Hold on tight!
The business has begun
Yesterday, I joined the Searcy County Chamber of Commerce and it has already activated the turbocharger for our business. I even had someone ask me about my goats milk face cream at the library while I was in town, so I felt basically famous. This just in, as I am working on the website and this letter, Darryl Treat let me know I am now the Secretary of the Searcy County Chamber of Commerce! I told my husband that maybe since he’s a business owner, and I am the Secretary of the Chamber, we should get together and have a business lunch. (We like to joke around, mostly me.) We have a lot of work to do to create the experience we want to provide our guests. We are going to be adding another Yome from RedSky Shelters as well as well as three sided primitive camping shelters and two little cabins. This one is a the “hobbit house,”
and this one is the “forest cottage.” Both of these are kits from the Jamaican Cottage shop.
We also want to have a few places available for good old fashioned tents, which is what we lived in way back in 2020 when we arrived here as medicine and politics converged. I have been updating our website which I am pretty proud of designing myself. We are offering breathwork sessions, 1-on-1 yoga practice, personal retreats. I even have a massage therapist who I have hired to come out for special events. The 2024 Solar Eclipse has given us an opportunity to set our goal for The Grand Opening Extravaganza 🤗 next Spring April 6-9. We intend to continue to build our business creating hiking trails around our spring as well as a natural swimming pool and offer a place for people to experience and enjoy guided meditation, rejuvenating yoga sessions, and nourishing, wholesome meals. We have a lot of work to do and not everyone believes in our dream. However, when you look at the names of the towns and places around here, it looks like we are not the first people to come here looking for a place to connect with nature on a deeper, unconventional level.
Scotch-Irish settler’s were attracted to Arkansas in the 19th century despite its rugged terrain due to the promise of fertile land suitable for farming. The challenge of the landscape didn't deter them; instead, the lure of agricultural potential and economic opportunities, such as land ownership and employment, played a pivotal role in their decision to settle in Arkansas. The determination to overcome the rugged terrain showcased the resilience of the settlers seeking a better life. Like those settlers, we were magnetically drawn to the wild beauty of the Ozark mountains and the Buffalo River as we escaped our safe, comfortable home in Illinois.
Although I had chosen all the neatest light fixtures, wall colors, piano, record player with a literal white picket fence around a pool with beautiful huskies outside, we gave it all away because we didn’t want to grow old and die having collected and polished our many gadgets and gizmos. We had purchased tons of mulch every year to make the outside of our home look nice for our neighbors and to live up to some ideal, where we could rake up our leaves and save up our coins to purchase more impressive nature fixers, like weed-whackers and leaf blowers. Oh, how I would have loved to surprise my husband with a riding lawnmower. And then my grandma died. In a nursing home, that reeked of urine. She had lived in a very nice house with my grandpa Jack in a “fancy neighborhood,” from my perspective as a child. She loved me so much. Her life ended and my eyes opened. God had bigger plans for me than to continue raking leaves and placing mulch around irises.
The risks we’ve taken may seem selfish, having two small children, pregnant with my third child, but what we have given ourselves and our children cannot be measured with dollars or tape measures. It has to do with following your soul’s urge to live life now, while we are alive. It’s about showing my children that I can’t be bought with weed-whackers. I know they see us growing, and trying, and failing, and working, and living, and falling, and laughing and I believe that is what God asked me to do.
please check out our website and let me know what you think. www.ervinhighlandfarms.com
Thanks for reading,
Donna