About Us

Wel­come to our farm web­site! We are con­tin­u­ously updat­ing it with new infor­ma­tion as our farm grows, and hope that you will check in fre­quently to see what’s hap­pen­ing. Our first chick­ens arrived in Jan­u­ary 2010, and we offer farm fresh eggs avail­able for pickup from our farm. We also offer own­er­ship shares in our goat herd — herd share own­ers receive a half-gallon of fresh goat’s milk each week.  Khaki Camp­bell Duck­lings (excel­lent egg-layers as adults — they should start lay­ing in late sum­mer) arrived in March 2011, along with some Indian Run­ners, and as of late May, some Cuyuga duck­lings were added to our menagerie.  We are rais­ing some meat chick­ens this sum­mer for our own fam­ily, and depend­ing on our expe­ri­ence with that, we may offer fresh pas­tured chicken in the future. We also hope to build an on-site cream­ery in the future so that we can pro­duce cheese, but­ter, and other dairy products.

We strive to use nat­ural, eco­log­i­cal farm­ing meth­ods, and con­tinue to edu­cate our­selves about per­ma­cul­ture and bio-dynamic prac­tices so that we can imple­ment those — it’s a con­tin­u­ous learn­ing process. We want to pro­duce real food that is nutri­ent dense and that pro­motes the health of not only those who eat it, but those who pro­duce it, which includes our live­stock and the micro-organisms in our land.

The Mean­ing Behind Our Farm Name

We’ve been mulling over what to call our­selves ever since we departed the “life that was” in the city in 2008, and after con­sid­er­ing it for well over a year, we’ve decided on Seren­ity Acres. Besides the obvi­ous ref­er­ence to the calm, peace, and tran­quil­ity that are a part of our life in the coun­try, we are also ded­i­cated fans of Joss Whe­don’s tele­vi­sion series Fire­fly, and the sub­se­quent film, Seren­ity. Although farm­ing was not the liveli­hood of any of the main char­ac­ters, we’d like to think that we are work­ing to embody the sort of place that they’d cre­ate if they had been. Our goals of self-sufficiency, entre­pre­neur­ship, and a burn­ing desire not to be “med­dled with” par­al­lel those held by the crew of the Firefly-class ship Seren­ity, and we are build­ing a life here that cher­ishes the same sort of per­sonal lib­erty that they sought.  We’d like to believe that ours would be a safe haven for Cap­tain Reynolds and com­pany, and that they’d enjoy their stay.

As for the URL? Well, serenityacres.com was our first choice, but once we dis­cov­ered that it is being sold as a “pre­mium” domain — to the tune of some $1300 — we real­ized it was too rich for our blood. If you are famil­iar with the yearly fund rais­ing event put on by Fire­fly fans (Can’t Stop The Seren­ity, which my hus­band and I have been involved with orga­niz­ing here in Michi­gan in the past) you’ll under­stand our rea­son­ing in what we chose instead. And if you aren’t a Brown­coat, well, per­haps you were a Sein­feld fan, and recall Frank Costanza attempt­ing to lower his blood pres­sure with the phrase “SERENITY NOW!”, albeit rather unsuc­cess­fully. In either case, it was amus­ing to us, and the price was def­i­nitely right, so, here we are.

Our goat herd is reg­is­tered with the Amer­i­can Dairy Goat Asso­ci­a­tion, and our herd name is “Brown­coats” — which, if you are famil­iar with Fire­fly and Seren­ity, you will rec­og­nize as the name of the Inde­pen­dent Fac­tion who fought against the Alliance in that mythos. They fought for the prin­ci­ples of sov­er­eignty and the right to self-govern in the face of the impe­ri­al­is­tic Alliance. Our goats are also very independent-minded, and it’s one of the rea­sons we adore them so much, as they are kin­dred spir­its with us. So it’s quite a fit­ting herd name.

As of Sep­tem­ber 2011, our herd is com­posed of eleven goats — seven adults and four juve­niles. We are milk­ing six of the adults, and will be breed­ing the juve­nile doel­ings once they are ready. Our herd has a mix of breeds: LaMan­cha, Alpine, Saa­nen, and Niger­ian Dwarf. Each goat has its own per­son­al­ity that is unique, and most of the time, quite endear­ing. We milk twice a day, every day. George still works full-time in the city, so this is no small task! Our life is busy, and exhaust­ing, but it is also very reward­ing, and we pre­fer this to the hub­bub of city life.

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