OUR STORY
Building a Dream
Arbor House Farm is situated on the south slope of a mountainside in the Boston Mountains of Arkansas. We are a family of four, with two boys growing up on the land, wild and free. The start of our farm began in in 2016 with big dreams and a single gray horse. We have now grown to four horses, two donkeys, chickens, and a bustling rabbitry. For a period of time, we also had a small herd of dual-purpose miniature cattle. We focus on producing quality animals while upholding values that include respect to both the animal and the land we are fortunate enough to have for raising our livestock.
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Every piece of our farm is a work in progress and we continue to strive to adapt to the land, listen to what it wants to grow and support. We have been building our farmhouse for over two years now, doing the finishing work both inside and outside ourselves. We adopted a Shaker-inspired style which is intent on function and form, while paying attention to beauty as well. The enduring utility, honesty, and beauty of design is our focus, taking to heart the golden rule "Don’t make something unless it is both necessary and useful; but if it is both necessary and useful, don’t hesitate to make it beautiful."
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Some of our projects over the next year include building a stone wall and picket fence in front of the house, expanding our garden next to the rabbit yard, building a permanent chicken yard adjacent to the barn, adding a section of fencing around the southern thicket to begin working the donkeys through the brush to clear it out, clearing trails in the woods beyond the pond, lining four more watering holes for the horses, working on more pasture improvements, planting wildflowers along the driveway, and working on window casements and baseboards in the farm house. It's a lot of work, but rewarding to see the end results of hard-earned results.
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Here we are, posing for some fun pictures we took for a Christmas card of us on our new homestead.
THE FARMHOUSE
Our house, designed by my husband Jeremy, was influenced by Early American architecture, with many elements inspired by the Shakers as well as Colonial Williamsburg.
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As we planned out the details and researched the historical aspects of each element, we were especially inspired by the Early American attention to detail and craftsmanship. In a time when things are mass produced and the extravagant details are lost in favor of the inexpensive, we have been inspired to care deeply about every detail of this house God has chosen to bless us with.
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The Shaker motto "Hands to Work, Hearts to God" has become our own, and we are inspired by the Shaker's devotion to God in the every day things. It seems fitting the interior of the house is being built and completed by ourselves. With our own hands. With strength from God and His blessing upon us, and our hearts turned ever to Him.
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Utility, Honesty, Beauty
We have opted for a simple, classic design for the front of the house. Enough time, toil, and money is spent building a home that it's worth getting it right the first time and never needing to update it. Nothing seems more classic, timeless, or fitting to us than a New England colonial style facade. Always in style, simple to design and build, with minimal materials. The exterior symmetry was challenging to work around when we designed the interior of the house, but it has been well worth the effort. Four years after we began construction, we still wouldn't change a thing about our home design, the color choices we made, or the materials used.