Faith Family Farm
The Stroot family
“A farm includes the passion of the farmer’s heart... the biological activity of the soil, the pleasantness of the air about the farm – it’s everything touching, emanating from, and supplying that piece of landscape.”
“This sustenance we absorb has a story to tell. It has a journey. It leaves a footprint. It leaves a legacy.”
Joel Salatin
Our Story
From the day we met we shared a love of homesteading. It’s a team effort for the family and a collaboration with neighboring homesteaders and all our friends. Living the day-to-day of is lots of work and learning but a blessing and joy.
We began homesteading in the small backyard of our first home, a house in Gastonia that we gutted and fixed together. In a long raised garden bed, we grew food for our family and others. Around the front we replaced ornamental trees and shrubs with food-producing plants. A flock of six hens gave us eggs and hours of entertainment along with a small fire pit. It was peaceful and simple... we remember those days fondly. Homesteading comes in many shapes and sizes!
When we moved our family to an old horse farm in 2015, we found more to keep us busy. There had been many horses on small areas of pasture, leading to soil compaction and very little vegetation. Our first few years were focused on soil building using cover crops, compost, and mulch.
As we cared for the soil, it took care of us. Harvests grew bountiful and the work of preserving and sharing began. One of our favorite things about a homegrown lifestyle is the amazing community it builds!
Andrea is a homesteader and teacher at heart. Her dad, who spent his childhood on a farm in the mountains of northern Cyprus, taught her the love of gardening. She grew up homeschooled by her pioneering mom, and spent hours a day exploring the woods and climbing trees with her four siblings. Before becoming a mother, she used her music degrees and Montessori certification to guide children in arts and academics. Those experiences make for a lot of fun now as she homeschools our three daughters Claire, Leah, and Joanna. Their favorite classroom is outdoors on the homestead.
Joel grew up in farming, with his dad managing a 200-acre pick-your-own apple orchard and with much of his extended family in full-time farming endeavors. His dad taught him how to farm, and always to live with the values of Faith, family, and farm in that order. When Joel was sixteen, his dad was killed in a car accident that Joel was in with him just before Christmas.
Remembering his dad’s words, Joel went on to college. After finishing his undergraduate, he used his dad’s old backpack and hiked the 2,200 mile Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine in memory of his dad, whose unfulfilled goal was to complete it.
Feeling called to discern God’s will by considering the priesthood, Joel attended Catholic seminary for two years. He found himself drawn to the mission fields and to marriage as he worked with missions in Haiti and Mexico. In these remote poor areas he saw a great need for dentists. Dentistry attracted him through allowing him to really help people in a physical way while spreading the gospel message, and also helped him to be able to support a family and a farm.
It was on his way to serve in Honduras that he met Andrea. In 2013, he finally graduated dental school. Although his schooling spanned a time of twelve years, he never lost his desire to get back to the rural farm life. The dream became reality when he and Andrea purchased 35 acres near Charlotte. He shares his time between meeting the dental needs of local families and farming the homestead.
We love to join with others on their homesteading journeys. As we encourage in our classes, those journeys take on forms big and small! We're all stewards of the amazing gift of creation, and homesteading helps us respect the land and its creatures, and our bodies and souls. It’s truly exciting to grow and prepare our own food, and it feels good to know the farmers who supply what we feed to the people we love.
