Hi there! We’re Eric & Roxanne and we’re the husband and wife team that runs this site, Finding Good Living.
To get a feel for where we’re coming from, who we are, take a quick trip down memory lane with us for a minute…
We met early in our freshman year of college and as they say, “the rest is history.” We’ve been married since 2011 and have 2 pretty decent kids (if we do say so ourselves).
Something we always had in common was the random dream to live on a farm “when we grew up.” Despite neither of us growing up on a farm, it was still just a gut-deep desire to live this life of dirt, farm chores, exhaustion, and oh so much reward.
We started our married life in the suburbs in a large, comfortable house with a nice, big backyard where we knew we could raise a family and fit all those extended family gatherings without much issue — a big dream we always had. Everything was great!
A portion of our backyard was turned into a vegetable garden — something both of us grew up with every year and knew we needed for ourselves. Every so often we did some canning and preserved for the winter. Nothing compares to sliced fruit for snacks or homemade spaghetti sauce at your fingertips.
We finally came to live this homesteading life after a hell of a lot of trial and error, and…well, trials in our life. To put it succinctly: we let our dreams slide a little, let life get the better of us, and then cancer hit.
On the exact day our daughter (our second child) was born, Eric was diagnosed with leukemia. Considering he thought he just had a nasty sinus infection, it totally blindsided us.
Even worse was that his genetic subtype of leukemia brings with it only an approximately 30% chance of survival.
We spent around 18 months, give or take, getting Eric through his treatment, which included a bone marrow transplant with his brother as his donor. That was really a long stretch of “survival mode” for us — as a one-income family, Eric getting sick really threw off our financial situation.
Luckily he had short-term disability coverage so we had some income, but it was about 40% less than his regular pay. We inevitably accrued more debt trying to keep the fridge and pantry stocked up to keep up with his giant medication-induced appetite, among other expenses (medical bills, prescriptions, clothes as he lost and gained weight, etc).
Most people never realize how many hidden costs there are to get through cancer.
Something about this major upheaval in our life struck us deeply.
Despite Eric doing and feeling better, clearly, we were leaving survival mode and entering “recovery mode” after all of this…something wasn’t sitting right.
Anxiety and stress were at an all-time high. We started to feel — or perhaps remember — that we just didn’t belong where we were anymore.
Life is short. Too short.
By the time Eric had been cancer-free (after the transplant) for about a year and a half, he finally got the promotion we had hoped for that gave us the opening to make my childhood dream come true — we could finally move to a different city to be closer to more family, and THAT is where we had always wanted to buy our farm someday.
We made the list of what needed to be done to sell our house, we narrowed down property choices for where we wanted to move to, and we shared the great news with the whole family, extended and all!
…and then cancer came again. About 2 weeks after we excited shared our news, Eric relapsed.
That rocked us almost as much if not more than the first diagnosis. The transplant was supposed to be an “insurance policy” to prevent relapse, but clearly that wasn’t the case with his cancer.
And, of course, that 100-acre farm 1.6 miles from my grandparents that we had picked out — my absolute dream farm — was gone.
We navigated more treatment and Eric achieved another remission, But with the warning that we should expect the cancer to return.
It was obvious that moving to a different city wasn’t going to happen, that it wasn’t a good idea. Staying near his medical team (of whom were some of the best doctors for his cancer in the entire country, no less), was too important to take that gamble of moving.
Or was it?
We came to realize that we could let cancer control our lives, or we could fight it. Maybe we couldn’t move to a farm in a different city, but we COULD still move to a farm; it just had to be close enough to his team.
So began the search for property in our current city.
Knowing there was pretty much a guarantee that his cancer would be back, we took a leap of faith that this was still where we were meant to go.
We started to renovate our house for sale, we picked a property that had just about all the property features we hoped for and got a signed and accepted offer on it, Covid hit, we listed our house anyway and eventually, finally, we moved and closed.
As we got ready to move, so came the relapse.
The short version is that Eric did a CAR-T trial to treat the leukemia, and after a month away from home over the Christmas and New Year holidays, walked out of UPenn cancer-free by all measures.
And now here we are — on 24 acres with livestock and a large garden and a thousand more farming plans and dreams in the works.
Dreams. Hope. Faith.
That’s what it took for us to get from “homesteading” as we could in the suburbs to living a farm life on acreage.
That’s what we had to focus on to make this life happen. That’s what it takes to make ANYTHING in your life happen.
If we can make it through 3 rounds of cancer and still start living a farm life, you can too.
We promise to help YOU find “good living” through this life for you and your family.
On your journey to Finding Good Living, with us by your side, we’ll help you not just get the headstart on what you need to know to get to and live a homesteading lifestyle, but we’re also here to help it just feel right, to help you find your groove.
You’ll learn about how to farm — from animal husbandry to maintaining infrastructure to scaling up to make an income.
You’ll learn about all things garden — growing, preserving, and taking things to new heights.
You’ll get a handle on sustainable living — from making household good at home to raising kids with good values to frugal living to just putting more meaning into everyday moments.
And you’ll wrap your head around the homesteading mindset — staying positive through the hard times, looking at potential instead of setbacks, and more.
So really, this leaves just one last point for us to bring up, and that’s a question:
You’ve read some of our story of our journey to finding good living…
…Are you ready to start yours?
Let us help you get started or get moving faster.
Our best ways to do that are:
Thinking about homesteading?
–> Start here, with Homesteading 101
NEED SOME EXTRA SUPPORT?
–> Join our “flock” — our “Homesteading Help & Positive Mindset” group on Facebook
WANT A REGULAR NUDGE TO KEEP MOTIVATED, GET SOME TIPS, OR JUST REMEMBER THAT YOU’RE NOT ALONE IN THIS?
–> Sign up for our email list so we can send some love and support right to your inbox on a weekly or every other weekly basis.
Want to see what we’re up to?
–> Follow us on Instagram to keep up on our journey.
Tag your pictures with @findinggoodliving and one of our hashtags to show us what component of good living you’re working on:
#growgoodliving
#raisegoodliving
#findgoodliving
#homemademoney
#farmfreedom
NEED SOME IDEAS TO MOVE YOUR CURRENT HOMESTEAD TO THE NEXT LEVEL?
–> Follow our Farm Freedom podcast on your favorite podcast app to get regular ideas for homemade money and tips about homesteading, farming, and finding good living.
