You don’t need a lifetime of farming experience to build a successful farm. Dana and Lauren Cavalea share how they went from corporate careers and zero agricultural background to growing a thriving direct-to-consumer meat business on more than 300 acres. Along the way, they discuss the realities of raising livestock, selling beef, expanding a farm business, and why adaptability, strong marketing, and faith have been just as important as hard work. If you’ve ever wondered whether it’s possible to start farming from scratch, this conversation will encourage you to boldly take the first step!
In this episode, we cover:
- How two complete beginners unexpectedly became farmers on 130 acres
- Buying their first cattle, pigs, and chickens with no farming experience
- Learning hard lessons about livestock, butchering, and selling their first beef
- Growing from 130 acres to more than 300 through strategic land purchases
- Building a nationwide direct-to-consumer meat business
- Selling beef shares, meat boxes, and working with other local farmers
- The business skills every profitable farmer needs beyond raising livestock
- Beef shares vs. individual meat boxes: the pros and cons of each model
- What it really takes to ship frozen meat across the country
- Using authentic storytelling and social media to grow a loyal customer base
- Why flexibility, continual learning, and adapting have been key to their success
- Following God’s leading, embracing new challenges, and encouraging others to simply get started
Thank you to our Sponsors!
NutriMill.com | High-quality small kitchen appliance products that function well, are easy to use, and promote healthy eating
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About Dana & Lauren
Freedom Farms was started by Dana & Lauren Cavalea. The two met in high school and eventually went their separate ways for college and the years that followed.
About a decade later the two reunited and have been on a journey ever since. Lauren spent her career working in news for ABC News, while Coach Dana Cavalea became a World Champion Coach for the New York Yankees. What do you get when a professional sports coach and a news aficionado get together?
You get Freedom Farms. A 270 acre farm in Upstate NY shipping meats nationwide. They are a PRO-AMERICA, PRO-FREEDOM Farm that loves America, and are 100% committed to keeping American Farms Being Farmed by Americans!
Together, along with the farm’s mascots, Rocco & Lucci (their English Bulldogs), and Gunner and Bullet, the farm is worked daily and filled with energy— producing the best and healthiest beef in New York.
Resources mentioned
Head over to Freedom Farms to see their full lineup of high-quality meat selections and more!
Connect
Dana & Lauren Cavalea | Website | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube
Homesteaders of America | Website | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Pinterest
From Zero Experience to a Booming Farm Business: The Power of Authentic Marketing Transcript
Amy Fewell Welcome to the Homesteaders of America Podcast, where we encourage simple living, hard work, natural healthcare, real food, and building an agrarian society. If you’re pioneering your way through modern noise and conveniences, and you’re an advocate for living a more sustainable and quiet life, this podcast is for you. Welcome to this week’s podcast. I’m your host, Amy Fewell, and I’m the founder of the Homesteaders of America organization and annual events. If you’re not familiar with us, we are a resource for homesteading education and online support. And we even host a couple of in-person events each year with our biggest annual event happening right outside the nation’s capital here in Virginia every October. Check us out online at HomesteadersofAmerica.com. Follow us on all of our social media platforms and subscribe to our newsletter so that you can be the first to know about all things HOA (that’s short for Homesteaders of America). Don’t forget that we have an online membership that gives you access to thousands—yes, literally thousands—of hours worth of information and videos. It also gets you discount codes, an HOA decal sticker when you sign up, and access to event tickets before anyone else. All right. Let’s dive into this week’s episode.
Amy Fewell Welcome back to this week’s episode of the Homesteaders of America podcast. This week, I have a husband and wife team that I’m excited to introduce you guys to. Welcome to the podcast, Dana and Lauren.
Lauren Cavalea Thank you, Amy. We’re excited to be here.
Amy Fewell Yeah. Okay, so tell us just a quick bio, like who you are, and then we’ll get into this week’s podcast.
Lauren Cavalea Take it away, Dana.
Dana Cavalea I was going to say you could take it away because I always take it away, but anyway, so I’m Dana. This is Lauren. We were not farmers. That’s probably the best way to say it. We didn’t grow up as farmers. We grew up around some farms on Eastern Long Island, but they were vineyards and sod farms. We didn’t really have too many animals outside of ducks at the local duck pond. But with that being said, I think both of us went and had careers. I had a career with the New York Yankees in professional baseball. Lauren worked for ABC News in New York City. And, you know, after doing those gigs for a while, you start to have some thoughts of like, hey, maybe there’s something else that we can do, would like to do and have…
Lauren Cavalea A new challenge.
Dana Cavalea —a new challenge and have interest in. And even at that point, it still wasn’t agriculture and it still wasn’t farming. We didn’t find our bug yet. So we were living in Westchester County for a bit. I was still coaching, I had a bunch of gyms, and then we ended up moving down to Florida, land of the free. So, we had a good time down there but after a little while it started to get a little bit, you know, boring per se and then COVID came around. Our folks were still up in New York, and we said, “You know what, let’s go up for the summer and spend some time with family.” And that’s what we did. And upon doing that, we realized that it’s probably only a good idea to be around your folks for about three to seven days at a time before you need to kind of go hit the road and see what else is out there. So we found a place upstate that we were going to go visit and have a good time for a weekend upstate New York and I said, “You know what? There’s a real estate listing I’ve been looking at.” Actually, there were two of them. “And let’s just swing by.” It was a real estate listing on Zillow and the place looked somewhat dilapidated. The pictures were done by the owner. And we ended up saying, “All right, let’s go take a look.” So, we go, we take a look, and we meet the owner of the property, and it ends up being the farm that we’re at today. It’s 130 acres.
Lauren Cavalea She gave us a three hour tour. And it was during COVID, so we wanted a place out of the city limits. You know, a place where we could kind of escape to from Florida and the summers. But then we just fell in love with the farm. And Dana was like, “Why don’t we just throw our hat in?”
Dana Cavalea Yeah. So on the way home, we said, “Should we do it?” And we weren’t sure. So, we ended up talking to some family about it and whatnot. And the first thing my dad said was, “What do you know about farming?” People call Long Island Italian. And I said, “Well, we can sell hay.” That was my answer back. That was pretty much the only defense I had for it. And that was pretty much it. So after that, we ended up talking to the owner. She liked us, we liked her, and we were able to formulate probably what was the hardest negotiation and deal I’ve ever been a part of. And we got it done in, I would say, November 20th of 2020. That’s when we closed on the farm. And that was it. And by January 1st, we were back down in Florida because it was the coldest weather we had ever experienced in New York. So anyway, get back in about… I want to say it was May of that year. And I look out at this farm and I say, “You know, it’s a beautiful property, but something’s missing.” So that something was animals. So what do you do, right? You say, “Well, where do I find cows? I have no idea.” So anyway, I went on Craigslist, and I found 13 cows about 35 minutes from where we are. So I call the guy up and he says, “Hey, I’m moving to Wyoming at the end of the week, and I have to get rid of these cows in the next couple of days. Why don’t you come take a look?” So I bring my checkbook, I drive over to this guy’s house, and I go and I check out the cows. I have no idea what I’m looking at. And he said he had 13 cows, and I was looking for cows, so we ended up doing a deal for the cows.
Amy Fewell And you became an instant farmer.
Dana Cavalea Instant farmer. 13 cows, and I wrote him a check for $6,400. The greatest deal in cattle farming right now.
Amy Fewell You can’t even buy two cows for that much now, right?
Dana Cavalea And that was it. We started off with the magnificent 13. And I said, “You know what? That was fun. That was nice.” We brought the cows back, and loading them—watching that whole process was a real, you know, **** show, for lack of a better term. And after that, I said, “Well, if you’re going to have cows, you’ve got to have pigs.”
Amy Fewell Of course!
So I went on Facebook instead of Craigslist, and I found a place called Pig Nation. And we ended up heading over about another 40 minutes away.
Lauren Cavalea And my parents were visiting the weekend we picked them up. My mom’s from the Bronx, New York, so she’s from the city. So we brought her and my dad to that farm. She’s like, “Oh my God.”
Amy Fewell Everybody’s having culture shock here.
Dana Cavalea Yeah, totally. So it’s like the set of deliverance we pulled up to. There’s cow heads on the trees, and just a really interesting place. And the guy says, you know, “We’re looking to get out of the pig business. How many are you looking to buy?” And he had four sows and one boar. And I said, “We’ll take them all.” And that’s how it kicked off. So we brought them back. So now we had 13 cows, we had five pigs and, you know, the only thing left was to go to tractor supply and buy all the chicks that they were selling and start raising chicks. So then we did that. And I was the guy that would show up every week and say, “Hey, what do you guys have left over?” And they would just pack them all up.
Lauren Cavalea And they were thrilled because I think we bought all the chicks at Tractor Supply that season. They wanted to get rid of them.
Dana Cavalea Yeah. The last thing they wanted to do was change out those chicks’ tubs and do all that. So anyway, then we started with the chicks and the first thing I said was, “Well, you know, here it is a month and a half. Where are the eggs?” And there were no eggs. We had to learn that whole thing. And then anyway, they produced the first egg, the rooster did its first cock-a-doodle-do, and it was like a huge moment for the farm. We have chickens, we have pigs, and we have cows. And then I got the big phone call: somebody said, “Do you sell meat?” I said, “I got 13 cows. Sure we do.” And I told the guy I’d have his half a cow ready in two weeks. I didn’t know how it worked. It was COVID, the butchers were booked up for like two years, and a cow has to hang for two weeks, and I knew nothing about any of this process. So our adventure continues. I am looking for more cows on Craigslist. I can’t find a butcher’s appointment. I finally meet this guy John in Pennsylvania and John says, “Hey, I got some Hereford cows you can buy.” So I go down there and I tell him, “John, I’d love to buy some cows, but I got a problem: I can’t find a butcher.” He says, “You know what? I actually have a butcher appointment for next week that I’m not going to use at a place right up the road. They’re USDA. Would you want those appointments?” And I said, “you know what? Do you have any finished cows?” And he’s like, “Yup.” So I bought his cows and I sent them right to the butcher and I was able to supply that, you know, that gentleman, his—
Lauren Cavalea It’s like everything kind of lined up the way beyond our wildest dreams.
Amy Fewell Yeah. Okay, so let’s stop for a second. Let’s roll back a little bit. How many acres do you guys currently have?
Dana Cavalea So we started with 130, and then when we first got up here, there was another plot up the road for 50. So I said, “Well, you know what? There’s not a lot of times where there’s more acreage available on your same street. You know, maybe sometimes within your lifetime.” I said, “We should probably throw our name in the hat and go get it.” So that’s what we did. And we bought another 50 acres. And then from there, we just kept kind of running the farm and doing our thing. And there was another plot of land that I thought was very overpriced, and I bailed on it. I think it was like $150,000 for 60 acres at the time. And I said, “You know what? I think the guys are asking too much, you know, based on what I paid for acreage.” Anyway, somebody bought it and then two years later, they put it back on the market. So I paid an extra $40,000 for that same parcel. So we acquired another 60, we just acquired another 30 and then another 60. So we’re now over 300.
Amy Fewell Wow.
Dana Cavalea Yeah, it’s a wild situation, and I should probably dig a little bit deeper. So I’m a coach by trade. That’s my main thing. I not only coach the Yankees and athletes, but I also coach executives. And when we first started this, I realized that the most precious resource—although we love our cows and we love our pigs and we love our chickens—the land was actually the most precious of resources because, A, they’re only making so much of it. B, farmland is in jeopardy. And C, I knew that if we can use our earnings from selling meats to buy land, it would be sort of this cycle that would just keep continuing: allow us to acquire land, acquire cows, acquire land, sell more meat, you know, and do that whole jazz. So that’s sort of the spin.
Amy Fewell Okay, guys, we’re taking a quick break in our podcast to bring you some more information about one of our sponsors this year. We are delighted to have NutriMill with us once again this year as a sponsor. We really enjoy this company and everything that they stand for. They are super like-minded. They educate us about whole grains. You can even check out one of the past podcasts we did with the owner of the company. NutriMill is dedicated to creating high-quality small kitchen appliance products that function well, are easy to use, and promote healthy eating. From mixers and grain mills to dehydrators, they have it all. Make sure you hit up this one-stop shop for all things fresh grains at NutriMill.com.
Amy Fewell So you guys own all this acreage in New York, of all places. And of course, nobody right now is like, “Yeah, I want to move to New York to homestead or farm.” But you guys are doing it.
Dana Cavalea We want to leave.
You want to leave. You might have some farmland for sale, right? But okay, we’ve got the beginning of your story. But what do you do now? Let’s talk about now. You got thrown into this farming thing. You just went with it, which I love. Like, you know, that’s the number one thing that people will tell you: don’t just jump into it. You know what? I know a lot of people who just jumped into it, and they’re being incredibly successful. So I think that kind of depends on who you are. But you guys and I met because our mutual friend Joel Salatin introduced us to one another, and I remember getting his email, and he was saying, “Hey, you’ve got to check out this couple in New York.” And I’m like, “New York?” And he’s like, “Yeah, New York!” He’s like, “I was just up there and they’re amazing,” and all of these things. He had so many good things to say about you guys. And so we connected that way, but you guys have a substantially successful farm business now after just jumping into it in 2020. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about that?
Lauren Cavalea Well, I agree with you, Amy. I think the best way to do something in life is just to jump into it because it’s exciting, and I feel like when you’re hands on and you throw yourself in the fire, you learn things the best way. You know, you make mistakes along the way, but when we first started, it was a real adventure. We wanted to raise our own food, because we were concerned about food, where it comes from, and how it’s sourced. So that’s really the reason why we started this farm. And then, like Dana said, people started asking if we’d sell the meat. We said yes, and we learned the whole way to do all that—butchering meat, slaughtering, and all that stuff while working with butchers. And now we run a direct-to-consumer meat business and we ship nationwide. So I feel like we not only threw ourselves in, but we were like, “This is working. Let’s get behind it 100%,” because people are like us—they want to buy from locally sourced farms.
Dana Cavalea And at the same time, too, you know, we learned a lot about our own viewpoints. So we had this very utopian view when we first started, like, you know, “Our cows can only eat grass, and they can’t have any of this, and they can’t make that.” And then we lost 15 cows in one winter. And then we did a whole study with Cornell, we did blood testing, we did autopsies.
Lauren Cavalea We thought it was the hay.
Dana Cavalea Yeah. We did everything. And they said, “Well, the problem is with this region, like if you’re going to try to just do all grass, first of all, the grass quality is not great. Second of all, they’re only on grass for five months out of the year because the weather is so brutal, and there’s just not enough energy to get them through the brutal temperatures that you face up here.” And we experienced that. I mean, our grass quality up here is probably not the greatest. So we learned, and then we started talking to more and more farmers and learning more about how to keep our crop not only alive, but also helping them to thrive. So again, we had Joel up at the farm, we had Greg Judy up at the farm, and we just tried to keep learning as much as we could. But the business side—it’s fun; it’s also a tremendous challenge. And I know today a lot of people are like, “Hey, I’m going to go direct-to-consumer, and that’s going to be the answer to all of my problems.” And it may answer some, but it may cause a lot more. So you have to really also know what your desires are out of your life and go from there. You have to be very adaptable, and I see sometimes—again, I don’t come from farming—but I see farmers that are very rigid people, and their openness is not always there. And it’s like, “This is how I do it. This is how my grandfather did it. This is how we’ve always done it.” And sometimes if you’ve always done something a certain way, you can always sometimes get the same result, and that may not be the best result.
Amy Fewell Yeah, that’s so true. You know, I think one of the best things for you guys is that you didn’t come from farming. My husband says this a lot. He’s like, “I think you should value me more because I didn’t come from farming.” And I didn’t necessarily come from farming, but I was around farming. My grandfather had beef cattle, I grew up in a farming community, and so yeah, I know farming. But he always says to me like, “I think it’s a blessing that I don’t know farming because I can look at your cows,”—we have dairy cows, of course—”and think unlogically, the farming way, right? Like I can think logically in a different way that isn’t what you learned and knew growing up.” And nine times out of ten, I can’t tell you how many times… You know, like this winter, we had a cow that was due to calve and I did everything—I checked all of her symptoms, I checked all of her ligaments, I did the whole thing that I knew how to do. It was the coldest night of the year. And I was like, “Well, there’s no way she’s having this calf anytime soon.” And my husband was standing there looking at her. He’s like, “No, I think you should put her up for the night.” And it was a whole thing. I kid you not, an hour later, she dropped that calf. And in the freezing cold, in the coldest day of the year, and I’m like like, “What? How did you know that?” And he’s like, “I don’t know. He’s like it’s just a blessing that I didn’t grow up farming. I’m not checking all the things. I’m just going by intuition.” And so it’s incredible to hear your story because it’s an encouragement to people who are not living this lifestyle yet or who just started. So let’s kind of dive in. What made you go directly farm-to-consumer because you’re shipping meat. What’s the process of that even look like? I mean, I’m sure it’s different for every state, but what kind of made you take that avenue with selling meat?
Lauren Cavalea Well, we started out by doing shares.
Dana Cavalea Yeah, we started off just just doing shares and, again, you know, I’ll tell you what it was for me: it was my first set of bills that came in. And I said, “Whoa, this was supposed to be a summer house.” I didn’t realize like, again, in upstate New York, like you’d start having to pay for winter fuel in October. I was down in Florida and I started getting these bills.
Lauren Cavalea That was before we had animals, really. We had a small herd.
Dana Cavalea Yeah. And I said, “Okay, we have to figure something else out here.” Because what I thought was just going to be, you know, you pay your taxes and pay what you got to pay and you’re good, it turns out that to run a farm is a whole ‘nother animal. And that was that was something that, you know, maybe to my own naivety, I didn’t know. But if I did know, I probably wouldn’t have done it just based on the overall expenses that go with it. So it was like, we have to do something in order to generate revenue off of this entity. And I wasn’t looking to really rent our house because I wanted to use it, so that was out. So it was like, okay, well, what’s the next best thing? Like, let’s figure out how to sell meat. And then we ran into other problems. Once we started to sell the meat—it took us in that direction; again, we wanted to use the cash flow to support the entity—and then what happened was we were starting to oversell what we could produce. So then we started working with other farmers, right? Going here, going there, going here, going there, sourcing from this farmer, sourcing from that farmer, working with Amish guys, right? And we started to figure out, like, we can kind of build this little network of people, and sort of address maybe a bigger theme of, you know, there are farmers that are struggling. But what I found is a lot of farmers struggle because look, they love to raise animals and they hate to market. They love to raise animals, but they don’t really like the business side of farming. And farming is a business. It’s one thing if you want to do something at your home and feed your family, and you guys keep everything self-contained and folks have jobs off the farm. That’s one thing. But if you want to be an actual farmer, you have to have some business acumen and skill, and realize that marketing is needed, customer service is needed, and financial acumen is needed. So anyway, we started selling because we had to.
Lauren Cavalea Managing people.
Dana Cavalea Yeah, that’s the long and short of it.
Lauren Cavalea And then once we went from shares, a friend of ours actually helped us—we were thinking of putting together a little try-it box because people were like, “Oh, you know, I don’t want to buy a whole share yet or a half share. Can we try stuff?” So we put together a try-it box where it has an assortment of different cuts, and that sold really well. So then we were like, “Well, let’s come up with another meat box.” So not only do we still do the shares, but now we have a whole menu of smaller boxes because not everybody can fit that much, you know, share into their freezers.
Dana Cavalea If I had to do it all over again, I would just stick with the shares.
Amy Fewell Really? That’s interesting. Yeah, I’m sure it’s more work—it’s more to keep up with, it’s more organization—but does it make you more money in the long run?
Dana Cavalea It could make you more money. You have to have huge volume. And look, if you’re looking to build and you want to sell that arm of your business, then yeah, the small boxes can work. They’re volume-driven, they could be subscription-driven, they’re repeat buys—it’s all that kind of stuff, it’s good. But if you want to talk about just straight margin versus work versus how much packing material you need, and all the logistics, you know, the shares are more lucrative, at least we have found that to be the case.
Amy Fewell Yeah. And it’s interesting because, you know, years ago, cow shares were very, very popular. And then suddenly it was like they decreased in popularity, at least around here. And suddenly people were not buying the whole cow and the half cow. It’s almost like a community mindset shifted. And maybe it was COVID. I know pre-COVID, it was very popular and then COVID hit and, yeah, it kind of boomed, but we saw a lot of people after that moving to the singular cuts. So steaks and roasts and burgers and things like that because it was just easier, I guess, for their freezers. But I think we are kind of starting to see a shift back into the shares. So that’ll be good for you guys. But I think we’re seeing more and more people doing that, especially as people are realizing how fragile the food system is. You know, people kind of forgot after COVID and now people are kind of waking up to it again, which is just so interesting to see. Just so interesting to see the farm and society movements, and different culture and different locations change. But let’s talk about the packaging. What does a normal week look like for you guys? Because you’re doing shares, you’re doing boxes, but you’re also shipping beef all around the country. So what does that look like?
Dana Cavalea Oh, it’s like, if you want to just work seven days a week, do this. That’s pretty much what it looks like.
Lauren Cavalea It is seven days a week. But our packing days in the warehouse are Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and I do all the overseeing of that. Dana handles pretty much everything else. He does the marketing, he does the shares, all of that.
Dana Cavalea Yeah, sales, marketing, strategy, etc. That’s like my thing.
Lauren Cavalea So when we’re packing orders, you know, everything is custom cut at our slaughterhouse that we work with. We work with a USDA slaughterhouse locally. It’s family owned, and every Tuesday morning we get back all the meats that are cut fresh. And then once we unload the van, it’s a lot of lifting. I have a great team. I have a team of about nine people that help me every Tuesday and Wednesday get orders out. We unload the van, there’s a lot of lifting, and then we put everything away in the freezers, make sure everything’s organized, and then right away we get to packing orders. I also have shares come back that need to either be shipped out, or we also deliver shares. We have freezer vans that we send out as well. So I have to weigh out all the shares, make sure that everything is weighed properly for each customer, and then we either ship them through UPS or, like I said, we’ll put them in our freezer van. So Tuesdays and Wednesdays are full days of meat slinging and thank God we have, you know, we keep it positive in the packing room. We try to have fun with it. And I’d say of smaller boxes, we do about 230 orders a week. And then how many shares do you think we do like per month?
Dana Cavalea I don’t know. You know, the share business is interesting because it’s a little bit volatile right now only because we’ve put more of the focus, believe it or not, on the smaller boxes. From a recurring standpoint, people have wanted those. But at one point we were doing 16 to 20 cows a month, all broken down—halves, wholes, et cetera. We were just doing a call this morning on… you know, trying to understand that business segment a little bit deeper because right now, when you’re asking someone to pay a few thousand dollars for shares versus say, that $150 for a box, you know, economics play a role, right? Sometimes people just may not want to spend on the bigger items versus the smaller ones. So there is a little bit of a cycle to things as well. You have to understand data, you have to understand the trends, and all that. But a typical week is just…
Lauren Cavalea Plus running the farm. So you, you know, it’s seven days a week, 24/7. Anything could happen. And sometimes I’m like, Oh God, what am I doing?
Amy Fewell We’re all like that. Trust me.
Lauren Cavalea It’s almost like you’re addicted to it, and I feel like God has His plan and He wants us to do this.
Amy Fewell Yeah. So, okay. Did I hear you right? You’re shipping shares through the mail too, is that right?
Dana Cavalea Scariest thing you’ll ever do.
Lauren Cavalea So scary.
Amy Fewell How does that even work? Like with the postage? I mean, it’s got to be outrageous in shipping.
Well, we use UPS, and we worked out… I think with them, you have to get a certain amount of orders shipped every week to get discounts with them. So they’ve worked out some discounts with us, but every time I send a share out or any small box, I always say a prayer that it gets to the customer on time.
Dana Cavalea Yeah, because sometimes it doesn’t, and you have to be ready to deal with that. And for me personally, that’s the most frustrating part. It’s like, hey, we did our part, and there were a lot of steps that got that meat to that box…
Lauren Cavalea And it’s an animal!
Dana Cavalea Yeah.
Amy Fewell Yeah. Okay, you’re shipping all over the nation. Would you say that the bulk of your shipping is in New York, or is there a certain state that you’re seeing?
Dana Cavalea We built it initially around New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania. That was sort of our, you know, geo target. And then it’s like, okay, well typically people from New York—where do they go for the winter, right? They go to Florida. So now all of a sudden you pick up Florida. Who’s got a son or daughter that they send a gift to in California? We’ve actually seen a spike… I mean, listen, we’re a right-leaning brand. We’re a pro-America meat company. I can’t hide it. Freedom Farms. But we’re seeing a spike in California right now. It’s getting very interesting. We can be on polar opposite coasts and it’s not a demographic that we would target, but we see elevation there. So it’s interesting. I mean, it is kind of wild to just see how lights turn on in different areas for people’s desires and wants.
Lauren Cavalea And I worked at ABC News for most of my working career. And I worked with great people there, but you had to be very tight lipped about how you felt about certain things. And when I left ABC News and we started this farm, I was very much like, “I want to be bold in our messaging, and I really don’t care what people think. You know, I’m going to share how I feel and show them this journey of the farm.” We started a YouTube channel as soon as we started the farm, and we just started documenting our day-to-day work and the journey. And just being bold in our messaging attracted a lot of people that feel the same way, and really feel like they’re a part of something, you know!
Amy Fewell Yeah, that’s great for marketing, right?
Lauren Cavalea Yeah, but it’s so organic, you know?
Dana Cavalea Yeah, it’s like when you try, it’s hard.
Lauren Cavalea Yeah, we don’t… It’s like you—I always loved reading your blogs through the years. You know, I felt very connected to you and your writing. And I feel like when you share your truth, and share the truth, and be bold in your messaging, I think you can do very well and attract a lot of good stuff.
Amy Fewell Yeah, that’s the greatest marketing plan ever is just being bold in your beliefs, and what you do, and who you are. People really want to connect to where their food is coming from, especially. And so the fact that you guys just hit it out of the park from the get-go, like, “This is who we are. This is what we believe. This is where your food is coming from,” I’m sure that helped incredibly to get you started. But that is such a massive operation that you’re running. I mean, there are people who are thinking about that now, and I’m glad you’re being truthful, right? Like it’s a seven-day-a-week job and you can’t not do it. You can’t wake up one day and be like, “I don’t want to do this today,” because there are so many people that are depending on it.
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Amy Fewell So do you guys have plans of expansion? I know you just said you want to leave New York, but what are your plans in the future? Like, is this something you’re dead set on doing for a while or you’re going to shift into something different? What’s it look like?
Lauren Cavalea I think for now.
Dana Cavalea Yeah, for now. It’s a hard question because, knowing my own tendencies, I’ve kind of lived my life in these 7 to 10 year blocks. So, you know, after a certain period of time, not that I get bored, but I get excited for a new challenge. The one thing I will say about this business, what makes it so unique, is there’s so many spokes that come off the wheel. So we’ve gotten into creating sauces, you know, dips, marinades, we’re going to do a ketchup, and a mustard—all different stuff. So it keeps my attention, you know, based on these brand extensions that could be created. So I don’t know, I find agriculture to be a very unique world. I find it to be somewhat mysterious, actually, to the public. And that’s good and bad. And I don’t know, I find it just to be very important overall. So I don’t know what the future brings. I mean, look, there are times that we sit around and we say, “You know, it’d be great to build this and then sell it and it’d be awesome.” Then there are times we say, “No, we don’t want to do that.” It’s total bipolarity by the day. It’s total like manic behavior, that’s what this is.
Amy Fewell It’s normal farmer thoughts. I mean, I’m serious. Even small homesteaders, we all have these thoughts like, “You know what? I could go live my life in a totally different way and not have to worry about my dogs eating my chickens or my milk cow going down or my beef cows getting out into the neighbor’s field and eating her roses,” or whatever. But then you think… My husband and I do this all the time. We were in town even recently. And there’s this massive car wash in town and it’s Saturday morning and everyone’s getting their car washed on Saturday morning, right? And our farm store is right next to this car wash and we’re sitting there in the parking lot just watching all these cars and he goes, “You know what? That must be a really boring life to just have to worry about waking up on Saturday morning to get your car washed.” And, and it’s like, on one hand, we’re like, man, that must be really nice to only have to think about getting your car washed on Saturday morning. At least at this age, right? Like I’m not saying we’re going to think that when we’re much older, but at least at this age we’re like… I don’t know. I feel like it keeps us young. It keeps us challenged. You know, we love a good challenge. We’re both entrepreneurs, which you guys very much are, which makes sense why you’re trying to find different branches of your business to be successful. I mean, I’m sitting here listening to you thinking, you guys should, like, be a name brand in homes. And so, we get it. Every farmer, every homesteader gets it.
Dana Cavalea It’s funny where you went with the car wash. I went somewhere else. We sit at a car wash and we’re like, “Man, wouldn’t it be great to own a car wash? What are we doing?’
Lauren Cavalea It just seems like people just keep coming. You don’t have to… Everybody needs their car washed.
Dana Cavalea Soap and water, maybe something mechanically dies here and there, but you can fix that.
Lauren Cavalea I feel like I tell Dana all the time, “If you can run a farm, you can do anything.” If you can run your own homestead, you can do anything. And I tell people all the time, “If you feel called to do this, do it. Just throw yourself into it. Don’t be afraid, and just learn as you go.
Amy Fewell Yeah. All right. Well, I won’t keep you guys much longer. I do think we need to schedule a Q&A time with our members. I’ll talk to you guys about that later because I know people are going to have questions from just this podcast episode, but I want to leave it open to the end. At the end of every podcast, I leave it open to our guests to share whatever’s on their heart. It could be about the topic we’re talking about. It could be about something else. It could be encouragement. What would you share with our HOA audience if you could share absolutely anything with them right now?
Dana Cavalea That’s deep. So, you know, I said this earlier: part of what I do is the farm and the business, but most of my day is also spent coaching. So this is a very beautiful question that you asked because it falls right into my wheelhouse. And, you know, the biggest thing I always tell people is, look, nothing’s permanent unless you want it to be. So you can always make changes. Let’s say you start going down this road of homesteading and you don’t like it. You can change. You want to start a farm? You go down that road, you don’t like it, you can change. Something’s not working? Fix it. You can change, or you can keep pivoting until you get it right. And again, you’re talking today to two people that had no goal ever in their life of starting a farm, of starting a farm business, of being in agriculture, of talking to farm people—like, that was never the thing. We were brought to this place just by trial and error, experimentation, and being open-minded, and not closing our mindsets. And that’s the biggest thing. So in life, nothing’s permanent. Don’t be afraid to adjust, don’t be afraid to pivot, and stay open. Because as soon as you close, you’re actually shutting off your opportunities and your possibilities and killing your own potential, which is the most dangerous thing.
Lauren Cavalea He helps me with that all the time because I’m very stubborn, so I tend to have a closed mind with certain things. But the farm has definitely taught me to be more open. And then one thing I will say is I’ve had people come to the farm and they’re like, “What made you do this?” And I always say, you know, “God created all of this. He created the chickens, the cows, the sheep, the goats. He created all of it—the mountains.” And for me, I know that we’re just stewards, and we’re kind of the in-between, bringing good food to Americans nationwide. And so I give it all to Him. And if you do that, you’ll be very successful in life and He’ll guide you and bring you to places you wouldn’t even have imagined. So that’s where we are in Freedom Farms and…
Dana Cavalea That’s why we’re in New York still, because we would like to be south.
Lauren Cavalea Yes, we love the South. Maybe Kentucky.
Amy Fewell No, no, no. Yeah, these states are all going crazy right now. It’s kind of insane to just watch.
Lauren Cavalea Really?
Amy Fewell Yeah, the political landscape is crazy. Like, you know, not to get on a bunny trail here, but I’m sure listeners will be fine hearing this: like Nashville—Starbucks and Amazon are moving to Nashville, which means they’re taking like 8,000 of their employees with them. And so when you start having corporate companies moving into these states, you know the politics are going to come with them. And so it’s just really interesting because we have, oh my gosh, we probably have hundreds of thousands of homesteaders that just moved to Tennessee because it’s the freedom state, right? And I’ve been saying to people, like “Homesteaders, if you’re going to move, then move where your community is. Don’t move due to politics because it’s all going to change real fast, real soon.” You know, we’re here in Virginia and everyone’s always like, “Are you going to move? Are you going to move?” Because our politics just changed drastically. And we just don’t feel like that. You know, God has put us here and our whole community is here. And my thing is, you know, if I pick up and move, my community is gone. I have to start all over. I have to get new friends. I have to build new relationships. I have to do all those things. And that’s fine if that’s what God calls us to do. But you know, our community, the people that we’re taking care of is right here. And so that’s just where we’re going to be until, you know, if ever God says “go.” I was just telling a friend this morning, “I’m going to build what I can build and what God calls me to build while we’re here because who’s to say that in the next 10 years, the whole nation won’t be just on fire, you know, in so many horrible ways. Or it could be really amazing and everything has changed.” But, you know, what is God calling me to build here for a place of refuge in times of chaos, right? And political turmoil and just things that are happening. So I would encourage you guys to go where your community is. You know, if you have community somewhere else, go there. Or if you can convince them to move with you, do that too. But, you know, your story is so inspiring. It is so clear that God has just anointed you for a time just like this, a time that we’re in providing food for people, providing support and just farming because obviously there’s no other way it would be so successful outside of His leading and just keeping you guys where you are. So thank you guys so much for joining me today.
Lauren Cavalea Thank you, Amy.
Amy Fewell Yeah. We really appreciate you. You guys that are listening can check out their information below in the show notes or the description of the video, however you’re listening or watching. You can buy beef from them if you want beef. You know, we have some people who are not homesteaders and farmers, so go check them out. We love you guys and we will see you next time.
Lauren Cavalea Thank you, Amy. God bless you.
Amy Fewell Hey, thanks for taking the time to listen to this week’s Homesteaders of America episode. We really enjoyed having you here. We welcome questions and you can find the transcript and all the show notes below or on our Homesteaders of America blog post that we have up for this podcast episode. Don’t forget to join us online with a membership or just to read blog posts and find out more information about our events at HomesteadersofAmerica.com. We also have a YouTube channel and follow us on all of our social media accounts to find out more about homesteading during this time in American history. All right, have a great day and happy homesteading.
