Our Story
What began as a childhood dream to someday own a farm became a reality in 2017. This city-kid and her family bought 20 acres north of Bowie, Texas, and bought 5 chickens–1 for each kiddo–as soon as we could. Because when you buy a farm, you have to have chickens! These 5 chickens grew to 20, then 40. Chicken math is real, y’all! I always desired to be as self-sufficient as possible. I want the option of going to the store, or going grocery shopping in my backyard. We had already amassed many of the “survival”-type skills associated with homesteading, just from our individual histories of backpacking and from when I quit my 9-5 job to stay home with our kiddos. In order to save money, I learned how to make my own bread and my own laundry soap, among other things. This background paid dividends when we moved to our farm. Eventually we decided to give raising our own meat chickens a go. I found that I enjoyed the day-to-day chores immensely, and didn’t hate the actual “processing” part. Turkeys, of course, were a natural addition to raising poultry for eggs and meat. While we also raise a few head of cattle, and have a small herd of goats (which, in fact, were supposed to be the primary “enterprise” when we moved here), raising poultry for meat and eggs has been, by far, the most enjoyable, and the most profitable of all our other “ventures” here.
Our goal has always been to live in harmony with the environment, and to be good stewards of the slice of creation we have been abundantly blessed with. We strive to walk daily with our Creator God. We try to do things here in the manner we think He originally intended. Diversity in species, allowing our animals to work in their God-given design, making the most of our land, and helping to restore balance, health, and vitality to our pastures is what we seek to do. Our philosophy falls in line with regenerative agriculture principles. We rotate all of our animals at least weekly (daily, for our meat chickens), we “stack” species on top of each other, fully fertilizing the ground and utilizing our land efficiently, and give each animal an opportunity to do what they do best–goats browse all the tall, weedy, woody stuff, cows mow the grass short and their hooves “plant” any seed heads from native grasses and forbes that the goats didn’t eat (thus re-seeding our pastures for us), then chickens and turkeys come in behind to lightly till the soil, spread out the manure, eat the bugs, interrupt the parasite cycle, and generally clean things up. All the animals leave behind a healthy, balanced dose of fertilizer in the form of their manure–meaning we don’t have to use any synthetic anything here. No pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, or glyphosate products are used anywhere on our farm. Just animals being animals.
For more detailed information, don’t hesitate to visit our website at www.7ArrowRanch.net or email us with your questions!