Today we’d like to introduce you to Anna Austin.
Hi Anna, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
It was February 2021 that my husband, Mark, and I sold everything we had, left everything we knew, and moved our family of 6 from the state of Oregon to the hills of Tennessee.
Our goal was to start a family farm from scratch and serve the local community. We landed on a 53 acre plot of land and patched together a chicken coop for our first round of meat birds.
We named it, “True Blue Farm,” to honor Mark’s grandmother who, when she was on her deathbed, came-to when Mark walked in the room and said, “Oh Markie, he’s true blue.”
That first season we quickly learned that there was a huge demand for what we we were doing—growing clean meat—and we were woefully underprepared to meet it. So, we tripled our production the following year, and then again the year after that.
With each season, the farm has expanded—adding more infrastructure, and improving our product quality, all while building strong relationships with our family and local community.
This year True Blue Farm ran 15k meat birds, 20+ hogs, 15 head of cattle, and 300 laying hens. We offer our meat and eggs on subscription and serve hundreds of families every month all throughout Middle Tennessee. We also provide fresh eggs to a few of our favorite local restaurants.
The farm is growing again in 2026. This time in the form of a local market. We’re excited to offer not only our own farm’s products, but to partner with other producers to provide locally sourced goods to our community in Petersburg, TN.
Our motto is: “We believe food should be grown with integrity, and families should be fed from local farms.” And we plan to keep doing just that.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
2023 was a doozy for us. Our old 1900 built farmhouse wasn’t able to withstand a subzero cold snap right before Christmas ‘22. We came home from vacation on Christmas Day to a frozen flood inside our home. The pipes had burst and the water froze as it poured into the house.
We spent the majority of 2023 living in a hotel in Columbia with our 4 teenage kids. We drove to the farm everyday to run the chores AND to rebuild our house—WITH OUR OWN HANDS. My husband, who has a background in concrete and construction laid a new foundation and raised the new walls with the help of our 2 boys and a few friends from church. The girls and I helped where we could. And the community came together to help us finish and paint so we could move back in before the end of the year.
It’s a miracle we survived 2023. At some point throughout the year, each one of the kids ended up in the ER for some reason or another. I battled some health issues. The stress on Mark and myself nearly broke us.
But, God carried us through in a truly miraculous way that year. Our church played a huge role in helping us and the farm survive. We are incredibly grateful for that faith-filled community.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
What we do is grow clean, pasture-raised, non-GMO meat on our small family farm here in Middle Tennessee. We specifically specialize in poultry—which is our largest enterprise.
We’re proud to be a source of locally grown food, and to help facilitate family meals in our community. We believe that all healthy community starts at home, and we want to help our local families share healthy meals together, in turn—creating a healthier community.
Personally, Mark and I are proud that we’ve persevered through some pretty difficult circumstances. Most first generation farmers don’t make it to year 5–but here we are still standing.
I read a stat from Charlotte Smith (a farm business coach) that said—80% of farmers go out of business by year 2, and by year 5, the failure rate is 98%.
What sets us apart from others is that we are such an UNLIKELY success story.
Mark and I were teenage parents. That is such a big part of who we are. Neither Mark nor I went to college. We have no degrees or training. We don’t come from farming families. The odds have been stacked high against us from the very beginning.
Yet, here we are at 37 years old, married for 19 years now, with a healthy, thriving family, and a first generation farm that’s stepping into its 5th year.
God has set us up as a beacon of hope and an example of perseverance to so many others going through less than ideal circumstances. We are able to encourage others to keep pressing on because we have kept pressing on.
How do you think about happiness?
For me? There are lots of things that make me happy… friends, nature, music, creativity, etc. If I had to boil it all down, I would end up with one word: Connection.
Connecting with people, connecting with my husband and children, connecting with myself, connecting with nature, connecting with God.
I can’t think of one thing that makes me happier than connecting.
Why? Because it reminds me that there is so much more to life than just what I can see. I am part of a bigger story. Connecting gives me courage to keep going. And it allows my story to be useful, even though my story isn’t perfect.
That makes me happy.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://TrueBlueFarmTN.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/truebluefarmtn
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/austincakes/
- Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/@truebluefarm6317
- Other: https://instagram.com/anna_austin
