When our children were born we began to reconsider the path our lives were taking. As we learned more about food and agriculture, we knew we had to take part in making food better. We wanted to create a life that mattered in all the details of daily activity. We wanted to test ourselves against the challenges of hard work. We wanted to find joy in tangible accomplishments. We wanted to farm.

In 2011 we moved to a long-vacant and dilapidated farm.  Its preeminent virtue was that it was the most affordable place we could find.  We knew we wanted our farm to be built on the cornerstones of “grass fed” and “pasture raised,” so we were looking for good land for grazing livestock. We began building our lives around this farm, adding pasture raised chickens, pigs, grass fed beef cattle, gardens, and orchards.  We set fence posts, dug ponds, constructed bridges, and steadily built the infrastructure of a pasture farm. We made rookie mistakes; we learned as we went along. And all these years later we still feel like we are just beginning to learn what this place demands of us, and what we can expect from it.

Our name is an homage to Wendell Berry’s poem “The Mad-Farmer Liberation Front” which praises farming with a streak of contrariness.  Our farm has always been moving in a different direction, some would say a Wrong Direction.  We don’t want to engage in a headlong pursuit of bigness and blandness.  Success isn’t measured strictly by quarterly earnings. Our purpose is to practice an agriculture that promotes human worth, that respects the nature of the animals we raise, and that restores our environment rather than exploiting it.