It’s not the usual path to change your choices in your mid fifties, we’ve been diligent in the career path since we were in our teens, working government and education roles and being very loyal to the 8 to 5 life. But a few years ago our Alabama home was in the middle of an area that no longer could safely drink their water. We started experiencing what happens when communities just let things slide. Families weaken, schools become holding pens, not places of joy and discovery. We began to question why we were not choosing more often to be the change than to be frustrated that there wasn’t change. We began to see that if we were to support a different kind of community, we needed to be a different kind of resident.
We didn’t take the choice to come to Oklahoma lightly. Just as we plant things in our garden, we knew that we would be committing to planting ourselves as a bare root, without much shelter in this new space. We prayed hard that we’d make the right choices and we left the Departmen tof Defense to come to a private company while we took a few years to build a new presence in a new state. Oklahoma had been Les’s childhood home, but it’s been 40 years since he’s lived in Oklahoma as a home base full time.
We believe in community, we believe in being supportive of your neighbor’s business and your local schools, homeschooling families and customers. We love making choices that support our values and also support the land, our community and each other.
What matters to you? Where do you source your food, your labor, your commerce items? Does it matter to you? It does to us. We believe that we are called to be good stewards of our lives. And so we begin on a little farm, near to town, and begin new choices in our business and our lives. Folks like Cameron and her husband risk being our provider for feeds, for plants, for our animals. They have skin in the game too. We choose to buy local for we know that their family and ours depends on supporting our community. We’ve spent eight months getting the dilapidated cottage back to liveable and planted a garden. We’ve loved. shopping locally, learning more reasons to admire our neighbors and community artisans. It’s a new adventure and we’re mighty happy to be here.
Every small thing we add to the cottage to make it more home, to create the ability to enjoy the land, the yard and each other over sweet tea, gives us satisfaction. One step at a time, we’ll rebuild our lives here and cheer other families on too.
~ Sweetie & Les