The ink has dried in this chapter of our journal
Today was a special day. I was driving my 718 Cayman. The car crept along as I carefully navigated the gravel road away from the farm. This car doesn’t get a lot of use. When it gets taken out, it’s a spectacular weather day or date night. But today was a particularly unique day. My 718 Cayman was not coming back to TnF Farms.
When I was a teenager, my best friend at the time had a custom-painted purple Camaro. In addition to the custom paint, he put a high-performance V8 in his chick magnet. If our teenage hijinks took us down a road that had just been resurfaced or was gravel, he crept the car along so little rocks wouldn’t get thrown against his car and damage the paint. My friend was the lucky kid who had all the cool cars of the 90s. My teenage cars, by comparison, were more on the grocery getter end of the spectrum, so I usually rolled my eyes when my buddy obsessed over his vehicles.
Times certainly change
As an adult, I’ve always tried to own a special car. My current special car is a Porsche 718 Cayman. It’s specified from the factory with really “grippy” tires. Mine has the upgraded wheel package and my tires seem to pick up every single rock on the road. What little the car has gone it up and down our gravel road has certainly taken its toll on the car’s rocker panels and rear bumper.
Over the years, I’ve navigated this gravel road so many times, I had gotten pretty good about going down the road in my wife’s CR-V or my F250 quite quickly. I knew exactly where to hit the brakes and when to veer to the right or the left. Those vehicles have way more ground clearance. So even if I didn’t time my maneuvers just perfect, neither vehicle would tear a bumper off.
Faith followed in the CR-V as my car made the final crawl through the Florida tundra. If we met a neighbor going down the road from the other direction, I knew all the wide spots to dive into so we could pass each other without rubbing my car’s paint on any vegetation. Both of our vehicles were loaded down with non-essential and fragile items from our home. After the turn at our mailbox, it was all paved highway to Tallahassee.
Living in the Big Bend part of Florida
Faith and I relocated from the Jacksonville area to rural Tallahassee, Florida, in the fall of 2021. We worked jobs we thought were very boring and repetitive. The two of us wanted to chase a little more adventure and what we saw as an uncomplicated life. This drew us to an area known as the Big Bend part of the state. Average people can still buy a decent chunk of land in the state of Florida without being celebrity-rich. We dreamt of starting a hobby farm where we would produce our own high-quality, real food. Be a little more self-sufficient and live a more outdoor, agricultural lifestyle as well.
We decided to make a business out of it and developed this website. Faith would be in the spotlight and I enjoyed doing stuff in the background. To personalize it, we tried to keep an extensive journal of our experiences while promoting a fun rural way of life over social media. TnF Farms was newly minted in 2022.
We tried our best to not be all work and no play. The social life blossomed more slowly than it did in Jacksonville. Faith and I managed to visit most of the nearby state parks. A few times, we drove 30A west and caught a meal in Destin. TnF Farms’ side-by-side traversed some of the area’s ATV parks. We made it to all the local springs, swimming holes, and even tubed the Chipola River. The two of us tried most of the restaurants in the surrounding areas. But the responsibility of an animal farm meant that we could only be away for so long. As TnF Farms grew, our opportunities to play dwindled.
Farm life took its toll
TnF Farms as a business had moderate success with farm products and livestock sales. The actual revenue paled to the financial investment in equipment and supplies. Then there’s the amount of work you put in. To some, it’s probably obvious, running an animal farm is not for the faint of heart. You can’t escape it, you see life, death, and everything in between, up close.
Then add the complication of running a farm as a business. There’s a mountain of inside work when there’s no more daylight to do outside work. Any farm is constant work. A small farm like ours did not return the money we anticipated. Our adult lives up until this point, Faith was a nurse, and I was an engineer. We both exclusively worked our 40-hour-per-week jobs in air conditioning. Neither my wife nor I was getting any younger. The constant stress, heat, and physical labor took its toll on our bodies.
I grew up a Boy Scout and was a pretty outdoorsy kid. Poison ivy, at least my contact with the southern variety, became a guaranteed doctor visit. I somehow managed to get regularly attacked by every conceivable insect. Ticks? Name a body part, and I’ve found one there. Yellow flies? All the time. No see ums? I saw em. I am the unlucky guy who clumsily stumbled into every angry hornet’s nest. Faith’s arthritis went from barely an issue to barely manageable. Allergies on top of all of that really made the toll on our health worse.
We met some really great people here. Many of our farm customers we enjoyed getting to know and held at a friend status. While living here, we went many months, and in some cases, years, without seeing close friends or family. We had some salty townies obsessing over everything we did while being a thorn in our sides. We tried to ignore or laugh them off. But the combination of isolation and never knowing when a bitter crone would take another cheap shot at us, mentally took its toll.
“Why are we doing this again?”
In early 2024, I looked at my wife and I asked that very question. “We used to wander beaches, and now we never go. We never have time to do anything with friends and family unless they come to us.” I continued. “The universe has been fighting us being here, and I don’t think I’m able to push this boulder uphill anymore.”
Faith looked at me tenderly. Her face was veiled in sorrow. She, too, had realized the life we chased here had run its course. She confessed, “We haven’t had a real vacation since we moved here, and I’ve needed one.” That night, we created a plan to wind down farm operations and relocate back to the Jacksonville area. Over the calendar year, we sold equipment, supplies, and all of our livestock. We depleted all of our farm goods inventory as well.
We didn’t share these plans with anybody. After our conversation, Faith and I worked our plan and carried on like we always had. When the time came to start telling folks, we were asked if it was because of one of the reasons I mentioned earlier. We always answered “no, we’re just going back to our lives in Jacksonville”. In reality, the combination of everything just wore us out.
If we knew the outcome, would we do this again?
The most truthful answer we can offer is “Yes …but…”
For those who knew us personally and were surprised by our decision to leave, we wanted to explain our decision why we decided to hang it up. Faith and I have talked at length. What if we started out accomplishing things in a different order or slower pace? Then, had some circumstances happened differently, would we still be wearing the rose-tinted lenses and embracing the farm life? Neither one of us grew up farm kids. This post’s purpose was not to discourage starting a farm of your own. But to bring to light how much you will need to invest in homesteading and the farm life.
Our experiences while living in the Big Bend area had countless wonderful times. We met some awesome people who will be friends for life. We raised a few pigs that had dog-like personalities. Faith midwifed multiple generations of goats. We watched our chickens hatch, grow up, and start laying eggs of their own. Our animals thrived from our veterinary efforts. We traded animals and swapped anecdotal farm life stories with fellow homesteaders. We learned to build really strong livestock fences through trial and error. One of our neighbors taught me how to fell trees. A friend who started out as a customer introduced us to persimmons. I designed and built a couple of buildings. Until TnF Farms, neither one of us had ever driven a tractor or operated a chainsaw.
My grandparents started their farm after my grandfather served in World War II. By the time I came along, they were retired and soon moved to the city. My grandparents wore a lot of hats. Veterinarian, mechanic, carpenter, engineer, botanist, accountant, and electrician. For a time, Faith and I got to wear all of those hats, too. A lot of these skills we picked up came from reading books and watching videos on YouTube. Pushing through the challenges, farm life is very fulfilling. We got a lot of satisfaction from giving God’s creatures a great life. Then to have these animals give us perfect, unsullied food in return! TnF Farms has been an incredible chapter in the journal of Tim and Faith. We share a deeper appreciation for farmers, but realize farm life is not something we can do for the rest of our lives.
Our journey back home.
My 718 Cayman takes the Monroe Street cloverleaf, leaving Tallahassee East on I-10. I lean on the gas, the engine comes alive as all 4 tires bite the pavement. The car rockets around the ramp to the interstate. I need to use the brakes to get down to an acceptable interstate speed. The sun has been steadily moving up into the azure sky. It’s going to be another beautiful Florida day. My sunglasses are on and I have a smile on my face. This smile I haven’t worn in quite a while. I see Faith is now catching up with me in the CR-V. Her expression appears to be a combination of amusement and disapproval of my driving. Why did we drive separately? Today we’re driving to our new home in the suburbs of Jacksonville. The journaling of TnF Farms, at least in this iteration, is done.
