DELAWARE, Ohio – Before she left to start her own farm education business, Bring the Farm to You, Christa Hein spent 15 years as the education director at the Stratford Ecological Center, a non-profit farm education center, and state nature preserve in Delaware.

Hein’s environmental education background allowed her to lead children’s and adult programming at Stratford.

“We had schools visit farm sites and we had farm camps,” Hein said. “We taught people gardening, beekeeping, and an herbal study group – all kinds of different things.”

Her farming advocacy grew from her childhood experience with gardening and beekeeping.

“I learned agriculture from my German immigrant dad,” Hein said. “The homesteading skills were a part of our family – always gardening. My grandma was a beekeeper – so I had all of that farm interest but had never worked on a farm until that position at Stratford.”

Bring the Farm to You offers hundreds of remote farm sessions throughout central Ohio. Locations include schools, libraries, assisted living facilities, churches, parks and businesses.

“We started statewide and just last year we started to narrow that because we can’t fill the demand,” Hein said. “We do about 450 programs a year.”

Twelve programs range from small livestock exposure and rearing, to beekeeping, and making apple cider. Programs include hands-on experiences, traditional formal presentations, and how-to instruction.

“For example, in our rabbit rearing program, the rabbit might stay at the school for two weeks – that presentation starts with how do we take care of animals? How do we meet their basic needs?” Hein said.

The mini farm program is a formal informational presentation.

“We’re talking about all the animals, their biology and physiology, why their body parts work the way they do,” Henin said. “Then why do farmers raise certain animals for meat, fiber, eggs or milk?”

Making apple cider and beekeeping are how-to programs.

“The apple cider program is historic and beekeeping is about how to become a beekeeper,” Hein said.

The chick-hatching program is offered in people’s homes, schools, assisted living centers, and libraries without the long-term responsibility of raising the chick.

“People can kind of experience that miracle of birth,” Hein said. “But then we give them the option to keep the chicks, find a home for them, or we have a partnership with a farmer that purchases them a couple weeks after they hatch and raises them.”

She raises the chickens, ducks, turkeys, rabbits, sheep, goats, and pigs used for the programs on her small farm in Delaware County and transports the livestock to the location based on the specific program.

Hein measures the success and impact of her programs from the reactions of program users.

“A lot of that comes from feedback from the organizers of those programs,” she said. “For example, I remember being at the Parsons Avenue Library on Columbus’s south side and the librarian telling us that some of the kids they serve have never left the neighborhood, they have never been to a park, they have never been to a zoo. And that was their very first experience ever around animals outside a cat or a dog. It’s those kinds of impacts I know that we’re making – especially for those inner-city kids who have never seen anything like that before.”

Hein stays up to date with farming by maintaining professional ties with the Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association, an advocacy, education, and grassroots organization that promotes local and organic food systems.

“I ran their kid’s conference for several years at their main conference the first several years of starting Bring the Farm to You,” she said.

In addition to full-time employees, Bring the Farm to You hires seasonal workers to support programs. Many of the employees come from education and agriculture backgrounds. Last season 13 people were on the payroll.

“Our communications director got her degree from OSU in animal sciences, one of our interns is on the veterinary path at OSU, and another one is in agriculture communications,” Hein said.  

“Two of our lead teachers are schoolteachers – one works for us during the summer and the other is a substitute teacher on the side that works year-round.”