About Blue Line Farm TN

After a career in law enforcement, I believe God led me to begin this farm to start the next chapter of my life.  (read how it began below)   I am so humbled and grateful for all His blessings (and even the trials)!   I strive to be an excellent steward of the land and animals entrusted to my care, and seek to glorify God in all that I do.   I will be creating blog posts to take you through the projects and process of starting up the farm, and you can see the current happenings on the farm on social media @BlueLineFarmTN.   I invite you to join the journey, meet our wonderful animals on these pages (bear with me while I post their info and introduce you to them over time), and enjoy the adventure that is this beloved farm!   Thank you for coming along with me!

Thanks to the University of Tennessee Extension Office of Smith County for featuring Blue Line Farm TN on this “Meet a Farmer Monday” episode from 2020! Our Extension Office is fantastic, and I’ve taken many classes and seminars through them and learned so much!

How it began……

I recently retired after a couple of decades as a police officer in Reno, Nevada. After several years of pre-retirement thinking, dreaming, researching, planning and searching, I purchased a farm of 37 acres in beautiful Middle Tennessee, outside Carthage in Smith County, and moved to it immediately upon my retirement in January 2019. I brought with me my “City Dogs,” a pair of huskies named Theia and Kemper.

With absolutely no experience in agriculture or livestock, I had big plans … to raise and breed sheep for fiber, goats for milk, and chickens for eggs. There is an orchard on the property, neglected for many years, and I plan to revive it and use the fruit (apples, peaches, plums, cherries, figs, blackberries, blueberries, pears, persimmons, mulberries) to make preserves, jams and jellies, pies, cobblers, etc. I reconfigured the guest house into a commercial kitchen for baking and cooking (two of my passions!) and a soap-making studio. One of the rooms in my house will be converted to my “fiber room,” for sewing, embroidery, and fiber arts using my sheep’s wool. I plan on learning how to clean and process the sheep wool, spin and loom. Future plans include offering an apartment on the property as a bed-and-breakfast or farm retreat.

I purchased my first sheep, 10 Scottish Blackface ewes, while still in Nevada, and had them transported to Tennessee. They arrived here a couple of weeks after I did, in January of 2019. I got baby chicks in March, a donkey in May, my first goats (3 Nubians) in June, and 2 Scottish Blackface rams in July. I’ve been adopted by a wild cat that lived on the land before I did, who has wormed her way into the house and might be just a little spoiled. I’ve experienced sheep shearing (twice per year); learned how to care for all these critters, including giving shots, trimming hooves, checking eyes, mucking out stalls, nutrition, and so on; learned how to milk goats, drive a side-by-side, mow using a zero-turn mower, weed-wack, chainsaw, build out a milk parlor and outfit the chicken coop, fix fences, build out stalls, you name it! I’ve had the ewes artificially inseminated (more about that here) and got to experience the birth of 15 lambs in March 2020! Got more goats, then more chickens, then more goats again. Over time I’ve added a total of 5 Great Pyrenees as livestock guardian dogs to keep everybody safe. Bred goats and had four kids (baby goats) added to the herd in the spring of 2020. More breeding (of sheep and goats) in the fall of 2020, for spring 2021 lambing (18 lambs) and kidding (7 goat kids). Who doesn’t love more babies??!!!

On this website you can meet the animals and get to know them, see lots of pictures, learn how I did lots of projects, laugh (with me, of course) at all my mistakes! and follow along as I continue to transform from a city cop into a country farmer! Oh, and shop, you can shop too :) Thanks for stopping by!