Today we’d like to introduce you to Emily Galloway.
Hi Emily, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
Hey! Before we dive in to the story, I want to say thank you for this opportunity! I am excited to share our story! We are a family of 4, 7 if you count our 3 dogs. We have been farming for over 2 years now and love every bit of it! First, I want to touch on how our farm name came about because we have people who always ask us. Then, I’ll jump into the rest of the story! When we started with our 8 chickens and tiny little garden, I kept catching myself and the kids saying, “Isn’t that wild?” Or “Mom, that’s so beautiful!” or “Mom, now that’s wilder than wild!” As a homeschool mom and living a life of slowing down to enjoy every moment with my quickly growing babies, I remember one early winter morning. My kids and I were sitting on the back porch, their still half-asleep heads resting on the sides of my arms while I was sipping my coffee, and they were sipping their hot cocoa. The sun was coming up and just perfectly kissing the tops of the remaining leaves on the trees, the wild birds were singing, and the chickens were happily scratching and pecking around in our all-but-failed garden. With her untamed, out-of-this-world-wild, morning hair, my daughter pointed to the trees and sleepily said, “Beautiful,” and my son, with his small but full of beautiful love arms wrapped around me, said, “Wild.” The 3 of us giggled because we were all tired from staying up too late watching our first eggs hatch from the incubator. And that was when our farm name was fully born: The Wild and Beautiful Farm. It fits us perfectly. Everything from our family of four to our animals to our garden and the nature around our farm, it is all so wild and beautiful!
Growing up, I spent a lot of time helping my Daddy with his garden and my Pa-Paw with his garden and on his little farm. I always loved visiting his place because we would see the goats, chickens, guinea fowl, peacocks, turkeys, etc. As a young girl, I wanted to have all the farm animals! I would ask Santa every year for a real horse or a puppy, and I even asked for ducks and rabbits for a couple of years! I never got the real animals, but I sure did get all of the Barbie doll animals: chickens, baby cows, horses, ducks, geese, rabbits, pigs, and even a swan, you know, those ones with the magnetic mouths, so that they could pick up their carrots and hay? Yep, those were my favorite toys ever! Now I have the real thing, hard work and all! Haha! Deep down, I have wanted my farm since I was a kid!
We officially started our little farm journey in 2021. After researching homesteading and farming lifestyles for a little over a year and learning that guinea fowl would keep snakes out of the yard, it seemed like a great solution to get some to help keep our kids safer in the yard. Well, I couldn’t find guineas near me then, so I settled for chickens. I brought home 8 chickens instead of 8 guineas. Our garden improved; we had fewer issues with snakes and fewer bugs in the yard! Haha! Well, those 8 chickens quickly grew in numbers, especially after we got an incubator to do an embryology project for homeschool. At this point, we decided we liked this life! And we wanted to grow and produce most of our food here eventually.
This led us to bigger garden plans and adding a meat pig, then another a few months later. We added two Nigerian Dwarf does in early 2022. One of which was pregnant, so 2 became 4, then 5 because we needed an unrelated buck to be our herd sire, and now we have 12. We also have 3 rabbits currently, and we plan to breed them. We aren’t going to talk about how many chickens we have had over the years or how many we currently have because if you know anything about chickens, you know that chicken math is real! Haha! Let’s say we have about 15 different breeds and varieties of chickens.
I also taught myself to make all kinds of breads and soups from scratch. That part was easy for me as I have always enjoyed baking and cooking and was a certified cake decorator for several years. As time went on, I also decided that since gardening has always come easy to me, I wanted to share that ability, at an affordable cost, with as many people as I could and teach them how they can grow their vegetables at home so I started offering plant starts each spring. We currently breed and raise our Nigerian Dwarf goats; we plan to offer some mini Nubians. We have small breeding flocks that produce a wide variety of eggs. Breed-wise, we have Speckled Sussex, Silkies, Orpingtons, project Satins, and some gorgeous easter and olive eggers. We typically have chicks available throughout the year, mainly during the spring, when our hens are in total production. We also donate eggs to our local 4-H for them to take to the schools for the Embryology projects at the beginning of the year, and the chicks are returned to us after the project is completed. So that is a lot of fun for everyone involved! And we usually have lots of extra chicks available in the spring. We typically have Nigerian Dwarf kids available once (sometimes twice) a year. We have bigger plans for the future with our little farm, some that include giving the public opportunities to be involved. But I’ll keep all the details and additional information a surprise for now. We would love you to follow along on this wild and beautiful ride with us!
Would it have been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
There are always struggles that will present in any aspect of life. But it’s your perspective and mindset that defines the outcome. Sure, it’s been challenging at times, but man, have we enjoyed the ride and learned a lot! And that is growth that none of us would trade for a “smooth road.” This life is a journey; we only get one. I want to make the best of mine that I can. And I want to ensure my kids know where real food comes from. They need to know how to grow, raise, and make their food, and I want them to learn how while working with the land and nature, not against it. Our kids are our future, and that’s important to me. Getting started was challenging because the costs and prices for lumber and other materials were high. We repurposed many materials, from wood to tin roofing to fencing. We wouldn’t let anything get in the way of this dream. We just had to get creative. Our coops and other various pens/shelters may not be Pinterest-worthy, but they are beautiful in their own way. My husband worked hard to get every structure and fence up here. My kids and I helped along the way. Since we are still changing some things here and there, we are making necessary modifications. So there is a lot of love, laughter, some not-so-great words, sweat, blood, and tears in everything on our farm. And every bit of it has been worth it!
Thanks – so, what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
First and foremost, I am a full-time stay-at-home mom of two wild and beautiful kids (currently 7 and 9 years old) and a wife to one extraordinary man. Secondly, I homeschool both of our kids and run the farm. While it’s not a huge farm (yet), it still has its fair share of work and challenges for one person to manage on a day-in and day-out basis with two young helpers.
It is hard to say what I am most proud of with this wild and beautiful farm journey. There are a lot of small things all along the way that I have been proud of. I’m proud of the connections we have made with others and the network/support system we have. I am pleased to shop with other local farmers. We have gotten a couple of goats from Michelle Wittke at Crooked Oak and Molly Jones at The Jones Mini Farm. We have learned a lot from them and Becky Pelton at Dusty Bugs Poultry, who we got a handful of our gorgeous chickens from! Holly Clayton at Ej’s Southern Boutique is where we have gotten some of our farm shirts from, and we plan to order more products from her to offer to our clients and followers.
But the best way to answer this is to say that overall, I am proud of how much we have learned together as a family on our farm, the things we have overcome, and how much we have grown. I mean, after we moved to our new home in 2019, we started with small-scale container gardening, and that was to keep the memory of my Daddy alive and pass it on to my kids. Our farming adventure began with a great big dream and 8 chickens. Now we have a modest-sized (mostly) year-round kitchen garden just out our back door, 7 different breeding stock pens for our chickens(we will be adding more in the future, stay tuned!), two starter 4-H rabbits for the kids, 1 purebred papered English Lop rabbit, and a quaint foundation herd of pet quality and registerable Nigerian Dwarfs and Nubians.
Part of our dream is to help educate others on raising animals and growing food. At the same time, we are still not open to the public for educational farm visits and experiences, but that is something we have planned for the future. We have shared our passions and a few laughs and helped educate others between our small online platforms and in-person interactions. It’s always a great feeling to see the light bulb come on when others learn something new or finally get all the puzzle pieces together. I see others go from thinking they can’t do what we do to being able to grow their first tomato, hatch their first chicken, or milk a goat for the first time. Our knowledge and education are based on research, science, and personal experience. We will continue to help educate others about real food inside and outside the kitchen, animal husbandry, and land stewardship.
Our passion is part of what sets us apart from others. We may not know it all yet (and who does?), but we will continue to learn and share what we learn. A raindrop may not make waves, but it will make ripples. And if we can make some ripples in a few people’s lives through education and help them find their passion in this life, then maybe their raindrops will make more ripples and raindrops. I am trying to remember where I first heard that example, but it has stuck with me for a long time. The other thing is we are confident in dreaming big. Do our dreams make us a little scared? Well, yeah, they are huge! Haha! But that’s all part of what makes this such a Wild and Beautiful experience!
We’re always looking for the lessons that can be learned in any situation, including tragic ones like the Covid-19 crisis. Are there any lessons you’ve learned that you can share?
It’s hard to say for sure. We were already very much into the development of our farming dream before this. It allowed more of a slowdown to have time to learn more and further discuss our plan for our dream. And it allowed us time to think about how we wanted to kick things off. And, of course, like many others, our focus also turned to more family bonding time. My family and I would watch other homesteaders and farmers on YouTube. The kids would draw and paint pictures of their dream farm. We tried new recipes and created some of our own. But, in the eloquent words of Jess Sowards from Roots and Refuge, we “turned our waiting room into a classroom.”
Pricing:
- Fresh eggs (for eating) are $5/dozen. Hatching eggs start at $25/dozen.
- Straight run chicks range from $5/each to $15/each
- Pullets (or hens) start at $20/each.
- Nigerian Dwarf kids currently range from $200 to $400
- Pricing for baked goods or other items not listed here can be found on our farm page, or contact us!
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/thewildandbeautifulfarm
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheWildAndBeautiful
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@thewildandbeautifulfarm
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@TheWildAndBeautifulfarm
Image Credits
Emily Galloway
