A dream homestead with a brutal routine
A sprawling 400-acre farm sounds peaceful. For Carrie Underwood, it may be anything but. RadarOnline reported in August 2025 that the country star has been running on little sleep as she tries to keep her Franklin, Tennessee property in working shape. The site says she’s up before dawn handling chores that never seem to stop, from animal care to repairs. None of this is confirmed by Underwood or her team, but multiple reports paint a picture of an all-consuming daily grind.
Underwood, 42, shares the farm with her husband, former NHL player Mike Fisher, and their two sons, Isaiah and Jacob. The land is big enough to be its own small town—pastures, gardens, fruit trees, a chicken coop, and pens for sheep and horses. She even built a 16-by-28-foot greenhouse last year, a point of pride after sharing her first harvest of mandarins and limes with fans. It looked idyllic on Instagram. Off camera, sources say the upkeep has ballooned.
According to RadarOnline’s account, the singer is juggling shoveling hay, weeding, fertilizing, and harvesting, on top of feeding and caring for dozens of animals. Then come the issues that hit any working property: broken fences, leaky hoses, loose latches, and the kind of small fixes that turn into big ones if you wait a week. One insider called it a loop of "repairs that never end." The punchline? Finding reliable help hasn’t been easy, so a lot of the work reportedly lands back in her lap.
On social media, she shares the pretty stuff—sunny garden shots, a basket of eggs, the greenhouse glowing at sunset. Every so often she lets followers in on the messier bits, like swarms of bees. But people who’ve spent time on farms will tell you: the camera catches the harvest, not the slog. It’s easy to post a perfect tomato. It’s harder to show the 10 small tasks it took to get there.
This isn’t a beginner learning on the fly. Underwood grew up in Checotah, Oklahoma, and has said she loves getting her hands dirty. The farm-to-table life is part of her family’s routine—fresh eggs, homegrown produce, time outside for the kids. The problem, if the reports are accurate, is scale. Four hundred acres isn’t a backyard garden. It’s a second job. Some weeks, it’s the main job.
Why the workload keeps growing
Ask any farm manager what sneaks up on people, and they’ll say this: maintenance. Middle Tennessee brings spring storms that knock down limbs and fencing, summer heat that cracks boards and hoses, and humidity that breeds mold, mildew, and pests. One strong wind and you’re chasing tarps. One hard rain and you’ve got ruts in a drive that need gravel. Water lines clog. Barn doors shift. A day off just means two days of work later.
Greenhouses are their own beast. They’re great for extending growing seasons and protecting tender plants, but they demand constant control—temperature, moisture, ventilation. Miss a day and you can get aphids, whiteflies, or powdery mildew that spreads fast. Fruit trees look simple, but they need pruning, feeding, and watchful eyes for blight and borers. Add raised beds and seasonal crops to the mix and you’ve created a never-ending to-do list that resets every week.
Animals raise the stakes. Chickens need daily care, fresh water, and safe housing from raccoons and hawks. Sheep need clean pasture, shearing schedules, hoof checks, and secure fencing. Horses come with feeding routines, farrier visits, and the odd emergency that doesn’t wait for someone’s day off. It’s rewarding work, but it ties you to the land hour by hour.
There’s also the people problem. Large properties often rely on a small crew: a farm manager, one or two hands, maybe seasonal help for planting and harvest. In many rural areas, reliable skilled labor is tough to find and harder to keep. When you do hire, there’s training, supervision, and gaps when someone is sick or moves on. If RadarOnline’s reporting is correct and staffing has been inconsistent, that alone could explain why the workload feels like it’s sliding backward.
Now layer in her day job. Touring schedules, studio time, brand commitments, and TV tapings don’t always line up with weather windows, delivery dates, or a lambing season that arrives early. When an artist is away, farms rely on a crew to keep things steady. If that crew isn’t stable, tasks pile up. You come home to a list of fixes: a fence to mend, a pump that needs priming, a greenhouse fan that died while you were on a red-eye.
Money and logistics matter, too. Feed and hay need ordering, storing, and hauling. If rain ruins a cut of hay, prices jump. If a supplier is short, you spend time calling around or driving farther. Tractor parts don’t always arrive next day, and even simple repairs eat hours. A 30-minute fix ends up a two-hour round trip for a bolt and a belt.
The emotional part is real. People romanticize the farm life because it offers meaning and rhythm—planting, growth, harvest, care. That’s likely why Underwood, who has talked before about loving a hands-on life, leaned into it. The same things that make it satisfying also make it demanding. You can’t snooze a hungry flock or push a storm off a day. If you ignore the small stuff, nature will remind you who’s in charge.
Could this ease up? It depends on the choices ahead. Many celebrity landowners bring in a dedicated property manager who handles vendors, schedules crews, and sets priorities so the owner doesn’t have to triage every squeaky hinge. Others scale the animal count down to match the crew they can keep. Some outsource greenhouse work to a horticulture specialist for a season and reset. There’s no shame in calling in help; it’s how most large farms operate.
For now, RadarOnline’s story is just that—a report. Underwood hasn’t weighed in publicly, and the snapshots she shares still show a family leaning into the life they chose. If the behind-the-scenes workload is as heavy as sources say, it would put her in the same boat as a lot of owners who bit off a little more land than their crew can chew. The difference is, when a superstar starts her day at dawn to feed animals, people notice.
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