Ocoee Riverside Farm

from November 2022

A Thankful Heart, For Real

Stay Here, Play Here

Ocoee Riverside Farm, owned and operated by John and Donna Warner, is a 30-acre riverfront farm located directly on the Ocoee River in Benton, Tennessee. While there are opportunities offered to the general public, the Warners have created a unique “Stay Here, Play Here” environment that caters almost exclusively to their lodging guests. From their two-story riverside cabin, “The Glampsite” tenting area, one of three different covered wagons, or one of two barn stays located inside the lofts of working barns, guests can return again and again having experienced something new each time. Whether you are an outdoor enthusiast, an animal lover, or just seeking a peaceful riverside retreat, we are confident that Ocoee Riverside Farm has what you are looking for in your next Tennessee vacation!

Lodging

• The Riverside Cabin: Sleeps Six • The Glampsite: Accommodates Two • The Welcome Wagon: Sleeps Four • The Band Wagon: Sleeps Four • The Chuck Wagon: Sleeps Four • The Barn Loft: Sleeps Three • The Camel Condo: Sleeps Ten

Experiences

From horseback rides to waterfall hikes, and camel experiences to river adventures, Ocoee Riverside Farm’s lodging guests can choose from a host of unique and memorable experiences for all ages. And, because these experiences are available almost exclusively to guests staying on the farm, you will receive the personal attention you cannot find in a public environment. Experiences include Farm Tours, Horseback Riding, Pony Rides and Grooming, Camel Rides, Farm Hand for A Day, Tubing, Kayaking, and a Waterfall Hike with Lunch. Presently, the most popular experience at Ocoee

Riverside Farm is their Farm Tour, which provides guests with close encounters with the vast majority of the animals on the farm. If you live in the area locally and have out-of-town friends or family staying on the farm, that is your ticket to join in on the fun! Local friends and family members of lodging guests are permitted to sign up for any “guest only” experience that their lodging friend or family member has signed up for. Beginning in the spring of 2023, new experiences will include Kangaroo and Sloth Encounters!

Events

“Yes, we do that too!” is the response the Warners give when they are asked if they host birthday parties, field trips, family reunions, retreats, and weddings. Moreover, the farm offers discounts when at least 3 of the accommodations are booked simultaneously for the same event. And if you’re looking for a day trip, Ocoee Riverside Farm swings open the gates year-round every Wednesday for their weekly Hump Day celebration. Local guests who make Hump Day reservations will enjoy camel rides, pony rides, and time inside their petting zoo with feed included for hand feeding. This next spring Ocoee Riverside Farm will be introducing “Homeschool Days,” which will run for an entire week each spring and fall season, offering homeschoolers and their families special programs, discounts, and events similar to the field trips.

Newest Accommodation

Ocoee Riverside Farm’s newest and most unique accommodation by far will soon be making its debut as The Camel Condo! This one-year construction project has produced an incredible 2300+ square foot “barndominium” that will house 10 guests. It includes three master suites, each with its own king-sized bed and full bathroom as well as two additional bunk rooms. It features a fully equipped modern kitchen, living area, and gaming area with a 170-gallon fish tank visible from each of the two levels. The bunk rooms will have glass floors that allow kids a birds-eye-view into the camel stalls and be connected by a 22-foot black-lit tunnel with glowing fish displayed in each of 5 recessed aquariums within the walls. Their 2-story sloth enclosure comes up from the ground through the living room floor, giving guests the chance to “hang out” with Flash as he hangs out in his tree branches. Other features include hidden doors and passageways, picture windows, private balconies, barn doors, a floating bed, hanging rope beds, a jetted tub that looks out over the swan pond, and more!

A Letter from The Warners

We are John and Donna Warner and we are so excited to have this opportunity to share a little bit of our story, as well as our home that has come to be known as Ocoee Riverside Farm!

While serving as an Officer in the U.S. Navy, John was diagnosed with cancer in 2000. John is a cancer survivor, but his cancer battle forced an early medical retirement after fifteen years of service. Following his retirement, John and I continued to grow the property management business that we had begun in 1995, and earnestly prayed about where the Lord would lead us next. John remarked that the Navy had sent him all over the world, but he had never seen the United States. So, in 2009, with our two adult children out of the house and our oldest daughter at the helm of our business, we set out on a crosscountry trip with our three youngest children.

Living in an RV for thirteen months, we homeschooled and toured the U.S. The memories of that experience only amplified what we already knew: “The most important things in life aren’t things.” The opportunity we had to basically live on vacation with our children for an entire year demonstrated just how much busyness we had allowed to crowd our everyday lives! In addition to experiencing this great country of ours, a primary focus of the trip was to help us determine where we would want to live because, for the first time in our married lives, the military would no longer dictate that decision. It was on this trip that we fell in love with Southeast Tennessee. That’s right! We traveled the entire country and this is where we wanted to call home. goodnewscm.com // 31

It would take us another ten years to make the dream of moving to Tennessee a reality. During those ten years, we would continue residing in and managing our business in Virginia. We would adopt four children from Ukraine between 2012 and 2015, become full-time caregivers to my disabled father until his passing in 2016, and become caregivers to John’s mother in 2017. Yes, the vacation was over and the busyness had found its way back into our lives! And then it happened. In 2018, we sold Warner Property Management and began a year-long housing search in Southeast Tennessee that would bring us to this little town of Benton.

Benton seemed to check all the boxes—a small town with a hometown feel, beautiful scenery, friendly people, and cleverly situated 15 minutes from everything and nothing at the same time. It is also within a day’s drive to our adult children, and now grandchildren, living in Georgia, Virginia, Kentucky, and Oklahoma. And so, in January of 2019, the Lord blessed us with our little piece of heaven on earth and the one thing that we both knew was that we wanted to share it. We just had NO IDEA what that was going to look like!

Thinking that one of our younger adult children would be interested in residing in the riverside cabin, it was actually this daughter who told us we should “just Airbnb it!” It would be another three months before we got curious enough to investigate what Airbnb even was and, as a result of navigating around their website one night, ended up accidentally publishing our cabin. To our surprise, we woke up the next morning to three bookings! The cabin, initially dubbed, The Riverside, became our very first guest accommodation. We only had three horses, twelve chickens, and one dog at the time.

We remember back in the beginning our guests would ask if they could come up by the house and see the chickens. We would not only let them come and see the chickens but also allow their kids to help feed and collect eggs from the coop. Guests that inquired about borrowing our kayaks were offered the chance to load up in our truck for a quick drive upriver so they could paddle their way back to our boat ramp here at the farm. Then requests came to ride the horses, and before we knew it, we were doing horseback rides on a regular basis. Our guests' love of horses also inspired us to create our second accommodation here on the farm, The Barn Loft, which allows guests to sleep in the loft of our equestrian barn with the horses. Virtually everything that has caused the farm to grow and transform into what it is today came about as a result of guest requests and it’s for this reason that we remain so committed to those lodging with us.

We were just going about having such a good time with folks that we remarked one day, “Wonder what our guests would think about llamas?” and so we decided to bring llamas onto the farm, which was quickly followed by camels! From the camels to the kinkajous, kangaroos to coatimundi and so, so much more we now have over 100 domestic and exotic animals that all call Ocoee Riverside Farm their home.

If there’s one message that we would want to convey to our guests it would be: This isn’t just a place where we come to work, it’s where we live, and you’re invited! We hope you accept this personal invitation to come and hang out on the family farm with us. Whether you are looking for a peaceful, no-contact vacation, or an all-in farm experience, we trust that the memories of your time spent here at Ocoee Riverside Farm will last a lifetime.

Blessings, John and Donna Warner

If you would like to book your stay at Ocoee Riverside Farm or would like more information about community events, visit their website at www.ocoeeriversidefarm.com. For any questions, you can contact the farm directly at (423)-241-3738.