How We Got the Name
A tale taller than Shaq, with more truth than the Bible.
Every farm has a story.
Some have been passed down through generations. Some were built with decades of hard work and tradition.
Ours started with a mysterious smell, an abandoned campsite, and a neighbor who casually asked if we believed in Sasquatch.
I wish I were making that up.
A few days after moving onto our twelve wooded acres in the hills of Jefferson County, we’d wake up every morning to the unmistakable smell of something rotten. Not “forgot to take the trash out” rotten. More like “something died, hired a lawyer, and is now haunting the neighborhood” rotten.
Like any new homeowners, we immediately blamed the septic system. Out here, that’s the rural equivalent of blaming your Wi-Fi when anything goes wrong.
Thankfully, just like a check engine light, the smell mysteriously disappeared after a few mornings.
We shrugged, counted it as a win, and moved on.
At the same time, I had been spending every spare minute wandering through the woods with an EGO brush cutter, trying to carve walking trails through twelve acres that hadn’t really been touched in nearly a decade. “Overgrown” doesn’t even begin to describe it. Nature had reclaimed the place with a level of confidence normally reserved for toddlers holding permanent markers.
The farther we explored, the stranger things became.
Hidden deep in the woods, we found what looked like a forgotten off-grid camp.
I had a feeling something was here based on my use of Google Maps and spotting the white squares. See photo of blue circle.
The white squares that started it all. Blue circle: the camp. Red lines: our property. Everything else: questions.
There was an outhouse.
Small buildings.
A fire pit.
Solar lights.
Cleared gathering areas.
This wasn’t just someone pitching a tent for the weekend. Somebody had spent serious time living back there.
Not a weekend tent situation.
The amenities.
Deep-woods real estate. Previous tenant: unknown. Rent: apparently free.
We contacted the previous owner.
He had no idea.
We asked another neighbor whose property bordered ours.
He was just as confused.
Now we weren’t dealing with a smell anymore.
We had a mystery.
Then one afternoon, the neighbor whose property sits behind ours stopped over to introduce himself.
After a few minutes of small talk, he lowered his voice and asked,
“I don’t want to sound weird… but do y’all believe in Sasquatch?”
That’s not exactly the conversation starter you expect when meeting the neighbors.
He explained that around this time of year, people in the area claim you know they’re around because of the smell.
Like sewage.
He showed us photos of large footprints that had been found down in our creek bed. He told us he’d lost an entire flock of chickens the previous spring. Trail cameras had disappeared. Then he casually explained that the abandoned camp we’d discovered had once belonged to a group of Bigfoot researchers who would spend weeks living back there hoping to document evidence.
Sixteen-plus inches, in our creek bed. For reference, my boot is a 10.5 and my boot has never made anyone whisper.
The print itself. Real photo, real creek, our actual property. You decide. We named the farm.
Apparently that little detail didn’t make it into the real estate listing.
“Three bedrooms.”
“Two bathrooms.”
“Twelve wooded acres.”
“Possible Sasquatch activity.”
Seems like that last one should’ve been disclosed.
The funny part is, we could have ignored the whole thing.
Instead, we embraced it.
This farm has never been about pretending life is perfect. It’s about learning as we go, asking complete strangers on Facebook for advice, making mistakes that probably violate several unwritten farm rules, laughing at ourselves, and creating a place where the stories are just as memorable as the animals.
Whether Sasquatch is actually wandering these woods is still up for debate.
But one thing’s for sure…
This is the only place we’ve ever lived where “Have you checked for Bigfoot?” became a completely reasonable troubleshooting step.
And that’s how twelve acres in Bloomingdale, Ohio became Bigfoot’s Farm. The daily chaos lives in the Batshit Archive, the greatest hits are becoming a book, and if you ever visit — be respectful in the woods. He was here first.