In 2018, we bought a 100-year-old fixer-upper farmhouse in North Carolina. There was no plan. Which, if you know us — two planners by nature — is a little funny. But sometimes you just know.

Farming was in our blood. Ancestors on both sides of the family worked the land. Being outside fuels us. And so, without quite intending to, we started building something.

The first summer brought two raised beds, olive and fig trees, berry bushes, and twelve baby chicks. One of those chicks turned out to be a rooster. His name is Hernan, and he has served as head of security for the coop ever since.

When the pandemic came, we leaned in harder. More beds. More time in our little corner of the world. Then came three pygmy goats — named Luke, Han Solo, and Anakin by our daughters, deep in their Star Wars era. Then the alpacas, because Courtney had started weaving (thanks to a loom gifted to our daughter Claire that Claire, after honest consideration, decided wasn't quite hers) and we'd started wondering: could we grow our own fiber?

Turns out: yes.

At some point we stopped calling it homesteading and started calling it a farm. Paradiso la Caria — paradise in Italian, la Caria for our family name — was born. Our paradise. In our little corner of the world.