A Proposal and a Place to Call Home
Authori Bio: J. Tyler Clark is a co-editor and ad manager for the Front Porch Magazine. He is an estate planning and probate attorney based out of Caldwell, TX. He also is the Founder of the Christian Higher Education Foundation which helps increase access to Christian colleges and universities.
For Dee and Dr. Carrie Ellis, home began before there were walls. It began with a piece of Burleson County countryside, a pond, a table set with roses and a question that would shape everything that followed.
Dee purchased the land in 2018, originally looking for just 10 or 20 acres. He found it along CR 274, part of a former ranch being divided into country tracts, and kept buying until his little piece of the country had grown to roughly 104 acres.
Country living was familiar territory for Dee. After growing up in different parts of Texas, he settled in Rockdale, where he lived for about 30 years and raised his three children. He served on the school board, was president of the Lions Club and became deeply involved in the community.
Years later, the property would become the setting for a new chapter.
Dee and Carrie met through their work in animal health and infectious disease. Their relationship grew from colleagues to something more, and one day Dee brought Carrie out to the still-undeveloped property. Friends had helped him arrange a table, chairs and roses overlooking the pond.
“I distinctly remember yelling, ‘What’s all that junk over there?’” Carrie recalled.
Dee suggested they go investigate.
There, on what was then nothing more than an open field—and near what would eventually become their back porch—Dee proposed.
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After marrying in 2023, they began turning that field into the home they had imagined. Construction started in 2024 with longtime Rockdale friends Charles and Gabe Bland of Bland Construction. Dee focused on the big picture: where the house should sit, how it should face, where roads and ponds belonged and which areas should remain wooded. Carrie took command inside, choosing everything from flooring and cabinets to countertops, fixtures and finishes.
They moved in just before Christmas 2024.
Both brought impressive professional backgrounds to their new country life. Carrie earned her master’s and Ph.D. at Texas A&M and works in large-animal infectious-disease and vaccine research through Texas A&M AgriLife. Dee is a veterinarian and longtime animal-health professional who attended Texas A&M’s veterinary school, previously served as Texas State Veterinarian and today remains involved in animal-health research, education and outreach through A&M.
But for two people whose careers and travels have taken them far beyond Burleson County, some of their greatest enjoyment now comes from what is right outside the door.
The property has three ponds and is home to cattle, two horses from the Noack family, two cats and Apple Jack, their dog adopted through H.A.R.T. animal rescue.
Even more important has been the community surrounding them.
Carrie remembers living for nearly a decade in a College Station neighborhood and barely knowing her neighbors. Country living has proved almost the opposite. Along CR 274, neighbors stop to visit from their mules, swap recommendations through a neighborhood Facebook group and gather for Christmas parties and other get-togethers.
“The people out here are great,” Dee said.
It turns out that a little more distance between houses can sometimes bring people closer together.
And from the Ellises’ front porch, surrounded by animals, neighbors and the land where they became engaged, it is easy to see that they did more than build a house in the country.
They built a home.
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