Ranchin' Around

Starting a ranch with a little knowledge and a lot of heart.

Hello & welcome to the show. My name is Crystal. People who know me would tell you I am introverted, intense and passionate. The few people who know me well would tell you I love beautiful pictures, creativity and a lot of humor. I will try to include all of those things in the blog as we navigate building a ranch from the ground up, dreaming up business opportunities and, oh yeah, raising kids along the way.

Family

My husband and I met 7 years ago the old-fashioned way - online dating. It was probably the only way an introvert like me was going to ever date again. We were married in 2018 and between us we have 2 grown children, 1 adorable grand baby, 4 boys at home and in 2019 we were blessed with a baby girl.

Original Plan

As in-love couples do, we talked about the future. We discussed how we wanted to raise our family and where we wanted to live. I felt like a lot of our aspirations were outside of our reach. We were paying off old debts, combining two households. At times, it felt like we were just barely scraping by.

Once the honeymoon was over, pun intended, we sat down and really talked about our goals. We came up with a 5-year plan that included paying off all our debts (except the mortgage), selling our home and buying property. That was it, that was the plan.

Miraculously, without killing each other, we pulled off our 5-year plan in just under 3 years. We moved into "our forever home". This home is a large 7-bedroom, 3-bathroom home sitting on 20 acres about 45 minutes from our previous home. Our kids can run, jump and scream to their hearts content. We are surrounded by wheat and barley fields. This is what we wanted for our children!

New Plan

Oddly enough, we didn't have a plan for these 20 acres. We didn't have a plan past moving our kids out to the country where they could live the carefree, wild spirit life we had as kids. So, we spent the following two spring and summers puttering, not doing much (if anything) with our land. We spent that same amount of time growing in our careers, as well as a couple and as a family.

In fall 2022 something happened, I don't think I can even quite explain it. I have no idea where or how it started but I had this dream to build a ranch. My husband was one hundred percent on board, he is always trying to bring animals home. We talked about what starting a ranch might look like for us. We tiptoed ever so quietly into discussions about where pastures, pens and barns would go.

Before you know it, our new plan was born, build a ranch on these 20 acres. We quickly put those dreams into action, within a month we had two miniature horses and a couple of weeks later we added some dairy goats. The day after the goats arrived, it started snowing and winter showed up big time.

Join us on this journey!

Thank you for coming along on this wild ride. I'll have some more fun things in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!