Sunny Joy Farm — From Hardship to Healing: A Care Farm for These Times
Many of us are feeling it in our bones: the speed, the violence, the division, the constant state of alarm. Our nervous systems are overwhelmed, our young people are carrying far more than they should, and too many of the places meant to support them feel rushed, fragmented, or transactional.
In times like these, it becomes essential to ask not just what’s wrong, but what helps.
Sunny Joy Farm is my response to this moment — a care farm, a refuge, rooted in relationship, land, and lived experience. It exists because I believe young people, and all of us, need places where healing is slow, embodied, creative, and real. Places where we can rebuild trust in ourselves, each other, and the living world — not through abstraction, but through hands in soil, shared work, and meaningful connection.
There was a time when life asked everything of me — and I had to find a way to give back to that pain with meaning, connection, and service. The journey that brought me to Sunny Joy Farm is not a neat success story, but a tapestry woven from wilderness, loss, determination, and love. My son made a video last year about our journey as a family. We called it Hardship to Happiness. It is more than a narrative arc — it’s the root of what this place is becoming: a care farm where people, land, and community heal together.
The Roots of the Vision
In 2002, I experienced homelessness — a raw and humbling milestone that cracked open my assumptions about stability, identity, and worth. What I had once taken for granted was stripped away, and I found myself humbled into listening: to the land, to my children, and to the invitation to live a deliberate life. In the years that followed, I chose to build life on my own terms — embracing land-based living, composting, gardening, textile art, mentorship, and community engagement with full presence and intention. Over nearly two decades of living this way, I found what many of us are seeking: resilient life skills grounded in reciprocity with the Earth.
Sunny Joy Farm emerged from this long practice of grounded living — a place where soil, hands, heart, and community meet. In 2025, after years of visioning and grassroots engagement, the opportunity to acquire the property on Hummingbird Lane presented itself. What felt like the right land at the right time became the fertile soil for something deeper than gardening — a care farm for resilience, regeneration, and belonging.
What Is a Care Farm?
Sunny Joy Farm is two acres of farm, studio, garden, and sanctuary in Talent, Oregon, dedicated to growing not just food and flowers, but capacity — the capacity to heal, to connect, and to flourish. It is a care farm — a place where therapeutic land-based experiences, ecological arts, regenerative agriculture, and intentional mentorship converge to support personal and communal restoration.
Care farms are rooted in the understanding that engagement with soil, plants, animals, and shared work can foster emotional well-being, practical skills, and a deep sense of belonging. In a world that often feels extractive, fragmented, and disconnected, Sunny Joy Farm is growing something different — something rooted in care, reciprocity, and collective resilience.
This farm holds space for young people, elders, artists, families, and anyone whose nervous system yearns for grounding, meaning, and connection. It is a sanctuary where folks can move through embodied work, creative expression, and deep listening — not toward an abstract idea of success, but toward active hope and reclaimed agency.
The Mission: Healing Through Hands, Soil, and Story
At its heart, Sunny Joy Farm seeks to cultivate three core things:
Resilience — building emotional, relational, and ecological resilience in a world marked by uncertainty
Regeneration — tending soils, communities, and creative spirits in ways that give back more than they take
Relationship — honoring our interwoven connections with the living world and with each other
This work is grounded in the belief that doing meaningful, nourishing work with our bodies — in soil, gardens, studios, and circles — transforms us from the inside out. Guided, not coerced; invited, not prescribed; relational, not hierarchical — this is a model of learning and healing that meets people where they are and walks with them into what is possible.
What We Offer and How It Works
Sunny Joy Farm’s programming reflects the philosophy that presence in place produces meaning in life.
Through the Resilient Youth Internship Program, teens and young adults are invited into hands-on learning rooted in real responsibility, creativity, and mentorship. Youth engage in gardening, composting, irrigation, ecological art, natural dyeing, and seasonal farm rhythms while building confidence, competence, and a sense of belonging. This work is paced to support nervous system regulation and personal growth, not productivity for its own sake.
In the Magical Botanical Studio, participants of all ages explore natural dyeing, botanical printing, and fiber arts — creative practices that open pathways to expression, imagination, and emotional integration. Art here is not about performance or polish; it is a bridge from experience into story, from isolation into shared meaning.
Resiliency coaching and small-group learning spaces support people navigating grief, transition, burnout, and identity shifts. These offerings integrate somatic awareness, land-based rhythms, and deep listening, helping individuals transform adversity into a source of strength and clarity.
Garden education and regenerative practices invite participants back into relationship with the cycles that sustain us — seed to harvest, soil to nourishment, effort to care. Meeting basic needs with dignity and skill lays the foundation for wider personal and collective resilience.
A Living Invitation
Sunny Joy Farm is not a finished product — it is a living question.
What happens when we root ourselves in the land with intention?
What becomes possible when vulnerability is honored as strength?
How might we build ecosystems of belonging that help young people — and all of us — weather these times with integrity?
This farm is being shaped as a place of refuge and restoration, where relationships deepen across generations, skills grow organically, and stories unfold across seasons. Whether you arrive as a participant, collaborator, supporter, or quiet witness, your presence matters.
Together, we are tending something slow, relational, and enduring — a care farm where healing is hands-deep and hope is grown, patiently, in soil and story.
Sunny Joy Farm made it through the start-up phase of land acquisition and forming partnerships with nonprofits to support the charitable work. We are now entering Phase 1 and could use your support to acquire the materials needed to have a thriving volunteer program and grow the expanded vegetable garden intended to support the 1st Phoenix Community Center no barrier Food Pantry. Monetary donations are appreciated, but materials donations are equally valuable. Use the button below to donate money, use this document to learn what materials we are seeking.