Sometimes you find yourself in the middle of nowhere, and sometimes in the middle of nowhere, you find yourself.
We bought the Beekman Farm in 2007 thinking it was going to be a weekend getaway from our lives in the city. At the time, and with our youthful idealism, we thought the future looked bright. We cashed in everything we had ever saved and took out a million-dollar mortgage. (A million-dollar mortgage!)
One weekend we arrived at the farm to find a hand-written note in our mailbox.
“My name is John Hall. I grew up in the area on a dairy farm, and I now have a herd of 80 goats. I am losing the place where I am farming. Could I please bring my goats to your property to graze? Otherwise I will have to sell them.”
A hand-written letter by a man down on his luck turned out to be our own salvation.
We both lost our jobs in the recession of 2008 and came very close to losing the farm, but we had our community and we had our bootstraps and that’s the way Beekman 1802 started.
When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. When life gives you goats, you make anything you can with the milk. After nearly 10 years, Farmer John still lives on the property with us, now with 147 goats in the herd. The products inspired by the farm can be found around the world.
One neighbor helps another . . . and so on and so on and so on.