Original subtitles

[music playing]

JENNIFER SAMS: We're so thick in the woods

back here in the Chattahoochee National Forest.

The roads are quite windy, hilly.

In the summer, you can't see anything

and then the leaves come down and you

realize where you are on top.

And you see mountains in all directions,

and it's pretty spectacular.

We're at the farm in Ellijay, Georgia, and I'm Jennifer Sams.

And I'm Susan Fitzsimmons.

You know, it's like this natural thing of what are we gonna

call this place, and both Jennifer and I,

our grandparents had places that they referred to as the farm.

So it's kind of an homage to to that.

We're about 60 miles from the nearest town,

and as you start off maybe going east

but then you think you're going north but

somehow you end up going south.

But then you get up here, and it's like where is that road.

And from the road can I see my house.

So when we walk in the back door,

first thing you would notice is some of the artifacts

that we've collected.

Coat hooks from South Africa, topographical maps of our area.

But as you look ahead you're really just looking

out south to another ridge.

We have a deck off of the back that most of the time

have dinner out there.

There's a structure in the middle of our house

that kind of separates the sleeping area from the living

area and serves as also the pantry for the kitchen,

little galley kitchen.

There's a real balance of how much is too much wood.

The floors that we have in here were

the sub-flooring out of an old textile mill in South Georgia.

And it turned out so well that we actually used them to build

the shelving in the kitchen.

And so, you'll see that, kind of, almost

earthy, organic quality to the dishware that we use,

the things that Jennifer's made.

Small bathroom with these geometric windows,

kind of, echoed between the kitchen and the bath as well.

If you walk out the back door, you're immediately

looking at pottery shed.

Jen's really gifted at ceramics.

JENNIFER SAMS: We have a great fire pit out to the right side

of the house.

As soon as we finished building the house we're like,

oh, we need a solid outdoor space, more than just the deck.

From the fire pit down around, we've built some paths.

And you just go down into the woods.

And we've created some walking paths

that take you to the bottom of the property

or just around to the west side of it and back up again.

So much goes back to our families.

When I was a kid, we would make whole villages.

We would rake the leaves into paths.

When I first started, it was just that idea, like, you know,

if we've got these woods, we need to spend time in them.

And then they started to become more intentional, more than

spending time walking on them.

It's been fun building them.

How the land moves and putting the paths in to,

kind of, feature the native azaleas

that were already on the property

or the mountain laurels that were there.

So then you wind back around and we

have a floating deck that we built

in that's more of the chillout area.

And then that path takes you up to number

four, the sleeping cabin.

SUSAN FITZSIMMONS: There's basically four buildings.

There's the pottery shed, the tool shed,

and the sleeping cottage, and our main living area.

You named the fourth one four, but not

for the obvious reasons.

JENNIFER SAMS: So, my family has this thing based

on a Victorian poem and it says, "One, I love; two,

I love; three, I love; four, I love with all my heart."

And that's how my family-- we signed letters

and notes to each other.

So we just thought, you know, again, bringing it all back

to our growing up and our families and our-- the things

we love in life, it just seemed fitting to call it number four.

We, kind of, made it a project.

You know, we'd just get away on the weekends.

And because we're so close to Atlanta,

we can come up easily for just a day trip

and just drove around and, you know,

kept our eye out for land that was for sale.

We found this piece of land.

And that was it.

We both immediately looked at each other and said,

this is it.

This is the place after three years.

The plans that we used were actually 480 square feet.

We were so hands on with all the design.

A big part of mid-century modern architecture

was designing spaces to go in their surroundings.

And it's all about being outside here.

And so we wanted a lot of windows

that were really looking out at those trees out there.

We wanted to put in the clear story-esque windows

on the sides, just get as much glass in here as we could.

SUSAN FITZSIMMONS: It's a different mindset

when we're here.

It's helped us, kind of, eliminate some

of the noise in our life by just coming up and having quiet time

and focus, intention.

Jasper is our little weirdo.

He's a pithuahua, pitbull-chihuahua.

In the city, he's the kind of dog that sleeps a whole lot.

And when we come up here, if we go on a four-mile hike,

he's right there with us.

It's like a dog's best life up here.

SUSAN FITZSIMMONS: It is his best life, for sure.

I work in the software industry.

And so, you know, all the traps that, kind of, go with that,

it's kind of nice to be up here where you're

not tethered to a Zoom call.

JENNIFER SAMS: I have a retail business in Atlanta,

sell vintage, mid-century modern furniture.

I work during the weekdays.

But I'm, kind of, working all the time.

I absolutely love it.

But it's just-- we come up here and do the opposite.

We just kind of check out, look to be

creative in a different way up here,

you know, look and-- look to be creative with our surroundings

up here the same way we're creative with our surroundings

in Atlanta or like to try to be.

So, it's fun just to have projects that we can do.

Sometimes it's print making things, painting sometimes.

We both just, as we get older, want to make sure

that we're super productive.

You know, our house is a place that, kind of, shelters us.

And we take care of it because it takes care of us.

But here, it's much more of like a nurturing kind

of relationship, tweaking little things, perfecting things,

making paths, you know, improving the space,

but not because it needs to be painted again this year.

More because it's something, like, you

nurture a child or something.

12 years into this, we still come up here and are amazed.

And we still feel like it's such a gift to us.

And so it makes us want to continue to, like, improve it.

So we're just constantly, you know, nurturing it.