Our Beginning

Hi! I’m so glad you stopped by!! We are all about simple, delicious food and homestead living on our farm.

About Rivers Family Farm, established 2020.

A little bit about the author.

First, let me introduce myself. I’m Rebekah, and welcome to Rivers Family Farm where I share my family’s simple, homesteading life and from scratch recipes.

I was born in Orlando but discovered the joy of living in the country when my family moved to rural Georgia right before I went into eighth grade.

I met my wonderful husband Derek when I was in college and he was stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia. We got married and I followed him to North Carolina where I graduated with a degree in Accounting.

Duty called and he deployed overseas for more than a year. We were blessed with our first child about a year after he came home from the war.

As a new mom, I wanted to do everything I could to ensure that our daughter was well-nourished, so I started our first vegetable garden in the backyard of our postage stamp-sized lot. I remember the thrill of that first harvest and the flavor that I hadn’t experienced up until then. From that point on, I was hooked and I wanted to learn more!

A season of learning.

We moved to a larger house after a few years to accommodate our growing family. I kept expanding our vegetable garden, planted fruit trees and berry bushes, and learned how to preserve the harvest through canning and dehydrating. But I wanted to go deeper.

It was illegal to have backyard chickens within city limits, so I petitioned the local city council to update the decades-old zoning ordinances. The council told me that if I wanted backyard chickens, I needed to move. SO WE DID!

Moving to Rivers Family Farm.

Like so many of you, we were fed up with living in a city and looking for more freedom. So in 2020, Derek and I sold our suburban house and moved our 4 kids (girl, boy, girl, girl) to a 120-acre cattle farm in rural Alabama.

We immediately jumped into the deep end of homesteading. We started by getting chickens but that quickly grew to also raising cows, goats, pigs, and turkeys, and we are thankful for every day that we can enjoy living our dream.

I started this blog in 2022 so that I could teach and inspire others to learn about cooking from scratch and growing more of the food that they eat.

I took the DOGE offer and the Fork in the Road.

In early 2025, I was offered a generous and unique deal by the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency to leave my Federal career. I had worked for nearly 20 years as an auditor, but having the option to retire early was an answer to our prayer.

So I traded my cubicle for my farm. I traded my high heels for muck boots and leather work gloves. I traded my early morning conference calls for milking my dairy cow. And I traded my long commute to sit around the table and homeschool my four children.

You’re never too old to start living your dream(s) or imagining a new future!

Living our dream at Rivers Family Farm.

My deepest desire when we moved to our farm was to 1) grow closer to God, 2) grow closer as a family, and 3) grow closer to the earth and be more involved with where our food was coming from. And that’s exactly what happened.

Join me and my family at our farm where we cook and eat old-fashioned, nutrient-dense meals; where we use our homesteading skills to be as self-sufficient as possible; and where I document our journey here on the blog!

Follow our journey on Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook!

New to cooking food the old-fashioned way? Read these helpful posts!

Here are some posts to help get you started cooking and eating the way our grandparents used to.

Beginner homesteader? Read about starting your homestead with these posts!

If you’d like to learn more about homesteading, try these helpful beginner homesteader posts!

Thank you so much for stopping by our farm!

Grab this FREE PRINTABLE so you can learn how to homestead on any budget with any amount of land!

Rivers Family Farm Free Printable for Homesteading for Every Budget.

God bless you!!

Love, Rebekah