About us
Our story
On a snowy Michigan winter night watching "Alaska, The Last Fronteir" the dream was born ...Let’s move to Arkansas and have a sheep farm! Something about that way of life pulled us and just felt right. So not weeks later, with conviction in our hearts and zero real plans, we sold everything and moved in with my parents in Arkansas with no jobs and no place to live other than my old bedroom. But, we had a dream! We set out to find jobs to fund this crazy idea. Real estate was the answer for us. We had some early success with investing and thought maybe we could be good at helping other people do that too! Soon we found jobs and a house and we got to work on our goals. I started in sales and migrated to leadership and coaching. Rabih took a HUGE leap of faith and left a 15 year career in the restaurant industry to help people buy houses too! He loves what he does and was able to become one of the top loan officers in Arkansas. Fast forward 5 years driving back and forth from Little Rock on weekends and holidays, putting in plenty of blood, sweat, tears and poison ivy outbreaks (and help from a Beginning Farmer Veteran Grant thankfully) to build our dreams and here we are living it today! We were able to buy the land I played on as a kid next to my parents, build our dream home and now have a child of our own to play on that same land. Follow us to see how it all unfolds!
Our values
Our focus is raising and growing food with regenerative agriculture practices and serving our families and communities through access to healthy, nutrient rich foods. We raise pastured sheep, chicken (and eggs), duck and heritage breed cows. We have many hopes to add to our farm family of offerings in the future as we master our current ventures.
Our history
Revitalizing this 100 year old farm has been one of our life's great pleasures. Neglected and overgrown, it had become a dumping ground for old car parts and unwanted furniture. As we cleared through the overgrowth, we were able to discover massive Oak and Walnut tree lines once shouldering the fences that contained animals grazing here in years past. Giving rise to the farms namesake, a grove of old-growth Walnut Trees can be found at the farm's entrance. Those beauties now provide shade for our animals and great picnic spots to watch them graze and play! Today, we are on our third lambing on pasture started (over) from scratch just a few years ago. We are so grateful for how far we've come and so grateful to everyone who has helped make Walnut Valley Farms what it is today!
Meet the Family
Rabih, Katy and Lili Joy
Owners and Operators
We live and operate on farm as a labor of love. It a true Joy to take Lili out on our daily farm chores.
Baller
Chief Impregnator
This big Dorper ram is about the friendliest fella you could meet. And not just with the ladies. Wink. He's given us some pretty big babies too with some weighing in at over 80 lbs at just a few months old on grass (and all the "weeds") alone.
Ewe Crew
Chief Lamb Producers
These gals have proven to be excellent mommas. We let their babies stay with them until these mommas wean them themselves. This makes for some very healthy and thriving lambs!
Farm News
See what's doing on our little farm and check out the current projects where we try new things (and fail) a lot.