Sara Mullet smiled down at the kids crowded around her, ready to squirt hand sanitizer into their waiting hands and hand them small cups of seeds and corn to feed to the goats, pigs, chickens, cows and other animals at R-Farm in Maysville.
Sara is happily employed at R-Farm, set in the rolling hills near Maysville, with a petting zoo, pumpkin patch, and corn maze. She arrives at dawn most mornings to feed the many animals and prepare for the visiting families and students.
In many ways her life now is the opposite of the life she had as a child and teenager. Sara loved working outdoors with the animals on the farms her Amish family lived on as she was growing up. But her family moved frequently when she was young, and she left home at 16 to escape an abusive situation.
Her life led her through several states to Montana, where she used her outdoor skills to work at a ranch. “The big ranch I used to work on had 1,600 acres, and we had the cattle, we had the horses, we had cabins there that we brought people out and taught them how to go roping or horseback riding,” Sara said. She loved her life there out among the mountains, but she left Montana to come to Maysville, where her daughter’s father lives, to share custody of her daughter with him.
Montana had her heart, but Sara found her way to people in Maysville who were also grounded in the land.
The family-owned R-Farm has embraced Sara and become a second family to her. Owners Davis and Loura Robinson, the husband and wife duo who run R-Farm along with their children, are happy to have her working with them. Loura originally hired Sara to clean their house, but after a few months Sara found herself again working in the outdoors she had always loved. “She liked the farm stuff better,” Loura said, laughing.
After Sara began working outdoors at the farm, Davis taught her the basics of how to repair tractors, and she sometimes helps out by driving the trailers of visitors out to the corn maze and pumpkin patch. Davis and Loura include Sara in their family gatherings and events. “We try to involve her, you know, on stuff like that because she don’t have much family around here,” Davis said.
Sara’s daughter, Elizabeth, also has a passion for the outdoors and enjoys being at R-Farm. Elizabeth would occasionally tag along with her mother as she worked, until she started kindergarten this year. “She absolutely loves it,” Davis said. “There ain’t no vacation; she wants to come to the farm.”
Sara still misses Montana, but she’s found a new home and community with the Robinsons at R-Farm in Maysville. “I never regret leaving,” she said about her family. “I sometimes regret my kids not knowing my parents and brothers and sisters and stuff, but I don’t think my kids could ever ask for a better life than they got.”
