After graduating high school, I went to Southwestern Oklahoma State University with the intention of becoming a marine biologist. I quickly discovered that I hated being in the lab during the spring and summer but I didn't hate doing my math homework. So I changed from a biology major to a math major so I could come home and help my dad work. 

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Once I moved away for graduate school, I was really and truly gone for the time it took to earn my Master's Degree and PhD from 1997-2004. While in school, I kept myself busy so I didn't have time to miss working on the farm. I was a full time student, teaching assistant, and had a full time job outside of all this, not to mention training and walking several half marathons and one full.

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I am trained as a psychometrician. Psychometrics is the field in psychology devoted to testing, measurement, assessment and related activities. My responsibilities grew from an individual contributor to designing and creating an entire system of state assessments from the ground up. By this time I was traveling 3-4 weeks a month and when I wasn't traveling, I was home helping dad on the farm.

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Then in 2017, there was a light switch moment when my mom passed that I realized I needed to figure out how to get some control over my life. I started focusing on creating a situation with my job that would allow me to leave and come back to the farm permanently. I realized I was definitely going to make a bigger impact here than any other place I could be. 

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One thing I brought back with me is something my incredible mentor from early in my career, Tim Vansickle, suggested I do to learn how to be the best leader that I could be. He suggested I find some leadership books that spoke to me and made sense to me. 

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One book in particular stood out to me - Animals Make Us Human by Temple Grandin. The ideas in these books changed how I thought about and worked with people and animals. I was a high strung over-achiever in every sense of the word. Grandin’s research and observations made a tremendous impact on me-- being calm works better in ALL situations, leading from the front is so much better than trying to push from the back. For my work team, this meant that I coached them to be calm under pressure (and there was a LOT of pressure in the highly charged world of educational assessment). For the farm, it meant that I started REALLY noticing how my dad worked with the animals… how he moved slowly, ensured they saw him, talked to them, and how sometimes he’d just sit with them.

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I've taken all the knowledge I've gained and the lessons I've learned, and am putting it all into making Osage Orange Farms an Agritourism hub in western Oklahoma. We are continually working to improve the farm for the animals, us, and you too! Our beef is processed under USDA inspection protocols so that we can ship directly to your door. We offer local pick-up. And, we invited you to camp with us should you be in the area.