Boundaries seems like an ugly word. But if I have learned anything about the burnout I experienced the last two summers, it’s that without them, you’ll run yourself into the ground.

Maybe I’m writing this as a message to farmers who want to do what we’ve done.
Or maybe I’m writing this to keep my promise to peel back the curtain and show what it really looks like to build a business in agriculture while also stepping fully into retail.

But the real reason might just be that I’m writing this as a permission slip to myself… to find grace in my choices, even when those choices cost me.

I’m a problem solver. If someone gives me an answer, I want to know why. Because of that, I tend to be a chronic oversharer, but this blog has always been more like a journal than anything else, so it feels like the right place to write out my own personal permission slip.

I’m not going to sugarcoat it.
Our hours have been a bone of contention for a lot of people, but honestly, no one more than me. It’s the question I answer most often every single week and it wears on me. Not because I don’t like hearing from people but because this industry is EXPENSIVE and turning down sales feels like it goes against everything in me.

Think about it from our side. Our life is tied down every Saturday. Even though we have amazing staff who help keep our little store running, I still have to be available to answer questions, field emails, return phone calls, and handle the prep work that happens before we ever open the doors to make sure the shelves are full.

The choice to only be open once a week doesn’t just limit when you can shop. It has a profound effect on our life, too.

We built all of this without the money to hire help, just the two of us working long days and chasing every sale we could get just to make this work.

A few years ago, someone was trying to sell me a piece of commercial property when he called and said,
“I drove to your store and you weren’t open. You’re losing out on a ton of sales by not being open more. I’m sure your little store would be more profitable if you had better hours.”

Believe me, I was taken aback by how brazen that comment was. And no, I didn’t buy his property… lol.
But you would be shocked how often this comes up. Maybe not quite that bold, but the reality is the same.

Yes, I might make more money if we were open more.
But revenue and profit are two very different things.

We have already maxed out what we can raise on the farm without hiring more staff. Selling more does not automatically mean we make more when that new revenue just goes straight to paying someone else’s wages or new equipment needed to handle the increase. We also did not want to become managers while someone else did the farming part. We wanted our hands rooted deep in the food we feed you, not just buried in paperwork.

Before we ever sold meat, the kids and I were slinging eggs at the end of the driveway out of a cooler. We would wash, pack, and carefully cool each day’s eggs and keep that cooler stocked. But we got robbed. At the same time, a neighbor a few miles away with a much bigger roadside stand was dealing with constant theft, too.

I chose to believe someone needed it more than we did, but my faith in the honor system was gone.
So, we abandoned the self-serve idea and when we finally had meat to sell outside of our shares, focused more on delivery.

The business you see today actually started with shipping in 2019, not because it was covid trendy, but because it fit our life. I could pack boxes after bedtime. I could move product on a schedule that worked around babies who needed their mom. While the kids were awake, I could focus on livestock and chores without being tied to a clock.

Eventually, we began offering local pickup once a week straight out of our freezer to help people save on shipping. It felt like some back alley drug deal though with us gathering that hours pickup orders & then grabbing them from our garage when they arrived. We tested the waters to see if people actually wanted pickup & to our utter shock (or should I say udder? Lol.) people LOVED it, driving hours sometimes to just grab their week or months meats.

In 2021, we built the store you know today.

We set our hours as Saturdays from 10 to 2, but I was still so eager to grow that I would let people pick up outside of those hours just to make sure we could pay the feed bill. That’s when I really started to understand how small business owners burn out.

At one point, I was so hungry for sales that I didn’t want to turn down any transaction. If I was home, I would let someone come grab an order. Even if it meant stopping what I was doing, even if it meant rearranging my day, even if it meant juggling three little kids while my husband worked full time.

And then came the day that gave me permission to set boundaries I’d never had before.

A new customer called and said, “Hey, I’ll be in your area at 2:30 on Monday. Can I swing by to grab the order I forgot to pick up on Saturday?”

I agreed. It seemed late enough that I wouldn’t be in the middle of pre school pickup, and early enough that the baby would be napping.

So when the time came, I got off the tractor, took off my coveralls, packed their box, put the livestock dogs away, and got everything ready while the kids all napped.

Then I waited.
And waited.

Eventually I went inside to check on the kids and found the baby awake and crying, and my daughter had covered her face and my brand new tile floor, the one I had saved years for, in permanent marker.

That was the moment I hit the wall people talk about.

4PM rolled around before the customer finally pulled in, while I stood there holding a crying baby, staring at marker all over my floor, and realizing I was now an hour and a half behind on everything else — because what people don’t realize is that livestock still have to be fed and cared for in the evenings.

Dean was sobbing.
Gracie had black eyebrows drawn on her face.
And I sat down on that newly decorated, hard earned floor and thought,
“I can’t do this.”

My stress had hit a level I didn’t even know was possible.
I was putting customers ahead of the very kids I had built this life for, and I still wasn’t even paying myself a wage.

That wasn’t a one-time occurrence in those early years.

That was when I realized that without boundaries, I was going to burn out long before I ever built something that could actually support our family. It was a moment of clarity one day when I had a thought. No one calls Safeway to ask them to stay open an hour later because they forgot their hours. No one calls the Farmers Market Manager to ask vendors to stay an hour later.

Ninety-nine percent of our customers understand.
Just like a farmers market, we’re here from 10 to 2.
Just like a grocery store, when the doors close, we’re done for the day.

Over time, our business has grown, but my outlook has stayed the same.
We don’t bend on our hours, because bending leads to breaking, and I’ve already been broken enough.

In 2025, we extended our store hours to 4 PM. The response was great, but we were exhausted come winter. Those two extra hours meant we were putting off all other work. Remember: even though we aren’t in the store, there are hours of work that need to be done out here every single day. & on Saturdays, we get up earlier to do morning chores & then we still have to do evening chores. That’s when we made the decision to go back to 2 PM.

I love our store.
I love seeing you.
I love knowing your kids, hearing about your jobs, and watching families come back year after year.

Last year, hiring someone to take the store off my shoulders came with tears. I wasn’t just exhausted but I was missing all of my sons baseball games, struggling to see how this was sustainable. I was sure people would stop coming if I wasn’t the one standing there, though. I was convinced sales would drop and I would have to let our new employee go.

But that didn’t happen.

We are busier than ever, and every smiling face that walks through the door reminds me that the roots of this farm go deeper than just me.

This journey has taught me a lot about what it really looks like to run a brick and mortar business, which is so drastically different than the online version I was operating prior and peeling back the curtain, the good and the bad, helps people understand the why behind our decisions.

It’s not that we don’t want to be helpful, it’s that we only have the capacity to do so much and do it well. Right now, the livestock and our kids have to take priority. And, if I’ve learned anything in the last few months after getting so sick? It’s that my health, stress and sanity need to come before anything else so that I can continue to be here for years to come.

So thank you for sticking with us as we stick to our hours. It is an honor to feed our community.