Who We Are
We are a family of four - Kris, Meaghan, Everett and Cohen - living in Riverview, Florida. We live in the tiny house we built and have one acre of land. On this acre, we are raising goats, chickens, and bees, tending our garden, and creating a beautiful life to bring glory to our Creator. We are passionate about raising food without additives and chemicals by pasture raising our animals. Our dream is to be able to be food independent and to build a legacy for our children and their children.
Our Story
In October of 2015, we got married and started our lifetime adventure. We were living in a suburban neighborhood, working full time, and had no real knowledge of the food industry. While eating healthy was important to us, we didn’t have a desire to grow our own food.
Fast forward a year and we had decided to sell our house, live on our parent’s property, and build a tiny home. Many of our friends thought we were crazy, more thought our tiny living adventure would never last, but here we are 7 years and two kids later, still living in our tiny house and loving it! Days before our first son, Everett, was born, we moved our tiny house from our parent’s property to the property we now call Tiny Acres Farmstead. We wanted to have land for our children to have a big yard and to maybe have a small garden and a few animals. That desire grew into a small dream - to be food self-sufficient and create a full life for our children.
We started small with small raised beds and two chickens. Then we added more chickens, we bought two goats, and we created an in-ground garden. In the past year, we have added bees, raised and butchered pigs and chickens, bred and started milking our goats, and started cooking from scratch using sourdough and whole foods. We have so far to go and are so thankful for what the Lord has given us.
Why Pasture Raise?
When we were first married and attempting to eat healthy, we had no idea what was actually in the food we were eating from the grocery store. Both of us had some knowledge of healthy eating from our families, however, our own journey into understanding food started in 2018. Kris came across a very popular book that highlighted the problems with modern meat and advocated for a completely vegan lifestyle. It talked about the power of food to heal modern diseases and the problems with modern meat processing. In this book, we learned about eating colorful foods for antioxidants, how grocery store chicken is pumped with sodium before processing, and how whole foods are the key to a healthy lifestyle. At the time, Meaghan was starting to train for a marathon and decided to train using a vegan lifestyle that focused on eating whole foods, not fake vegan products. After the marathon, we continued eating primarily vegan for some time until our research into pasture raised meat began. We learned how commercial meat is raised in confinement with poor diets focused on the animal’s weight gain and not nutrition. We wanted better for us, better for our children, better for their children.
Because of this, we raise our animals on grass, in the sun, with freedom to move and run. They are happy and content and serve a beautiful purpose in life.
We are still learning and growing and it seems like every week our eyes are opened to how we can farm better. While it is more expensive to raise food this way, we feel better knowing we are doing right by both our animals and by ourselves. You can taste the difference!