Arrow Hill Farm and Diary is a small farm located in Northwest Georgia owned and operated by our family of 8.
We both grew up on farms, met in the FFA and studied agriculture in college. Since we married in May 2006, our desire has been to raise our children on a farm. Our desire was a simply a dream for over 10 years as we saved money and did what we could where we were – we lived on 1 acre for 6 years and while there gardened, canned, had a small flock of laying hens and even had 2 goats for a little bit of time.
John David holds a bachelors degree in Agriculture Communications and manages to combine the two interests – agriculture and communications. He works as a Director of Ministry Support at a multi-site church by day and is a farmer in the mornings, evenings and weekends.
Rachel also has an Agriculture Communications degree. Her primary calling is to be a homemaker in this season of life, supporting John David, educating and nurturing her children. Her hobbies are gardening, reading and writing so farming and blogging are natural creative outlets for her.
We have 6 children and we are so thankful that we have the ability to raise them where they have ample room to play, explore, create and learn. We are educating our children at home. We have a desire for them to love learning and we’ve learned over the past 10 years of home educating, that time spent in nature and in connection with the rhythms of the seasons is an excellent educational foundation for children.
In May of 2017, our dream of owning a little land came true when we purchased our 5 acres and began our first homestead. We raised chickens, pigs, goats, sheep and in September of 2019, we added our very first dairy cow, Buttercup. We grew a large garden, canned as much food as we possibly could, added another dairy cow, began selling milk to a few friends and acquaintances and just enjoyed life on our homestead.
In March of 2023, we moved 12 minutes from our homestead to a 22 acre property. There was a house, a run down barn and very little fencing. John David did his best to make do with the barn that was on the property and made a milking area in there. We set up a milk fridge in our garage for milk pick up and began dreaming, planning and working on improvements to our new farm.
After planning, saving, salvaging and gathering materials second hand for a year, we began work on our new dairy barn in early spring 2024 and began milking in there in June of 2024. We moved milk pick up to the new barn shortly after. The barn is functional but still a work in progress since we are paying cash as we go. “Work is sometimes slow when you cash flow!”
In addition to milking, we have a small flock of laying hens and a couple pigs. Pigs are a wonderful addition to a dairy – they turn old milk, skim milk, whey and failed batches of cheese into pork for our family! We also have a small garden – we’re not quite back up to gardening like we did on our homestead and canning hundreds of quarts of food each summer but we hope to soon work our way back up to producing even more of our own food.
We’re so glad you’ve found us and hope you enjoy reading about life at Arrow Hill Farm and Dairy.