I am the mother of four amazing kids, ages 22, 20, 16 and 14. I homeschooled all of them and am still homeschooling the youngest two. I have been married for 23 years, my husband and I moved to Hendersonville NC. about 20 minutes outside of Asheville NC. four years ago and we have been building a more self sustaining lifestyle. We live on 15 acres, we have a large garden, chickens, turkeys, ducks, goats, and cows. We have a wonderful milk cow, Willa that we milk twice a day and she gives the most wonderful, creamy milk. We make all our own butter, cheese yogurt, etc. We are currently producing almost all of the food that we eat. My oldest son, Austin is 22 and lives down the road from us. He is really into Parkor/ Free Running and knows some of the most amazing, and rugged hiking spots in the area. He works in an environmental lab. My oldest daughter, Journey is 20 and she lives in a "tiny house" on our property. She is an artist, soccer player, roller derby team member and works as a dog groomer. My two youngest children, Cora, 16 and Phoenix, 14 are musicians, they play the piano and have just started to trade our milk for violin lessons, so hopefully soon we will have more music in our house. They love reading, hiking, trail running and camping. They love to take their keyboard downtown and go street performing. They enjoy meeting new people, and look forward to the opportunity to travel more.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

I am couchsurfing because I have chosen a path of self relience, we live very simply and because we have chosen to live a life outside of the mainstream, in order to have the time to farm and travel and create, we do not have a lot of income. We have started to barter with people in our community and we love how much we have been able to work outside of the money economy. We all love to travel and couchsurfing seems like a perfect fit for us and other people that are trying to live more of their lives outside of the money economy. I also like the idea that when we travel, our kids will have the opportunity to meet more people and have a much richer experience. I am also excited to host people for the same reasons, we love the area that we live. There are so many beautiful hikes to take here in the appalachian mountains, and we would love to share this beautiful area with others and be enriched by their stories and experiences also.

Interests

My husband, Nathan and I love to hike and go camping. We so enjoy our life here on our farm. Working with the animals on a daily basis is an amazing experience. Neither of us grew up on a farm, so it has been a joy working together to create this life, and learn about so many new things together. My husband is a carpenter and we are currently renovating a home on our property to bring in rental income. Cora and Phoenix and I like to workout to the p90x videos and we play a lot of chess and card games. We love to build and create things out of found materials. We built our house using almost exclusively used/ salvaged materials and we were able to build a comfortable home for our family for under 15k. We will soon be starting on a "tiny house" project with Cora and Phoenix, and are looking forward to that. We enjoy reading, and cooking. We are liberal/ libertarian minded, and we have a very live and let live attitude about things. If a person is living a life that makes them happy, and they are not hurting anyone, then good for them! We like people of different opinions, we just ask that everyone be respectful of other peoples choices.

• animals
• dogs
• chickens
• beauty
• dining
• cooking
• cheese
• running
• working out
• gardening
• chess
• reading
• traveling
• music
• piano
• violin
• hiking
• camping
• trail running
• soccer
• mountains

Music, Movies, and Books

Our all time favorite book is To Kill a Mockingbird. A close second is The Education Of Little Tree. Our whole family really liked the book Born To Run, by Chris McDougal.. We like the classics, Oliver Twist was great, and so was Jane Eyre. We enjoyed the Hunger games series a lot too. I just finished Half Broke Horse and Glass Castle by Janette Wells, I love her writing. We also all love historical fiction and biographies.
Favorite movies are Shawshank Redemption, V For Vendetta, Fight Club,Hannah And Her Sisters, The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty, Stranger Than Fiction, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Moonrise Kingdom, Fried Green Tomatoes, and Second Hand Lions.
As for music, we like folk music, classical, especially Chopin, and Beethoven. We like Milky Chance, Mumford And Sons, Of Monsters And Men, Jubal's Kin, and Imagine Dragons.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Hiking the slot canyons in Utah, hiking to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and back up, Canyonlands Needles district.

Teach, Learn, Share

We can teach about farming, construction, and homeschooling. We would love to learn more about off grid living, and travel. We can share the beauty of our area with our guests, show them some of the best hikes, and give them a nice home cooked meal, let people taste fresh raw milk and eggs, and pasture raised meats.

What I Can Share with Hosts

Cooking, information on farming and homeschooling, a cheerful attitude and never a mess. :)

Countries I’ve Visited

Canada, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Puerto Rico

Countries I’ve Lived In

United States