Our Story

When we first purchased our little farm it seemed like some sort of reward for twenty-five years of hard work;  I had always wanted to be a farmer.  We had a few of everything:  cows, sheep, pigs, chickens, turkeys, horses, llamas, dogs and cats.  What it actually turned into was a training camp for Trinidad.

While searching for just the right missionary to help with a monetary, monthly gift, the Lord wasted no time in revealing that the missionary was me.  I got nervous real quick because I had plenty of "want to" but not much "know how."  Thankfully, I was a subscriber to the Stockman Grass Farmer and in every issue I was reading about Joel Salitin's style of farming.  I was being led to introduce these methods to an orphanage in Trinidad which is nestled on about ten acres.  So I bought the books, tapes and videos.  Still feeling inadequate, I called Joel, explained my plight and was welcomed to Swope, VA for a three day crash course.  The entire family and interns were wonderful and I will be grateful to them for all my years.

Knowing I couldn't show up in Trinidad and practice, we setup the Sharon Rose Farm with portable electric fences, started intensive grazing and built a brooder and portable chicken huts.  The next thing was to process them and find some folks to eat them.

In the beginning, we were only three weeks ahead of what was going on in Trinidad.  So in trying to keep pace, I enlisted the help of family members and close friends.  Because we came in the back door, it took us a while to figure out the real health benefits of raising grass fed beef, lamb and pastured poultry.  When introduced to Jo Robinson's book Pasture Perfect, we said "no more" to the chain store's meat, poultry and eggs.  Then after picking up Jordan Rubin's book The Maker's Diet our lives have been forever changed.  We are now real believers in clean food.  Because of the slick marketing techniques, misleading labels and high cost of organic products, we've chosen to make our products available to other like-minded folks who not only want to know their food is clean of antibiotics, pesticides, hormones and animal byproducts, but would also like to have a relationship with the folks raising their food.  We are excited about doing something that really makes a difference in people's quality of life.

As for as the Home for Children in Trinidad, it remains a work in progress.  Our goal is to not only produce enough food for the home, we also want to produce in such abundance that we create endless opportunity for the children to grow up and become productive members of society, instead of burdens to the state.