Our Story

We recognize that there is a mainstream way of doing things in this world, which has developed over many generations, and this is what my husband and I call the System. We believe this multi-faceted system, which affects nearly every aspect of our lives, largely deviates from what we believe our Creator intended for all of us.

Coming out of the System

Despite multiple attempts at addressing various tentacles of the System and trying to right the course it was paving for the generations to come, we found it was best to just ditch the System altogether and start anew.

We left the city behind.

While we didn’t know it at the time, our journey of coming out of the System began when my husband and I left the city behind in 2004.

We packed up our family and all of our possessions and journeyed to a plot of land in the country, on which sat my grandparents’ house adjacent to my parents’ house, where we indebted ourselves to a bank in order to call this place our new home. And we spent well over a decade paying that debt off (with interest).

We took on more personal responsibility.

We quickly discovered we had to learn how to manage our own water supply, sewage and waste removal because there were no municipal services to tap into there.

We bought our property “as is” because that was the only way we could afford it. So, the house, property & other outbuildings were all in need of some sort of care & repair. (And they still do in varying degrees.)

Given my husband’s skills & experience, we figured he’d do much of the work himself. And since I’m not that particular about stuff, I was fine with whatever living conditions we had to deal with (so long as it wasn’t unsafe or unhealthy), so improvements were often made on an as-needed basis.

We employed ourselves.

When we moved, it was not due to an employment opportunity, so once we got here, we had to employ ourselves in order to generate an income to pay back the bank and meet all of our other living expenses. Thankfully, we had Internet access and a variety of useful skills we could put to work for us.

Ty was an independent contractor doing roofing, general construction, & handyman work before we moved, and I was an accountant with office management & computer skills & experience in my back pocket.

Ty had some experience selling on eBay. And I had just begun to learn about SEO & Internet Marketing and was in the process of already building my own special interest website from scratch.

So, with the help of my father, who had just recently opened his own brick & mortar wallpaper store in conjunction with his own e-commerce website (which he had designed from scratch being a computer programmer himself), we got busy developing our own online business.

We eventually employed livestock.

Our “lawn” was much larger (16+ acres in total) than what we had before, and our time & energy were limited, so we eventually acquired livestock to help manage the property.

We took advantage of our natural resources.

Since our house came with a fireplace and our property came with a wooded section (and the electric heating bill would skyrocket in the winter), we turned to heating our home with wood burning stoves.

We educated our kids at home.

Our young family began to expand & grow. Since we were home all day, we chose to keep our kids home with us and teach them how to read & write & do math ourselves. This meant I never got a break from having to feed all those mouths all day, every day — and keep them engaged & out of trouble. But I’m grateful for being with them all throughout their childhood and the positive impact we were able to have on one another.

We re-educated ourselves.

As time passed, we began to learn more about natural living, and we started paying more attention to the food we were all consuming — both literally & figuratively. This led us to questioning a whole host of things.

But when we began to ask certain questions that were apparently taboo, our world started turning upside down.

We lost our community support.

Given our desire to know the truth, we persisted in questioning the unquestionable — and speaking about it. And this led to the loss of all the community connections we had managed to establish & develop in that area within our six years of being there.

Nonetheless, we pressed on — seeking & finding social connections elsewhere.

Thankfully, we found community support online — for a time.

We were able to find others online who were willing to not only question the unquestionable in search of the truth but also talk about it. And we engaged with one another.

Of course, these people lived all over the country — some were even outside the country. Given some of what we were learning — and having shared experiences (being excommunicated from our previous communities), we took advantage of many opportunities to meet with several of these people in person. And we created opportunities for others of like mind & like conviction to meet with us as well.

Eventually we found people in our local region with whom we could gather & associate.

But of course, we continued questioning the unquestionable — and speaking about it. And again, this led to the loss of newfound community connections. This happened again & again with each new path of inquiry & investigation we went down. Until we were finally whittled down to just a handful of folks who appreciated & largely agreed with many of our findings.

This small group of ours began to connect with one another on a weekly basis via Zoom conference calls in early 2018 (before these kinds of connections became very popular). And everyone on the weekly calls was able to get to know each other. While my husband & I were the common thread between them all, they all interacted with one another whether we were in the picture or not.

Then, that fall we hosted a week-long campout on our homestead to bring this group together in person, and we all had a glorious time living life together. It was a beautiful thing. The saddest part was after the event was over and everyone went back home.

While we certainly enjoyed getting to know everyone over the course of that year leading up to that event, it took an enormous toll on my husband & I having to devote so many hours in front of a screen each week to facilitate those meetings.

And then, given our chosen land-based lifestyle & location, we knew we needed more physical (in-person) aid & support throughout the year, let alone throughout the week.

Plus, our children were 11-15 years old by the end of that year, and they needed more in-person time with other people besides ourselves.

So, we decided to make a drastic change.

Living Primarily Online is Not Sustainable

We Took on a Second Home.

In the late summer of 2019, we purchased another home in a small mountain town where our kids could experience a different way of life, and we could all become active & contributing members to a geography-based community.

We rearranged systems on our homestead so we could be away together for several nights at a time. And we set up a second office from which to run our online business, so we could work at either place. Then, my husband & I took turns traveling between these locations each week, so we could manage our affairs in both places.

While it was a bit taxing on Ty & I, it was worthwhile to us because of what our kids were able to experience through it all.

And I was gaining a lot of hands-on experience doing something that I loved: connecting personally with people face-to-face and developing & distributing a local print publication to support & help connect that community to each other. It was wonderful.

Then, the World-at-Large Turned Upside Down

Then, March of 2020 happened, and everybody’s world was turned upside down.

The economy was shut down. People became fearful of getting sick and began to mask up & socially distance themselves from one another.

We headed back to the homestead.

Given the state of affairs, we moved back to the homestead where most of our natural resources were. And we carried on with our old lifestyle of living on (& off) the land.

At this point, people-at-large began to turn to the Internet for all of their purchases, which thankfully enabled our online business to boom.

We lived life together with others (for over six months).

Since my husband had already been working on getting someone to come stay & work on our homestead prior to all of this, we already had a young family lined up to move in with us at the start of that April.

This enabled us all to help one another, and we made huge strides in getting out of debt and improving systems & facilities on our homestead — all the while in the mask-free company of others willing to live life together with us for that year.

In mid-Fall that young family moved on, and we were back to living alone again. But we knew that time was short — things were changing fast in the world-at-large, and we had to ACT wisely and strategically to not only weather what we saw coming down the pike, but hopefully also prosper through it.

So, we:

• Worked diligently to get out of any remaining debt that we had,
• Started migrating our operations to function off-grid, and
• Pursued a variety of endeavors to build a fresh new community centered around us & our homestead.

Then, in the summer of 2024, the kids & I began to reconnect more with the small mountain town we had left behind. Again, we divided our attention between these two locations with my husband primarily staying on the homestead, and I travel back & forth.

We’re now helping our children transition into adulthood.

My husband & I are doing what we can to help meet our family’s individual needs as each of our children transitions into adulthood.

My husband is helping our daughter in her personal pursuit of having her own physical used bookstore. They are each also managing their own online business ventures, in addition to caring for the livestock and gardening on the homestead.

I’m working alongside my eldest son in the mountains, running our family’s e-commerce business and pursuing other online endeavors. And I’m helping prepare him and my younger son to live more independently & encouraging them to engage more with people offline.

Aside from this, my husband & I are also working in other ways to bring to fruition our shared aim of establishing an ecovillage-type community around us.

Living Life Together (on & off the Land) is Key to our Survival & Future Success

When operating within the System, a vast network of people all performing their own roles in making the System work is made available. In fact, it is the people who actually make the System work.

But when we operate outside of that system, we’re on our own. And we have to either tap into:

• other networks operating outside the System,
• develop our own network of people,
• or employ a combination of both.

We’re doing a combination of both as we pursue our shared aim to live life together with others on & off the Land.

[This page was written by Carrie (not Kelly) and last updated on 5/8/25.]