Crooked Acres

We are Fred and Robyn Anderson.

We married almost ten years ago and for the first eight years of our marriage, we lived in Madison, Alabama, first in one subdivision on a tiny amount of land, and then on another subdivision on a slightly larger amount of land. As Madison was built up and people moved from Huntsville in ever-increasing numbers, we decided that we were not subdivision/ suburb people (though there’s certainly nothing wrong with that; you can’t discount the perks of living two minutes from the grocery store and ten minutes from the mall!), we didn’t care to have our neighbors sitting in our laps (figuratively speaking) and started looking for a smaller house on a lot more land.

In August of 2006, while driving by a house that we decided wouldn’t work for us, we happened upon a small house on 4 1/2 acres in a tiny town about 20 minutes from Madison. The house, an old farm house, had so much more character than the cookie-cutter house we were then living in that we fell in love with it immediately. And the amount of land was appealing – we knew immediately that we’d have room for chickens and pigs and possibly cows to roam, and there was plenty of room for a large garden as well.

A few months later we bought the house and property, and began several months of renovating the house while living in the house we already owned. It was an undertaking, but most of what needed to be done was cosmetic.

You can see the before and after pictures of what the house looked like, here.

In the spring of 2007, we moved in and began making our dreams a reality. We ordered chickens from a hatchery, and Fred built a coop and yard for them. We planted a large garden, and Robyn learned to can and freeze. In early 2008, we built a shelter and a yard in the back part of our property for a couple of pigs.

The chickens are raised not only for our entertainment (and they are very entertaining, have no doubt), but also to provide eggs and meat for us. The pigs will eventually be slaughtered by a professional and will fill our freezer.

We started out with a dozen chickens and currently have somewhere in the area of fifty – we ordered a second batch of chickens in the spring of 2008, and after that we hatched a large batch of fertile eggs in an incubator, and then our adult hens started going broody and hatching eggs themselves.

It seems as though there’s always a hen going broody.

Cows might be added at some point in the future. Maybe not. We haven’t decided!

We’re living our dream.