Hello everyone!
This seems a bit odd and uncomfortable for me as our situation is not dire and so many others here are. At the same time, my husband and I are so dedicated to our project that we must make every attempt to have it succeed.
The long story is this, last year, my husband and I bought a long abandoned, 200 year old home in the center of a small town in Massachusetts. This house was an eyesore and we, well, mostly my husband, spent the year fixing her up both inside and out along with her very overgrown three acres. During this time, we were embraced by this beautiful town. Horns started honking, passers-by introduces themselves and we quickly became old friends to this beautiful community. This charming place is now our home.
We are both in the restaurant industry and have been since we’ve been able to work. While it can be lucrative, the hours are not family friendly and recent events have proven that employment opportunities are a bit more volatile than we’d prefer. Covid turned us straight to God and what it meant to be Christian, what it meant to be a community. Keeping our hospitality roots in mind, we focused our four months of involuntary time off on how we can put our passions towards something better than clocking in and selling steaks.
The vision is this: within our little homestead, build a modest farm stand where we can sell cheese, wine, charcuterie and surplus produce from a standpoint of traditional hosting and gourmet expertise. You see, our little town of 2500 is sleepy and the town center where we live could really use some life. We want to turn our passion for good food and a good life into a way to raise our three children and show them what it is to be a part of a community. And we will. We have tilled about an acre already, and will be planting heirloom and organic seeds starting this spring. Our 45 chickens will be gaining 165 new friends this spring so that we can sell more eggs. We are putting in a small well, solar panels, and in the final stages of buying the building that will become our shop, Mirabelle. The reason I am here, is because as I said, we are only servers and we have three children. We aren’t exactly swimming in capital. So I suppose the hope is that by some miracle, we are able to find a way fund all of these projects without breaking the bank. As I said before, WE WILL ACHIEVE THIS, no matter what. The question now is how long it will take. Our goal is to be open in the fall.
If you have taken the time to read all of this then thank you, and if you have considered donating, thank you again. To be honest, I opened this account mostly because I knew at least one more soul would be praying for our dream. We are dead set on this and truly so blessed to have many people in our community already rallying for us, praying for us and helping us on this journey. We are so humbled and thankful.
God Bless everyone on this site and may all find what it is that they need and desire.
-Amanda
P.S. I’d love to take the extra text space to explain the name Mirabelle. My husband’s grandfather, who recently passed, lived in the north of France. On his property there was a farm that included many Mirabelle trees, yellow plums that are famous in this region. My husband would spend summers there, waking up early with his brothers to help harvest or build things and of course, play. A story he told me always stuck in my mind, about his grandfather and his great strength shaking the Mirabelle trees by the trunk and making the fruit rain down on the ground. The boys’ job was to pick the plums off the ground and then his grandma would make jams. His grandfather would also make a special Mirabelle schnapps, the prize of the family. We have about 3oz of it left in our home. I will always remember the way my husband’s face would light up and the pride he had when telling this story. His grandfather was such a hardworking man and my husband revered him for it. When we decided to take on our own homesteading journey and add the shop, Mirabelle was the only name that made sense to me.
