Lost Ridge Sugar Bush

What a year this has been?

This year we have had many ups and down. (I know we aren't the only ones) Jr was laid off earlier in the year for a month or so. Luckily Tiffany was able to keep working and then eventually become full time. This made us rethink our entire plan. We had so many questions. So much uncertainty.

What was our long term goal?

Its always been to be a self sustaining as possible. To become producers not consumers. If we can do it ourselves, we surely are gonna try.

But how? We live in a place where coal is considered King. We've known for a long time though that coal is not forever. We milked it for as long as we could. After many, MANY conversations Jr decided to leave his 12 year coal miner career behind in July. We are forever grateful for coal and what it provided us as a family.

We have had time to think about what we want to do in the future. How can we continue to produce income year round. We have the garden all summer and hops in the fall.

We always tap maple trees in the winter. We however barely get enough for us to last a year.

Jr saw a class online about growing your maple syrup business in West Virginia. The cost was $325, which on a 5 person, one income household was tight. Jr knew it would be worth it, and that it was. Kate at Future Generations University was wonderful. She came out to our farm and talked to Jr about what was possible and he ran with it.

Over the past few weeks we have started to work on running lines. We have the main one complete, but still have a lot of work to do.

We are so thankful you are here. Without the support of our community we wouldn't be where we are today. We hope you will continue to follow along with us.

We hope to keep our blog updated with everything we are working on. You can also let us know if there is something specific you would like to learn about

Love

The Wards