By: Madison Brush
I grew up spending most of my summers and many weekends on a family-generational cattle ranch. That land—its rhythms, its seasons—is woven into who I am. It shaped me, grounded me, and gave me parts of my childhood that I still look back on with deep gratitude. My brothers and I spent countless hours there, working, playing, and soaking in the stillness that only country life can offer.
There are aspects of that ranch we all still romanticize:
- Cool Wyoming summer mornings, where the air was crisp, and the whole world smelled like sagebrush and possibility.
- The scent of cows in the corrals before a cattle drive, dust kicking up in the early light.
- Water hitting the irrigation ditches in the crop fields, the sound signaling life and growth.
- My grandma in the kitchen, cooking full-sized breakfasts, lunches, and dinners—always homemade, always enough to feed an army.
- Late nights with cousins and family friends, running through the fields, playing with the animals, and talking about everything and nothing. Our imaginations ran wild.
- Country fireworks shows, where the sky felt endless. I’ve still never seen anything quite like those fireworks.
The ranch made me who I am. We were always busy but never rushed. There was an unspoken understanding that life had a pace, and you didn’t need to force it. We were told not to run the horses too much, not to wear them out before a long ride. Looking back, I think that’s a great metaphor for life—walk when it’s not necessary to run, and save your energy for the long journey ahead.
But the ranch wasn’t perfect. Beneath the nostalgia, there were flaws, struggles, and plenty of hard lessons. Some of my family members see that place as cursed, and I can understand why. I don’t pretend it was perfect. Not everything about it was peaceful. Not everything was right. But for me, the best parts of it still stand out in my memory—the stillness, the simplicity, the connection to land, animals, and a way of life that moved in step with nature instead of fighting against it.
And that’s one of the biggest reasons Taeda Farms was born.
I wanted to take the best parts of my childhood ranch—the beauty, the slowness, the lessons in gratitude—and give them to my kids. I wanted them to have a space where they could wander through nature, not just observe it from a distance. I wanted them to appreciate the animals that give us so much, to understand the give-and-take of a farm, where respect for life is woven into every part of the day. I wanted them to have deep gratitude for rain and sunshine, to know that we need both, in the fields and in life.
Most of all, I wanted them to grow up away from hustle culture. To know what it’s like to slow down, to eat homemade food, to work with their hands, to understand that life isn’t meant to be rushed through but lived fully.
I have a lot of hopes for Taeda Farms.
I dream of building a successful flower farm, a place where beauty and hard work come together in something tangible. That part is for everyone—for healing, for connection, for embracing the slow. A place where we move at the pace of nature instead of the pace of the world.
But more than anything—more than the flowers—my greatest hope, dream, and prayer is that Taeda Farms becomes for my children what the ranch was for me.
A place where they grow up surrounded by gardens and a deep respect for animals. A place where they learn the give-and-take of farm life. Where they wake up each day with gratitude for the rain and the sunshine, understanding that we need both, in the fields and in life.
A place of wonder, of learning, of freedom. A place where they can run, breathe, and just be. A place that will live in them long after they’ve grown.
Because the best parts of the ranch I grew up on weren’t just about the land.
They were about the life that happened there.
And that’s exactly what I want to give them.
