Before the gardens, animals, and gathering spaces can take shape, I need to create a life with enough structure to support the dream.
A few days ago, I sat down at my desk determined to begin planning WildHaven. I wanted to think about the food forest, animal habitats, gardens, and everything we hope to create here.
Instead, I ended up reorganizing my office.
Papers covered my desk, unfinished projects surrounded me, and everything I had neglected seemed to compete for my attention. Before I could dream about orchards and gardens, I needed enough order to think clearly.
That moment captured exactly where I am right now.
I have an enormous vision for our land, but I am also learning to create the routines and systems that will give me the capacity to build it. So this story is not beginning with a finished master plan or perfectly planted garden.
It is beginning with the foundation.
Hi, I’m Courtney, and welcome to the very beginning of Creating WildHaven. This is the story of transforming our home and land, one intentional project and one season at a time, into the place my husband, Ramon, and I have dreamed of creating for years.
You can also learn more about my story and the vision behind Creating WildHaven.
The Dream of WildHaven
If you are picturing food forests, productive gardens, chickens scratching through green pasture, wildflower meadows, thoughtfully designed animal habitats, and a long farmhouse table filled with people gathered together, you are picturing WildHaven.
At its heart, WildHaven is about creating a place where beauty, usefulness, stewardship, and everyday life work together.
We want to grow more of our own food, build regenerative landscapes that become healthier and more abundant over time, and create better habitats for the domestic animals in our care as well as the wildlife and beneficial species that already live here.
That means learning to work with the land rather than against it through permaculture, food-forest design, soil building, water stewardship, rotational forage, and other regenerative practices.
It also means creating spaces for connection.
One day, I hope WildHaven becomes more than our private home. I can imagine people gathering here for meals, workshops, celebrations, seasonal events, and experiences that encourage them to slow down, learn something useful, and reconnect with the natural world.
But that version of WildHaven does not exist yet.
Right now, there are projects to finish, systems to build, spaces to rethink, and acres of potential waiting to be shaped.
That is exactly why I am documenting it now.
Why I’m Choosing to Begin Now
I have lived in the country since I was a child. Open land, animals, changing seasons, and rural life have always felt familiar to me.
But WildHaven is different.
This is the first time I have had the opportunity to shape a place around everything I value most—to create a property that is productive, beautiful, welcoming, and deeply connected to the land around it.
For a long time, the vision lived mostly in my head. I thought I needed a complete plan, more money, more knowledge, and better timing before I could begin.
But someday has a way of moving farther away when you keep waiting for perfect conditions.
I do not need to know every step. I need to start with what is in front of me, make thoughtful decisions, learn as I go, and allow the vision to evolve as the land—and our real life—teach us what works.
WildHaven will be built through hundreds of smaller decisions, experiments, projects, and improvements made over time. This is the beginning of them.
The Part of the Dream I Couldn’t Ignore
I thought the first chapter of Creating WildHaven would be about planting trees, mapping garden beds, redesigning the chicken coop, and deciding where everything should go.
Instead, I kept running into the same problem: everyday life was already using most of my attention.
Every time I sat down to plan, something else pulled me away.
Laundry. Meals. Paperwork. Errands. An unfinished project. Something I had forgotten. Something that should have had a system but did not.
None of those things was dramatic on its own. Together, however, they created enough friction that WildHaven kept getting pushed to the side.
That was the realization I needed.
If I want to build something this large and long-term, inspiration alone will not be enough. I need practical structures that support the life required to build it.
But before I could create better systems, I first had to become honest about what I wanted those systems to support.
I spent time imagining the life I wanted, thinking about the woman I wanted to become, and identifying what mattered most to me. I began creating what eventually became The Aligned Life—a workbook of reflections and exercises that helped me clarify my vision and understand my deeper why.
That work gave me direction. It helped me see that I was not simply trying to become more productive or fit more tasks into each day. I was trying to create a life with more beauty, purpose, health, connection, freedom, and time for the work that mattered to me.
But clarity did not automatically change the way our home operated.
I could know what mattered and still lose time searching for something, deciding what to make for dinner, catching up on laundry, managing paperwork, or trying to remember a task that had never been placed into a reliable system.
That is when I began to understand the next part of the process:
It is not enough to envision the life you want. You also have to build the routines, spaces, and systems that can support it.
Why I’m Building Personalized Systems
I do not want a perfectly organized life or a rigid schedule that falls apart the moment something unexpected happens.
I want simple, flexible systems designed around the way we actually live.
Systems that reduce unnecessary decisions. Routines that support my energy instead of fighting it. Better ways to manage meals, household work, projects, maintenance, paperwork, and time. Regular opportunities to reset before small problems quietly become overwhelming.
The purpose is not to spend my life managing systems.
The purpose is to spend less energy managing the basics so I have more energy for my health, my family, our animals, Creating WildHaven, and the life we are trying to build.
One of the first small systems I created was a Weekly Home Reset—a regular time to clear clutter, catch loose ends, look ahead at the coming week, and bring our home back to a manageable baseline.
It is simple, but it gives me something I desperately needed: a place to begin again each week instead of constantly feeling as though I am trying to catch up.
Now I am going deeper by rebuilding the way we manage food across our pantry, refrigerators, and freezers. I want to reduce waste, stop buying things we already have, make meal planning easier, and create a system I can realistically maintain.
At the same time, the first major physical transformation I will be documenting is our chicken coop and the land around it. The goal is to create a safer, more functional habitat with better shelter, storage, watering, seasonal protection, and rotational forage.
These may look like separate projects, but they are connected.
The home systems create capacity. The land and animal projects give that capacity a purpose. Each one is part of learning how to build WildHaven in a way that is thoughtful, sustainable, and true to our real life.
“Building a dream starts with creating the systems that support the life you’re trying to build.”
Three Connected Parts of Creating WildHaven
The Creating WildHaven journey will unfold through three connected parts.
Living WildHaven
Living WildHaven is about creating the inner alignment, self care practices and home systems that support a more intentional life. This is where I will share what I am learning about routines, food and meal systems, organizing, homemaking, home maintenance, seasonal resets, and creating enough structure for what matters.
Growing WildHaven
Growing WildHaven follows the regenerative transformation of the land through permaculture, food forests, soil building, seasonal growing, edible landscapes, and habitats that support livestock, wildlife, pollinators, and other beneficial species.
Building WildHaven
Building WildHaven covers the physical transformation of the property—the chicken coop, animal shelters, DIY projects, infrastructure, outdoor gathering areas, and the practical work involved in shaping this place over time.
These are not three unrelated projects.
The systems inside our home create the capacity to work on the property. The gardens and land will eventually help feed the household. Animal habitats and outdoor spaces will shape the way we live here. Every improvement becomes part of the larger story of what WildHaven is becoming.
WildHaven may be taking shape on the property, but its foundation begins with how we live.
What Comes Next
I am no longer waiting until WildHaven is finished to share it.
I will be documenting the unfinished spaces, decisions, experiments, systems, and changes in direction that happen along the way.
Next, I will share the process that helped me clarify the life I wanted to build—and why that clarity led me to create systems that fit our real life. From there, I will take you behind the scenes as I rebuild our food-management system and begin transforming the chicken coop and its surrounding habitat.
If you have ever had a dream that felt bigger than the time, energy, or structure you had to support it, I hope you will follow along.
You do not have to have everything figured out before you begin.
You just have to start building the next piece.
Begin With a Weekly Home Reset
If managing your home is consuming the time and attention you want to give to something meaningful, the free Weekly Home Reset Guide will give you a simple place to begin.
The guide will help you clear clutter, catch loose ends, look ahead, and bring your home back to a manageable baseline—without trying to make everything perfect.
Enter your name and email below, and I’ll send the guide directly to your inbox. You’ll also receive new WildHaven projects, behind-the-scenes progress, seasonal inspiration, and the practical systems I’m creating and testing along the way.
Building a dream starts with creating the life and systems capable of supporting it.
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