OUR STORY
The reason behind the farm is Tess.
Tess struggled with Cystic Fibrosis. She was in the hospital a lot, and we would be there all day. There would be a break in the middle of the day and Ralph would come be with her. He would say, “Tess! Let’s go do something fun. We’ll go anywhere you wanna go. We can go get ice cream, go to a toy store or to the museum. What do you want to do?” The only thing she would ever say was, “I want to go see horses.” So we would go drive by farms and go visit horses. People would yell at us because we were on their property, getting too close to their horses. But that’s what she wanted to do, and she always wanted to get closer.
For her make a wish trip, the volunteer advisor came over to get to know her a little better. She asked Tess about the things she liked. She told the advisor she liked swimming and animals. In response to this, the advisor said, “We can take your whole family to Hawaii! You can swim with dolphins and swim in the ocean.” All of the kids said, “Yes! Tess, let’s go to Hawaii!” But she wasn’t that excited about it.
The next idea the advisor had was a Disney cruise. Making it sound appealing she said, “You can swim in the pools, eat all kinds of food.” Again, all of the kids were really excited. But Tess still didn’t seem that into the idea.
Finally, the lady asked, “What do you want to do?” And she said, “I want my family to ride horses together.”
For the trip, we went to The Bar Lazy J in Colorado. We rode horses for the week and it was the biggest gift ever because we got to put away all of our phones and other electronics and we connected with nature. Being with horses all week as a family was a connection with nature we needed.
A few weeks later, she passed away. We missed her and needed to find a connection to nature again. In response to feeling this way, we bought our first horse, Rose. From there, we decided we needed more space for that adventure. After years of searching for the right place, driving across Cincinnati visiting pieces of land, we bought our farm. We intended it to be a place of respite, but then it began naturally evolving into more. The first few years were spent learning, and as we did, we found that we wanted to do more and more with the land.
Our vision for the farm first changed as we began growing flowers. We started donating a few flowers here and there to friends and family. We then began delivering a few bouquets to local hospice centers, as we remembered our time spent there. We were blown away by the gratitude shown us by the nurses and families that received these little gifts. We couldn’t help but expand our fields and began growing more and more. We call our efforts “The Bouquet Project”, and you can learn more about it here.
Our vision for the farm again started changing while Tracey was working at the Madeira Elementary School Butterfly Garden with the Madeira High School’s National Honor Society. A student, Nick Ramos, was idly talking with her and said, “Wow, I’d love to work at your farm.” And that was that. She hired him on the spot. The first year, he and a friend made our pig fencing and set up the system to rotate them through wooded lots, allowing the land to get a little break. We loved getting the chance to teach them the things we had fumbled through, and the chance to get to know these students in a unique setting.
Nick later enrolled in the engineering department at the University of Alabama. He applied for an internship at Kroger, which is very elite and hard to get into, and in his application he shared about his experiences at the farm. He wrote about that pasture rotation system for the piglets, and it set him apart. The person reading his application was interested in it because no one else had a experience like that.
One student became two, two became three, and soon we had five students working with us at the farm. At first we didn’t realize the impact we had with some of these students, but it began to be unearthed over time. There were some mental health issues such as depression and anxiety, things we didn’t know about, that were relieved and realized after a summer spent at the farm for a few of our kids.
As we talked with them, and hearing what they liked about the farm and what they wanted to see in the future, we realized a couple things. First, that the farm is not just a place to grow food and realize where it comes from, but it’s really a place of community and awareness. Second, we needed to do more. In wanting to do more, we realized we needed help. We called upon our friends in the community and created a volunteer advisory team. They have been amazing! They helped us define our vision, and helped us create better, smarter goals.
We have enhanced our student program, changing the program to be more about teaching and learning rather than strictly doing chores. We want to give them more responsibility and give them more guidance on how to be successful with a small business, and yet still have fun learning to ride our horses, watch lambs be born, hike through trails, and just enjoy nature. We are excited to introduce our Community Supported Agriculture system. We want to bring on as many students as we can, but need the community’s help to do so. Check out our page here to learn more how you can support them by taking some of the risk
OUR STORY
The whole reason behind the farm is Tess.
Tess struggled with Cystic Fibrosis. She was in the hospital a lot, and we would be there all day. There would be a break in the middle of the day and Ralph would come be with her. He would say, “Tess! Let’s go do something fun. We’ll go anywhere you wanna go. We can go get ice cream, go to a toy store or to the museum. What do you want to do?” The only thing she would ever say was, “I want to go see horses.” So we would go drive by farms and go visit horses. People would yell at us because we were on their property, getting too close to their horses. But that’s what she wanted to do, and she always wanted to get closer.
For her make a wish trip, the volunteer advisor came over to get to know her a little better. She asked Tess about the things she liked. She told the advisor she liked swimming and animals. In response to this, the advisor said, “We can take your whole family to Hawaii! You can swim with dolphins and swim in the ocean.” All of the kids said, “Yes! Tess, let’s go to Hawaii!” But she wasn’t that excited about it.
The next idea the advisor had was a Disney cruise. Making it sound appealing she said, “You can swim in the pools, eat all kinds of food.” Again, all of the kids were really excited. But Tess still didn’t seem that into the idea.
Finally, the lady asked, “What do you want to do?” And she said, “I want my family to ride horses together.”
For the trip, we went to The Bar Lazy J in Colorado. We rode horses for the week and it was the biggest gift ever because we got to put away all of our phones and other electronics and we connected with nature. Being with horses all week as a family was a connection with nature we needed.
A few weeks later, she passed away. We missed her and needed to find a connection to nature again. In response to feeling this way, we bought our first horse, Rose. From there, we decided we needed more space for that adventure. After years of searching for the right place, driving across Cincinnati visiting pieces of land, we bought our farm. We intended it to be a place of respite, but then it began naturally evolving into more. The first few years were spent learning, and as we did, we found that we wanted to do more and more with the land.
Our vision for the farm first changed as we began growing flowers. We started donating a few flowers here and there to friends and family. We then began delivering a few bouquets to local hospice centers, as we remembered our time spent there. We were blown away by the gratitude shown us by the nurses and families that received these little gifts. We couldn’t help but expand our fields and began growing more and more. We call our efforts “The Bouquet Project”, and you can learn more about it here.
Our vision for the farm again started changing while Tracey was working at the Madeira Elementary School Butterfly Garden with the Madeira High School’s National Honor Society. A student, Nick Ramos, was idly talking with her and said, “Wow, I’d love to work at your farm.” And that was that. She hired him on the spot. The first year, he and a friend made our pig fencing and set up the system to rotate them through wooded lots, allowing the land to get a little break. We loved getting the chance to teach them the things we had fumbled through, and the chance to get to know these students in a unique setting.
Nick later enrolled in the engineering department at the University of Alabama. He applied for an internship at Kroger, which is very elite and hard to get into, and in his application he shared about his experiences at the farm. He wrote about that pasture rotation system for the piglets, and it set him apart. The person reading his application was interested in it because no one else had a experience like that.
One student became two, two became three, and soon we had five students working with us at the farm. At first we didn’t realize the impact we had with some of these students, but it began to be unearthed over time. There were some mental health issues such as depression and anxiety, things we didn’t know about, that were relieved and realized after a summer spent at the farm for a few of our kids.
As we talked with them, and hearing what they liked about the farm and what they wanted to see in the future, we realized a couple things. First, that the farm is not just a place to grow food and realize where it comes from, but it’s really a place of community and awareness. Second, we needed to do more. In wanting to do more, we realized we needed help. We called upon our friends in the community and created a volunteer advisory team. They have been amazing! They helped us define our vision, and helped us create better, smarter goals.
We have enhanced our student program, changing the program to be more about teaching and learning rather than strictly doing chores. We want to give them more responsibility and give them more guidance on how to be successful with a small business, and yet still have fun learning to ride our horses, watch lambs be born, hike through trails, and just enjoy nature. We are excited to introduce our Community Supported Agriculture system. We want to bring on as many students as we can, but need the community’s help to do so. Check out our page here to more!