Gertrude Jekyll

"A garden is a grand teacher.
It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift: above all it teaches entire trust."

Welcome to Sprinkle With Soil, a place where we share the gritty details of getting started with our homestead: lessons learned, how-to’s, from scratch Asian family-style recipes, and homeschooling resources.

I am inspired from the most well-respected experts in the real food nutrition world including the Weston A. Price Foundation, Holistic Nutritionists, my mom, and the works of many others. In taking care of my aging parents these past 10 years, it has forced me to learn to cook with an Asian palette with an emphasis on traditional foods. Sprinkle With Soil exists to inspire readers to return to our roots in the age of fast-paced convenience, and value quality of food, life, health, and family and becoming better stewards of the land…all while working full-time. 

Hello, I'm Sophie!

changed us.

The pandemic

My husband Tim, and I, were both born and raised in San Jose, CA. In fact, we met in high school. For the first 15 years of our marriage, we bought, remodeled, and sold many different homes in the Bay Area for our clients, advising them on what to look for when investing in land and property. We work with discerning buyers and sellers and are keen on what to look for.

we began taking the first steps to establishing our ¼ acre urban homestead in the middle of the Bay Area. We rushed to pick up 3 egg-laying hens the day our country went into lock-down on March 16, 2020. Knowing that we had overpaid for these hens, we promised each other on the drive home that from that day forward, our family was never going to be in a position where we could be left so vulnerable to any pandemic, economic recessions, or supply chain breakdowns. This shifted our family’s entire focus to begin hands-on skills training, teaching our children to be producers and not consumers.

When

2020 hit,



By Summer 2020, we packed up our RV and traveled around to learn from the best regenerative agriculture and beyond-organic permaculture farms in California, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, North Carolina and visited Joel Salatin at Polyface Farms in VA (3 times in 2021!) to fast-track  learning about food, farming, and nutrition. It led us to begin looking into the importance of improving the soil microbiome and how it is directly tied to having a healthy gut microbiome, leading to improving our brain health.

In 2021

we left our life in the city 

and moved to beautiful farming gold country north of Sacramento to begin implementing what we have been learning from other regenerative agriculture and permaculture farmers, while importantly returning to our roots with nourishing ancient Asian traditions. We have spent these last few years growing more self-sufficient through DIY remodels, establishing gardens, raising animals, preserving the food we harvested, and homeschooling our children. We feel like we have earned our MBA in building our homestead with all the mistakes we have learned along the way these past few years! 

In 2022

we bought raw land in the appalachians

Stay tuned on what's coming next!

our mission

Our goal is to steward our land, provide wholesome, nourishing food for our bodies, and grow our family in love and faith.