ABOUT US:
Our family has been serving our friends and neighbors with natural home grown foods, herbs, vitamins, and supplement resources since 1995.
In the years leading up to our decision to pursue healthy foods and a homesteading lifestyle, my husband worked as a master carpenter and project manager for high-end residential and light commercial projects. I worked as a medical social worker and interned caring for pregnant women and young children with the WIC program in a health department, and later worked with the elderly as a Social Service Director in a 145 bed nursing facility.
While he was busy mastering his craft and learning construction management, I was part of a medical care team with doctors, nurses, specialists, dieticions, etc. Our team included about six people and we looked over each patient's needs every week in a care planning meeting for those having accute issues, and every three months for those whose disease process was chronic but stable. Our team looked at all aspects of the person in caring for them: diet, meds, psycho social, family, history, disease progression, etc.
Over the years working in medical social work, I became discouraged at the foods and medicines being fed to the elderly and watching their health decline over time. I believed their rapid decline was due more to the snowball side effects of medications and poor nutrition than to the disease itself. I truly believed that much of the problems the elderly were facing could be managed with proper nutrition through whole nutrient dense foods and very few if any medications. In addition to providing counseling and support, conflict resolution, and writing goals for all staff in care planning for each patient, one of my main tasks on the medical care team was to monitor for side effects, document them, provide this information to the doctors, and help reduce the number of medications the elderly were on. The average number of medications was about 21 per person. Our goal was to reduce this number by at least half. We were successful at reaching this goal during the years I worked there. I also became certified as a Qualified Mental Retardation Personelle and wrote care plans and provided services for those with disabilities from birth such as down syndrome, spinal bifida, cerebral palsy and so on.
In 1995 while we both still worked our regular day jobs, our healthy foods business started with a backyard garden and a few chickens and selling our surplus eggs, produce, and baked breads, jams, and pickles to neighbors and friends.
In 1997 we both left our professions to do something new. We had both been serving in the music ministry of our church for a couple of years, me singing and my husband running sound board. We continued serving this way, but became ordained ministers in our church and took on the challenge of teaching the youth ministry. We enjoyed serving as Youth Pastors. I also met with folks facing life threatening illness in the local hospital and nursing homes and provided spiritual support and grief counseling for families. I became certified in Biblical Counseling, and served the church counseling those in need with relationship and parenting struggles. I also continued to write care plans and was blessed to help out in foster care. My husband and I were both certified Theraputic Foster Parents too and took in foster children.
In 1997, my husband opened a General Contracting construction company in 1997 called Weiser Construction. Over the years his company and reputation grew and he became a master builder in our county and recieved building awards for his quality. Over the years he served in leadership positions too as President of the Home Builders Association (and served as Vice President), served on the Board of Zoning Appeals for our county, and also on a Board of Advisors for the local Vocational Technical School's Building Program. He also took the state course in real estate law and passed the Indiana boards exam for real estate linsensure.
We moved to a farm and got serious about homesteading. We added farming several acres, our 19 acres for livestock and hay, and my sister in laws 40 acres of hay. The healhty foods business grew into hay production, raising registered Angus and Angus cross cattle, registerd Jersey dairy cows, Khatadin sheep, registered Nubian dairy goats, Boer meat goats, and Bronze turkeys.
We contracted with a local butcher and customized each family's order. We worked together with other neighbors to buy in large bulk items such as flour, beans, grains, and cheese. At the same time we began learning about the Weston A Price Foundation and the benefits of eating naturally raised animals, soaking, sprouting grains, raw and fermented dairy, fermenting vegetables and fruits, fat soluable vitamins, the X factor, and so much more.
In 2001 we combined this knowledge of raising nutrient dense Traditional Foods into our rearing practices and raised our animals on grass and hay without any additional medications or antibiotics.
In 2004 we opened a healthy food store named Weiser Farms Natural Country Store and began ordering in additional organic groceries, produce, packaged herbs, vitamins and supplements, nutritional and Christian books for our customers. We also opened our doors to any local crafts people and farmers who wanted to sell their products from our store. We kept our opperations small and managible selling about 2,000 various products from our store and serving about 100 people a week on average. One of our biggest draws for customers was that most of the meat, eggs, and several other items were locally produced. The other biggest draw to our farm was that we were willing to special order anything for folks. It was the personal service they got. It was the handshake, the hug, and the smile that is missing from other stores.
Folks came from all around including neighboring states. A photographer from Farm World happened to drive by our sign one day on his trip through rural Indiana photographing barns. He asked if he would publish a story about us and took a few photos. It ended up being a 4 page spread in the news paper and folks from near and far contacted us to let us know they had read the story and were inspired. Those traveling from far away brought a vehical of coolers to transport their goods back home in. They often completely emptied the freezers of beef, chicken, pork, and fish, on these trips. We had to have more cattle, chickens, pigs, etc butchered asap. But that was the wonderful thing, customers knew this meat had just been butchered and they were thrilled to take this fresh nutrient dense food home to their families.
Due to a down turn in the economy in construction, my husband took a job managing construction for a commercial construction company and we moved from the farm in Indiana to the Hendersonville, North Carolina area in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains in 2008. We anticipated buying a farm there and restarting our homesteading and healthy foods store asap. But the job did not provide the income and bonuses he was promised and we saw our dreams to continue homesteading slipping away. Land there is very expensive and it would take much longer than we had anticipated. Meanwhile, we continued helping others in our local community through offering a bulk foods coop for grains and commodities, and helped folks locate resources and local farms for fresh organic foods, grass fed beef, fresh raw milk, free range chickens and more.
While living in Hendersonville, we also began teaching local workshops for adults and children in the local parks. We created programs and met a need in the community. I taught Take Action Tuesday, Build It Workshops, Learn It Workshops, and 4H. These workshops focused on healthy foods and cooking, life skills, safety, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathmatics), building and creating with Legos, "Green" learning projects, 4H club (Lego and Robotics Academy), play, socialization, and more. I organized an online homeschool newspaper posting opportunities for adventures for families within a 100 mile radius between Asheville, NC and Greenville, SC. I served as the Park Coordinator for the Henderson County Homeschool Association araging weekly playdates and learning programs too. While I cared for our babies (we have 6 children) my husband served our church of 5,000 as a volunteer in the Children's Ministry too. The church was an hour drive one way down the mountain from where we lived. But it was exciting to attend and serve.
The years living in NC were busy and a blessed time of family learning adventures! Since we were not farming, we had time to explore the country side and attend many programs. We saw mountains, waterfalls, the ocean, the fairs and festivals, and so many fun activities and adventures every week. We were never bored and were always on the go.
In 2013 we moved back to rural Richmond, IN. My husband opened up a general contractor construction company, Weiser Construction Services. It was a slow year the first year and even though he has had a few projects, it was not enough, and he went to work for other construction companies in project management until the company has enough income to support us fulltime. If you need construction work done, give him a call.
We bought a certified organic farm and began rebuilding our homesteading way of life. In our first year back, we are farming 27 acres. We have 22 acres of certified oragnic hay certifed through MOSA. We have a small orchard (that includes apples, pears, persimon, peaches, blueberries, red raspberries, wild mulberries, wild grapes, wild black rasperries), a garden, a flock of chickens, a few rabbits, and cats and dogs.
We hope to have cattle and goats again someday, and also to build a greenhouse in the near future and raise fresh greens for locals. We are looking into producing organic greens rasied in greenhouses through an aquaponics method.
We are looking forward to the future. We are striving to live healthy and share the good news and resources with our neighbors. We continue to dream big!