Our Family Story

Thank you so much for following our small family business! We’re Amanda and Jourdian Lamar, and we have 3 children.

Let’s take it back to the beginning - we’ve grown a small summer garden each summer since we’ve been together (10 years now!), mostly just a tomato plant or two and some squash. In December of 2018, I quit my full-time job in banking to stay home with our daughter (she was two at the time) and work a small home-based business. I really enjoyed gardening, and each year, our garden grew a little more. I began selling fresh produce occasionally when I had extra, and then I offered veggie plant seedlings in the spring to help pay our increasing garden costs. We had a small flock of chickens and sold a few dozen eggs to help pay their feed costs. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to keep me busy and I absolutely loved growing our own food, learning more each season, and getting our children involved in it. When the pandemic hit in March of 2020, we chose to homeschool our children for the following school year and we grew our garden even more. We involved our kids in the daily life of our homestead; it was a safe and healthy home environment for them while it seemed the world was falling apart. Unsure of the future, we chose to begin raising and harvesting our own meat - we started with broiler chickens, and then added New Zealand rabbits. I quickly fell in love with rabbits, and started a small herd of Holland Lops. After raising a few litters, I wanted to focus on “breeding better,” and now my herd of Hollands are all pedigreed and top quality - the moms and dads come from show lines, so some babies born could have show potential. Having only one acre of land, we were pushing our limits but really wanted to try our hand at raising pigs. We found a breed of pasture pig called Idaho Pasture Pigs - and drove all the way up to Ohio to get some! We raised two feeder pigs and harvested them ourselves in October 2021. It was an incredible process, and we learned so much. We loved everything about our IPPs, and really wanted to be able to breed our own…but with only one acre, it wasn’t possible.

That leads us to the present. In October 2021, we chose to list our home for sale and search for a property with more land. We wanted more than our one acre could give us. After weeks (months?) of dead ends, worry, and lots of prayers, our future farm presented itself in the most humble way possible. I’m writing this summary of our story January 27th, 2022 and we are about to move our family to a new 15 acre farm. We have our work cut out for us, but we will build a commercial greenhouse, set up a store building, and have plenty of room for all the livestock we want to raise (IPPs are first on the list! We’ll be registered breeders ASAP). We are building our farm from the ground up, and our whole family gets to be part of the process.

We are learning more every day in terms of self-sufficiency, growing food, helping pollinators, safe food prep and storage, and so much more. We strive to provide for our family as much as possible from our land, and want to share our knowledge, our produce, and our story to anyone who wants to listen. I’m so thankful our lives led us down this path, and I’m anxious to see where this new adventure takes us!