Meet the Founder

When I was a young girl, I spent my summers at our log cabin on Lake Erie and on my Aunt and Uncle 160-acre farm in the Hudson Valley.

Those precious summers on the lake and farm taught me that human beings are not to dictate what happens to the land. Instead, the land tells us what needs to be done if we listen.

Harvesting tomatoes for canning and sauce-making, picking berries for jam and gathering mint for stomach aches showed me that our efforts to care for the land provide us with both food and medicine.

Many years later, I longed for a place to live everyday in harmony with the natural world. After a long search, my husband and I discovered our current home in the Sunday paper. The ad only mentioned the acreage, the latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates, and a phone number.

We drove out straightaway, hiked down a dirt road past a chicken farm, hopped a rusty gate, and our hearts just about stopped. No telephone wires, no houses — just an unbroken landscape of three luscious valleys, and beyond them, the Cleveland National Forest.

We have the privilege to own that 157 acres of land, The Crown Hill Ranch & Conservation Center, for the past 20 years. Our off grid ranch is home to 200 bee hives, 70 olive trees, and 100 lavender plants. We established the Nani Pua Farm, offices and warehouse on our conservation property in 2019.

As I continue on this path, I am committed to honoring the legacy of stewardship passed down to me. I hope future generations will develop committed relationships with the land, just as I have.