From a poor rural homestead

to the highs of corporate America…

to a resilient, modern homestead

Hey there, I’m Tim Young, and I’m glad you stopped by. We each have a life story…here’s mine.

My family lived a rural, simple life when I was a kid. We had a large garden and my grandfather built his house from trees he felled and milled himself. The walls had cracks between the boards that grandma plastered with cardboard to keep the cold out. And some of the bugs. As my sister and I grew up we called this place “the old house.”

Remains of “the old house”

Like many kids who don’t know how good they have it, I rejected that and wanted something more. And I didn’t have the patience to wait for it.

I dropped out of college after the first year even though I had a golf scholarship. I took a job at minimum wage tossing mailbags for a direct marketing company. They paid me $3.67 an hour and I was on cloud nine.

Without a college degree, I set out to work long hours and educate myself. By the time I was 23 “they” made me vice-president in a Fortune 500 division. I had 200 employees under me.

Imagine that!

That’s when I lost all respect for titles. I mean, if a kid like me could be a VP…hell, I guess a condescending real estate developer could become President of the United States.

I kept getting moving up and became president of that division when I was 25. I held that position for 9 years. Then I walked away at the top of my corporate “game.”

I wanted freedom. At that time in my life freedom meant starting my own business. So I bootstrapped a marketing services business. I didn’t have much money to start it. But I accepted all those credit card offers they kept sending my way.

In the first year, I maxed out all those credit cards to set-up office, buy computer servers, and what not. Within 5 years my little startup grew to 450 employees. We were in six countries and Inc. Magazine named us the 130th fastest-growing privately-held company in America.

And I was on an airplane…constantly.

But there was a problem. And for me, it was a big problem.

I couldn’t explain to anyone what I actually did. Hell, it didn’t even make sense to me. And that bothered me. It bothered me that I couldn’t explain to a child what I did for a living.

The world was (and still is) too complicated. After some soul-searching, I realized the corporate dream I conquered wasn’t the dream I longed for.

So I walked away from it all…the constant air travel, the traffic, the cubicles…all of it.

Something was calling me, and that something was “the simple life.”

Of course, the “simple life” ain’t so simple.

Still…15 years after leaving the corporate world behind, I’ve found this dream to be exactly what I hoped it would be.

My wife and I started a sustainable livestock farm in 2007 and produced lots of protein products. Grassfed beef, pastured poultry, woodlot pork, rabbit…seems like we did it all.

From there we opened a dairy and offered both raw milk and farmstead artisan cheese. Our cheese won awards at all kinds of places. We won at the United States Cheese Championship, the American Cheese Society competition, and elsewhere. We delivered our products to wonderful families. I explained to kids what I did. “I’m a farmer. I’m a cheesemaker.”

And they got it. And I was fulfilled as I never had been in the corporate world.

In 2015 we sold that farm business because we wanted more time with our young daughter. But we didn’t stop farming. We still milk our own cows, make cheese, raise pigs, chickens, turkeys, rabbits, ducks, and grow more fruit and vegetables than we could possibly eat.

And, of course, we hunt, fish, camp, and practice survival skills. Why?

Because we realize how risky it is to depend solely on others for what we need to survive.

Does that mean we don’t shop at the grocery store? Of course not. Hell, I can’t make Cap’n Crunch. Or Nutella. But we’re not dependent on the grocery store.

I wrote about the need to be prepared for anything (including a pandemic) in my book, Start Prepping. I also taught parents how to keep their children prepare in my book Playful Preparedness. Clearly, I take prepping seriously.

But, in most ways, I’m just like you. I watch Netflix, take my kid to play at Chick-Fil-A (well…I did when they were open), and yell at the TV when the Steelers lose (it’s always the ref’s fault.)

And I work from home, like many of you now do. One of my passion is helping farmers become proficient marketers, something I do through Small Farm Nation. Another passion of mine is helping people to experience the joy that comes from being truly grateful for the simple things in life. In that regard, my wife, daughter, and I operate Naturally Grateful, a fashion business with a missing of helping people to spread gratitude by wearing gratitude.

I love doing both and do so in an office next to the schoolroom where we homeschool our daughter. And I’ll continue to do both for many years to come.