Our farm is a major part of our lives. We have had a variety of animals over the years, and currently own a growing herd of beef cattle, a few dairy cows, a few goats (for those of us allergic to cows’ milk), chickens, a dog, and a couple of barn cats. Our second and third sons would like to farm full-time in the future, so lately we have also been acquiring quite an assortment of farm equipment.

Whether we’re making hay, working in the gardens, butchering meat, moving cases of books, or putting together a catalog mailing, we work together as much as possible. We love each other in spite of all our faults, and we love being the Castleberry family.

Our family has always enjoyed good books, and we especially enjoy reading together as a family in the evenings. Over the past few years, that evening reading has become “evening reading only during the colder months” – the number of animals and the responsibilities that go with them have grown so much. Like many other Christian families we know, we have had difficulty in finding enough good reading material. We have a desire for books that can be read to the entire family, with no questionable topics or language. But other than a limited number of older books, where were they to be found?

Steve is a marketing professor at the University of Minnesota at Duluth, about a 30 minute commute from our farm. We had never dreamed we would someday write books – it wasn’t even in our minds. Until we met Robin Berglund, a neighbor and good friend. He taught us how to do some of the things we now do – and then he gave us the idea for writing about our experiences. We were a little hesitant, but also excited. And as we began to remember what we had done in those first few years here, and then to write about what we had learned, we had fun. Lots of fun. Talking over ideas for chapters, re-living our experiences, and reading the stories aloud to the children as we wrote them was another thing we could enjoy together as a family. And so we wrote our first book, Our Homestead Story. The response was so encouraging that we began writing more books as the Lord provided the time and ideas. We currently have eighteen books in print, and will continue to write as long as the Lord leads us to do so.