(birds chirping) - My sense of belonging is really important to me.

I think when you can sort of walk out your front door and feel like the land is yours.

I love it, it feels like home.

(upbeat music) People say, oh, we're building a house.

You know, a contractor's building a house for them.

We say we're building a house and we're literally driving every nail.

We haven't had any major accidents with power tools which is remarkable 'cause I'm not very good with power tools.

My family helped to found the state.

You know, having those roots I think helped give me a sense of how I'm gonna live my life here on this farm.

Since my ancestors did it, I think maybe I already have a one up on them.

I don't know if that's something that like, you inherit the ability to work the land, or not.

There is nothing better than shoveling dirt.

I love the land and I love the community that I live in.

I don't think I could live anywhere else.

When I met Morgan, he had already bought the land.

He had come to Missouri from California to fulfill this dream of owning land and building his own place.

He just looked and looked and then he found this piece.

Mostly we've been showering in a pump next to the house.

This is our shower spot and we have let the cattails grow up around it as kind of a shower curtain.

Although, we do try to shower at night so we don't traumatize the neighbors.

And it works, but last night it was like 55 degrees when I showered and it was really cold.

Whoo!

Other than the toilet, which went in last week, which was really exciting, hot water is one of the modern conveniences as they say, so I'm really excited about that (laughs).

We hooked up the washing machine and we put a load in and it's a front loading washer, and so we sat and watched the entire cycle 'cause we haven't had a TV for weeks.

So we're just watching it go round and round.

It was really fulfilling.

To live in a real place, it feels like you have to rely on the neighbors you do have just a little bit more.

They're kinda all you have.

Missouri is special, I think of the diversity of the people and the diversity of the land.

A perfect example, at one end of my driveway, I have these awesome neighbors and he's, he's a gun dealer, and he has you know, a walk-in gun safe and he has more guns than I could possibly imagine.

And on the other end of my driveway I have this guy whose like, he's really into metaphysics and he was a little gnome garden that he takes his grandchildren through and the fact that we're here starting this organic farm and you know we have musicians, we're building a stage.

I think all those things are indicative of what Missouri is like.

So this one of my other favorite places in Missouri.

This is my 16th year at the center and now I teach horseback riding to people with disabilities for two to four hours a week.

Working with people with disabilities on horses, it is the most amazing thing I have done in my life.

It gives people freedom that I have never seen any other kind therapy do.

Life's pretty short, as long as you are happy and healthy and caring for the people around you and making the most of every single day of your life, then it's the right thing to do.

In 2007 I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer.

As any sort of large medical event like that does, I think it changed my life significantly.

Because it was the first time ever I had a glimpse of my own mortality.

In a sense it was a really positive thing.

I was in a relationship that wasn't fulfilling in any way.

It was sort of progressively becoming clear that we were a terrible match.

And having thyroid cancer was definitely a wake-up call that made me realize I'm not gonna live forever and I and he, really, could be a lot happier.

Getting divorced was a lot harder than having thyroid cancer and it was really tough, but the other side was like a beautiful Missouri sunset, I guess.

Since we've been building the house, I feel like I've put roots deeper than ever before.

They're very deep, I want to stay here forever.

We have no plans of being anywhere but here.

And putting down those roots into this land, you know, where my grandparents and my great-grandparents who put down their roots in Missouri, it's very satisfying, these roots are they're gonna be really deep by the time we get done.

(upbeat music)