Your Friends Farm

Your Friends Farm We work to be good stewards here, of our land, our animals and of our bodies. On the farm that mean You can shop for eggs here

Whelp, today we castrated our last batch of piglets for the spring. How’s that for a speed bump accompanying these sweet...
05/28/2026

Whelp, today we castrated our last batch of piglets for the spring. How’s that for a speed bump accompanying these sweet headshots of this precious little piggie?!

It’s one of those realities of farming that doesn’t make it into the romantic version of raising animals, but it matters.

We castrate our piglets because it helps prevent aggression as they grow, keeps the boys from breeding indiscriminately, and improves the quality of the meat we raise for families.

It’s not glamorous work, and it’s certainly not fun, but good animal husbandry rarely is.

There’s a tenderness required in farming that people don’t always understand. Not softness exactly, but care.

The kind of care that means stepping into uncomfortable tasks because stewardship asks it of you. We hold these little creatures with gentleness, do what needs to be done quickly and cleanly, and then set them back down to root around beside their siblings like nothing happened.

Farm life is often both beautiful and practical at the very same time. Baby pig snoots and hard decisions. That’s the work.

What I Learned in FranceI’ve been thinking a lot about how you don’t realize the weight of something until you finally s...
05/15/2026

What I Learned in France

I’ve been thinking a lot about how you don’t realize the weight of something until you finally set it down.

Two weeks away from the farm showed me just how much I’ve been carrying.

Not because the farm is bad,I love this life deeply. But because I’ve been holding it like I alone am responsible for all of it; sort of because I am.

My hours will likely always be long. I will probably always be “on call.” Thats just the reality.
And I don’t resent that.

The problem is how I’ve been holding it, and how I speak to myself about it.

I didn’t realize how depleted I was until I sat at a table and cried over a meal someone made simply to care for me.

I didn’t have to work for it. I didn’t have to produce it first. I didn’t have to justify rest to sit for two hours and enjoy it.

And I realized how long I’ve been treating care like something I have to earn.

I think farming and our culture, can glorify overworking. We call burnout dedication. We treat exhaustion like proof that what we do matters. We point out how many hours we are working and what others do so that we can work even more.

And I’ve lived in that.

There’s pride in being the one who carries it all. The one who never stops.

But I don’t think that’s sustainable. And if I believe sustainability matters for the land, it has to matter for the farmer too.

Right now I’m carrying sales, marketing, planting, purchasing, inventory, land planning, animal care, lambing, vetting, farming… and most of the things in between, alongside our household etc.

And it’s not a badge of honor I carry anymore, it’s eye bags, stress, and missed moments with myself. No one else is suffering for it, just me. And before last week, I would have insisted I was fine.

But as we know Fine is a four letter work that starts with F and not one I want to describe myself with.

And something has to change. I don’t have all the answers yet, but I do know I can’t keep going like this.

I’m learning how to navigate what needs to shift without abandoning what I love. To continue to farm while valuing self, as part of it all.

I want to build a farm that can last.
And a life that can too.

The animals have taught me that motherhood is far less polished than the world likes to pretend. It is instinct and exha...
05/09/2026

The animals have taught me that motherhood is far less polished than the world likes to pretend. It is instinct and exhaustion and tenderness all braided together. It is standing watch in the dark. It is learning when to intervene and when to stay quiet and trust what has already been written into a body.

I have watched ewes call softly to lambs still learning their legs. Watched mother hens puff themselves twice their size to protect their chicks. Watched cows lick their calves clean with a patience that feels almost holy. On the farm motherhood is not performative. It is repetitive and physical and often unseen. It smells like milk and dirt and hay and sweat, blood and tears.

It asks for your body over and over again.

The animals have also taught me that motherhood comes in all shapes and sizes. Mothers adopt babies. They keep watch over one another’s young. They grieve together in loss and celebrate together too. Care has never belonged only to biology. It belongs to love, to presence, to the willingness to nurture and protect what is vulnerable.

The longer I farm, the more I realize that mothering is less about control and more about courage. The courage to love something enough to let it become itself. The courage to remain soft in a world that rewards rigidity. The courage to keep showing up every single day whether anyone notices or not.

To my children, you make me brave.

There has never been a day in my life that I did not want to be a mother. Before I knew your faces, before I knew your names, my heart was already making room for you. And now every risk I take, every hard thing I do, every way I’ve learned to trust myself more deeply has come because of you.

You have made my life wider, more vulnerable, more beautiful, and infinitely more alive.

Happy Mother’s Day.

Two days ago we visited the Cadre Noir in Saumur.No photos were allowed, otherwise I would have filled this post with th...
05/07/2026

Two days ago we visited the Cadre Noir in Saumur.

No photos were allowed, otherwise I would have filled this post with the horses. Truly some of the most beautiful animals I’ve ever seen.

But what stayed with me most wasn’t the performance.

It was the familiar things.
The smell of straw and manure.
Hay on warm breath.
The sound of animals eating in their stalls.

It felt like home to me.

As we walked through the barns, I found myself less interested in the spectacle and more interested in the care.

I wanted to know who fed the horses. Who cleaned the stalls. Whether the riders worked with the same horses every day and knew their personalities and moods.

I wanted to know what happened behind the scenes that allowed all of this beauty to exist in the first place.

The horsemanship was incredible. But what moved me most was sensing that the animals were known there.

Not just trained.

Not just used for performance.

Known.

They let me rub a few soft noses and suddenly I was homesick for my own animals. For the cows at home. For carrying a milk bucket across wet grass. For a barn cat finding a warm spot nearby while chores get done.

I think when you spend enough time around animals, your heart starts looking for that connection everywhere you go.

You can tell when creatures are being cared for by people who know them well.

What a gift it is to witness beauty and to recognize the quiet work and relationship that make it possible.

All of these photos were taken by and the beautiful little cherubs pictured are hers as well

It’s been four days.Four days away from the farm,and I’m still learning how to hold the distance.I know this might sound...
05/04/2026

It’s been four days.

Four days away from the farm,
and I’m still learning how to hold the distance.

I know this might sound dramatic,
it’s just a trip. I’ll go home.

But distance has a way of revealing
what’s been quietly forming all along.

There are certain places that settle into you,
become part of your core.

This farm is one of them.

These photos,
small glimpses of home sent to me,
feel like reminders of what is still possible.

Nine hours ahead now,
as the sun rises here, it has set on the farm.

Somewhere in that rhythm,
he’s still walking it, tending it.

A kind of hope I don’t have to understand.
A kind of love that arrives like a first breath,
felt long before it’s chosen.

Brian has always cared for me
by sending me out.

When our kids were little,
he’d come home from long days
and tell me goodbye,
doing everything short of placing my shoes in my hands.

I loved being home so much
I didn’t always remember
that leaving could be a kind of care too.

The farm is like that.

It holds me so well
I forget I might need to step away.

When my kids were little, I used to tell them:
mamas always come home,
even if it’s only in the heart of the one who knows her as home.

Maybe that’s what this is,
learning that home isn’t undone by distance.

Because the farm seems to continue to hold me,
reminding me the order of things is still good.

It’s taught me how to loosen the pressure to be at the center and remember we are all just moving around the sun.

Maybe that’s why this feels different,
to be away, and still feel held.

You might see a farm.
I see the place that taught me how to come home
to the land, and to myself.

And even from here,
I can feel it…
steady, waiting, unchanged.

Things that I saw while gardening this week. 1- Cows on pasture for the first time this year. I could hear them munching...
04/26/2026

Things that I saw while gardening this week.

1- Cows on pasture for the first time this year. I could hear them munching while I cleaned up the food forest and the sound and sight together brought so much hope for the season to come.

2- worms, worms, and more 🪱s

3-This is my garden chicken, Maisel, she comes running anytime she sees me with a shovel or the tiller. This is our second season farming together.

4- She’s the best

5-My guy came to visit me on his lunch break and took a minute to give Callie some attention.

6-A broody chicken with at least 20 eggs underneath her.

7- The herd through the trees.

Just your average white-collar guy loving on his blue-collar girl 😉Hoping he’ll always want to kiss me after a long, swe...
04/21/2026

Just your average white-collar guy loving on his blue-collar girl 😉

Hoping he’ll always want to kiss me after a long, sweaty day; when I’m covered in dirt, grass clippings, and whatever else the farm handed me.

Our day jobs couldn’t be more different, but our evenings always find us in the same place…working side by side, choring and building something that’s ours.

One of the most common questions about our Year of Food from the Farm subscription is whether we will ever offer it with...
04/19/2026

One of the most common questions about our Year of Food from the Farm subscription is whether we will ever offer it without lamb.

The short answer is no.

Not because we’re unwilling.
But because it would mean telling a story about this farm that isn’t true.

This program was built out of two deep commitments.

To you, and to this place.

To you because I want this way of eating to feel possible. Not out of reach, not reserved for a different kind of life, but accessible, steady, and trustworthy. A way to say yes to whole animals without having to piece it together on your own, and at a price that can be known and planned for.

And to the farm because it deserves to be honored as a whole, not divided into what is convenient and what is not.

And at the heart of this farm are the sheep.

As a shepherd, I’ve learned that sheep don’t just live on the land, they help tend it. They graze what others leave behind, press back weeds, and make room for a more diverse pasture to grow. Their hooves, their manure, their presence, it all works into the soil, building something we rely on but rarely see.

They are part of how this land stays alive.

And lamb, in that sense, isn’t separate from sustainability, it’s an expression of it. Sheep are able to thrive on pasture that wouldn’t support crops. They require less in the way of outside inputs, and when they’re raised this way, on grass, in rotation, in relationship, they become part of a cycle that gives back as much as it takes.

This is what it means for us to farm.

So no, we won’t offer it without lamb.

Because this offering is meant to reflect something whole, for you, and for the farm itself.

It’s an open invitation to eat in a way that is more connected, more honest, and more rooted in the life of a place.

We’ve seen people come in unsure and grow to ask for more. We’ve seen families find what works for them, even if that means receiving it all ground.

There are many ways to come to the table.
There is room for you here.

We get asked what makes a farm sustainable.And the answer might not be what people expect.It’s not just soil health, tho...
04/17/2026

We get asked what makes a farm sustainable.

And the answer might not be what people expect.

It’s not just soil health, though that matters.
It’s not just happy animals, though that matters too.

What makes a farm last
is whether it can stand as a business
without draining the life around it.

For us, sustainability looks like this:
The farm carries its own weight.
It pays for its inputs, its infrastructure, its growth.
It doesn’t quietly rely on something else to keep it afloat.

And at the very same time,
it is held up by community.

By people who choose to buy their food this way.
Who share about it.
Who understand that this kind of farming only exists
if it’s supported on purpose.

We don’t exist in isolation out here.
No real farm does.

Sustainability isn’t independence.
It’s a relationship.
Between land and farmer.
Between animal and pasture.
Between farm and table.

And if those relationships are strong,
the farm lasts.
Not as a hobby.
Not as a side project.
But as a living, working, enduring way
to feed people well.

Address

10312 N. Ritchey Road
Spokane, WA
99224

Telephone

+13603930466

Website

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