- oleh Aditya Pranata
- nyala 16 Sep, 2025
The image and the grind on a 400-acre spread
Owning hundreds of acres sounds like peace and quiet—until the alarms go off before sunrise and the to-do list never ends. That’s the picture painted by new reports about Carrie Underwood and life on her roughly 400-acre farm in Franklin, Tennessee. The country star, 42, is said to be juggling round-the-clock chores, unreliable farm labor, and constant repairs that come with a big property, livestock, and a working garden setup.
Multiple outlets describe a routine that starts before dawn and runs long after dark. Sources say Underwood is caring for chickens, horses, and sheep while also managing fruit trees, several gardens, and a greenhouse. That means feeding, watering, mucking stalls, and collecting eggs, plus pruning, weeding, fertilizing, and harvesting. On a property that size, the list grows fast: fences need fixing, gates sag, irrigation lines clog, and roofs leak. Equipment breaks down right when it’s needed most.
Underwood and her husband, former NHL player Mike Fisher, have shared glimpses of their farm life over the years, often highlighting the wholesome parts: baskets of fresh eggs, sunlit garden rows, and greenhouse harvests. Last year, she posted excited updates about her first mandarins from a 16-by-28-foot greenhouse and homegrown limes—small but proud milestones for any grower. Those are real moments. But they don’t show the daily grind behind them, and that’s where the tension lies.
The reports say sleep is scarce because mornings begin with animals that can’t wait: chickens and horses don’t care about touring schedules or late nights. Predators do not either. In Middle Tennessee, coyotes, foxes, raccoons, and hawks are a constant threat to poultry, which means dusk lockups, early releases, and vigilance. Add in heat waves, sudden storms, and winter snaps, and even simple routines can turn into emergencies—burst pipes, flooded runs, sick animals, or trees down on fence lines.
Hiring help should make it easier, but that’s another sticking point in the reporting. Managing a farm crew is its own job: recruiting, training, scheduling, and paying people who know their way around livestock, tractors, and tools. The work is physical and often unpredictable. When staff turns over, the owner starts back at square one, resetting routines and standards while chores keep piling up.
It’s not that Underwood is new to rural life. She grew up in Checotah, Oklahoma, and has long said she loves the dirt-under-the-nails parts of gardening. That background might be why the farm idea felt like a perfect fit in the first place. But there’s a difference between tending a family garden and overseeing a multi-hundred-acre property with animals, orchards, and buildings. Scale changes everything—more land means more fences, more water troughs, more gates, more pasture rotation, more feed, and a lot more maintenance.
Walk through a day on a place like this and it adds up. Feed and water animals. Collect eggs. Clean coops and stalls. Move horses to fresh pasture, check hooves, restock mineral blocks. Inspect fencing for predator gaps. Check the greenhouse vents and humidity, watch for pests, and hand-pick or treat when needed. Weed raised beds. Start seeds. Transplant. Mulch. Sharpen tools. Fix a leaky hose. Drag the driveway. Service the UTV. It’s not glamorous, and it rarely pauses.
The social media snapshots tell the happiest chapters. A basket of eggs does not show the raccoon that got in last week. A neat row of mandarins doesn’t show the months spent monitoring soil pH, managing pests, or fighting leaf drop in a cold snap. Posts are highlights by design. The work behind them is messy, repetitive, and unforgiving if something gets skipped.
There’s also the family layer. Underwood and Fisher are raising two young boys, Isaiah and Jacob. Kids can help and they can also need help—rides, school, activities, dinners, bedtime. Layer that onto a farm schedule that runs on animal timelines and weather, and you get a calendar that doesn’t leave many blank squares.
People tend to assume wealth solves the workload. It helps, but it doesn’t erase it. A 400-acre property needs a manager with authority to make decisions, a small team that knows the land, and a plan that fits the owners’ time and goals. If the plan is “everything,” stress fills the gap. In that situation, even a week on the road for shows or a round of press can leave the farm a step behind—and catching up takes twice the effort.
Middle Tennessee adds its own quirks. Heavy clay soils compact easily and drain poorly; pastures need careful management to avoid ruts and weeds. Hot, humid summers can hammer greenhouses with pests and fungal pressure. Spring storms test roofs, panels, and power. Winters aren’t brutal, but they’re cold enough to freeze hoses and strain waterers. Any of those can turn a normal day into a scramble to keep animals safe and plants alive.
Reports say the strain is showing: short sleep, long days, and a stack of repairs that never shrinks. It’s a familiar story to anyone who’s tried to turn an Instagram-ready homestead into a real operation. The gap between the idea and the daily reality is where burnout creeps in—fewer small wins, more big headaches, and a nagging sense that the land is running the owner, not the other way around.
None of this means Underwood’s farm is failing. It means the setup may not match the hours she can give it. Right-sizing a property can be the difference between joy and grind. There are levers to pull: fewer species, fewer acres under intensive care, or a shift from labor-heavy animals to lower-touch grazing and trees. There’s no one-size approach, but the path gets clearer when the goals do.
Why large hobby farms overwhelm even well-resourced owners—and what could change
Big properties invite big ambitions. The common traps are easy to spot in hindsight:
- Too many moving parts: multiple animal species, gardens, orchards, and a greenhouse create competing priorities.
- Underestimating maintenance: fences, water systems, barns, and equipment eat time and money even when nothing “new” is being built.
- Labor churn: reliable hands are scarce, and training replacements pulls owners back into day-to-day chores.
- Seasonal whiplash: weather swings push tasks together—calving, planting, and storm prep often collide.
Owners who escape the churn usually do a few things differently. They write down the purpose of the property—food for the family, a small market operation, horse boarding, habitat restoration—and they design the setup for that purpose. They choose fewer species and breeds that fit the climate. They invest in infrastructure that reduces daily labor: automatic waterers, secure night housing for poultry, shade structures on skids, and paddock systems that make rotation quick.
They also hire management, not just help. A good farm manager keeps calendars, orders feed, schedules vet work and farrier visits, tracks pasture recovery, and calls the electrician before the lights go out. On a property this size, that role pays for itself in fewer emergencies and more continuity. Support staff can handle chores, but the manager keeps the machine running.
For greenhouse and garden setups, automation helps: timers for irrigation, roll-up sides that vent on temperature, and basic environmental monitors. Even small changes, like consolidated beds with wide mulch paths, cut weeding time. A tidy greenhouse is not about aesthetics—it’s about moving through it fast, spotting problems early, and preventing one pest flare-up from ruining a season.
Livestock choices matter. Chickens bring daily chores and predator risks; sheep require parasite management and careful fencing; horses add hoof care, training time, and heavy hay use. Swapping to fewer species—or scaling back to a single focus—can drop workload overnight. Many busy owners keep guardian animals for poultry, use electrified netting for rotations, and limit breeding to avoid round-the-clock lambing or foaling.
Then there’s the calendar. Touring artists stack commitments. When that’s the reality, the farm has to be built for absence: routines that a manager can run without guesswork, labeled storage, backup plans for storms, and a clear decision tree for emergencies. The best setups look almost boring. Boring is good. Boring keeps everyone fed, watered, and safe when the owner is on stage two states away.
Cost is always part of the picture, no matter the budget. Feed, fencing, gravel, lumber, diesel, and veterinary care add up fast. Spending money on the right things saves more than it costs—think perimeter fencing before new garden beds, water lines before a new barn, a competent manager before more animals. A farm that’s pleasant to work on is cheaper to run because fewer things go wrong and fewer people quit.
Public image hangs in the background of all this. Underwood’s Instagram shows the wins because that’s what fans want to see. The new reporting suggests the hidden half is heavier: early mornings, late nights, and the grind that never makes it into a square frame. Both can be true. The harvest posts are real. So are the hard days between them.
As of now, representatives for the singer have not publicly addressed the latest claims about the toll of farm life. What’s clear from the reporting is the pattern: a beautiful property, a proud set of milestones in the garden and greenhouse, and a workload that has outgrown one person’s bandwidth. If the plan changes—fewer moving parts, stronger management, smarter infrastructure—the same land could feel completely different.
Until then, the picture is familiar to anyone who’s run a big place without a full-time crew: the mornings start early, the repairs line up, and the animals always go first. The posts show the joy. The hours tell the rest of the story.