Chickens and llamas and goats! Oh my.
Sunday night's Very Cavallari premiere saw Kristin Cavallari and Jay Cutler shaking things up in Nashville—and getting closely acquainted with the great outdoors in the meanwhile.
"Since season one, I moved out to the country. So, I'm living the farm life," Kristin explained happily at the start of this week's episode, adding that the move was a positive one for the whole Cavallari-Cutler crew, her husband especially.
"Jay's still retired and he's living his best life," she said. "He loves being in the country."
The "farm life" is definitely no joke, though. In addition to the couple's three kids—Camden, 6, Jaxon, 4, and Saylor, 3—Kristin and Jay tend to a whole herd of lovable creatures who similarly call their woodsy oasis home. Like Blooms, the spirited family rooster, who managed to dupe his owners into thinking he was actually an egg-laying hen for a minute there.
"Well, I found out why Blooms doesn't want to lay eggs," Jay told his wife during a surprise visit to the Uncommon James office one afternoon.
"Why?" asked Kristin.
"She's a he," said Jay. "He is gonna go to chicken heaven soon."
Kristin didn't like the sound of that and suggested they "give Blooms away" instead. Regardless, the business-savvy animal lover was still looking to add to her and Jay's growing flock of furry friends. Thanks to country singer Luke Bryan and his wife Caroline, who happen to live on a farm of their own not far from Kristin and Jay's, she had some help with that.
Caroline gave Kristin and her longtime BFF Kelly Henderson the full-on farm tour (complete with an affectionate pair of kangaroos and everything) during this week's premiere. Kristin, for her part, was in awe.
"Luke and Caroline's farm is the most gorgeous farm I have ever seen," she said in a confessional. And that was before she met Pecka, the 2-year-old llama who stole her heart immediately.
"If you want to babysit Pecka for a couple of days to see if you like it, she travels well," Caroline offered, and Kristin was all for it.
"Pecka, I need you to spit on my husband for me!" she joked, before swiftly carting the llama home to Jay.
Much like the family farm, Kristin also spent 2018 growing her company, Uncommon James. What began as an empty warehouse space in season one had transformed into the Nashville-based home goods and jewelry outlet of her dreams by Very Cavallari's second season debut.
"Uncommon James has completely taken off," said Kristin. "I literally went from four employees to, now, I have 55. And I'm still hiring more and more."
But with new projects still on the horizon for her already expanding business, the no-nonsense entrepreneur also had to make some tough calls about Uncommon James' employee roster. Mainly with regard to long-term social media director Shannon Ford, whose office antics and unexplained absences finally led Kristin to a professional breaking point.
"Things with Shannon have been so bad lately. Today she decides just not to show up for a staff meeting," she explained to Kelly over dinner. "But I just feel like it's good because I'm figuring out really quickly who needs to be here and who wants to be here and who's here for the right reasons."
Kristin admitted that letting Shannon go had definitely crossed her mind before—on more than one occasion—and she told Kelly it was finally time to "start trusting [her] gut" on that front. So she arranged for a one-one-one meeting with Shannon to lay everything out on the table.
"I'll just jump in, since I know we both would rather be other places," Kristin said, kicking off their meeting later that week. "This conversation is long overdue. I know that you know I've been extremely frustrated and things have not been good."
The highly organized Uncommon James founder went on to list (in bullet-point form) those instances where Shannon had severely shirked her responsibilities at work. From missed deadlines to sleepy social media accounts to general back-talk, Kristin was entirely fed up. And with good reason.
"I want you to know that you are single-handedly costing my company money," she said, but the veteran employee felt differently.
"It's human error!" Shannon argued back.
"I've made so many excuses for you for a year and a half. I've defended you. And lately, I'm asking myself, ‘Why?'" Kristin said, before promptly cutting to the chase. "I have to let you go," she told Shannon.
See how their tense conversation went down—and get the low down on Kelly's love life too—in the clip above!