Jennifer Morris grew up on a farm near Cosby, Mo., and couldn’t wait to leave home and move to “the city.”
After marrying in 1999, she and her husband, Aaron, settled in a farmhouse in the
Jennifer Morris '01, with sons Shaden, Asher and Landan
country, but it wasn’t until her first child was born a few years later that Jennifer began to enjoy country living. And in the past few years, she has fully embraced the lifestyle, filling her farm with livestock and produce. “I’m really into ‘self-sustaining,’” she says. “I want my kids to know how to grow their own food.”
Jennifer says she never really thought much about healthy eating until she became pregnant with her first child (she has three sons – Landan, Asher and Shaden). “For the first time, I thought about what I was taking into my body. I started reading labels and stopped assuming what is on the store shelf is safe.”
First she started growing lots of produce in a chemical-free vegetable garden. Then she bought some chickens for both eggs and meat. Then she bought goats for milk. The next year, she increased the size of her garden and acquired turkeys, calves and bees. The family has an orchard with five different kinds of fruit trees, and four different berry patches on their property. Now she’s thinking about getting a pig.
She has even tried growing wheat, grinding it into flour and making bread. And, of course, Jennifer grows lots of herbs and even stevia as a natural sweetener. “I love sugar, I just want it to be good for me.”
She freezes a lot of her produce and started canning after a friend’s grandmother taught her how. Her goal is to grow and raise enough produce and meat for the family to be self-sustaining throughout the entire year.
For Jennifer, it’s about being self-sustaining, but also about eating healthy and knowing what has gone into your food. She said it may be expensive to feed the calves they are raising for meat, but it is convenient and she likes knowing what is going into her future meat.