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In 2016, we began our homesteading adventure by purchasing a home on 7-acres. It has been quite a journey and we’ve learned a lot about what we like about the land we live on and what we don’t. We’ve learned a lot about caring for animals, warding off predators, and even rescuing some animals along the way. We’ve cried a lot and laughed a lot, most importantly, we’ve loved a lot and prayed a lot. We’ve learned (and are still learning) to put Christ at the center of our marriage and at the center of everything we do; because of this we’ve grown through our trials and come out stronger – even when we didn’t really want to. Koutz Farm is about our family and our adventures in homesteading. It is not just another blog, or just another online store, or just another website. There is a family behind every piece of information here, a person behind every minute spent here, and a love that has been poured out of our hearts into these pages. Welcome to Koutz Farm, where we pray our love will fill your heart with every word you read and every moment you spend with us here.
Values and morals are important to have. If you don’t have them, you can’t gauge right from wrong, truth from fiction, and be convicted morally when something is way off. Values are part of your character. They are what draw others into your lives and are the building blocks of trust, loyalty, and relationships. Without values, you are ship on rough seas heading straight into the storm that is going to take you down to the darkness of the seabed where you will eventually drown in your own mess. We try hard not to drown in our own mess (although the clutter at the house right now may say otherwise, we’re working through that, too) and that is why we are glad we were raised with values and morals being taught to us at every turn. So, here is a list of our family values – values that we share and carry into our business, our daily work, our farm, and into our relationships.
Put God First In Everything You Do (Not Always Easy & We Are By No Means Perfect At This)
Truth & Honesty Will Always Be Given & Is The Best Choice Even When It Is Hard To Hear
Everyone Has Something To Give, To Teach, & To Value. Always Value & Respect The Lives Around You – Be Kind, Be Considerate, Be Helpful, Be Compassionate, And Be Empowering To Others Whenever You Can.
Don’t Give Up When Things Are Hard. Rest, Reset, & Try Again.
A Promise Spoken Is A Promise Made. Keep Your Promises Or Reconilate Them Before They Are Broken If They Can’t Be Kept.
Try To Leave Things Better Than You Found Them.
Be A Forever Student. Learn Something New Every Day. You Don’t Know Everything Already, I Promise.
How You Treat Animals, Waitresses, & Shopping Carts Tells Us A Lot About The Kind Of Person You Really Are; So Treat Animals & People With Love & Kindness And Always Put The Shopping Carts Up After You Use Them.
Failures Show You Are Trying, So Don’t Be Afraid To Fail. Learn The Lesson & Try AGain.
If you’ve read much of our content, you’ve most likely run into something that lets you know we are Christians and that we try to put Christ front and center of our lives. If you haven’t read much of our content, or we failed to put our faith in the content you did see, then this is where we get to tell you that we love Jesus! We aren’t perfect, we still sin, we have a lot of growing and learning to do, but we love Jesus and we are trying to be better people than we were before. Both of us have dark pasts that have crossed into the hands of the devil and demons. Both of us have come out of the darkness scarred, traumatized in some ways, and broken in places people can’t see. Both of us have failed in the past to follow Christ, we’ve turned a blind eye to what we knew and were raised to believe. BUT we’ve changed. BUT we’ve grown. BUT we’ve been forgiven and we’ve forgiven. BUT we’ve received God’s mercy and grace! So you see friend, we are covered in God’s light. When darkness tries to swoop in, it can’t swallow us whole like it used to. The light of God is always there for us, no matter how dark the devil tries to make the path.
We are non-denominational – David was raised Catholic and Crystal was raised Southern Baptist. We came out of religion and into the light of Jesus. We are Christians who believe Jesus is the WAY, the TRUTH, and the LIGHT, just as Jesus says He is. We celebrate Jesus’ birthday in December even though we know He probably wasn’t born in December and we celebrate Christmas because we know in our hearts that Jesus is the reason we celebrate the season. Whether or not some traditions were started with Pagan or other ceremonies and symbols, we know that what we do for Christmas now at our house and with our family is God-centered and our celebration is about Him giving us the salvation of the Lord Jesus. How can we not celebrate such a magnificent man that sacrificed so very much for us? So, we may say “Merry Christmas” to you to wish you a joyous end of this past year and we hope that you’ll accept the words simply as well-wishes and not find offense in the phrase of merriment and blessing.
Another important thing we do is pray. We pray all day long, like we are talking to a friend. We pray hard when times are tough and we pray with tears when we cannot speak the words that need to be prayed (and yes we’ve had those moments in 2023), we pray when we are travelling, we pray when we are asked to join up with prayer warriors to pray for others in need, and even though we’ve never met you – we’ve prayed for you, too. If you need prayer, make sure to fill out our Prayer Request Form and if you’d like to join our Prayer Warrior Team, fill out our Join Our Prayer Warrior Team Form.
We decided to put our personal Bible Studies on our website to share with everyone; you can access those here. We will be picking them back up in January 2024. If you start reading what we do have out there, you’ll see we got behind on them especially in 2023 because of a serious tragedy in our family and events going on in our own household that made it too difficult to keep up with. Things are starting to look up thankfully and God has answered prayer that proves to us everyday how powerful prayers are and that they work. Never doubt the power of prayer, never be afraid to ask us to pray for you, and know that God is with you through every trial, through every battle, through every struggle, and He will not leave you as long as you choose to be His. So join us in 2024 as we pick our Bible Studies back up here on Koutz Farm.
Our family is small, it is just the 3 of us and our bonus “son” plus all of our animals. David & Crystal are who you hear from, the content creators, and the homesteaders that run Koutz Farm, the website, and our online store. Taylor and her boyfriend, Dom, are recent college graduates that are beginning their own journey and adventures – a history teacher and a mechanical engineer – in their new careers and new found independence. Exciting things are ahead for all of us. We have new plans in the works (that we aren’t quite ready to share publicly, yet) and new adventures await us all. While we don’t know what 2024 will bring, we do know that as long as we keep Christ at the forefront then we will be okay and with His blessing, the adventures we seek out will be victorious.
This question is much harder to answer, it is more like what don’t we do? As a small farm, we sell fresh eggs on a regular basis and have sold baby chicks, baby ducks, laying hens, and roosters to locals in the community. We were selling seasonal herbs and produce; however, we didn’t build our big garden this past year like we wanted (it honestly was a really rough year) and have only had a small container garden. The “big Texas freeze” a few years ago killed all of our nice herb plants that we were using to harvest and sell fresh herbs and oddly enough no matter how many times we replant and try to regrow them nothing is successfully growing in that spot any more. We have our conspiracy theories about what was in that snow that might have caused this – but this isn’t the conspiracy theory page of the website, so we’ll refrain.
As for our e-commerce business, we have an online store that is picking up popularity as folks start supporting small businesses again. We do well with our online store, the Koutz Farm Market & Boutique. We are super excited to see our hard work start paying off because it helps care for the animals out here and allows us to continue to give to our favorite fundraisers and charities. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts – your support means so much more than you can ever know.
We have side gigs and “day-jobs”, too. David is the most amazing mechanic that ever lived (yes we are quite partial to him) and although his day job has him managing people and fleet operations as a contractor for a major auto manufacturer, his side jobs keep him on his toes all the time and because of burn-out, he has made the decision to quit doing mechanic side jobs all together. We support him in this decision and look forward to having him around more with us on the farm. Crystal has been blessed with working her “day-job” from home (thankfully) and has transitioned from being a Records & Information Management Administrator to becoming a System Application Administrator for a government utility company that she has worked for since 2015. During her free-time, Crystal dabbles in side jobs building websites, doing graphic design, and even some stock photography gigs. Crystal’s latest entrepreneurship adventure has her working in the affiliate marketing space and learning how AI can be utilized for improving business processes, to include automation of print-on-demand product creation and social media posts. She loves learning new things and is fascinated with all the new tech out there; she is a forever student – one that loves to learn something new every day and is happy get back to reading again after a long hiatus caused by her battles with fibromyalgia.
On top of all of these things, David and Crystal have the farm and all their beloved animals to spend time with so they stay happily busy and are excited about the new chapters opening up in their lives.
Coming Soon
Coming Soon
