My Visit to Galloping Grace Youth Ranch

A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to visit a friend at Galloping Grace Youth Ranch. Locals with kids are probably pretty familiar with the ranch and more are probably familiar with the Galloping Grace Pumpkin Patch in the fall. Though I don't have any kiddos of my own, that wouldn't stop me from visiting the ranch again, so I thought I would share a little about it here.

Galloping Grace Youth Ranch, according to their website, is a non-profit organization with kids in mind to learn and lead other kids in how to raise livestock, grow crops, explore the outdoors and help their community. I was thoroughly impressed with all of its initiatives.

While they have a ton of opportunities, programs and education for young kids on up to high-schoolers, their experiments with sustainability at the ranch is what got my attention. From livestock and the environment, to aquaponics (so cool!) and their food recovery program, it was all so interesting! They know their animals over there and know exactly what to do to keep things fresh over at the ranch. For example, they use food donated from local schools, grocery stores and restaurants to feed the animals, keeping it out of the landfills, then by rotating the animals through different pens, their eating habits naturally do all of the work from composting to fertilization.

While the whole science of the ranch is fascinating (<--for those of you who know my husband well, he's rubbing off y'all and I'm not sure how I feel about it!), it's also just as fun to go watch the animals. It's completely hands on and so much fun! I've never seen a herd of pigs and goats run so fast (feeding time) nor have I ever felt so sad for some hungry piggies before- you would have thought they were dying!

My suggestion to you: go check it out- NOW! You'll instantly re-live your childhood dreams of getting messy and playing with all of the farm animals and learn a ton while at it. And if you do have kiddos, they'll love you more for it!

PS- Did you know that pigs don't ever stop growing!?

Thanks Jeni for the personal tour (and the photos), clearly I had a blast!


Re-living a childhood memory at the farm (some family back east runs a cow farm).


Feeding time- don't mess with them during chow time. I witnessed a pig break open and devour an entire watermelon!


Mr. Piggy was NOT happy to be held.

By the way, though I didn't get to hold her, there's a little runt piggy that is a must see. She's absolutely adorable!