Tour Grammy Award Winner, Rory Feek’s Country Estate

Hey, good morning!

Welcome to our farm.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you.

It's beautiful today.

It is. Especially pretty today.

It is.

And the cemetery where the people who built our farm are buried and some of their children, and then my wife is buried there. So that's, uh, my sister Marcy's house.

Okay, nice.

Now we dream, you know, we watched Little House on the Prairie and, uh, The Waltons growing up, and so we basically have spent our whole lives trying to create the favorite things that we love. So now my sister Marcy lives right there, my sister Candy lives on the other side of the schoolhouse. We're all here on the same property.

That's what you loved about it, that you were all together on the same property.

Yeah, I mean, we had a very fractured, rough upbringing, but we longed for something different than we had, and so we're all working hard to try and create something better, especially for our children.

Whose idea was it of your siblings to bring you guys together like that?

Well, I'd say it was pretty much God's idea because I just— we had lived everywhere, and then I moved here for music in 1995. When I started having some success, I bought this old farmhouse, and one by one, my siblings and my mother all moved here. I wouldn't say it was my idea or anybody else's idea. We were all just kind of gypsying around And finally someone settled down. And so then they all worked their way here. And then in time, we've all, you know, we've all been here. This is a '54 Oldsmobile Rocket 88. And this is a car— I've actually had lots of old cars over the years, but this is the only one I have now. This one's back again to how the old car used to be.

Wow.

But I like it. I like things fairly original.

So you still drive this?

Oh yeah, yeah. I park those vehicles right there to make me drive this. Because, you know, when you step out here, These cars are— the other cars are close. I'll be like, let's just take something warmer and faster and more reliable. But let's take something cooler. Now it's more complicated.

I noticed you have a Ford truck and a Chevy Suburban. As a country music artist, aren't you supposed to pick?

No, not as a country music artist. But as a friend of Richard Lyons who owns a car dealership, I am supposed to pick. So I picked Chevys for a long time because that's what he did. But then he bought the Ford dealership. And now I don't have to pick anymore.

Okay, good.

I just pick Richard.

Okay, there you go.

That's right.

All right, let me show you the house.

Yeah, just so you know, unless you're gone, I should maybe get that sign for my house. Mine just says, welcome, please remove your shoes.

That's good. So this house was built in 1870, and we've been here since 1999. One of my favorite things is this, because the people who built our farm, Calvin and Sarah Hardison, they're buried in the cemetery, as are some of their children. I knew from the history books that, that they lived here. They ran the mill at the bridge. There was a post office, general store, and I knew a good bit about them. And I also knew they had two daughters, Molly and Viva, and I heard that they worked at the original Hardison Mill Schoolhouse. Which was across the river, which now we have the Hardison Mill Schoolhouse here. But I also heard that they played music and were songwriters. And my friend Jan Harris, who lives across the river, she found the sheet music.

What?

100 years before I moved in here, these two young girls in 1894, they were published songwriters living in this house, writing songs. This is a song Molly wrote about her and her sister living in this house. In 1894. How about that?

That's really awesome.

Has somebody played it?

Yes, my buddy who's actually coming down for the concerts this weekend. I don't know how to read music, but we pulled it down and we had him play a little piece of it.

Oh, fun.

It's really cool. Yeah, it's really cool. So that's one of my favorite things, just the history of the house. I like, I like old houses and old things and old people and old cars. So there's 7 fireplaces.

That's amazing.

Fun.

Yeah, that's awesome. It's fun for me, but I can't imagine back in the day when there were 7 fireplaces, what would they do? Some people out of Ohio whose kids grew up, they, uh, brought Indiana a playground this weekend. I mean, this— they brought her a playground this summer and they set it up. And when I brought Indiana outside, I said, look what someone brought. So they set this up and Indiana said, a park upstairs. All the floors are poplars up here.

Wow, beautiful floors.

And downstairs they're beech.

Okay.

But one of the things that I love about these old houses is that every door led out to the porch. Probably just to stay cool, I would guess. Yeah.

Cool window.

I know, right?

This is awesome.

Oh, what a cute bed.

Well, and I have to have— we had to add this to it.

So that there's no roll out. She doesn't roll out.

Yeah, because she ends up on the floor all the time.

You don't even hear her.

There's no crying or anything.

My kids do it too.

The other thing is, is I get up every day at 5 and I go down and have coffee and, and try and, you know, get prepared for the day. And this way, you know, when she's awake and she's up, that's the sound that you hear.

I like how you revealed the rafters in here.

Yes, we did that right when we got married, actually. This is the 7th fireplace right here.

I love me some fireplaces, especially in a bedroom.

There he is.

Hey, Ranger!

This right here was originally a shop I built when I wrote the song Some Beach. Oh yeah, I got some old sign.

Tell everybody who Blake Shelton, Blake Shelton writer right here.

Blake Shelton. And, uh, when that song was a big hit, we built this barn. So this place, it became this. We built this stage, green room, storage room, lobby, bathrooms, parking lot. And then now we can literally just walk across the driveway and sing.

No more tour buses.

Well, we still have tour buses, but we just don't have to travel very much.

Yeah.

So it's really nice. Plus we get to be with all of our friends and neighbors who, who come and work the concerts. So it's really nice.

The old milk barn.

Yes.

How cool. A lot of stories in here too.

Oh, it's warm.

Originally the milk house, and so the stanchions are still here. There was a door over here before. There was a door right here before, and this was separated out, but it's been a lot of things over the years. So in here, I can probably— like you, you know, I make stories.

Yeah.

And so I'm kind of constantly creating And we're about to launch a whole new thing, which interestingly enough, I've made a lot of stuff, but we're about to start blogging on a whole different scale.

Nice.

So we've not—

blogging or vlogging?

Vlogging. I've been blogging for a long time, but we're going to start vlogging.

Where are you going to put that show?

Curtains are up, bed is made. Only one thing wrong. There is no baby in the bedroom. No baby in the house. No baby anywhere. Hello, Ranger. It's a glorious day, and that's where my sister is, where we're going to spend Thanksgiving today. It's going to be awesome. The best part was the end.

I didn't know you edited.

Oh yeah, I edit all the time.

Now wait, where's this vlog gonna air?

Is this ARFD or is this YouTube?

How about this? This is—

this was our Thanksgiving. It was the first day of the county fair.

That's great. It's beautiful. I like how you timed the music with the teeth.

Where's it going to be? I don't know. It'll be on YouTube and then on the television. So this is probably going to end up being a lot of what our television show is going to be, which is my blog come to life. So the blog come to life is basically a vlog. Instead of me writing words, it's me sharing words and doing lots and lots more videos. So this is basically just—

Be the first to vlog on network TV, man.

Well, we'll see.

Blow it up.

It'd be fun. It'd be fun. Yeah.

I love the sound system.

I need you.

You need this setup, Justin.

I know, right?

I'm like, what is this like? I'm in the hallway right now, Rory.

No, we're in—

On a fold-out desk.

Well, I think—

He's been moved around.

Yeah, I'm that way too. I've been moved around a lot. We've had this spot down here. We've been— I have an editor, Daniel, who was down here for 4 years. And he was— we made a movie, we made a documentary, we made quite a bit of stuff down here, but this was really where he was, and I did almost everything at home. So I've always been making videos, and I've always been making them, you know, an awful lot of them by myself. I do lots and lots of editing. I wish I had more time, but they take— it takes a lot of work.

You did a really good job on that. Good job. Hey, I love your sticker right there. Yeah, Great American Farm Tour, represent!

You gave that to me. Let's, uh, let's go see the schoolhouse.

Oh yeah, which way would they come in?

They came in this way. So what this was, was on top, okay, there was basically grain up there. Okay, so you would come up there and you would pour grain down these chutes and then it would basically land in here. For the cows. There basically was, uh, well, if you pull this up, they're still there. It's inside of here, it's just big grain bins, and there was these big wooden chutes that came down.

Nice. What's up with the movie posters?

I'm just a fan of great films and storytelling. So if Joey was here, Joey would have been homeschooling Indiana, and so we needed to come up with another plan. And right after she passed away, people started sending cards and letters of condolence. And in a lot of those cards were checks and cash, and it added up to enough money to build this building.

Yay!

We got together. You can see a video on YouTube of basically our community. Instead of doing an old-fashioned barn raising, we did an old-fashioned schoolhouse raising. Rebecca runs it, and they're in the other room because they have a special teacher who's teaching them something today.

And so now there's other students here, so this is officially a private school.

This is a private school.

Yeah, we are making crayons today, so we just put the crayons in the oven and now we're waiting for them to melt. And we made, um, gingerbread crayons and Santa Claus crayons. Can I have it?

The Hobbit house, which is what the kids mostly see it as. Yes, but it's also a canning cellar and a storm shelter.

Yes, that's what you see it as.

This is the main little garden area, so there's 10 beds. Sometimes it's divided between children's beds. When Indy finishes school, maybe, just maybe, she'll want to be a teacher here, and this creates a job in the future for for her, right? Or if she doesn't want to be a teacher, maybe she wants to be a farmer and she'll want to grow stuff, and this will become a little place where she sells and grows stuff. Or there's another little boy that she goes to school with named Caleb who has similar almond eyes as hers, so I call him my son-in-law. Oh, he's a first grader. First grade. But maybe he's already—

he's already arranging.

Yeah, well, that, that may be their their little mini farm that they live in someday.

That's right.

You never know.

You just never know what the possibilities are.

But why'd you—

right now, it's a pretty great school.

Why'd you pick him for her?

Um, my wife picked him. Oh, just remind me to send you a picture. When they were— they were both about 1 year old, 1 years old, uh, Caleb's mom and Joey and Indiana were all together, and they decided that they were betrothed. So I'm just keeping that going. My son-in-law's not at school today. He's usually here, but he's not here today.

Or you want to introduce us?

I would introduce you. He's really, really cute. All right, goodbye, Rory.

Thanks for the tour.

Thanks for coming. Good to see you. Thank you for having us. Thanks for all you're doing.

Yeah, thank you.

Yeah, good to see you again. Thank you for coming. You guys, safe travels home.

Okay, thank you.