventure, explore and create. Neither one of us grew up on a farm. We weren’t born into generations of agriculture. Both of us were more familiar with cul de sacs and sidewalks than we were with gardens and goats. Matt’s childhood, however, was spent visiting his Grandpa Jay’s farm in a small rural community in eastern Iowa. Nostalgia is a powerful motivator. He learned to love the sound of the crickets in the evenings, the smell of the oily, dirt floors in the machine shed and the room to roam his grandpa’s farm offered when he visited as a young boy. I suppose this is what prompted us to live on a farm. We were both convinced. The chance to give ourselves and our girls a different way of doing life. But, it wasn’t so much a farm at first. We didn’t have a garden, or livestock or a tractor. In fact, we didn’t really have a plan. Just possibilities. That was enough.
The Start
For the better part of the first 10 years, we took an outdated farmhouse built in 1910 and remodeled it top to bottom. It was brutal. It was work and the kind of work you want to soon forget about when it’s over. It was the kind of work where you install windows before a storm at 1:00AM in the dark alongside Matt’s mom and dad. Or you use a Christmas break to sand a century worth of paint off of the original pine floors. At the time both of us were working full time. Matt was teaching, and Betsy in sales. Most of our spring breaks and summer vacations weren’t spent on the beach but spent replacing siding, gutting bathrooms and building treehouses. We love a good fixer upper and we had met our match. Needless to say, we eventually completed the remodel. Although, you’re never really done with the work, especially in a century old home like ours.
The Goats
Just before 2020, we purchased a handful of Nigerian Dwarf goats. Since our farm was just a hobby, we wanted to make sure whatever we raised or grew on our little farm would give us something back in return- no more freeloaders here! After all, with four growing children, we had enough mouths to feed as it was. We thought milking goats would be a fun adventure, so we took a leap. It couldn’t be much more than gardening or caring for chickens, we thought. Oh, were we wrong! We quickly realized the commitment to milking an animal is a huge one. Every day. Each morning. 24 hours on repeat.
We eventually learned to love it. It was routine, but one that yielded delicious, creamy, nutritious milk. So yes, we drink it. And yes, we tricked our girls into drinking it as well.
Changes
About 5 years ago, shortly after we purchased our goats, we felt the nudge to make some changes in our life for the sake of our family, our marriage and our sanity. One of those changes was Matt stepping away from his career in teaching in 2020, a year we are all still too familiar with, to pursue something else. We gained back time. It’s a commodity you can’t get more of unless you let go. It was scary. We prayed our way through those decisions, but didn’t have a great deal of certainty around what was next, just that we were to let go.
In some ways, what transpired next is a little like the familiar story of the man who climbs to the roof of his home during a flood. Maybe you’ve heard it before.
The waters rise and rise and so he begins to pray, asking God to help rescue him. A few minutes later a man on a boat rows by and offers and tells the man on the roof to jump in and swim to his boat. The man politely declines saying “No thank you, I’ve already asked God to save me and I have faith he’ll do it”. Minutes later a man in motor boat approaches the flooded house and pleads with the man on the roof to jump in and swim to his boat”. The man again, declines telling the driver of the boat he is waiting on God to rescue him. An hour goes by, the waters now rising rapidly, and a helicopter flies overhead and the pilot says “I’ll drop a rope to you so you can climb up.” Once again, the man on the roof says “No thank you, God’s going to save me. I have faith.” So the helicopter flew away. Minutes later the waters rose above the house and the man drowned. The man, now in heaven, was confused and approached God asking “I had faith, and you let me drown. Why didn’t you save me?!”
To this God gently replied “I sent you a rowboat, a motor boat and a helicopter. What more did you expect?”
So we looked at what we had – baby goats and an abundance of goat milk and said okay, let’s try something. And when life gives you lemons…I mean goat milk, you make body butter – or something like that. At the same time we agreed, after some friendly coercing by friends, to open our farm to our local community so they too could experience the cuteness of bouncy baby goats. And the rest, they say, is well, history. After several months of experimenting we started making goat milk body butter to sell and began a opening our farm to others.
A look forward
Opening our home and our farm to our community has been of the richest of rewards. We ABSOLUTELY LOVE welcoming others into our space giving them an opportunity to see a little peak into our life on the farm. As many of you know, we have seasonal opportunities to visit our farm for baby animals, pumpkins and Christmas trees and it doesn’t stop there. In the fall of 2024 we purchases a larger farm not too far away and have been working on plans to expand our little farm, all with you in mind. Our priority has alway been to our marriage and our four girls, and will continue to be that way. But, for those who read this, or have been to our farm, or have encouraged us, you too, are a part of our story. And that’s the part we’ve loved- that our farm can be a place where your story and our story overlap in beautiful moments together.
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