MERCER MADE FARMS
A REGENERATIVE FAMILY FARM
A classic tale of a northern boy meeting a southern girl...well, kind of.
Hey, y'all! Justin and Rachel here. We are Portland, Tennessee-based farmers, and we're excited you stopped by.
While we'd love to invite you over for a glass of tea or cup of cocoa someday, here's our story in a nutshell:
We met out in Texas in 2014 doing outdoor theater. And while Justin is originally from Detroit, and Rachel is from North Carolina/Virginia, we both fell head over heels for western culture and small town living.
We got married in 2017 and moved to Tennessee to be closer to our families. Now, we live on a 6.5-acre farmstead about 45 minutes outside of Nashville where we are building our farmhouse out of an old barn that was here on the property while operating our no-till regenerative farm.
Our chickens provide farm fresh eggs for us and our community, and we deliver locally to our customers (a little bit of that old-fashioned milk man vibe).
As we grow, we are offering even more farm fresh products for our community, so check back often for all of the fun updates!
There's always something going on here, and we love to share bits and pieces of the fun we have on social media. Be sure to follow along as we build our farm from the ground up — together.
At Mercer Made Farms, we tend our 6.5 acres with intention, working with nature—not against it.
Our farm is completely no-till and rooted in regenerative practices, meaning we’re focused on rebuilding soil health, increasing biodiversity, and leaving the land better than we found it. We lean into permaculture principles, allowing natural systems to guide the way we grow and harvest.
We are fully organic, and we only harvest honey from our bees when there’s enough to share. Every bloom, root, and balm we create comes from this place of balance, care, and respect for the land.
We started with 6 chickens on a 1-acre lot! Then, we got 20 more as people started asking us if we had farm fresh eggs. Fast-forward through all the nuttiness of 2020 and a year of intensive fertility treatments with no positive results in 2021, and we decided we wanted to take the leap and buy our dream farm. We needed to heal mentally and physically, and we were ready for the next chapter.
In June of 2022, we sold our house and moved into a 25' camper on raw farm land with two old tobacco barns. It was here that we decided to start our door delivery egg service as the demand kept growing, and off we went!
Through the years, we've added more chickens (of course), guineas, ducks, geese, pigs, rabbits, and barn cats. There's so much more to come, but our passion for healing through the land is what roots us.
What's next?
Our next BIG project on the farm is actually building our house! It's been a looooong journey to get here with many twists and turns, but we are finally FINALLY finally doing the thing!
We're going to try to document the process of our unconventional build, so feel free to follow along and laugh (and probably cry) with us as we test all of our skills.
Can we run a farm, work full-time, and build a house in a year? We're about to find out!