Welcome to Link Farm — our story
By
A few years ago, Jeremy and I sat at a kitchen table in California and started drawing on a napkin.
What would it look like, we wondered, to raise our own food? To know every animal by name? To live on land we worked with our own hands, and share the fruit of it with our neighbors?
Fast-forward a few years and a whole lot of prayer, and we’re writing this from our kitchen in Lowell, Arkansas — on 20 acres we never could have imagined — surrounded by miniature Highland cows, Nigerian dwarf goats, chickens, turkeys, and a couple of very well-fed pigs.
How it started
The dream was quiet for a long time. We talked about it the way you talk about things you’re not quite ready to do — in the conditional tense, with a lot of “someday” and “if we ever.”
But somewhere around 2020, the talking stopped feeling like enough. We started praying differently. Asking for clarity instead of comfort. And what came back, slowly and unmistakably, was: go.
Not a whisper. Not a suggestion. A calling.
We didn’t know exactly where. We didn’t have a farm picked out. We just knew the direction was east, and that God had something in mind for a piece of land somewhere that we hadn’t found yet.
Finding our land
We looked at properties in several states before we landed in Northwest Arkansas. To be honest, we hadn’t known much about NWA before the search — but the more time we spent there, the more it felt right.
The Ozarks. Real seasons. Space to breathe. A growing community that values food and land and slower rhythms. And 20 acres in Lowell, AR that felt, the moment we walked it, like the answer to something we’d been asking for a long time.
The first year
The first year was humbling in the way that all good things are.
We made mistakes. We lost some animals. We learned what we didn’t know (which was almost everything). We called farmers we’d never met and asked dumb questions. We read books at midnight. We prayed a lot.
But we also brought home our first goats, and our first Highland cows, and watched Justin and Andrew bond with each one in a way that made all the hard days worth it. We started making soap. We sold our first dozen eggs. We figured out how to keep a barn.
What Link Farm is becoming
This journal is where we’ll write about what we’re learning — the good days, the hard days, the lessons we never expected, and the small wins that make all of it worth it.
We’re also going to write about what this farm is becoming beyond just a business. Because from the beginning, we’ve believed this land was given to us for something bigger than selling milk and soap. What that looks like is still unfolding — but you can read more about our vision on the Outreach page.
Thank you for being here. Welcome to Link Farm.
— Amanda
[Continue with more of the family’s story — add real details about the move, the first animals, the kids’ reactions, the first soap batch, etc.]