Call to Farms

Tim Eng is the author of FM 5-21: Fortify Your Farm and, with his wife Sophia, co-author of the forthcoming The Nourishing Asian Homestead (Chelsea Green Publishing, October 2026, foreword by Joel Salatin).

He grew up in San Jose, California, and graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 2005. Tim served sixteen years in the U.S. Army as a combat engineer officer, including an eighteen-month deployment to Iraq in 2007 and 2008 in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom V, where he earned a Bronze Star for leading his soldiers in combat.

In 2018, he left the Army for real estate, building his career at firms including Compass and Sotheby's International Realty in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he and Sophia worked as a team and became top producers. In 2022, the family moved to Tennessee to grow their own food, and Tim rebranded his business as The Homesteading Agent. He now works nationwide as a realtor and lender for people trading city life for land of their own, and co-hosts the Call to Farms podcast.

Tim and Sophia raise beef and dairy cattle on eighty acres in Appalachian Tennessee. Sophia is an award-winning cookbook author (The Nourishing Asian Kitchen) and Director of Growth at Journify. They are the parents of two daughters who run their own business, Joy and Jolie.

Sophia Nguyen Eng is a bestselling, award-winning author, farmer, growth-marketing leader, real estate professional, mortgage broker, and international keynote speaker who divides her time between Silicon Valley and the mountains of East Tennessee.

A first-generation Vietnamese American raised in a multigenerational household, Sophia grew up learning traditional ways of cooking, farming, and caring for family through food. Her work today brings those roots together with regenerative agriculture, Korean Natural Farming, traditional Chinese medicine, and the belief that rebuilding local food systems begins at home. She is a certified Korean Natural Farming instructor and the author of The Nourishing Asian Kitchen and The Nourishing Asian Homestead.

Sophia has worked in real estate and mortgage lending since 2006. Together with her husband, Tim Eng (known as the Homesteading Agent), she helps families across the country find and fund land where they can build homesteads, grow food, and create greater independence.

Sophia remains an active growth-marketing leader, drawing upon her experience leading initiatives for startups and global companies including Workday, Autodesk, Smartsheet, and InVision. As an international keynote speaker, she has presented at Ferment Oaxaca in Mexico, the Wise Traditions Conference, regenerative-agriculture gatherings, and global technology conferences. She has shared the stage with Joel Salatin at Polyface Farm and returned to Google headquarters to speak about her cookbook and the importance of reconnecting food, culture, and health.

Through her family blog, Sprinkle With Soil, Sophia captures her family's unfolding story, from returning to their cultural and agricultural roots to raising children, growing food, tending livestock, and building a multigenerational life on the land. It is a living record of what they are learning as they pursue a more nourishing, regenerative, and independent way of life.

Sophia and Tim are also the founders and hosts of the Call to Farms podcast and membership community, where they are pursuing an ambitious mission: to help save 10,000 small farms across America. Through online classes and hands-on training, they guide members through the recipes, farming practices, food-preservation techniques, soil-building methods, and traditional wisdom featured in The Nourishing Asian Kitchen and The Nourishing Asian Homestead.

On their nearly eighty-acre East Tennessee homestead, Sophia and Tim raise grass-fed dairy cows and beef cattle, poultry, and seasonal produce while building a multigenerational life rooted in healthy soil, nourishing food, and family freedom.