After working several years commuting to our high rise cubicles in Denver, we found ourselves feeling very disconnected from what made us feel alive and well. We were slowly outsourcing more aspects of our daily lives – from cleaning the house to making food, from repairing our own vehicles to walking our dog.

I think it was our backyard garden’s bumper crop of tomatoes in 2009 and my experience having a plot at the community garden that started to rekindle some faith in the universe’s potential to produce an abundance of food and the importance of community – so often these things are woven together. I quit my engineering job shortly before becoming pregnant with our first son, T, and went WWOOFing in Northern California. The farmer I worked for opened up this new world to me, and inspired further change. In 2011, when T was 15 months old, we sold most of our stuff, put the rest in storage and headed out to WWOOF as a family in the US and Ireland. When we returned we knew that ultimately we wanted to own a piece of land and so commenced a few “bouncy” years chasing Elliott’s engineering field work while I started Wooden Mallet Farm to try my hand at farming in Texas, Georgia, and Kentucky. Our second son, M, was born in 2013.

In 2014 we were able to buy our 20 neglected acres in Yamhill. We moved permanently to the land in June 2015. It was a busy year of cleaning up the property and completing some big infrastructure projects, and 2016 was our first full season of production on our own land. We are so grateful to all the friends, family, and customers who’ve supported us these last few years! It’s been such a time of growth and learning (not always smooth) but we’re holding fast.

For a more detailed account of our adventures, visit www.gonefarming.wordpress.com.

Thanks for visiting!

-Sarah