Some celebrities crave a quiet life away from Hollywood.
"Vampire Diaries" star Ian Somerhalder and Nikki Reed left Hollywood four years ago to raise their children on a farm, away from the limelight. In a recent interview with E! News, Somerhalder admitted, "we're farm people," who "produce most of our own food," noting he "live[s] in [his] cowboy boots."
The couple live together on their farm with their 6-year-old daughter and 5-month-old son, as well as their 18 pets, which include cows, mini-donkeys and goats. He admits, "it's a lot of work," but that it is "special" to see all the different animals coexist on the farm.
"I will be a rancher and building legacy brands, whether it's my bourbon or my health and wellness company, and the regenerative agriculture and healthy soil management practices that I live by and our family lives by," he explained.
'VAMPIRE DIARIES' ACTOR IAN SOMERHALDER LEFT HOLLYWOOD TO RAISE KIDS AND 18 PETS ON FARM
"That's where my life was going. So, when people say, 'Why do you care?' That's why I care. Because that's who I am, that's what I'm going to become."
Here are some other celebrities who have embraced farm life.
Martha Stewart has lived in many homes, but her current home in Bedford, New York, is special. According to her website, she had always wanted a backyard full of animals and has slowly been increasing her collection since building her first chicken coop when living in Massachusetts.
She has 150 acres of farmland, which boasts a chicken coop and stables, and as of 2019, she owns about 200 chickens of various breeds, Friesian horses, Pomeranian geese and Thanksgiving turkeys, as well as donkeys and sheep. The property also features a few gardens.
There are many homes on the property, with Stewart referring to the main house as the Winter House. It features a chef-style kitchen, a gym, a dining room fit for 12, an enclosed porch and an apple orchard not too far from her front door. She uses the other homes on the property to house any guests staying with her on the farm.
"There’s truly no better place to spend a perfect autumn day," Stewart said of her Bedford home, per Conde Nast Traveler.
In 2011, Carrie Underwood and her husband Mike Fisher bought a 400-acre property, and began construction on their dream home. The property is affectionately referred to EH-OK Farm by the family, who have been living there since 2018, when work on their home was completed.
Aside from the mansion, the property also features a pond and a barn, where they house cattle and horses. In December 2020, Fisher surprised the singer with two cows as an early Christmas present, which her oldest son Isaiah, named Oreo. The family added two more cows to the bunch in April 2023.
The singer grew up living on a farm in Checotah, Oklahoma. She wrote in her 2020 memoir "Find Your Path" that she used to spend her childhood "outside, hunting for snakes, scooping tadpoles and turtles out of the pond to look at them." Underwood explained her "family didn’t have cable," so she was "usually out there running wild."
"I’m grateful for my free-range childhood," Underwood wrote. "It was fun and interesting, and I had the freedom to explore and learn about what I loved — animals, sports, and singing. And I was always active. My friends and I were always running around. It wasn’t something we even had to think about. It was just the way we all were — and if you ask me, that’s the way life is meant to be."
Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick often post on Instagram about their life living on the farm, posting photos and videos of their many animals, including four goats, three pigs, three alpacas and three miniature horses. In a recent interview with People, Bacon explained "I love animals, they are a joy to be around, and they’re very, very calming for me."
The two live on a 40-acre farm in Sharon, Connecticut, and in addition to raising their animals, they also tend to a vegetable garden which they use for cooking.
"Taking something hot off the vine that feels warm and smells like it’s been created by all these natural forces of the sun and air and water and earth and dirt, and then putting it back into your body to sustain yourself … it's a great lesson in terms of just how important it is to do our best to try to protect this boat that we’re all riding in," Bacon told the outlet.
Aside from eating fresh vegetables, living on a farm has affected Bacon's diet by making him think twice about the kind of meat he eats. He told People, "I no longer eat goat and I no longer eat pig," since they've become his pets, saying Sedgwick jokes they "can’t get any more animals, because [he's] going to stop eating everything."
Since becoming a couple, country superstar Blake Shelton and his Grammy Award-winning wife Gwen Stefani have lived part-time on Shelton's ranch in Oklahoma. The 1,300 acre ranch, known as Ten Points Ranch, is where the couple got married, in July 2021.
"I didn't see any of this coming with Blake," Stefani told People in September. "To be able to escape to Oklahoma, a place that I don't think I would have ever gone to, and when I met Blake, that's when I felt [at] home. Oh, this is where I'm supposed to be, with this guy. It was so automatic and just an amazing gift to be able to experience love like that for the first time. So going to Oklahoma was like being introduced to a whole world I didn't know about."
The two often post about their life on the farm, showing them working the land and getting their hands dirty. Stefani also told People she did not understand why Shelton was not able to sit still when staying in Oklahoma, but after being there for a while, she started to get in on the work as well.
"We get there and we're both…like, we're working," she told the outlet, adding she has grown quite the green thumb.
"Mean Girls" star Amanda Seyfried purchased a farm in the Catskills in 2014, relocating her family there permanently during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The actress lives on the farm with her husband, children Nina and Thomas, and their over 20 animals, including goats, chickens, ponies, horses and donkeys. During an interview with John Molner on his podcast, "Molner's Table," in August 2020, Seyfried detailed her mornings on the farm, saying she used to be the one to feed the animals, but "recently trained Tommy, [her] husband, to be able to feed [them]. He knows everything now," leaving her to hang out with the kids.
"It’s incredibly grounding to be surrounded by nature and by animals who live simply and without ego," Seyfried told InStyle in March 2023. "Something happens to you when you spend a lot of time taking care of them. You breathe a little slower, walk a little slower. There’s peace there, a healing symbiosis."
Her many animals are often featured on her Instagram, whether she is giving fans a peak at all the work required to run a farm or she's celebrating one of their pet's birthdays, with her rescue dog Finn making the most appearances on her social media account. Seyfried has spoken about how adopting Finn changed her life, telling People in 2019, he "helped me find my solitude and my independence."
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HGTV superstars Chip and Joanna Gaines, and their five kids, Drake, Ella Rose, Duke, Emmie Kay and Crew, live in a Victorian-style home sitting on 40 acres of farmland, in Crawford, Texas. The couple bought the property in 2012, as a two-bedroom home, but have since renovated it to fit their family of seven.
The family farm is often featured on their hit show, "Fixer Upper." In his 2017 memoir, "Capital Gaines," Chip said he liked doing all the farm chores himself, writing "my farm chores guarantee that every day I have those two hours to myself" without the interruption of technology, and "when I start my morning out there, I’m more productive for the rest of the day."
"Getting up at four in the morning to tend the farm while the world is quiet — feeding animals, mucking stalls, gathering eggs, filling water troughs, checking fences, letting animals out into the field — is a high point to my day," he wrote.
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During an interview with Self in October 2021, Hilarie Burton spoke about living on a farm with her husband, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and their two children, Gus and George. She told the outlet they first moved to their New York farm in 2010, finding the community to be "so wonderful and protective."
The "One Tree Hill" actress told the outlet that living on the farm has changed her relationship with Hollywood, explaining when she first relocated there, Zoom and Skype were not popular, so she could not audition. Due to this, "all of the work that I’ve done has been through people remembering me," which she considers "a really nice way to build a career because it’s based on your merit."
While she admits dealing with the animals is more her husband's job, one of the chores she enjoys the most is gardening. Burton explained no matter what she is doing in the garden, she enjoys herself, saying "taking the kids out to the garden to collect all the stuff that’s grown, that’s the fun part."
"Last night, my son was excited to go get carrots from the garden, and I had to figure out how to fix that into the dinner," she told Self. "And so teaching my kids and growing with them is certainly my favorite thing. Every night before dinner, we do a ride around the property in an ATV. And the point is to make a lot of noise so predators don’t sneak up."
