Today we’d like to introduce you to Anfernee
Hi Anfernee, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I often say that I lived the stereotypical black-boy childhood. I lived in a matriarchical home with my single mother, I didn’t spend much time with my father, and we moved around every few years or so, often to rough neighborhoods. I made my way through high school and joined the Marine Corps right after I graduated. I loved it. I wanted to stay there for a long time, but it wasn’t meant to be because a building collapsed on me and injured me pretty bad. I was a civilian again, I didn’t know what to do. I was a stay-at-home dad for a while, raising my daughter. Then I found The Faith and went to college. My family started to grow our own food and customers started to ask if they could buy what we produced. Here we are today, trying to grow a small business and build real relationships with good people.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
The road has been far from smooth.
I wasn’t able to build lasting friendships as a child, so childhood was lonely. Although I had a household filled with six other siblings, we were never very close. It was as if I came of age by myself. I didn’t have anyone there to teach me how to be a man or how to be a good person.
When I got married, I still didn’t know how to BE married, and my marriage has gone through some VERY dark times because of it. My wife and I were patient with each other, and she let me figure myself out.
This may sound a bit dark, but I’ve almost died a handful of times. that kept me in a perpetual state of stress and discouragement. After the building collapsed on my head and my military career was cut short, I thought that I was destined for dread.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Once I started to focus on what I was doing in life, I started to pay better attention to what I was feeding my family, and we started to grow our own food. Our health took a major turn for the better and the food security than we found was amazing to have during the Coronavirus Epidemic. The public found us, and we started to deliver our products to the marketplace.
We focus on WHOLESOME food. Food without any unnecessary additives or chemical inputs. Food that has been minimally processed. Food that heals those that eat it, not harms. We are a farm, a food producer. We aren’t in the mass commodity market. We try to focus on feeding the people around us and let other farmers in other places focus on feeding the people there. That way we can stay intimate with our customers and be gentle to the planet and to our animals. Lately, we’ve started to bake and deliver home baked sourdough goods. We started to bake our own bread, and again, the public wanted to buy it. Who are we to say no?
I feel like people have been yearning for more intimacy and connection to their food. They want to know how it was grown and raised. They want to be able to trust the system. That’s what we try to deliver. We try to people our customers the way that we would want to be treated. We take pride in that. It feels good to know that we are doing good work. We’ve had customers tell us that they won’t be getting their eggs from anywhere else. and that we have them as customers for life. It feels good to be doing something right and for things to be going well.
We value honesty, relationship and authenticity. We welcome the public to come and be a part of our unfolding story. We want to know our customers as people, and we want our customers to know us.
So, before we go, how can our readers or others connect or collaborate with you? How can they support you?
Come and shop with us. Hire us to transform your yard into your very own grocery store, so that it can change your life like it did for us. Let us teach you how to do what we do. Tell your people about us and help spread our message.Help us try to change the world, one community at a time.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bignuffhomestead_?igsh=MTRhYTlvN3g3MmJ1dQ==
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/12KbzBVxYSJ/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anfernee-mcdonald-57a768305?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=android_app
