You might already know the gist, or maybe you caught a quick glimpse of the About Us section, or maaaaaybe this is the first time you’ve heard of us here at Farm Hippie (What?! Tell me it’s not so!). Regardless, we’re kicking off the first blog post with a little candid look at who we really are and what we’re really about. Our Mission Statement: Farm Hippie’s mission is to help every one of its vendors grow, thrive, and prosper together by offering a means of connecting to the community like never before. Our hope is to bridge the gap between the community’s need for homegrown and earth-friendly alternatives and offer an easy-access marketplace for farmers and local vendors. We are our vendors’ number one advocates and truly support the hardworking small businesses, farmers, hobbyists, and dream chasers. Together we will educate, enrich, and market to the community.
Before we get to that mission in action, I feel it necessary to share a little about where we started– pre-Farm Hippie. And I promise, although it’s a lot, I’ll keep it short and sweet.
PRE-FARM HIPPIE
We, the founders and active owners, are Ash and Carrie Beth Winfield. Did we expect to be where we are today? Well, yes and no. And here’s the real scoop on what I mean by that: our backgrounds and pasts don’t quite match up with where we are now, yet somewhere along our journey in life, everything just aligned. Door after door opened, bridges were created for us to cross, and everything leading up to Farm Hippie just feels like, dare I say, absolute destiny. To not walk through those doors, or to not walk those (what felt like) wobbly bridges, life would be a lot different, and a lot less exciting.
With Ash’s background in corporate America, mine in an array of jobs leading up to landing a teaching position before the “retirement,” that magical something just continued to lead the entire way. We’ve now been married just a few short years and settled on our property here in smalltown Collinsville, Oklahoma. It wasn’t until moving to our homestead those fateful five years ago that things really started to unfold.
And that’s when it happened. We found the joy of nature. Of stepping away from “the grind.” Of living for ourselves and by ourselves on the homestead and as stewards to Mother Earth and her future. The joy of just living and immersing ourselves in the delights of doing what felt natural and right. We finally found that ultimate joy that had been missing. We just knew something big was about to happen, but what was behind that next door was an absolute mystery.
Combined we had six teenage/young adult children, three dogs, and two cats. By the time we finished out our first year on the homestead, we had a few less children living with us (you know how young adults are. They’ve since been on-again/off again.), three dogs, two cats, one cat who adopted us and offered to be our barn kitty, three chickens, two goats, and five thousand bees. This was also the year we developed the orchard, the garden, the farmyard itself, and the entire house got a renovated move-in makeover from the 1970s to current. That was all while working two very full-time jobs.
Our priorities quickly shifted. They were so easy to shift, and that’s when our Bee Farmee business really started to take flight, at that. That itch to make it full-time just continued to pull at us.
FARM HIPPIE IN ACTION
And here we are. One teenager at home (no doubt the rest of our young adult children any less stressful), a grandchild on the way, two dogs (may you rest in peace, Merle Jean), one “on-duty” Great Pyranees dog, three cats, 39 chickens, six goats, 50,000-thousand bees, two geese, and one pet pig. The orchard is growing, the one-acre garden fully developed and in action producing thousands of veggies for us year-after-year, and the farmyard is a generational special happy place of its own. And…drum roll…. a new business was in the works without our even knowing it was in the works, thanks to the direction those doors and bridges led us to go through.
With Ash’s background in business, mine in marketing, photography, (and teaching?), and all the skills we’d learned on the homestead, we just knew it was time to take Ash’s entrepreneurial inclinations to finally open the farmers market he’d been dreaming about for years while in his corner office, and mine to open Bee Farmee’s retail spot. It was time. We just knew it.
Bee Farmee spent several hours on the road, traveling market after market, event after event (mind you, while working full-time jobs). We met so many amazingly talented producers like ourselves along the way. We met farmers, artisans, ranchers, and everyone in between. With as many folks as we met along our traveling vendor journey with Bee Farmee, we learned of the struggle these vendors faced, first-hand at that. We knew there just had to be a better way. And that’s where our mission was created: “To bridge the gap between the community’s need for homegrown and earth-friendly alternatives and offer an easy access marketplace for farmers and local vendors. “And so, Farm Hippie opened its doors with all the joyful and scary momentum that continues to propel us forward.
In 2019, we opened our doors to the community. Scared to death, excited beyond belief, and secretly hoping we made the right decision. We look back at original content from the beginning and we can only laugh at how far it’s come since then. (Can you believe THE famous Mr. Rick Wells from KOTV News Channel 6 even came to check us out and film a segment just after opening?!). LINK: https://www.newson6.com/story/5e35bcb1fcd8ef694720d5e5/collinsville-farm-hippie-market-open-all-year–indoors#.YqIq6UyfBnY.link
We knew everything we were doing was right but had no idea what was about to happen. The bridge between local food and goods and its community was finally built. The trailblazed road was finally created, but as always, no good deed goes unpunished. The adversity and obstacles we were about to face certainly rocked us to the core, but that’s a story for another day. It’s that story that helped fully define and underline what Farm Hippie was and is and what its future holds.