top of page
logo_with_name_and_slogan - 2.png

There is something deeply satisfying and healing about starting your day out milking the cows, watching the sheep running around like little haystacks, and eating fresh yogurt with a fried egg from the chickens on homemade sourdough bread with spring greens from the garden. We love it and we invite you to join us ...

... learning, living and loving the agrarian life.

When we first heard the word "agrarian" it was in the great Wendell Barry's The Art of the Commonplace. It resonated with us immediately, calling up images of green gardens, happy animals, and healthy living. It had elements of farming, ranching, gardening, earth stewardship, and resource enrichment: basically, home production with an deep, intentional, and careful connection with nature and place. It is a way of life followed by many ancient people's and "evolved slowly in accordance with their knowledge of their land, of its needs, of their own relation of dependence and responsibility to it." These people "belonged by an intricate awareness to the earth they lived on and by, which meant that they respected it, which meant that they practiced strict economies in the use of it." (Wendell Barry, The Art of the Commonplace, p. 10-11)

 

Agrarian gave a name to the pattern we wanted to live by but wasn't fully captured by words like homesteading, farming, ranching or even self-reliance. It included earth healing gardening, pasture improving grazing, health enriching living. A grand and wonderful combination of all of the things we've been learning and are still learning and practicing: permaculture, holistically managed grazing, eating on the wild side, soil biology, herbalism, mycology, full cycle waste management, etc.

​

To live the agrarian life is to be a perpetual student of nature which just sounds exciting; forever adapting and working in a tight and awesomely rewarding relationship with your place. The trick and challenge of working with nature as the teacher and guide is that it is a principle and observation based process: change is the only constant. It is a life of great lows and great highs; agonizing failures and sweet successes. Challenging, satisfying, intense, and totally worth it.

 

What we want to share with you is what we've learned already and what we will continue to learn as we live the agrarian life.

Meet The Team

The Farm Chronicles is a compilation of the experiences and learnings and thoughts and perspectives of a whole family of people so we thought it might be helpful and set some context if we introduced the whole of everyone.

TFC_003_square.jpg
TFC_003_square.jpg
Cherstin Sparks

The mother of 6 and a believer in the importance of self-reliance. Cherstin is a lover of beauty and our onsite vet in training.

IMG_20200221_174001932.jpg
IMG_20200221_174001932.jpg
Christy Russon

Christy loves theory and building things, she's an engineer and life coach and designer. She's the narrating voice of the farm chronicles and enjoys sharing the story.

IMG_0681.JPG
IMG_0681.JPG
Teresa Russon

She is our mother Teresa, also known as Mama. She taught us how to work and is still showing us how to work and helping us solve problems.

TFC_003_square.jpg
TFC_003_square.jpg
Cherstin Sparks

The mother of 6 and a believer in the importance of self-reliance. Cherstin is a lover of beauty and our onsite vet in training.

TFC_003_square.jpg
TFC_003_square.jpg
Cherstin Sparks

The mother of 6 and a believer in the importance of self-reliance. Cherstin is a lover of beauty and our onsite vet in training.

TFC_003_square.jpg
TFC_003_square.jpg
Cherstin Sparks

The mother of 6 and a believer in the importance of self-reliance. Cherstin is a lover of beauty and our onsite vet in training.

bottom of page