Today we’d like to introduce you to Kerrina Sanchez
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Hi there, I am Kerrina Sanchez, also well known as Farmer K. I am 38yr old a small business owner, mother, farmer, food preserver and live a life striving for self sustainability. But that has not always been the case.
I was hired as a banker in 2005 and this accidentally became my career right out of high school. I worked for the same bank and built a successful career of 18 years.
While I was extremely successful in my job and loved many aspects of it, all of that changed very rapidly from 2020-2022.
Like many others, my home and work life merged without notice when COVID 19 shut down most of the United States. I was blessed to work from home without challenge, and when our twin boys were forced into distanced learning. During this time, our priorities shifted abruptly and we decided to make some changes to both our work and home lives.
Our twins went back to school in late 2021 and we decided that would be there last year in the traditional school environment. Making this change required that we make some budget changes as well as lifestyle changes to accommodate. We made the decision to homeschool our children.
I chose to leave the corporate world of banking after 18 years and truly never looked back. I walked away in May of 2022 just after our first video went viral reaching over 1 million views.
In late 2021, we were blessed to move onto a new property in Southern California that would support some of the changes we needed to make. We inherited some fruit trees from my Mother in Law that were already established on the property and we decided I would begin to grow as much of our food as possible.
I also started filming and posting videos on Tiktok and Instagram showcasing the changes we were making to our backyard garden space. The videos I posted continued to go viral and I continued to post.
I am a first generation gardener and food preserver. Once I started gardening and maximizing our space for food growth, we quickly realized the potential we had. Our first summer, we grew just over 750lbs of food. We now average over 925lbs of homegrown food on our 1/4 acre residential home we have turned into a micro farm.
Very quickly I also realized I needed to learn how to preserve our food to store in case of emergencies as well as the winter when most fruits and vegetables cannot be grown. I taught myself the science and safety to can our food, dehydrate and ultimately freeze dry.
Additionally, this gave us the opportunity to be mindful of what was in our food we would consume and we began to make as much of our food as possible from scratch.
In the late summer of 2022, we were afforded the opportunity to obtain our Cottage Food License allowing us to cook, process and preserve foods for retail sale. This is when Farmer K Homestead was born.
As of today, we are a vendor at local Farmers Markets as well as many local markets on a weekly basis. We offer a large variety of Freeze Dried Fruits, Candy (for fun) and our homemade and locally sourced jams, jellies and butters.
We also share our journey and help educate on Facebook, Tiktok, and Instagram with an audience of 500,000 and growing.
Our goal is to build Self Sufficiency and help others do the same.
On our property we grow 75+ varieties of fruits, vegetables and herbs at any given time. We have made so many connections, friends, and more over the last two years and are so grateful.
We are just a family of 5. Myself, my husband, our 3 wonderful children trying to build our life, educate and help others, while running our business, homeschooling our children and sharing the values that mean the most to us.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I am blessed to say that this journey has been more seamless than we could have ever expected. While the children give us a run for our money with homeschool at times, we are so grateful for the ag community and support we have received along the way.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Farmer K Homestead?
We specialize in food preservation. We offer a large variety of locally sourced Freeze Dried Fruits. We also offer Freeze Dried candy for fun at times.
Lastly, our seasonal and locally sourced jams and jellies which is how our business originally started in summer 2022.
We sell locally at Farmers Markets, local artisan markets, offer free local delivery and shipping options.
Freeze Dried candy has become very saturated and popular over the last year but we are the ONLY Freeze Dried Fruits in Southern California.
Who else deserves credit in your story?
Long Beach Fresh- Ryan Smolar, Tony Damico – Introduced us to many local agriculture influential people and opened many doors for collaborations
Kelli Johnson – Local Farmers Market Managers – offered us our first spot in local Farmers Markets
My Husband – Supported me and continued to work from home supporting us financially while we worked through the initial stages
Kelsey Shaw – My BFF that I met through Tiktok who has a VERY similar lifestyle. We have become the best of friends and chat daily to motivate each other and learn as we go
Pricing:
- $1-$25
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.farmerkhomestead.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/farmerkhomestead/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100086763701206&ref=xav_ig_profile_web
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@farmerkhomestead
