Becoming Better Bower’s

Who are the Bower’s?  And why do they need to be better?  And what is better, anyway?!?!

Hi! I’m Hillary Bower and my handsome husband is Joe Bower, to be affectionately referred to henceforth as “Farmer Joe”!  We live in Central Pennsylvania and we recently bought a farm!  For 40 hours a week (often it’s more like 60 hours a week, and sometimes more like 80 hours a week!) Farmer Joe exchanges his overalls for a business suit and runs a bank.  While I was blessed enough to have been a stay-at-home mom, I decided about a year ago to return to the work force.  As luck would have it, I found exactly the position I was looking for!  But as time went on, we found ourselves talking more and more about turning our farm property into a working farm.  While hubby grew up in farm country and worked on dairy farms for a lot of his youth/early adulthood, and I grew up in a small, rural town, the idea of creating a farm out of nothing felt really daunting!  Could we do it?!?!

As a CEO, Joe usually thinks BIG!  I tend to be more of a start small and see how it goes type of gal.  For example, I might say, let’s get a couple goats that could live in that shed out back, to which Farmer Joe might respond with something along the lines of, let’s get 250 goats that can be primarily grass fed in a 3-acre pasture field and find a commercial marketplace to sell them for profit.  Huh? Can you say overwhelming?!?! 

After lots of dreaming and worrying, thinking and worrying, planning and worrying, we started doing some research on livestock that we might be interested in raising.  After reaching out to several places, we got in touch with a farm in Northern Michigan that invited us to take a look at their animals.  Long story short, we came home and I submitted my resignation.  The farm dream becomes a reality!  (Sidenote: This is one of the roots of our farm name, The Greener Acres Farm.  I literally told my boss, “I’m leaving for greener pastures!  We’re starting a farm!”  You might also guess that it is a play on the TV series, Green Acres.  A business man trying to start a farm…..sounds eerily familiar.  Greener pastures was also a phrase that came to mind when we thought about our fast-approaching retirement years.  So, we settled on The Greener Acres Farm.)

Becoming Better Bower’s was something that popped into my mind when trying to come up with clever, creative and catchy farm names and it just kind of stuck in my head.  For me, it really encompassed how I wanted to approach not only this new farm venture, but life in general.  Trying each day to be a little better than before.  Remembering that there will be achievements and setbacks, successes and failures but it’s an on-going process.  It’s not a competition, there is no pass or fail grade, there is no time limit. 

So, there are the Bower’s and that’s the “becoming”. How can you define better?  I think if you asked 100 people, you would get 100 different responses.

In some of the “are we really doing this?” conversations, Joe lovingly pointed out that I was already doing some things that could be considered farm livin’!  The more I thought about it, the more I could come up with!  I already have a few laying chickens, I have a garden, I hunt, which helps fill our freezer with meat, I’m starting to get into fermenting kombucha and sauerkraut, the list goes on! When I think about starting The Greener Acres Farm in terms of becoming self-sustaining and not necessarily a huge money-making operation, it feels a lot more manageable and enjoyable.

For me, becoming better is about having dreams, setting goals, making plans and working hard.  It’s about accepting that it’s a process and having a willingness to change and adapt.  It’s remembering that my “better” is specific to me, no one else can define it for me.  So, as we grow The Greener Acres Farm, as we update thegreeneracresfarm.com, post pictures on Instagram @thegreeneracres , and write blog posts for Farm Livin’, we will always be striving towards “Becoming Better Bower’s”.