Our Story

In amongst all those years were health scares the medical field was at a loss over, a radical change in how we ate, looked at the world and took care of our bodies, 2 crazy, sweet children, and 1 eye-opening pandemic. God worked all those things together into a growing desire to find a safe place to raise our children, worship Him and live in peace without the overreach and tyranny we were unhappy with, yet mostly numb to prior to 2020.

God answered those desires with the 23 beautiful acres we now live and work on, that we have lovingly coined ‘Hollow Creek Homestead’ in God’s country, TN.

Our Journey to TN

In 2021, after much prayer, hard work and tears, we sold our just finished gorgeous 2800sq ft Victorian Farmhouse in the Finger Lakes of WNY along with almost everything we owned and moved into a 298 sq. ft. camper.

Hailing from western NY & Ohio by birth, and spending the first decade of our marriage in WNY, we knew we were meant to be somewhere better to raise our family. The awful, eye-opening years of 2019-2021 held the blessing of Ryan’s job going fully remote and, when asked, we were told we could move – as long as we didn’t take residence in CA.

No. Problem. Ha.

So, after multiple rounds of God saying, “NO”, or “Not there”, we found amazing property on the beautiful Cumberland Plateau by what many would call chance (we know it was 100% divine intervention). It is surrounded by rolling hay fields, creeks, waterfalls and deep hollows.

Our desire here is to steward what God has given us well. We’ve put up outbuildings to grow the animal aspect of the farm with heritage meat birds, layers, a couple calves and barn cats. Every year we expand our large garden area with raised beds, and have built a small, modern home to allow us to raise our littles on this wonderful property with space to grow our organic easy meal mix business.

Real Minute Meals from the Beginning

[Tiffany] Back in 2012, after spending 2.5 months on disability, exhausting multiple specialties of the medical field, going through months of physical therapy and ultimately having to quit my job as a Medical Assistant because my body was too sick to do basic things, we found an alternative care doctor who opened our eyes. He set me on a journey to health and healing, after decades of feeding disease.

When we were first married we went grocery shopping to build our pantry. Considering it was what we both knew and grew up on, we spent $300 of our very little money on a cart overflowing with ultra processed, GMO and pesticide laden cereals, easy meal mixes, condiments, frozen & boxed items, breads and the cheapest conventional meat we could find. I don’t even remember most of it, other than that it was utterly fake. But – FDA approved!

All of that had to go.

Over the years, I’ve done completely sugar free, Paleo, grain-free, and AIP (autoimmune protocol) diets. I’m not against them, they served a purpose for a time, but now we just focus on eating REAL FOOD. Things naturally found in or made by nature – ancient grains like Spelt, Einkorn & Khorasan (Kamut), heirloom vegetables and fruit, honey, maple syrup, and (non-sprayed) grass-fed pasture-raised beef, lamb, poultry. At the very least – organic, pesticide-free grains and foods.

The biggest hurdle we had to get over was how extremely complicated making food became. There was NOTHING easy. There were very, very few organic meal items in a normal grocery store, I don’t remember Annie’s even existing. Finally, after many a miserable night trying to put good food together, it dawned on us that easy and fast didn’t have to mean highly processed fake food. We had wonderful pasta options I could order online and we had all the organic flours and spices – we could create our own!

First thing to try was a homemade “Hamburger Helper”. We found similar-ish recipes online, but none really fit the flavor we were looking for. So came many nights of tweaking spices and really leaning into flavors. After many months (you can only eat ground beef pasta dishes so much before needing a break, ha) we had our ‘Cheeseburger Mac’ flavor perfected.

At the time, I was working for our alternative care doctor and told him about it. We had a ‘duh’ moment realizing that others are also looking for healthy alternatives to these grossly artificial, yet conveniently super easy ‘meal options’. So we looked up cottage food laws, created labels with the right info, ordered our favorite organic spelt pasta in bulk & local high-quality spices, and started selling at the doctor’s office. It was a hit! We ended up developing a ‘Goulash’ and ‘Lasagna’ flavor, but our ‘Cheeseburger Mac’ was by far the most popular. Even our doctor’s couple year old grandson who he was raising was obsessed with it.

2015 came fast and when our first was born I quit my job to be a stay at home mama. I wanted to be the one who kissed their booboos, taught them words, rocked them to sleep. All good and wonderful things come with a cost tho, and our business venture was put on hold.

Fast forward 2017 – we finished our second fixer upper right after our second baby was born, Ryan got an awesome job he was excited about and we moved 2 hours away to start all over again in our third fixer with two toddlers. Once we had a kitchen again (I was without for 4.5+ months during the reno), I started baking organic Bundt cakes that I developed over months of testing for a local restaurant and they were very popular.

Fast forward 2020 – when Covid hit that wonderful little restaurant, a joy to the entire town, was one of the many, many small businesses in the state of NY that was forced to close down, never to reopen. Stores, churches, doctor’s offices shut down, people hid behind their masks and never made eye contact unless it was to rabidly chastise anyone not wearing one. The health food store we drove 45 minutes to frequent and order bulk organic spelt flour from threatened to call the cops on me if I didn’t put a dirty blue mask on that they were touching with their hands. I had a medical exemption and they refused to honor it. I left my cart full of items and never returned.

Those were some awful years and eye opening for so many – even me. I had no idea the depth of the darkness gripping our country and world. But God brought light out of that darkness!

The Rebirth of Our Meals

Moving to beautiful TN we realized that even tho this state is supposedly ‘poorer’ (however they have a surplus and no deficit) and the median salary is lower – more people actually care about what they put in their bodies. We were floored by how many families here homestead – they keep their own chickens at the very least, goats, sheep, cows. They plant big gardens, preserve their harvest, search out grassfed, locally raised meat, or grow their own. It has been the most encouraging, enlightening, hopeful experience of our lives.