Todd and I are both in our 50’s and we’ve changed a lot over the years on how we view the world and what’s really important to us. Some of these areas we wish we’d learned when we were younger, but as they say, wisdom comes with experience which can only be gained through age. 

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We moved to Hot Springs, Arkansas many years ago from Northern California. There were many reasons for the move, but one reason was we wanted to be able to own a house without being house-poor. We bought our first house on my 50th birthday. I guess we thought it was time to finally settle down. 

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We both worked in residential construction when we were young. Mine was volunteer work for Habitat for Humanity and Todd worked with his grandfather and various other contractors. We finished our degrees, and both wound up in the IT field; me in software R&D as a Project Manager and Todd on the hardware side of things. We met on a project that our two companies were working on together and even though we were on opposite sides of the country it all worked out and we’ve been married for 17+ years now. 

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Currently, I have a consulting business that works on sustainable residential housing, mostly affordable housing, and Todd is an artist specializing in woodworking. Together we have The Sustainable Dragonfly herb and bee farm. We’ve been beekeepers for the past 6 years.  We also have apple, pear, and peach trees along with blueberry and blackberry bushes that we propagate. 

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We sell our herbs, plants, and honey along with Todd’s functional artwork at our local farmer’s market May – October. We thought we would be selling year-round, but found we do need the winter months to work on house projects, enjoy the holidays with the family and rest a bit.

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We have three rescue kitties that are quite entertaining. Zorro (left) and Einstein (right) came with us from California and Ginger (center) adopted us two months after we moved into our house, so she’s a local.  

 

We just got Honey Bear, a white German Shepard puppy who fits right into the family. We call him Bear for short.