Howdy Y’all!
I’m Janet, Mrs. Farmer Brown. I thought I’d give you a little insight and background information about me and how Farmer Brown’s Paradise came into fruition.
Believe it or not, I’m on my third and favorite “career” in my 50 something “loving life” life!
I started out at the age of 24 as an elementary school teacher. At 38, I obtained my Master of Arts Degree: K-12 The Diverse Learner. Over the course of sixteen years, I taught for twelve: Burkburnett, Bryan, College Station, all in Texas, and eight of those years in Ft. Collins, Colorado. My teaching career spanned from 2nd, 5th, and, mostly, 6th grades. It was hard to leave the school I loved so much in Ft. Collins, where I also served on several school committees, a couple of district committees, taught some mini-lessons to teachers on strategies to teach writing skills, and diverse learners at both ends of the spectrum in a full-inclusion school. In 1999, I was honored to be selected as Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers. I loved teaching; it was a fit with my personality and strengths.
The move to Auburn, AL, in 2000, began a whirlwind of life changes. Taking a hiatus from teaching, I was now going to be that Volunteer mom for my then, two teenage boys.
My boys all grown up! ❤️
They were both members of the High School band, so it seemed only natural to jump in there serving four years as the Band Parent Secretary. Amidst all of that, I drew inspiration to begin my second career in faux and decorative finishing, after undertaking a project that involved faux finishing the walls of the home we were building. As people wandered in the home under construction, as so many like to do, I was approached to do some faux finishing for a couple. That’s how it began.
In the midst of all of these changes, my twenty-one year marriage ended, but a year and a half later, I met and later married my extraordinary soulmate, Randy (AKA – Mr. Farmer Brown!) 
Randy, also was and still is involved in the construction industry owning his company, RL Brown Drywall, llc. Being each others cheerleaders, he was always introducing me to his contractors and clients, promoting my faux finishing skills. My business grew and I logged more than 150 hours of faux finishing instruction in Atlanta, GA, and Vero Beach, FL, along with untold hours of hard work applying my new skills for various clients.
By 2004, I had hired a helper and was still 6 weeks behind. So I hired a second one. Eventually, we made the plunge to open a store front in a new strip mall, transforming 3000 sf. of space into a showcase for my own retail store, not only displaying finishes and samples, but selling faux products, and offering classes in a large studio, while still continuing contract work.
The design, construction and décor of my new studio was definitely a family affair! Randy brought his years of experience in the building trades to the forefront in completing the entire interior of the studio. 
A 25-foot suspended barrel ceiling ran through the center of the store and was faux finished with an incredible plaster and wax. An elaborate faux finish on a 6-foot suspended dome ceiling over the hand built and plastered check-out counter at the store’s entrance was yet another sample of eye candy. My oldest son, an AU architectural student at the time, designed the layout of the store. There were two room vignettes, showcasing faux finishes on walls and furniture, separated by a two-way gas fireplace, floor to ceiling custom built stained wood display cases for the products we sold, and another open area housing sample boards and moldings showing various finishes for walls and furniture, an amazing office which included a mural embedded in an Italian plaster finish, high-end bathrooms, a storage/clean-up area, and a large teaching studio! No feature was left out. It was really something! In February, 2005, Faux Biz was open for “biz!”
Over the course of the next 3 years, the company thrived with many customers, contract clients, and a staff of 10 at it’s height. I expanded my distributorships to also include decorative concrete overlay products. Our work started getting recognized and published in several local and national magazines. In 2007, we were one of twelve internationally, invited to demonstrate our work at the annual World of Concrete Show in Las Vegas! That was fun, but my team: two of my employees, Randy, and I, (along with three other co-distributors who lent a hand when they could,) had never worked so hard in our lives logging accumulatively over 400 hours of labor in 3 days! Our work was featured in two national concrete magazines.
In the end, that whirlwind and exhaustive second career came to a close. In 2008, when the housing market crashed, so did the desire of home-owners and businesses to spend money on something they didn’t have to have. The writing was on the wall – time to get out and fast! So, in March of 2009, Randy and I made the decision to close up shop.
I found myself back home managing the house and also serving as Randy’s bookkeeper. It was quite lovely! But why let that slower, quiet pace of life be it? I suppose we just couldn’t leave well enough alone! LOL
That same spring of 2009, with heavy concerns about the decline of the economy and the direction of the USA becoming unrecognizable, Randy began talking about making our little three and a half acre paradise self-sustaining. When he mentioned the G word: garden, my eyes rolled back in my head and I laughed out loud announcing, “You know I kill everything!” Notably, my idea of gardening was buying fresh plants for the porches once a month and/or right before we had visitors! His reply was something on the order of, “You love to learn new things! Read up and let’s do this!” Ah, the challenge method of coercion…he is good!
So, I did. That summer, we built and planted a garden locating it where I had originally planned/sketched a future beautiful putting green. On a growing/harvest scale of 1 to 10, I gave it a 2! (FORE!!!!!!!)
That didn’t make me happy; I’m not a fan of failure, so I continued my learning journey and we modified the gardening methods several times over the next few years with increasing success – we made it to a 5 on the scale!
In the midst of my studies, I came across the concept of homesteading discovering we had several issues to address if we truly wanted to be self-sustaining. In 2013, we hired a pro prepper/homesteader from South Carolina to do some work. With Randy and my son, (the now architect/homesteader/walking encyclopedia living in Michigan,) as his assistants, he installed a hand-pump in our well. This enabled us to always have water available in the event of a power outage. Homesteading checklist: Water? Check!
While here for the day-long work and consult, the pro evaluated our place making several suggestions to include that our garden was dinky! It needed to be five times that large and placed in the sunniest location: THE FRONT YARD of beautiful grass! My first reaction was to laugh. When Randy wasn’t joining that reaction, my laughter became a nervous giggle. Tear up the front yard with an unsightly garden??? I chewed on that one for awhile! A few months to be exact! Eventually, the sketchpad surfaced, but that part of the story is a few paragraphs on down!
Much to my dismay, the pro homesteader also suggested we get some livestock. His recommendation was chickens. Needless to say, his visit was making me increasingly uncomfortable. After he left and several hours of brain churning, I inwardly decided he was correct about it all. My big girl panties were now pulled up and I was mentally ready to tackle the issues I had: how to do these things while making sure they were highly functional but, simultaneously, aesthetically pleasing. NOTE: The latter was, and still is, the crux of all projects here at Farmer Brown’s Paradise! We had worked tooooo hard, wearing out muscles, and developing callused hands building this place into a comfortable home with many beautiful features, trails, carefully designed out-buildings, landscape beds, etc., to not enjoy looking at what we built.
Therefore, in addition to continuing my gardening education, I had a new topic, backyard chicken keeping. The extent of my chicken knowledge at the time was: baby chicks were cute, big chickens were dirty, dumb, and noisy, roosters were scary mean, and all of them stunk! What to do, what to do?
After many hours of study, multiple sketches, and hours of conversations with Randy, we had our plan. It took us from October 2013 to March 2014, to bring the chicken coop and run to fruition. (And by the way… chicken coops don’t have to stink if you know what to do and do it faithfully!) If you’d like to read that project story, I will be adding a link in the Farm Critters category! Homestead Checklist: Livestock? Check!
Having the farm animals in place, it was time to tackle the expanded garden issue. The sketchpad was getting used up again. I drew a plan for four garden beds, two on each side, separated by a nine-foot strip of my lovely green grass. The length of that strip was adorned with three 10-foot arches crafted to look like natural branches to hold climbing roses and separate the two sections. The perimeter of these gardens also had a six-foot strip of my lovely green grass and each two-bed section was surrounded by a 3-foot split rail fence. That project began in October of 2014 and was completed in the spring of 2015.
It was planted that spring! Oh, and the success scale was a 4 (insert eye roll!) We improved the soil and the following year we made it to a 5! Still not acceptable! Homestead Checklist: Food? Still, no solid check in the box.
Then I stumbled across a gardening method that seemed too good to be true. It touted- plant it, and forget it! Is there really such a thing? We decided to do a test that summer of 2016, building one gutter and following the exact directions in the RGGS (Rain Gutter Garden System,) to the letter. The test results were shocking, truly shocking! The production on that gutter was at least an 8!
So you can probably guess the next step… convert ALL five garden beds to this system. Ahhh, but the same parameters still applied: it had to be attractive to look at! So, out came the sketchpad again. After lots of reading up to completely understand the system along with joining the RGGS facebook group, reading every post and every comment for a season, I felt fully knowledgeable on how to proceed. In the spring of 2017, we did, indeed, build all thirteen ten-foot gutters (stained to match our structures,) adorned with beautiful green buckets and got to planting! Every day was so fun! We finally scored 10 out of 10! I do need to add here that there is no such thing as plant it and forget it. The watering is automatic, there is no weeding, but you still have to be diligent in fighting the garden pests, funguses, etc. Homestead Checklist: Food? Check!
As I started making my own posts in the RGGS facebook group this past year even adding a couple of how-to videos I had made, many of the members encouraged me to start my own YouTube channel. In May, 2017, I did that. (By the way, all of that along with video editing was an additional learning curve!) I must say, although extremely time-consuming, it’s enormously fun and the feedback from folks about how easily they learn and understand the how-to’s from my videos is what makes me keep doing them. I reckon’ the teacher in me is still alive and well.
We love our little slice of paradise we are creating. It’s especially fun when our boys and their little families come to visit. We have four boys between us, all married, and seven grandchildren. They are all spread out with two in GA, one in SC, and one in MI.
That brings the story up to date with the creation of this blog. Oh my, at the learning curves in which I continue to find myself!
Quote for good living: “Keep your eyes on God, your feet on the ground, and your hands on the plow.” – Mr. Farmer Brown