Driving on country roads through snow covered rolling hills in Waldoboro, Maine to get to Julie Tinker’s village homestead, feels like you are driving through a holiday card from the 1950s. Passing historic barns and homes with candles aglow in each window. A cheerful robin's egg blue mailbox with white letters reading Homesweet Homestead is the driveway marker. It was a rough wintery Saturday in January and school had been canceled the entire week. Julie’s four-year-old son Gus was running wild after too many days trapped inside. Julie had industriously fashioned him a rope swing from the staircase to help alleviate some of his bent-up energy.

Julie’s home is a bright and creative place flooded with golden light, even in the dead of winter. The previous owner had remodeled the home when his wife was diagnosed with seasonal depression and that warm and inspiring light is what sold them on the house when they toured the property in the winter of 2012. Julie left Boston with her former partner to build a sustainable life for themselves and their son. It was a huge leap of faith because they literally knew nothing about farming or carrying for livestock, other than what they had read in books and off the Internet. Julie enthusiastically jumped in, using her minivan as a farm vehicle – hauling compost and chicken coops around the property with it.

Julie bought a cow, planted her first garden, participated in the farmers market and, with the help of her neighbors, have been streamlining their processes and continuing to learn as she goes. In just three years, she transformed their small 10-acre-farm into an operation that provides a majority of their food with two dairy cows, rabbits, pigs, chickens, ducks, barn cats and an enormous vegetable garden each year.