Welcome to Old World Garden Farms!
Our story really starts in late 2010, when we started our little 3 acre self-sufficient Old World Garden Farm just east of central Ohio.
At the time we were busy with both our professional careers and 4 teenage children. We longed for a slower pace, a place to grow some of our own food, raise a few chickens and maybe even keep a honey bee hive or two. Our ultimate goal was to someday build our home there as well.
So there we were, on a cool autumn weekend back in 2010, clearing the land with a rented walk-behind brush cutter. Swath by by swath, we carved out a little space to start our dream.
And then a funny thing happened that changed our life forever.
The Start of A Blog
We started a little blog called Old World Garden Farms. It honestly began as a joke. A way for us to update friends and family that perhaps thought we had lost our minds creating this “simple life” and a farm.
We began writing about all of our crazy adventures. Like building a chicken coop and raising chicks for the first time. And creating the farm’s barn for nearly free by tearing down (2) hundred year old barns and making one from the remnants.
Along the way we would post a few of our favorite recipes too. All simply to tell the story of slowing down and making life matter. We screw up a lot. We make mistakes. But we stick with it, and figure it out, and always have fun along the way. And we simply tell that story as it is.
We are still not sure to this day how or why, but the blog somehow resonated with folks from all over. First with a few followers, then a hundred, and then a few hundred thousand. The sites have now grown to over 10 million monthly viewers, with followers from 220+ countries.
Building On A Dream
Before we knew it, we had published our first book, Growing Simple, in April of 2016. We discovered how much we loved writing and speaking about our adventures and our passions of building, gardening, cooking and traveling to place to learn more.
In general, finding love in the simple things in life to live to the fullest. And all the while, continuing to work and now live at our little farm.
In 2018, we published our second book, Raised Row Gardening. and launched two additional websites, This Is My Garden, and Make Your Meals.
Mary’s Make Your Meals website lets her follow her passion of cooking. It works well, because it also allows me to follow my passion of eating. And for me, This Is My Garden allows me to write about all things gardening. Personally, I couldn’t ask for any better.
Each allowed us a dedicated outlet to concentrate on two of our most favorite loves, gardening and cooking.
It was at that point that we knew we had found what we loved to do, and what we were meant to do. Over the course of a few years, we each retired from our professional day jobs to work at our passion. As we still do, every day here on our Old World Garden Farm. In the garden, in the kitchen and in the workshop.
It is honestly true that if find something you love to work at – that you will never feel like you work at all. For us, this is our love. It is our passion.
Jim and Mary