We’ve had a ton of people wonder why we moved from the city to a farm in the country, and there were a lot of reasons. The main one, the thing that started it all was this, one of the best days of my life. (shout out to my good friend Maggie for the photo! Check her out on instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/maggiegostick/)
I’ve loved horses for as long as I can remember. I loved when my parents would take us for a trail or wagon ride, a rare treat. I loved visiting family members who had horses. When I was in 3rd grade, my parents told us we were getting a surprise the next day and we had to wake up a little early for it. I convinced myself that we were getting a pony. The surprise was that we were going to Disney World. I was mad that we weren’t getting a pony.
Fast forward to being an adult, and that little girl who loved horses was still part of me. I had surgery several years ago and while recovering I binge watched Heartland (a Canadian show about a family who runs a horse ranch, and some of the family members compete in horse shows). I decided to look into riding lessons and it didn’t seem “that expensive”. Famous last words.
When I came home from that first lesson, I was so excited! Lessons turned into part boarding (where I paid to ride someone’s horse 3 days a week).
After part boarding for a bit I competed in my very first show, and it was such an amazing experience. I went in expecting to finish dead last. My only goals were don’t fall off, don’t throw up and try to have fun. I was a giant bundle nerves and could hardly eat that day.
Well I ended up coming first! I’ve never really won anything based on merit like this before, never really participated in sports as a kid, so this was really my first big win. I honestly cried like I had won Miss America. And just as I composed myself my friend Maggie shows up with a dozen pink roses for me. I didn’t even know she was there! I started crying all over again. I put in a lot of hard work to get to that day, and to have it pay off like that was so incredible, which is why I say it was one of the best days of my life. And yes, I met all my goals!
And then we turned to talk of buying a horse of my own.
Problem is, where do you keep a horse when you have a small city lot? Where we live there’s a lot of options of places with beautiful facilities, but boarding costs as much as renting an apartment! So we looked into buying a small farm of our own.
We would be able to do so much more with a farm. Trevor especially loves garden fresh veggies, so we could have a bigger garden. And the idea of growing more of our own food is really appealing. Stuff you grow yourself is always so much tastier than what you get at the store usually. Plus we would have more control on what went into our food. We’re not super scared of chemicals, but you never know what’s going on those fruits and veggies. Add in all the scares with bacteria and what not on food, and growing our own seemed like a good idea.
Then there’s also the meat side of things. I love meat, (and milk and eggs) but often the way animals are treated before they’re slaughtered isn’t great. And the way hens are often housed for the eggs you get from the store isn’t great either.
We had been planning on moving out of our house anyways, there were a lot of things we didn’t like about it. We decided to go for it and bought our current home. It’s a beautiful, unique home on a gorgeous 13 acre property. There are so many great things about the house and the land, that it will take a whole other post to talk about! (Yep, that’ll be coming!). It’s not perfect, but all the stuff that’s not perfect about it can be fixed, and those are some of the things we’ll be chronicling in our blog.
And that’s how Rosewood Farm came to be!
Tanya
Rosewood Farm 