Most of my friends already know this story, but bear with me, because it's been on my mind.
Back in 2016, I did something slightly unhinged: I unexpectedly bought a 65-acre farm in East Texas. We inherited its name — Hold On Farm — and it became a running joke that fit a little too well. Between the tractor stunts, the questionable livestock decisions, and the general lack of anything resembling an OSHA inspector, "hold on" was pretty much our safety protocol. If something felt sketchy, someone would say "Hold on, it's about to get sketchy!" and we'd do it anyway. Hence the name stuck.
What I didn't expect was the support. People I barely knew, people from all over the world, people I hadn't talked to in years — they showed up. Advice, encouragement, actual hands-on-a-fence-post help. It was humbling, and honestly a little bewildering. I'm still not sure if everyone just believed in the wild idea, or took one look at a woman buying 65 acres with zero farming experience and figured I needed all the help I could get. Either way, it was awe-inspiring, and I've never forgotten it.
I lived there for the better part of a decade, and I shared most of it online — every muddy, beautiful, exhausting part. In those years, I started a business and closed a business. I became a sales manager for another, and then I began the work that's grown into the whole second act of my life. I got married there, too — in full old-west saloon regalia, feather boas and all, because if you're going to do a thing, you might as well do it ridiculously. I built the relationship with my husband that I still lean on every single day. We traveled the world and came home to that house every time. I watched four kids grow into adults and walk out the door, and I held our first grandchild for the very first time. I turned fifty. I came through a surgery that changed my body and my life. We watched the whole world come apart during Covid from behind those fences.
And I learned about death there, too. I buried four dogs who had made the move to that house with me. I lost my father. My husband lost his mother. That farm taught me more about life and death than I can hold in one place — because all of it, the joy and the grief both, happened there.
So when we sold the farm in 2025, I genuinely thought that chapter of my life was closed. I remember thinking, well, I guess now I need to act like a real grown-up and stop playing in the dirt. As if I hadn't already been a grown-up the entire time I was covered in it.
Before I get to that, though, I want to sit in the last of it for a minute.
When we finally pulled out of the driveway for the last time, Miranda Lambert's "The House That Built Me" came on the radio. I sat in the cab of the truck and quietly cried the whole way down the road. Because that's exactly what that place was — if not the house that built me, then the house that shaped most of the second half of my life. I was certain I'd never have another home, or another season of living, like the one I'd had in East Texas.
And I was sad about it. Embarrassingly sad.
Because here's the thing I never told most people: since I was a young woman — and honestly well into my thirties — I had this picture of who I wanted to become. The slightly feral hippie lady (maybe even one that some people are a little scared of) who makes her own tinctures and salves, grows her own food, talks to the birds, and has deer wandering through her yard like they pay rent. That was the dream. And when we sold the farm, I quietly grieved it. I thought, well, that's done. We'll never have that again.
We bought a house in a subdivision in Northwest Arkansas, thinking that was the answer — something easier, something manageable, something that didn't come with sixty-five acres of chores. We figured we could live there long term. After all, it had everything — proximity to a really cool town, hiking nearby, trails everywhere, mountain biking, great grocery stores… and a lot of people. Like a lot lot.
About six months in, we admitted the truth: subdivision life just isn't for us. Not after having land like that. So we started looking again — not for another sixty-five acres, that ship had sailed, but for something in between. Manageable. Still in the country. Close enough to town that it made sense. It took months of looking before we found a place.
In December of 2025, we bought a nine-acre homestead in Missouri. And even then — even then — I told myself not to get my hopes up. Nine acres. A fresh start in the cold. I was sure it would be a nice place to live and nothing more.
Fast forward to right now — July of 2026.
We have a thriving homestead. I've made plantain tinctures and mullein tinctures. I've hatched chickens, helped move the coop to its new spot with an excavator (a genuinely sketchy afternoon), and watched Brent renovate the whole thing top to bottom to get it ready for them. We've grown a good chunk of our own food in just six months. The deer wander through — one wandered right up to the fence line and stood there like she owned the place, which, fair enough. The birds and I are on speaking terms. I can even identify a few of them by their calls now.
And that same deer came back through the front pasture just this morning — except this time she brought her two fawns along the fence line with her.
Somewhere along the way, without me noticing the exact moment, I became the woman I'd quietly written off.
The Hills and Hollars version of her, anyway. Hills and Hollars Homestead is what we've dubbed this place, because you do have to drive through hills and hollars to get here.
We're deep in the Ozarks now, building a new life on a new homestead. I'm building a new business, too — one rooted in everything that started back in that East Texas farmhouse kitchen. We're growing a garden that should help feed us for years to come. And we're teaching both our granddaughters what it means to have dirt under their fingernails and open sky over their heads.
Here's what I keep turning over.
Just when you're certain life is about to let you down — it doesn't. The thing you mourned wasn't gone; it was rerouting. And I think the real lesson tucked inside all of this is to embrace every change, even the ones that scare the daylights out of you, because you truly never know what's on the other side of them.
Change is frightening. I won't pretend otherwise. But I've come to believe you have to get used to living life a little afraid — because only then can you actually enjoy it, and really experience the full living of a full life.
So if you're standing at the end of something right now, grieving a version of yourself you think you've lost, I'll just say this: don't be so sure it's over. Sometimes the next chapter is already being written nine acres away.
More from the homestead soon. The garden has opinions, and the chickens have a lot to say.
