Hello!

We are John and Melissa and our children are Molly and Hank. We live in Hagansport, Texas where we raise our herd of cows and calves for a living on a 400 acre lease farm. They thrive on our native Texas grasses and hay that we bale in the summer for use in the winter. I, Melissa, stay at home with the kids and help on the farm when needed (but I tell you what, John has the farm covered! The guy is good!). We live just down the road from our farm in a little country house that we are slowly but surely fixing up to fit our liking. It is 900 square feet (eek!) so we are becoming experts in "living small." It fits us. And we love it! Probably because it’s ours, and it’s the first house we’ve ever bought.  But I think it’s also because we love everything in it.  That’s the thing about small houses…. There isn’t room for anything you don’t need and/or love. I have a constant Goodwill pile going, and once a month I do a good purge.  I have to be careful not to have too much going on on the walls, or too many throw pillows on the couch (so sad!), or else it can look like a group of giants and all their stuff living in a cave!  I can only imagine when the kids are bigger and if there’s another baby down the line that we will outgrow this house, but for now, in this moment, we really enjoy being cozy; it forces the kids to enjoy each other’s company, and it allows me to clean the whole house in an hour! Ha!

It has been raining here for weeks. The ground is soft, the mud is aplenty, and the cloud skies are pretty in their own way. Too much rain has a way of dampening my spirits…too wet to play, mud being trekked in, unable to hang my laundry out (one of my top 5 chores!). But you know…. This rain is really setting us up for a successful summer.  We will have so much grass and the cows will be content and we won’t be stressed about our animals. We are in full calving mode around here and so far we have 22 babies and everything is going really well.  This is our fourth year farming and John does such a good job! He’s a natural. There are days that he comes home and hangs out and plays and sees what the kids and I do all day (make a giant mess and eat lots of snacks!), and there are days that the farm keeps him busy and we don’t see him until dinner. It’s a sweet little lifestyle. We are not rich (will we ever be? I doubt it!) but we have enough to meet all our needs and to tithe and to have a little backup for an emergency.