AMY MILLIRON

Hills of Milk and Honey— Craving Community

BY AMY MILLIRON

Ithought it might be too late in my life to start a farm. A beloved mentor encouraged me to go for it. I am a 42-year-old women who has longed for the chance to provide an inclusive space centered on regenerative agriculture that fosters community and allows folks the chance to learn from each other. My formal background and graduate level education is in teaching and curriculum and instruction.

All previous titles I’ve held prior to choosing a career in agriculture have revolved around teaching young children through adults. When

I am facilitating the learning of others, I learn as well. There is so much we all have to offer each other when we come together and share our knowledge.

Community and Learning

I have found that I am not the only person who craves community as much as I do. When I decided to begin my educational farm, Hills of Milk and Honey, in Dripping Springs, Texas, I spent several years preparing for the launch of my business. I volunteered on local farms, networked at farmers markets, interned in teaching gardens, worked for and became an apprentice beekeeper, and I completed my certification in Holistic Management International’s Beginning Farmers and Ranchers Training Program.

My goal was to learn as much as I could about launching a diversified farm where my community could come together and learn from each other. While participating in all of these endeavors to gain experience as a farmer, I shared my unique ideas about my farm with everyone I came in contact with to gauge interest. I explained to folks about my desire to ‘grow farmers’ in an effort to encourage children, teens and adults to get involved in the slow food movement. The response was overwhelmingly positive and these folks who believed in this idea from the beginning are now the farm’s biggest fans!

The challenges faced in the beginning included obtaining land, connecting with mentors in each of the enterprises I planned to implement, researching profitability of each enterprise, learning how to obtain funds to begin the process, fine tuning my marketing skills, and knowing where to focus my energy each step of the way. I had learned about Holistic Management International though my networking with folks in agriculture and I first participated by taking Holistic Management’s online Getting Started course. I was hooked! That bit of information I received, as well as visiting a local Open Gate day, led me to register for the full Beginning Farmer Training Program. I knew that the knowledge I would learn from the course would help me manage the challenges I was facing, almost entirely, if I put into practice what I was about to learn from the course.

Holistic Help

Creating a holistic goal and committing every decision made from that point on to fit nearly a year ago. The instructors were very well prepared and extremely knowledgeable. The pace of the course was perfect and allowed time to discuss, think through, brainstorm with the class, and put new skills into practice on my own farm and in my own enterprises. I was just in the beginning phase of launching my farm and my business so the timing of the course was perfect. I was able to use the Decision Testing Questions to help determine how to handle many looming questions including whether I should buy a tractor right away, whether I should take out a loan, whether I should rent out a guest house to earn more income, and much

more. This tool has proven invaluable because our family now applies these test questions to all major, and some minor, decisions that we make even when they are unrelated to the farm as a business.

I have stayed in contact with the instructors, and almost every single classmate from the course. In fact, several of the folks have taken part as presenters here at Hills of Milk and Honey as we’ve increased our workshop offerings to the community. After getting to know so many of them, it was clear that each person had individual, specialized skills that would be an incredible asset to my community. Each time I fill the semester’s calendar with workshops, I put out a request for proposals to the community, including the instructors and classmates from HMI’s Beginning Farmer

Amy Milliron found HMI’s Beginning Farmer Training Program just what she needed to start a profitable farm. One of the core values in her holistic goal is to engage her community with her farm and children as a big part of her community.

within that holistic goal was exactly the focus I was seeking when I was planning the future of my educational farm. Prior to learning how to create a holistic goal, I had lots of ideas swirling around about how to diversify my farm and offer educational opportunities to my community. It wasn’t until I really spent time on creating my holistic goal, that I realized how manageable it would be to move forward with my business plans. I had previously tried creating a business plan from scratch, with every detail figured out in advance. Oh goodness, that just doesn’t work. Instead, Holistic Management teaches to decide on the profit desired in advance, and make the plans to get there fit the holistic goal. Voila! It works!

The benefits I received from taking the course were worth every penny spent and every minute dedicated to the training I completed

Training Program. It brings me great joy to be able to provide a platform here on my educational farm for others to share their knowledge. And, although I teach workshops here as well, it is great fun for the community to learn from a variety of experts in the regenerative agriculture field.

Hills of Milk and Honey focuses on healing the soil in order to grow nutrient-dense food for the animals to graze and for the community to eat. A herd of Alpine and Nubian dairy goats, a flock of laying chickens, honeybees, rabbits, broiler chickens, and livestock guardian dogs fill the farm with their sweet presence while each meets a specific need on the farm. I spent the first year adding all of the livestock to the farm.

Now, in my second year, I am teaming up with permaculture designers, while also completing my own permaculture design certificate, to create a whole farm design plan using Holistic Management principles and practices in addition to permaculture practices. Included in this plan will be continued grazing plans for the livestock, as well as crop rotations for the vegetables, fruits, and nuts that are being added this year. A Community Farm

The business plans for the farm are purposely left a bit open-ended to allow for the community’s interests and requests to be considered along the way. What started out as a diversified farm that would host field trips of school students on weekdays, has morphed into so much more. Choices for community involvement include workshops for children and adults (i.e. composting, raising backyard chickens, soap-making, gardening, meditation, farm art creation, and more). These workshops take place on weekdays, weeknights, and weekends. Also, folks may request a private group farm experience, a private farm themed party, Girl Scout badge workshops and overnight camps, use of the farm for photo shoots, and overnight stays in the guest house. In addition, the summers are filled with day camps for preschoolers, elementary-aged kids, and middle school tweens and teens where they get to become a ‘farmer for the week.’

Several community requested programs have been created based on leaving room in the business plan for just such things. These include a preschool/senior citizen intergenerational farm program that occurs monthly. What’s better than an 83-year-old and a three-year-old digging for worms together in the garden?

Another program was created out of the desire to streamline many requests received throughout the year from homeschool families and groups. This spring, homeschool families may register for an eight-week program that meets weekly, to learn about regenerative agriculture through hands-on learning and research here at Hills of Milk and Honey. This is a hybrid co-op program where parents may choose to pay full price for a drop-off option or participate weekly in leading small groups for a discounted option. This is a pilot program with plans to offer semester-long, home school programs each fall and spring.

A special program was requested by a parent in our community who has a child with Autism Spectrum Disorder. This very passionate, amazing mom requested that I develop a camp week dedicated to those with Autism Spectrum Disorder so that they could experience the farm in their unique way. I partnered with a specialist and created a camp week dedicated to meeting the needs of children, teens and young adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder. I can only imagine the lifetime of opportunities that I will be able to offer to my community if I continue to listen to their needs, take their requests to heart, and test them to make sure they fit my holistic goal. This is just the beginning!

All of the curriculum for each program created here on the farm has been developed by me, with my experience and research completed revolving around regenerative agriculture, sustainability, biodynamic farming, the slow food movement, farm and food related advocacy efforts, permaculture design principles, and most of all, Holistic Management’s principles and practices of nature including functioning in wholes, and understanding your environment. In areas where more experience or skill is called for, I call in mentors and experts to partner teach with me, as is in the case with the autism day camp week this summer and several other programs. Before starting the farm I had to make a big decision. I had to decide whether to run the business as a non-profit or for profit. It is my hope that I can encourage farmers to create enough manageable diversity on their farm to earn a livable wage that allows for healthcare, savings, and the ability to hire more help and lessen the number of hours personally dedicated to hard labor as the farmer ages. Knowing that a farmer deserves to be able to obtain those goals just the same as any other profession, practicing what I preach is necessary. So, I created a for profit company. This means While Amy has numerous enterprises, including laying hens, she went through that grant opportunities the enterprise analysis process to determine which enterprises made the most are not as abundant, and sense for her farm. bootstrapping is key! One of my favorite t-shirts says ‘no days off’ and I wear it proudly. I am in a season where I must work hard nearly every single day in order to create a baseline for this business that allows it to flourish as it grows. This is just a season. I will not be able to keep up with this pace forever, and I don’t plan to. I continue to test out when and how to hire help using the Decision Testing Questions. One day, hopefully soon, I will be able to hire an actual, full-time employee. For now, I pay for very part-time, project-based help here on the farm. It is a lot to manage, but I have an incredible ‘pool’ of people to contact as needs arise. And, although I write about the farm from first person, I have the best partner/farm hand/ husband in the world and incredible children. My husband, Matthew, has a full-time, off-farm day job, but he comes home and either heads straight into the kitchen to cook dinner, or straight out to the barn to do chores. There is