Today we’d like to introduce you to Lindsey Bennett.
Hi Lindsey, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
We started as backyard gardeners in Colorado with a dream to spend more time together: growing food, sharing the garden with our new daughter, and sharing our space and creations with friends and the joy of growing and sustainability with others. And in some ways before that. I discovered a deep and profound beckoning to work in the environmental studies field in late high school. Majored in this in college, with minor in geology, and spent a couple years searching for work in this field while I traveled with Cliff in our camper and he competed in Big Mountain Freeskiing. This was just after the 2008 recession and environmental policy jobs in the nonprofit sector were scarce. I did a couple internships related to this work but after a while I decided to return to school to get a secondary education license and began teaching science. A love for kids and science drove me to the conclusion that there are many ways to have an impact on our planet’s health and a bottom-up approach of teaching kids to love it is one way to do it! Educating others on the impact of their choices is at the heart of what I have always done and will always do.
By 2019, we were married, we owned our first home, we had a one year old, my husband had just lost his mother, and we were feeling as if we worked all day apart to afford to be together a few hours at the end of the day. A feeling many share. At the time, we lived in Old Town Longmont, CO and in many ways it was dreamy. We had a charming small starter home, with an huge backyard garden with fruit treees, accessible by bike to all the amenities of a quaint downtown, and a great Boulder County Farmer’s Market. We had great jobs: I worked for the school district teaching middle school science with amazing co-workers at a fantastic STEM school, and Cliff worked for the City of Longmont as an arborist tech, taking his years of tree work experience to the urban setting. This after transitioning away from a head ski coach position of the big mountain ski team at the competition center in Winer Park the previous 6 years. So he was still very involved in the big mountain ski community there.
In spite of all of the pieces on paper adding up, something felt a little hollow. We were fully in the rat-race in a growing city and rapidly growing state and desperately wanted to slow down – together. A seed was planted, “what if we bought some land and started to farm? Spent our days outdoors together, building something meaningful to share with our daughter and our community.” We began to dream, check out properties all around the US, mostly on the West Coast. We were ready to leave Colorado, a place that in many parts has been loved to death. There’s still so much to love there but we needed a change. I had been there 12 years and Cliff is a native and had lived there most of his life, aside from the winter months when he called Snowbird, UT area home base while traveling in the early 2000’s to compete in the Freeskiing World Tour for about 8 years.
However, after the loss of my mother-in-law and realizing a support network would be so helpful embarking on a new life and lifestyle as new parents, we began to expand our search East. We started to swim upstream and think about coming home to the midwest. To be near my family again after more than a decade, and to a much longer growing season. We entertained the idea of buying raw land and putting a camper on it (a life we were familiar with) and starting from scratch but ultimately decided the capital cost of running all the lines and building would be too high without new jobs lined up. And as fate would have it, a historic farm property came up for sale in a good school district, near my family, adjacent to a nature preserve, and in our budget. We were planning to live off the profits from our CO house sale while we established and needed to keep costs as low as realistically possible, with the long term goal of being debt free. A childhood friend was getting married in KC that weekend and we decided to casually check it out. We drove by and I instantly fell in love with the hilly, bucolic feel that Eastern Jackson County offers. We scheduled a tour. This was a little scary as we got a closer look at what this “as is” property needed in order to make it safe, livable and comfortable for our little family. However, the price was good, and the timing was even better. In September 2019, we put in our offer and we officially moved in late November of that year. It took a couple months to renovate a little 500 sq ft studio attached to the original farmhouse and we moved in days before lockdown in February of 2020 with the intention of starting to work the land and farm.
This led us to row farming for a couple of years, focused primarily on vegetables for farmer’s market. Because of Covid, it was easier than usual to get into good markets as newbies. We were at Lee’s Summit Market for two seasons and did the best we knew how. We made wonderful connections with customers and other vendors alike. We hung in there but saw we had traded one hustle for another. Market farming is not for the faint of heart. We had jumped all in, growing acres worth of veggies, accumulating sheep, cattle, hens, ducks, etc. We worked hard and barely made any money and soon realized that to reach our long term goals for this lifestyle and farm, one of us would need to work off farm. Cliff spent a year working at Powell Gardens, and then made a few moves until he finally landed at Monster Tree Service where he currently works. He’s back to tree work during the week days and spends weekends helping with bigger farm projects, which are never ending.
Cliff’s hard work off-farm, allows me to focus on family and farm. During the “accidental sabbatical” from farm work in 2022-2023 with the addition of our second daughter and Ann all consuming full home renovation of the historic farmhouse, we closed the farm stand, and really stopped any farm work and growth that wasn’t absolutely necessary. We reeled way in, got rid of the cattle, lots of chickens, and began to reduce our flock of sheep. I kept a small kitchen garden for my mental health but that was really it. Last year, after pausing, reflecting and refining; we renamed and reopened with a more defined direction. The Mercantile at Moonrise Ridge was born. A very small on-farm store at the bottom of our driveway. Years ago, Cliff took a look at the century-old dilapidated smokehouse near the house and had a vision for it as a farm stand. He nailed it! He somehow managed to put it on skids and drag it down the driveway to its current location. He built a new floor with boards from the barn, we painted it white, and it’s the perfect space to sell our goods.
We just opened our farm store for the season. This early the most consistent items are fresh sourdough bread that I bake daily, just a couple loaves every day, eggs from our truly free ranging hens, local honey from Golden Rule, and hand poured beeswax candles made from Golden Rule wax that I make. Soon, we’ll add some wool products from our Shetland sheep as well as cuts of lamb and garden produce. It brings such great joy connecting with our local community and providing nourishing food that evokes a sense of place.
As we continue to grow our farm and refine our products, it’s with the intention of an increased focus on Agritourism. One day, when the time is right, we plan to host classes, and host stays here on the farm. To offer others a glimpse into life on a sustainable homestead. To share the power of local foods, eating seasonally and the impact those small daily choices have on our global climate and local economy. It’s really coming full circle. Using our interests and talents of cooking, growing, and educating to continue to advocate and love our planet in hopes that others will too.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The road has been winding, it has been scenic, it has been slow but no it most certainly has not been smooth. In 2022, as we planned to welcome our second daughter, we also accelerated the timeline on the farmhouse renovation. Cliff was the hero here again, along with my Dad. Though at the time it felt like an eternity, within a little over a year of starting the project we had fully gutted and renovated the entire house, adding a second floor to the attic space. That was a hard time in our lives, financially with job changes, physically with the pregnancy annd all spare time dedicated to the house, and emotionally after we accepted we were in way over our heads and knew we needed to shift at the very least our timeline for the farm. However, we built more resilience during that time period that we knew possible. After those tough years, we scaled back what we were producing, we scaled back our expectations, and really just took a big pause to evaluate.
Even prior to that, we were so naive, especially in regard to timelines. A friend shared a Bill Gates quote a couple years ago that I think about often. Something to the effect of, “people overestimate what they can accomplish in a year, and underestimate what they can accomplish in 10.” We came into this journey high on dreams and theory and learned quickly there’s no replacement for experience. You can read all the farming books in the world and visit others farms and study to your heart’s content, but until you are actually doing the work, doing the growing, the tending, the harvesting, the marketing, executing a plan, studying the results, you just simply don’t know. I think the same is true in every industry. This is a hard truth because more than anything it requires time, patience, and persistence to build a portfolio to be competent in anything.
Motherhood too. I was only a mother for 18 months before making this big move. For me, it’s been such a blessing and expanded me in ways I didn’t know I needed. Most notably, patience. We live in a very adult-centric world. We know we want something, we are trained to go get it at the fastest pace possible. Children don’t function that way, and they don’t need to. For years it felt frustrating to me that I was slowed down in pursuing my goals with my kids in tow. But now I see that pace changes with the season of life you are in. This summer, with our third baby on the way, I’m planning for a slower year, to maintain what we have built so far, and save the growth goals for next year. There’s time for those adult goals but children only get one childhood and I only get one one motherhood. Turns out all the cliche phrases are true, and it really does go so fast. So I’m practicing to acknowledge the season I’m in, while I’m in it, and learning to lean in. Just be here in these slower more concrete days of early motherhood with young kids. Nothing lasts forever. Plus, there’s a lot of beauty in the slower pace if you allow yourself to see it and to enjoy it.
And finally, just life not turning out the way you expect. Expectations vs reality can cause a lot of strife when we let it. In other words, it’s not always like the brochure. My expectation of the way our farm would be or how I should feel, or what it would be like when we got to “x” point in our journey vs how it actually is. That can be a real challenge, especially in our flat digital world of nonstop comparison. We see polished farms and homesteads, and now completely AI generated ones and it creates this false sense of your own goal. It creates your mental image subconsciously without your conscious consent of what you really want and what it really takes to get there in the real world. The evolving sense of satisfaction from what we see people do online in seconds vs what that work feels like. That gap is something I think we will only see grow and can become crippling when you feel you aren’t achieving what you think you want or achieving it quickly enough. This has led me to really limit my time in those spaces. It alters my expectation of what I’m able to achieve and have a nagging sense of disappointment even when I do achieve a goal.
The past three years I have homeschooled our kids while they work alongside me (or rather watch me work most of the time) and play and enjoy our beautiful home. Though it’s easy to lose the forest to the trees, in many ways we are living our original dream and if not fully there, taking little steps to get there. This year, as we prepare for the arrival of our third child, it comes with an awareness there’s no race or even final destination. This has not been a linear process and many times in this journey, I asked myself, “What the hell are we doing?” But every time, when I reach the other side of a dark valley, and see the view from the top again and I remember: the beauty, the clarity, the perspective, the deep joy, the purpose, and satisfaction it offers. Six and a half years after our move, we are settled into a beautifully renovated 1918 farmhouse, and running our little farm business with lots of room still to grow. And best of all, we’re doing it together. Realizing our shared goal.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
My time is spent raising our kids and slowly building our farm, growing a big garden, and stocking our farm stand with our products and hand crafted goods made by Cliff and I, and curating a few by other local producers. Right now my work looks like baking sourdough bread daily, planting a big vegetable and herb garden, a small orchard, tending to our flock of Shetland Sheep, and creating seasonal recipes to share on our blog. I also have dabbled in natural tanning of the sheep hides which I intend to sell eventually. There’s a steep learning curve with all of these crafts and trades.
Though this was not my intention, I think I’m probably best known for sourdough bread. It’s a big hit around here! Prior to making sourdough, I honestly didn’t enjoy baking much and still don’t really. I do love sourdough though. Nothing is more satisfying that pulling a perfect loaf of crusty bread from the oven, even from a woman who isn’t really a bread person. I think it’s all the variables that impact the perfect loaf. It’s the science lover in me. I actually wish I was known for gardening, which is why I’ve been honing that skill more and working harder at it.
And maybe cooking in general. I love using the inspiration of seasonal ingredients to create nourishing meals for friends and family. I love the sense of place that a great local meal evokes. It’s something I was inspired by on trips to Spain and Italy and will never forget. The deep connection to food and to land there is palpable and so delicious and I want to share that here. I want people to know that everywhere on this beautiful Earth is special and unique and should be cherished, yes even Missouri, and you can taste it. Someone once summarized it as “grounding through food” and I love that.
The theme in all of my creative pursuits is authenticity and connection. And I suppose anchoring all my creative pursuits in this is what I’m most proud of. I want a pure experience. The purest, freshest food, the deepest authentic connection to the animals we raise, I want to know how everything is made and its origins and to share that authenticity with others.
Are there any apps, books, podcasts, blogs or other resources you think our readers should check out?
This is tricky. I love to read, I love to learn, and I would say I even have an insatiable appetite for information and learning all the “hows” that life has to offer. However, it’s a slippery slope for me. Sometimes I become so consumed by consuming the information I fall into analysis paralysis or information overload and never allow myself to integrate all or any of it. There have been many influential farmers, gardeners, local and global whose work I admire and study. However, it was only after implementing the methods that I truly understood the work. One notable influence is Charles Dowding based in the UK. We switched to a no-dig garden and it has stuck. I have a few of his books and enjoy his very hands on, no fuss methods. I’m also influenced by permaculture and biodynamic agriculture and there are too many names to name. I like to get as close to the primary source of information as I can in any teaching and that includes lectures by Rudolf Steiner as well as using Maria Thun’s Biodynamic Almanac.
In the early days after our move I was listening to a lot of podcasts and following a lot of farms on social media and what I learned is that there’s a whole lot of egomaniacs out there, probably in every industry but especially in farming it seems. Maybe the idea of “playing God” with growing and raising animals, I’m not sure. Honestly, I just felt so overwhelmed by it all. Eventually, I decided experience is always my best teacher so I eased up on those.
I did recently become a MU Extension Master Gardener Intern and am presently volunteering to become a Master Gardener which really emphasizes research based methods and educational outreach. Cliff’s been pursuing his interests recently in culinary mushrooms recently by participating and completing the Wild Mushroom Identification course through Missouri Mycological Society. He can now sell wild mushrooms he finds if he chooses. Our focus is really just on lifelong learning and continuing to pursue our interests.
In terms of staying my best self, I’ll re-read Eckhart Tolle every couple of years to ground and refocus my inner work. I love his book, “A New Earth”. More casually, I set goals and journal with the moon’s phases to remind myself I’m part of this Earth and the energy that comes with it. But most of all, just spending time in nature is what always feels best for us both.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.moonrise-ridge.com
- Instagram: @moonrise-ridge
- Facebook: Moonrise Ridge
