Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/1387796
Textured layers in the living room, as well as an abundance of seating, makes a comfortable gathering space for weekend guests. Right: The breakfast room, with petite antique paintings and a custom leather banquette, is papered in one of Miles Redd's favorite Iksel wallcoverings. in food, design, and entertaining, as well as my efforts to decide what exactly I wanted to do with my life. Eventually we followed our bliss back to Houston with our one- year-old daughter, Grace, in tow. I opened my store Biscuit, selling the bedding line I'd started in October 2012. As busy as I was with Biscuit and my interior design clients, I wasn't about to make Grace an only child, and we welcomed our son, Harry, in 2014. Later that year, Pete and I were starting to feel the strain. We had spent five years straight up chasing our bliss around the country. I was beyond burned out and wanted more quality time with my people. What I probably needed was to sit and regroup; instead, I decided to build a farm about it! It didn't take us long to find the place: a property in Bellville that had all of the usual trappings of a farm, like the brand-new b a r n w e i n h e r i t e d f ro m t h e previous owners, and also some more curious features, such as the likewise brand-new two-story air- conditioned four-car garage that dwarfed the adjacent 100-year-old farmhouse. Also, there was no farm. Just 80-something acres of unkempt land where a neighbor grazed his cattle. Undeterred, we began work on the 1900s farmhouse. We added two bedrooms (gotta have room for all my people!) and an additional bath by converting the front parlor and a large sitting room. Once the house was completed, we set about tending to the farm part of the vision. We bought a fancy Victorian Lodge Greenhouse from Hartley Botanic and placed it on a two-acre swath of land that we then learned was entirely inhospitable, comprised of nutrient-deficient sandy loam soil. Not a great start, but, as always, we turned to our people. Pete had begun development on our Houston hospitality concepts. We were introduced to master sommelier June Rodil and chef Felipe Riccio through friends and partnered with them to start 60