Publisher’s Thoughts
Now raising their 4-year old daughter, Indiana, alone, after Joey’s passing, Rory Feek digs deeper into the soil of his life and the unusual choices he and his wife Joey made together, and the ones he’s making now to lead his family into the future.
When Rory Feek and his older daughters moved into a run-down farmhouse almost twenty years ago, he had no idea of the almost fairy-tale love story that was going to unfold on that small piece of Tennessee land. … and the lessons he and his family would learn along the way.
Now, two years after his wife Joey’s passing… as Rory takes their four-year-old daughter Indiana’s hand and walks forward into an unknown future, he takes the readers on his incredible journey from heartbreak to hope and ultimately, the kind of healing that only comes through faith.
A raw, and vulnerable look deeper into Rory’s heart, this book is filled with powerful stories of love, life and hope and the insights that one extraordinary, ordinary man in bib overalls has gleamed along the way.
As opposed to homesteading, this is instead a book on lifesteading, as Feek learns to cultivate faith, love, and fatherhood on a small farm, while doing everything at times but farming. With frequent stories of his and Joey’s years together, and how those guide his life today, Rory unpacks just what it means to be open to new experiences.
“This isn’t a ‘how to’ book, it’s more of a ‘how we’ or more accurately “how He” (God) planted us on a few acres of land and grew something bigger than Joey or I could have ever imagined.”
Staff Thoughts
I had never heard the story of Joey and Rory or their extraordinary life together with their girls. I was browsing the aisles of my local bookstore and saw the photo on the front of the cover of “Once Upon a Farm“. I would normally read the back cover to get a quick glimpse of what the book was about, instead I read the first pages and started crying and didn’t stop crying until I finished the book, using my tissue as a bookmark.
The chapters are broken down into random life lessons with Rory guiding you through his life now after losing his wife, Joey to cancer. I identify with this family, after my own experience with breast cancer and the impact it had on my family, but more importantly Rory touched my heart so deeply. I can’t remember if I’ve ever read a book that has made me feel so strongly – it still does and I’m crying writing this review.
He brought me on a journey of despair, grief, joy, inspiration, and quiet reflection in 234 pages that I didn’t want to ever end. This book is a keeper and I will read it again. I can’t wait to hear how Indy does in her new school. I leave you with the music video of Joey & Rory singing “When I’m Gone”.
