Our Story
I didn't start a farm because I wanted to start a farm.
I started because I loved my dad.
I've loved animals for as long as I can remember. When I was 16, my dad bought me my first horse. That horse became my best friend, but so did my dad. We talked several times a day. We shared hobbies. We read the same books, more than 20 a year, and discussed them at length. We traveled together along with my family. We had plans—lots of them.
We had decades of things left to do.
Then, in November of 2020, my dad was diagnosed with cancer.
I remember thinking that this was something we were going to beat. He was going to get better, and we were going to get on with all those trips and adventures we had planned.
So we started digging.
We looked at everything. Food. Sugar. Ingredients. Chemicals. Supplements. Water. Cookware. Things most people had never thought very much about. While we couldn't undo his past exposure we could detox and limit future exposures. While I had already been "crunchy" he hadn't bought into it too much - until now.
We were looking for ways to give his body the best possible chance while still allowing him to live a normal life.
One of the things I came across was information that made me question whether beef was something we wanted to continue eating. I wasn't looking to make him vegan. I wasn't interested in taking away every food he loved. I wanted to find another way.
And then we found ostrich.
It was red meat. It looked like beef. You could cook it like beef. But nutritionally, it was very different. We ordered some from another farm.
My dad loved it.
He told me that as long as he had ostrich, he could give up beef.
That sentence changed everything.
In June of 2021, we bought our first ostriches.
But by then, I had become obsessed with something bigger than
ostrich. I wanted to know exactly what we were putting into his body.
We changed almost everything we could.
We moved his diet to almost entirely to certified organic food.
We replaced cookware.
We replaced dishes and silverware.
We had supplements that were tested for heavy metals.
We got a Berkey to remove flouride and chlorine from his water. (I already had one.)
We started paying attention to the things he had never thought twice about before and I took crunchy to a whole new level.
However, there was lots of things we couldn't find or couldn't find organic.
And the more I learned, the more I realized something:
If I was going to do this, I didn't want to raise food the way everyone else did and simply put a different label on it.
I wanted to know what our animals ate.
I wanted to know what was in their water.
I wanted to know how they were raised.
I wanted to know how they were processed.
I wanted to know what ultimately ended up on the plate.
......most of all, I wanted to know that I was doing everything possible to buy more quality time.
That's still how we do things today.....like it matters!
Our animals are raised on certified organic feed. We don't use municipal water in the production of our animals or our products. We use filtered rainwater and tested and filtered well water. We pay attention to what our animals are exposed to because we believe those details matter.
I know there are things I believe today that I didn't understand when this journey began.
There are also things I believed then that I would explain differently today.
That's part of being willing to learn.
But one thing hasn't changed:
I still believe that how we raise our food matters.
By September of 2022, my dad's cancer was no longer detectable. There was one tumor that had been particularly stubborn—it had been the size of a tangerine—and it took a long time to break down even after the other cancer, including the cancer in his bones, was no longer detectable.
For almost two years, I had been searching for anything I could do to give my dad more time.
I don't tell you that because I want this to be a story about cancer.
I tell you because it explains why this farm exists.
But every time I raise an animal, every time I choose what it will eat, every time I think about what goes into the water, every time I decide whether something is good enough to put on your family's table, I think about the person who started me down this road.
He taught me to ask questions.
He taught me not to accept “that's just the way it's done.”
And he taught me that when you love someone, you do everything you can for them.
That's what this farm is built on.
I can't say, and won't claim, that the food we raise will prevent or cure a disease.
I can't promise anyone the outcome we hoped for.
What I can promise is that I will continue to care about the details.
If it isn't good enough for my family, it isn't good enough for yours.
Because this isn't just food to me.
It started with my dad.
And it became my life's work.