the beginning
Stebbins Family Farm got its start a long, long time ago. It almost sounds like a country song, girl meets boy, they become best friends and get married. I find it much more exciting and meaningful than that though.
I (Kristen) was 12, Jastin was 14. We met at our local county fair as we were both in 4-H. The way our fairgrounds in laid out, horses are on one side of the road and livestock on the other. The classic tale - he showed horses, I showed livestock. But, on that fateful day, he came across the road and I started a conversation. That conversation has been going for 24 years now. We grew up best friends, didn’t date until he was a senior and I a junior and that was the beginning of the end for us. Jastin graduated, and went off to the U.S. Navy as a Seabee, and I finished my senior year. We got married in January of 2005. Jastin was in the Navy for just shy of 10 years. We lived in California and Virginia. In those 10 years, we added three kids - Ryan, Ben, and Hannah. After Jastin got out we bounced around a bit, moved back to Oregon where we’re both from, did a little stint in Texas, came back, added Michael. This trend kept up for a bit as we tried to find our place.
Now, we fast forward to 2017. We buy a house, jump into a community and really love where we are. Despite being happy, we live in town, grateful to be on a double lot to put a garden on and it had a cherry tree and an apple tree, yay! But we still wanted some land. I kept searching, always keeping an eye out. We would periodically look at other houses that had more land, check out land that was for sale but the prices were going up and up. We just couldn’t afford to pull the trigger on any of them.
In 2020, the world being crazy, we kept looking for land really wanting to be able to grow and preserve more than we were on our small lot. We wanted the ability to grow our own meat too, and to just be more independent. This continued all year until we reached our breaking point in early 2021. We had several big things happen that were game changers and we realized we had two choices - 1. Quit complaining and just get over the things we weren’t happy with or 2. Make a change. We chose to make a change. We told our families in February that we were going to sell our house and move - to Tennessee. And we did just that, our house was listed about 6 weeks later, sold in 36 hours. We bought a truck and a fifth wheel and hit the road. We had the BEST summer! We drove all over Tennessee, touristed, stayed with our friends, lots of bonfires, dreaming, and praying. In July, Jastin got a lead on a job in Alabama. Alabama was NOT on our radar, but the town was only a couple hours away so we went down to check it out. It was nothing like we expected and the job opportunity was fantastic. We decided to go for it, we’re already on an adventure right? We lived in our fifth wheel from May 2021 until February 2022 when we bought our house.
The last 17 years of marriage and life has been wild. We’ve lived and dreamed more that we could have imagined as the 18 & 20 year old kids we were when we got married. Our farm is a dream that was started and dreamed of a long time ago. It was wished and hoped and prayed for, for so many years, wondering if we’d ever get here. Its not exactly as we imagined and definitely not in the place we imagined. We never planned on living in Alabama, but we’re so grateful that we’re here and we love every bit of it.
