By Karen Parr-Moody
SPRINGFIELD, Tenn. – America is home to an emerging subset of people who want to connect more intimately with the land and the food it produces. Christy Hunter – wife, photographer, mother of four and, now, farmer – is one of them. This pretty brunette in her 30s – a self-described “glam hippie” – raises rabbits for food, as well as chickens for eggs, food and pest control. She also has an organic garden the size of a basketball court.
“It’s just the best feeling ever to go into your front yard and pick your own food,” Hunter says. “The more we can do that – and the more we can teach our kids these basic life skills – the better. We’re not preppers, but we still want our kids to know how to survive.”
Hunter grew up in a Clarksville subdivision and enjoyed a social life filled with cheerleading, singing competitions and church.
“Life was a lot about convenience,” she says. “I didn’t know how to butcher a chicken.”
That was until she left a Springfield subdivision and moved, with her family, to eight acres of rural land 10 minutes south of Clarksville’s Sango a little more than a year ago.
A gravel road leads to the Hunter family’s eight rural acres./Photo by Karen Parr-Moody.
“My husband started talking about a lifestyle where you’re set back from the busy pace of life,” she says. “That started sounding good to me.”
The family still has some conveniences; the mini farm is halfway between Nashville and Clarksville. Since Hunter operates a photography business, Authentic Photos by Christy, she is perfectly perched. (To see her photos visit www.authenticphotosbychristy.com.)
“Photography is my passion,” she says.
The Hunters learned farming on the fly. They read books, watched YouTube videos on how to butcher chickens humanely and talked to other farmers.
Besides, they had already been transitioning to this new lifestyle before they moved to the country.
Hunter says raising livestock, including rabbits, teaches her children “respect for what you’re eating.”/Photo courtesy of Christy Hunter/Authentic Photos by Christy.
“We had rabbits at our subdivision house,” Hunter says. “We thought that was the gateway drug into homesteading. They’re easy, they’re very clean and they have multiple uses. So we started with them – and of course rabbits multiply very quickly.”
Hunter laughs.
“We do use them for meat, which is popular in Europe,” she adds. “It tastes just like chicken – even better.”
They also have 30 hens of miscellaneous breeds, which they raised from day-old chicks; they use them for eggs and pest control. Each spring and fall they get 50 Cornish Cross chicks, which is a fast-growing breed raised for its meat. When they chicks are grown, the family butchers them and puts the meat in the freezer. This supplies their food needs for an entire year.
Free-range chickens provide eggs and pest control./Photo by Karen Parr-Moody.
The children help with the butchering, which Hunter says is a humane, modern process.
“We use it as a science lesson, since we’re home schoolers,” she says.
Additionally, Hunter cans produce from the organic garden. And since the family doesn’t have pigs or cattle, she buys pork from the nearby Jolly Barnyard and beef from Tennessee Grass Fed Farm. She considers herself a locavore due to this dedication for purchasing food from within the geographic region.
Hunter would eventually like to have a greenhouse to grow summer produce, such as tomatoes, year-round. Goats are also on the wish list.
The Hunter family grows produce using organic methods./Photo courtesy of Christy Hunter/Authentic Photos by Christy.
Still, farming isn’t everything. Hunter loves to get dressed up and shoot photos of weddings, for example – hence her “glam hippie” description of herself.
“I can go to a wedding in Franklin and feel very glamorous and fun and social,” she says. “Then I can come here and throw on a camouflage hat and go feed my chickens or go barefoot in my garden and do earthing.”
Earthing?
She laughs. Followers of “earthing” believe that spending time barefoot in a garden pulls toxins out of the body through the feet. Additionally, it allows the body to absorb minerals and vitamins from the soil, she says.
“I try to get some earthing time in there,” she says with a laugh.
Christy Hunter makes pies and jam from fresh produce./Photo courtesy of Christy Hunter/Authentic Photos by Christy.
Karen Parr-Moody began a career as a New York journalist, working as a fashion reporter for Women’s Wear Daily, a beauty editor for Young Miss and a beauty and fashion writer for both In Style and People magazines. Regionally, she has been a writer at The Leaf-Chronicle newspaper and currently writes about arts and culture for Nashville Arts magazine each month.