THE STORY

The land at McLean Acres is nothing short of a miracle. If I had to be completely honest, I’m not really sure what I’ve gotten myself into. It began with this “oh so small idea” of learning a bit about living off the land. It was originally Jer’s idea, actually something he talked of quite frequently. I thought he was completely crazy, but after a friend shared how she was wanting to learn more about this way of life, I gave it some thought. I then decided to take this up with the Lord for a bit. I believe my actual conversation went something like this, “ummmm, okay, here’s the deal. You know my personality and I will take something to crazy level fast. You also know I will work in my own might and leave you high and dry. This just can’t happen. First, I don’t know ANYTHING about this way of life, so if you could send someone my way, that would rock. Second, I’ve NEVER wanted to live this kind of life. Like EVER. Sooo, there’s that. I really need you. If I’m all in, I need you all in. Cool? Great. Game on. I’ll do whatever you put before me. Let’s do this.

Well, I kid you not, I prayed that around 9pm and within two hours I had a very interesting private message on Facebook. At the time I didn’t have a large “social media following”, maybe a handful of people I went to school or worked with over the years. It was from a girl I met over 20 years earlier, for only one weekend at a Pastor’s Kid Retreat. Let me repeat that. I had only seen her over the course of a weekend, twenty years previously. Ok, let that sink in. Anyway, she said she just found me on FB and wanted to see how I was doing. I click on her profile to see if I could remember who she was, and I was hit with all these pictures of her and her family raising animals and growing their own food. I sat there thinking, hmmmm, this is weird. I message her back, and within a few days we were out looking at her land. As we sat and talked over lunch, I asked her why she messaged me that night. I mean come on, it was kind of random. She leaves the room and brings back a scrapbook and opens it up to a picture of me, her and a couple other girls. She said I don’t know, it’s really odd, but I was looking through this old scrapbook that night and I saw this picture of you and I felt like I was supposed to message you, so I looked you up and messaged you. Ahhhh, okay Lord, you’ve got my attention now. Bless my heart, it takes me a bit to trust Him on some things.

I left the house that day and was ready to conquer the farming world. Bring it. Jer and I started looking at property that was nowhere in our budget. At the time this took place, I had just quit my job as a nurse, and we had zero extra money. I remember looking at property that was around 1.3 million dollars. On the drive over, Jer was explaining how obviously there was no way we could buy this, I was like, of course, maybe they will give it to us. Well, they didn’t, haha, oh my. I quickly found myself spinning my wheels and getting nowhere. I couldn’t get the words, “just do what I put before you” out of my head. I had just recently started a new business in a network marketing company, so I decided to turn my focus there. 14 months later I was at the top rank of the company in record time. I believe it still holds the record to the top rank. Listen, I’m a big dreamer and a hard worker, but this was mind blowing. I knew the Lord was putting the pieces together for this property we were supposed to use in worship to Him.

So here we are. Oh, there’s much more to the story of how we found the land and how we almost gave up so many times, but we will discuss that another day. The bottom line is, your guess is as good as mine of what all will come of McLean Acres. I’m just doing whatever the Lord puts before us each day. It’s a thrilling adventure.