Much like young adults exiting their high school years and preparing themselves for college, military, and field-specific training, “gap” years are a break between life stages to pursue personal growth and exploration. In some personal cases, it's necessary to prepare themselves for their future venture. Perhaps they have to complete some hands-on apprenticeship or travel to a certain area to better prepare themselves for their studies. For others, it might just be because they aren't ready to commit themselves to their future. They need more time to mature, make or save money, or they want to relive their adolescent years just a bit longer. No matter the reason for a “gap” year, they are critical in personal and professional growth. For entrepreneurs, those looking to leave a 9-to-5 career for self-employment, or those who want to create, travel, or influence for honest income, a gap year might just be essential.
Our farm, The Fox and Crow Farm, was not inherited or gifted to Jared and me. It was a huge investment and an almost impossible-to-finance project home that took literal blood, sweat, and tears to acquire and renovate. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t a farm at all when we bought it. It was an unpermitted, hacked-together two-family home that was in rough shape. It lacked a functioning heating system when we found it. Its many interior walls had hidden mold, mice, rot, and deterioration. The uninsulated exterior walls, windows, sheathing, and siding were expired. The fields were all overgrown, piles of debris and trash were left in various part of the farm and the barn was past the point of saving it. We knew exactly what we wanted to achieve, and so we set ourselves up for the long road ahead. As a matter of fact, we set ourselves up long before we even found this house. The planning and preparation began at a very young age for me. It started as a dream.
I was born and raised in a small town in Texas near Austin in Travis County. Oak Hill, a well-known landmark at the intersection of U.S. Highway 290 and 71, located eight miles southwest of Austin in southwestern Travis County, was initially named Live Oak Springs. In 1865, there was an unsuccessful attempt to establish a town named Shiloh in the community. At one point, the community was also known by the names Live Oak and Oatmanville due to nearby schools. The Oak Hill post office, with Swen M. Berryman as postmaster, was founded in 1870. The community experienced growth in the 1880s when the new state capitol building was erected in Austin, thanks to its nearby stone quarries. By 1884, Oak Hill had a general store, four saloons, and a population of seventy-five residents, with pecans, cotton, wool, and hides being the main goods shipped by local farmers. The population had grown to 200 by 1904. The Oak Hill post office closed in 1910, and mail began being sent to Austin. In the 1970s and 1980s, Oak Hill's population was recorded at 425. By 2000, the community had become part of Austin. Most of my maternal family members have deep historical ties to Texas and played a significant role in the migration and development of Texas. Through my genealogical research, I discovered that my German ancestors immigrated to Texas seeking a new life after the state gained independence from Mexico in 1836. The initial generations of Texans in my family were cattle ranchers and horse traders near Boerne, Texas. Although I didn't fully grasp or value my family's history when I was young, I always had a strong internal passion for ranching and horses.
Being born in 1982 makes me a relic. I was born and raised in an era that predates cell phones, the internet, computers, and streaming TV. Our TV was a large wooden box that sat on the floor and only had channel presets up to the number 9. When broadcasting was finished on certain channels, the screen would go grey, and it was time to shut it off. My parents bought a nice rambling limestone facade ranch on Murmuring Creek Drive off of Highway 71 after they lost their home in the great Texas Flood of 1983 that the famous Stevie Ray Vaughan sang about. I grew up with neighboring kids that were my age. We were all best friends and did everything together. We rode the school bus together, went to class together, played after school, and explored. I liked to explore the barren cattle rancher's land out back. I would find the skeletal remains of neighbors' cats or dogs that were unlucky prey or had wandered off and perished to the elements. It was wild back there, but I enjoyed the challenge and wildness of it.
Though Texas will always remain deep in the center of my soul as my home, my family and I wandered off to Europe for a little while, back to the states but to New York, and found our way back to Texas. Not long after, we made our final settlement in Maine, which is where I graduated high school. I rejected the Northeast, and the Northeast seemed like it rejected me. I was made fun of for my southern accent, the way I dressed, and my interests. I was no stranger to the adversity of being the “new girl” in a small rural town. My travels at such a young age opened my eyes to their perspective, and I appreciated their curiosity. I kept to myself and took to the woods. My passion for farming and horses would bubble up to the surface at every move, but this time, as a growing young adult, it was starting to become a real focus.
My first paid job was working on a farm. I would do anything, even unpaid, to be around a working farm and farm animals. I took a job at a small growing dairy farm in Maine, Smiling Hill Farm. Quite popular now, when I started working there they just had a small ice cream stand and a petting zoo. I was hired to help transform their old chicken barn into the new deli and farm store. I worked there as much as my schooling and parents allowed. I helped set up the store, sold milk, churned butter, and did all of the basic store management stuff. I wasn’t even 17 years old at the time. I became great friends with the Knight family and finally had the courage to ask Roger Knight if he would let me work with his horses. They had a driving pair of Percheron draft horses. I had to stand on a stool to dress and undress them, but I did everything asked of me to ensure I would please Roger enough that he would want to keep me up at the barn helping.
Once it was time to prepare for high school graduation I had to figure out, what am I going to do with myself after school? I had a few jobs here and there working at a pet store, cleaning summer rental cottages and some other odd jobs but I needed to figure out how I was going to be able to afford to live on my own. I made my way to the city of Portland Maine and started working in a real estate office leasing apartments. The city hadn’t completed an appraisal for a while and when it came due the people in Portland were panicked at how much their real estate had increased in value. Some not able to pay their taxes, others excited about selling and capitalizing, I knew this was my time to jump into the world of Real Estate. This was before online classes and when real estate classes cost a fortune and required almost full time attendance until testing out and graduating. I stopped one commute and made my first down payment for the class. By the time the class started I was the youngest in the class. By the time I graduated, I was the youngest agent in my office. I was whisked into a fast paced career.
You can see how quickly time flies. I know many of you reading this may have gotten your start just like this. I hardly even remember my 20s. Most of it I'd rather forget anyway. There were good and bad relationships. I moved from apartment to apartment. I struggled to find "my people" and, most importantly, my identity. Despite the hustle and bustle of the path I created for myself, I always found myself outdoors and on a farm. I met the Hendricks in Waterford, Maine, at their Deerwood Farm and Garden. Working in their fields of cultivated daylilies and high tunnels always brought me back to my very foundation. They share a similar story of transitioning from being career focused in a bustling city to finding a way to move out of that culture and get back to their roots. They have inspired me in so many ways, and I literally credit them with much of the knowledge and success I have today.
Farming isn’t really a career that you can just jump into. There isn’t a set curriculum available that says “pay this, learn this, here’s your diploma”. My experience has been that it is more luck, trial and error, and a “I know a guy” sort of thing. Unless you grew up farming or ranching, inherited a farm or ranch and ALL of the equipment, it's also VERY expensive. It also helps when you have a ready and willing partner and a lot of money, so start searching for both now and get ready for the long road ahead. I did just that. I found my husband, Jared, through my real estate career. He was an unruly tenant at an apartment complex I was managing in South Portland. He was irresistibly handsome, charming, funny, and young, healthy, and strong. I did not see him, at the time, as a farming companion though. He was barely even 21 years old, I was 27. Jared still lived at home with his parents outside of college, and he didn’t even have a driver's license when I met him. Farming skills? ZERO. He rode his razor scooter, BMX bikes, skateboard, and a dirt bike. He did, however, drive a manual transmission and had a Jeep Wrangler so… he will do!
As the months turned into years, we grew together through adventures and experiences. We both shared a fondness for the outdoors. We both loved animals and were extremely hard workers. When the opportunity to buy our fixer-upper farm in 2015 in New Hampshire became a reality, we didn’t even blink. A passion inside both of us came gushing out as we started to tear down walls and rebuild our future on our newly acquired 100 acres in Barnstead, New Hampshire. We felt attached to the land and community immediately. We created a 7 and 10-year plan for our future thriving farm business, and we knew it would take a lot of capital to invest in the infrastructure and equipment. We took out loans, we paid them off. We started small and gradually got bigger with plans, dreams, buildings, and even livestock. The one kicker: we needed to work to make the money to spend the money. The more we worked off the farm, the less time we could invest in our farm. This is a very common issue when trying to move away from one career into another. How do we wean ourselves off the income generation and risk jumping into something that is slow to generate that money again?
In 2016, Jared was laid off from his job. It was tough since we had just bought our fixer-upper farm and were in the process of renovating it. I still had my stable career position in real estate leasing and sales, so we leveraged my income to help build his own company, Red Fox Carpentry. I had one condition: he had to specialize in something versus being a “general carpenter,” and so the passion for Barn Building became a reality. Making that investment in him was the right thing to do. Jared is an artist. He is a very hard worker. There was no better time than at that moment to start putting those wheels into motion and watching him grow his barn building company one barn at a time has been a true testament to what hard work, a plan, and a dream can accomplish. This was a joint venture, and he had complete emotional, financial, and mental support from me. I have to admit, I envied his success and freedom to freelance from my desk. I was making incredible income and working just as hard, but it was for someone else, and I felt stuck. I knew I would have to help Jared to make enough income to supplement mine if I was ever going to break free of the 9-to-5. I also had to prove that I had a plan that would generate income as well. Could farming be the answer?
I'll skip to the good stuff. Farming was not the answer. We keep a pretty solid record of our invested costs in infrastructure, feed, livestock, and income generation. The Gross vs the Net is just not sustainable. Does it make money? Absolutely! But you would have to hit it pretty hard to make a decent livable wage. We invited investors, farmers, educators, and the like onto our farm to give us some ideas. As I am sure you have been told, you can do one thing the best or many things okay at best. We needed to find that one thing that would set us apart from the rest and something we could do really well. We designed and priced a hog farrowing barn. How many hogs would we need to raise to make a decent wage? Too many that our farm could sustain. We looked into making a highly profitable salumi. It has a longer shelf life, can be shipped worldwide, and was very trendy at the time. The invested cost was extremely expensive, and the yield of usable meat from each hog just wasn’t enough to make this a sustainable venture. We could invest in Christmas Trees, but even still, the time it takes to grow them, the unprecedented loss due to drought and disease, and the amount of land it would require to make sustainable income was not the solution. Fruit trees? High tunnels for vegetables? Rabbits? Poultry? Farm-made gifts? We were dabbling in it all. State and town restrictions, insurance restrictions, and personal challenges all seem to get in the way. Still, we never stopped thinking, creating, and planning. We know it will take several forms of income-generating ideas here on our farm to be able to create an entirely profitable package.
Thinking about taking a gap year as a now 42-year-old full-time farmer seems strange. Is it really necessary to actually step away from the farm to see a plan for the future? After several consecutive blows to the knees from freezer failures, livestock deaths, insurance restrictions, and community woes from some angry, unhumbled housewives, we decided to just sit down for a moment and take a breath. 2025 will mark 10 years we have been here on our 100-acre farm. We have accomplished way more than we set out to achieve in our initial 7 and 10-year plan. We sacrificed vacations, friend and family events, and, at times, our own personal mental and physical health. It was time we started to see what we actually enjoy the most about our farm, what makes us take a pause, sigh, and deep breath in. It didn’t take long before we both acknowledged it wasn’t the hustle and bustle of buying and selling. It was the land itself. People have traveled hundreds and thousands of miles to come here and stay at our cabin in the woods, to hike or snowshoe in our woods just to be here on this land. The number of people we would need to provide our meats, fruits, herbs, and vegetables was totally sustainable if we provided those people with our farm experience. I had always said we were building a culture here. A culture built on farming heritage, sustainable agriculture, and the appreciation of the outdoors. It is about time we pursue our actual realized goal of sustainability and make it our priority.
2023 was the year of infrastructure. We moved a lot of earth and started construction of what we call the “mega barn”. But this would not be housing any animals or horses (although it could house quite a few horses!!). This would be more of a gathering place of creativity and community. We worked tirelessly through the winter and into 2024 before we decided, well fate would decide for us with a freezer failure and loss of our marketable meat, that we take a break. Taking a break was easy. We simply didn’t breed or invest in livestock. It wasn’t until August 2024 that I sold enough of my farm goods to justify closing the farm store. By the time the farm store is ready to re-open, it will be in the new barn. Finding things to do with all of my newfound “free” time was easy! I rode my horse Tango on trails through Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York. We rode more miles together this year and enjoyed camping overnight in our newly renovated camper trailer. These are memories that I will cherish forever. I brought home a new baby mustang horse named Dublin. He has been a constant project. My older mustang Ryder is just now learning to carry me as his rider, and we have enjoyed private lessons and training sessions in my new outdoor riding arena. But the creativity and entrepreneurial spirit never dies out.
I have found that the more time you give yourself to really think, process a thought, and realize it into fruition, the more successful you can be. Like writing this, for example. I write to become a better writer. I want to become a better writer so I can finish several books that I am writing. The better I can be at writing, the more people will read my books and the more potential income I can make by doing something that I love. If you practice at anything, the more time you spend doing that thing, the better you will be. Period. I have never been more humbled, more inspired, and more creative than I am right now in my life. Taking this gap year has actually generated more income between both Jared and me. I have been working alongside Jared building barns with him. Not only am I learning a valuable skill, but I am getting stronger, healthier, and spending time with someone that genuinely makes me happy. We are able to work faster and move along to our next projects faster. I have taken up sewing again. What once was just a hobby has now become a small business venture in making and selling my own patented design, Boot Blankets (tm). Now with the weather cooling off, I am able to really focus on my marketing strategy, and it is working out so well for me.
My website boasts several blogs I have published about the woes of farming, the true cost of agriculture, the politics of farming, and starting up small businesses. What we really need to talk about is the importance of taking that gap year to reset your focus and your goals when you feel stuck, inspired to change direction, or starting something new. Farmers ought to breathe more. Not just inhale and exhale, I mean to take a deep centered breath. Cry if you need to. Feel sad, scared, angry, or confused. Come to a point when you feel vulnerable enough to make a commitment to hold that thought and work out a plan. Growth is not linear. Growth comes from discomfort. Sometimes you need to find the “pain” to convince yourself to try a different direction or path. You are your own limiting factor in your own personal and professional growth. Don’t let YOU stand in your way. Let yourself climb to new heights and expand your vision.
Our supporters who have been with us on our farm venture have watched tirelessly as we grow our farm here in Barnstead, New Hampshire. They have supported us from day one. This gap year, this year of growth and exploration, has inspired us to expand our 100 acres beyond the stone walls, fields, and forest right back to you. Yes, farmers take gap years. I give you permission, farmer, rancher, hard-working carpenters, artists, writers, and the like, to take your gap year. Expand your lungs, inhale your creativity, strength, and energy, and exhale your limiting beliefs.
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