Our Story

Joe and I both come from rural roots. Though the roots were from families in different states, we both moved to the Dallas area when we were younger in order to make a living. We met and married five years ago. Because we were brought up to be frugal, we never truly felt at ease in the lifestyle that comes with a city. Our idea of a fun weekend was to visit his family who lived south of Dallas or to visit my family in rural Oklahoma.

While we cherish the lifetime friendships with so many of the people we worked with, we sometimes talked of starting a goat farm and ways to make a living at it. At first it was just a dream, but one day while sitting in rush hour traffic, I realized we weren’t getting any younger. If we were going to live that dream it was time to take a serious look at what was possible.

Soon we were able to buy a few acres with an old, empty house and a nice barn from some wonderful neighbors in Atwood, where I grew up. Opportunity was clearly beckoning us to create a goat farm, so, having absolutely no experience with goats, we took a deep breath, made a leap of faith, and began the process of transforming to a “simpler” lifestyle. Since our last name is Durbin, somewhere along the way we began calling the place Durbinshire, and the name stuck.

When we told our family and friends we were moving to Oklahoma to start a goat farm, to our surprise many of them said they wish they could do that too. Yet, a few of them thought we had lost our ever-loving minds. (Julie, I’m talking to you.) Serendipities that affirmed our decision, kept cropping up in ways that made it possible to build our farm spending very little money. Almost everything we have built, we repurposed from items given to us or that we purchased second-hand. There were also plenty of complications we hadn’t counted on. We work more hours, and are more physically tired at the end of the day, but we don’t regret life at Durbinshire for a minute.

The many people who have encouraged and helped us along the way; the evolving story of a Durbinshire Farm business, the ways the simple life can get complicated, the things we make from the bounty of our small farm? Well, those are all a part of the stories I share with you on my blog and I hope you will join me there often.