Noah, 25, and Bradie Terry, 24, purchased their Bourbon County property in December 2020, after moving from Oregon.
“We were motivated to look further into the homestead lifestyle and wanted to take the knowledge we gained to pass it on to others in the community,” Bradie said. “We quickly realized the importance of knowing where your food comes from and how it is raised or grown. We both did not grow up with any background in agriculture or farming, so everything that you see us doing is learning-as-we-go and applying our time we spent studying these things to gaining hands-on knowledge.”
The name of the homestead business is The Shire, LLC.
“The name, The Shire, derives from a region in J. R. R. Tolkien’s fictional book, The Lord of the Rings,” Bradie said. “In this fictionist world, The Shire is a peaceful, fruitful, community that focuses on agriculture. Which is symbolism of the type of community that we want to build upon in Bourbon County. We are also both pretty short, so we also have the whole ‘hobbit’ thing going for us.”
“Currently, we have a flock of free-ranged chickens that allow us to sell delicious eggs to the community,” she said. “We are also growing cucumbers to produce pickles for a local restaurant.”
The farm is located on the southeast side of Fort Scott near Ellis Park.
“We both work on the farm when time allows,” Bradie said. “Currently, my husband is in school and I work a full time job from home. Our goal is to transition one or both of us to working full time on the farm as we grow.”
They are the recipient of a Healthy Bourbon County Action Team (HBCAT) $10,000 Farmer/Rancher Grant.
“Our plans for the $10,000 farmer/rancher grant is to expand to our bee and dairy cow operation as well as expanding our garden for produce,” she said. “We will have bee hives and will breed our Jersey dairy cows by April of 2023, which will produce honey and raw milk by fall of 2024. The expansion of our garden operation will be done over the course of a couple of years and we hope to have a big greenhouse built by that time. The grant funds will also help us expand our chicken operation in order to have more eggs available to sell.”
“We will jump into the world of beekeeping and milking our dairy cows within a year, which are two huge farm changes because we haven’t experience this before,” she said.