MEET THE EGGEBROTEN FAMILY: Our family is Alaskan. Buddy was raised in rural northeast (Northway) Alaska. I was raised in Illinois outside of Chicago. We met in college at Grace College and Seminary where I was studying music and Buddy was doing the Bible certificate program.

Married 24 years now, neither of us had any inkling in those early days of the hardships, challenges, life changes, and incredible adventures that would begin. Living first in Winona Lake, IN, then moving to Alaska, I (Jenn) taught music and string instruments/ quartet/orchestra.

7 years later we welcomed our first of 9 children. 3 miscarriages were interspersed among the 6 beautiful souls the Lord graced upon our hearts. We homeschool. The kids are all involved in every aspect of farm life, with a lot of freedoms most will never know. They eat amazing food, enjoy having both parents at home and involved, and each of them has contributed to the homestead in ways we would have only imagined.

City life never was for us. We longed to be out somewhere on our own land, close enough to town but far enough away that we could have chickens and target practice without issues.

In 2014, I became gravely ill (thyroid coma) and the family moved to NC to be close to the help of family. We quickly grew to love the warmth of the sunshine, the mild winters, and the Lord Blessed us abundantly with exactly what we needed: a Homestead of our very own.

We purchased Speckled Sussex and built our first coop for them. It didn't take long for Jenn to start doing selective breeding, butchering, and selling eggs. But the genetics were poor and they were just "hatchery" birds.

We found Swedish Homestead on Youtube (now Simeon and Alex, Formerly Swedish Homestead). They run The Sound Farmer program. And coincidentally, they raised and loved the white Bresse chicken.

Seeing their big, healthy thriving flock and how wonderful every detail matched what I did not see in my current breed, we took the plunge and purchased our first birds directly from Greenfire Farms.

The Bresse were almost everything we expected. They were big, beautiful, not tame but vigorous. They were sweet if handled early (and least the hens LOL). However, we saw orange feathers, odd body type, and other things we didn't want. We ended up keeping one rooster, ---Casper--who you can see in many of our early pictures, and a couple hens. We started hatching and working on type type type. THEN we butchered a group of young cockerals finished on milk and wheat/corn mash.

Our lives have never been the same! That roasted chicken with Julia Child's recipe was HEAVENLY!

So, since that day we replaced our stock with Keith Loeffler's gracious gifts to our family. We ate well and bred hard. We culled everything we could find, measured hips and weight gain, tried to keep as many white earlobes as possible. Dark legs and white feathers were shocking me. The meat kept on coming and the eggs were big, tasty, and easy to hatch.

We have not looked back. And we truly are proud of our birds. We are honored to have the journey together as a family. We are full time farmers without any other income.

Thank YOU for supporting our HOMESTEAD and God Bresse you Abundantly in all you do!