About Us & Our Journey to Brown County
Hi there! We’re Clint & Kara - the dreamers, doers, and husband and wife duo behind the Brown County Barn Burner.
HOW WE STARTED
We met in college in the Fall of 2005 and were together for almost 4 years before getting married in July 2009. At that point, we lived in Pendleton, Indiana, in a house that we renovated almost every literal single square foot of, including building a deck and adding a pond.
We had our first daughter in February 2013 and, at the time, we were each driving 45+ minutes to and from work every day. And since there’s nothing like adding a child to your family to mix things up, we were soon re-evaluating the direction of our lives and how we wanted to spend our days. It was around that same time that we discovered a whole online community around the concept of financial independence and ‘early retirement’ and decided to start actively pursuing those things in our own lives.
By the time our daughter was 1, we had sold our house in Pendleton, majorly downsized and moved to Zionsville, Indiana, and cut both our commute times and mortgage in more than half.
While we lived in Zionsville, we learned a lot about ourselves, fully renovated another house, and added our second daughter to the family in February 2015. But we realized by early 2016 that we still weren’t in the place that we wanted to stay long term–we knew we wanted a slower pace of life, a small town community, and to live in a place that felt a little bit like vacation every day.
HOW WE GOT HERE
Around the same time that we were starting to consider options outside of Zionsville, Clint’s parents purchased a property in Brown County, Indiana that they intended to eventually build a home on. Although Clint and I had only visited Brown County briefly before for day trips or camping, it seemed like it checked most of our boxes, and we realized it might be the right spot for us too.
Like with any big decision, there was a lot more agonizing and discussion behind the scenes, but ultimately we bought our current home in October 2016 and officially moved down later that Fall. Our decision to move to Brown County has turned out to be one of the best things we’ve ever done, and we're so glad we made the leap.
Since moving here, we’ve both switched jobs (me more than once), gained a group of friends and connections that we couldn’t live without, gotten involved in the community, and ultimately dreamed up, designed, and built the Barn Burner.
There’s a lot more that happened along the way that I’ll share in future posts, but hopefully that starts to give you a sense of who we are and how we got ourselves to this point!
WHAT MAKES US, US
💪We will DIY almost anything (sometimes to our detriment), but we thrive on learning, problem solving together, and the sense of pride that comes from knowing we made something happen ourselves.
🌎We love traveling and have gone to some amazing international destinations, like South Africa and Thailand, but we also really love camping and taking long road trips across the US.
🌄We spend as much time as we can outdoors and being active, and it’s a big part of what drew us to Brown County. Kara spends her time gardening and hiking, while Clint loves mountain biking and projecting on anything mechanical
👨👩👧👧We are so happy to be raising our daughters in a literal log cabin in the woods and showing them what you can accomplish with hard work, determination, and a little bit of imagination. Big dreams don’t happen overnight but, if you stay focused yet flexible, almost anything is possible.
