When Sophie Hilaire Goldie, 37, and her husband, Rocky Goldie, 50, first started dating, she was in the middle of converting a friend's Home Depot shed into a tiny home. Before that, she had traveled and lived in a sprinter van for two years.
The couple met on Match.com and first bonded because they had both been in the military — Sophie in the Army and Rocky in the Marines. They chatted online for a couple days before talking on the phone and then meeting up in person a week later. After a walk in the park on their first date, Sophie insisted their second date involve working on the shed together.
"It was important for me while we were dating to see if we could work together on projects. I wanted someone who didn't necessarily need to be so great at it, but we should have fun doing it," Sophie tells CNBC Make It.
"We quickly realized that we found the one."
Rocky says helping Sophie was his way of impressing her: "I was trying to woo her because it seemed to make her as happy as anything. It was also very meditative for me to be back in the quiet and in the sticks."
While they were dating, Sophie went on a trip around Southeast Asia for several months. When she returned, Rocky asked if the two could start looking into getting their own place together.
"If it wasn't for meeting her, I probably would have ended up in a little shack," Rocky says. "I took a long way to get here but I wanted to be some type of homesteader when we met. She had the same vision and it's not common to meet somebody who does."
"He also wanted to be living off the land and homesteading," Sophie adds. "But he didn't have this big grand vision of all these buildings. He just wanted something simple."
Though Sophie was initially adamant about getting married before buying a house together, she knew what the couple had was special. She decided to go with her gut.
The couple started their search on Zillow with a specific list of requirements that included "at least 10 acres of land" and located "deep in rural Kentucky."
"We love old things and antiques, so we wanted a place with some history. We were actually looking for a fixer-upper that had some history, and we weren't really finding great stuff on Zillow," Sophie says.
A local photographer connected the couple to a realtor who found them a 37.5-acre homestead for around $390,000. The property had two log cabins from the 1840s that had been combined to make one 2,200 square foot house — with four bedrooms and one bathroom — and one 200 square foot cabin and two barns.
When the couple first visited the property, it was in pretty bad shape. There was poison ivy in the front yard, the sidewalk had cracks, and there was garbage everywhere.
But Sophie felt optimistic. "I knew we were going to buy this house before we even stepped foot into it," she says. "I saw all of the promise. With me and my husband working on this place full time, in a few years we could transform this place."
"I knew it looked terrible but I could see underneath all of it," she adds.
Rocky was less sure but says he was swayed by his partner's enthusiasm.
"I thought it was going to be a lot of work and that it was beautiful," he says. "Sophie was always talking about the pros and I was talking the cons, but she convinced me."
"I think we balance each other out that way. I'm toxically optimistic and Rocky is pessimistic, but I knew there was no way we weren't going to live here," Sophie adds, laughing.
"What you don't understand about me is that hard work does not scare me. I have put so much hard work into stuff I didn't even care about for so many years, working at places that were a little bit soul-sucking at times for financial security. I wanted to pour all my effort and energy and hard work into this place. I welcomed the challenge, and I was able to convince him, and now he can't imagine living anywhere else."
Sophie and Rocky closed on the property in the spring of 2024. Rocky moved into the house first. "I was sleeping on the floor and just feeling excited to see what things could be," he says.
The couple secured a 30-year mortgage with a minimum monthly payment of $1,790.18. They plan to pay it off in under five years.
Sophie says she is having so much fun learning how to be a "full-time home remodeling, chicken, and soon-to-be dairy goat farmer."
"I want to appreciate it and enjoy it for what it is and I think that's one of the things that makes it so rewarding," Rocky says. "With every change that you make, every job that you do on it, you're improving your own place. I can't think of anything more rewarding."
Inspired by life on the homestead, Sophie founded her own skincare company, Seoul + Soil. It's part of their plan to eventually reach 85% to 90% self-sustainability, living off of the animals and gardens.
"In my 20s, I was trying to achieve the blueprint, and in my 30s, I'm trying to unlearn these things piece by piece," she says.
"I think it's the most excited I've ever been about anything. There's nothing more entrepreneurial than just making up your life and seeing where you want to draw inspiration from and that's what inspires me. I feel like we have a whole world here with these animals."
The couple continues to grow their homestead together and are enjoying every minute of it. Sophie says this is the first time in her life she feels "whole."
Rocky says he enjoys how lucky he feels to live on the kind of property he'd always dreamed of.
"My favorite part is how meditative it is and what it does for me mentally. It's the peace and appreciation I feel that I'm lucky enough to get to live here. It's everything that I thought it would be," he says.
"We only have a few more decades left but we want to do 200 years worth of stuff and learn all of this. Everything we did brought us to where we are now, but it would be nice to be 20 and starting this," Sophie adds.
With so much left to do on their homestead, the couple expects to stay for the long term. "We are not moving. It's weird to even think that's an option because it's not how we think at all," Sophie says. "I have no interest in leaving ever."
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