About Prairie’s End
Little did I know, when I was a little girl running around the garden chasing the Bantam chickens while our goose Wednesday chased me, that one day I would be a farmer.
What everyone calls "sustainable agriculture" was just living to us. We grew or raised everything we ate except flour, sugar, salt, and other grain staples. Our neighbors provided milk and eggs. Mr. Kriner had the most awesome smokehouse that I would hide in just to smell the meat and enjoy the quiet. He brought us a wagon of watermelons one day to secure our promise to stay out of his cornfield while he was harvesting.
Like a lot of small families, Dad thought we would prosper in the city. We made the move to town when I was ten, and I've been trying to get back to the farm ever since. As I neared retirement, I felt uneasy with city life and the pressure of corporate management. My oasis was the outdoor living space in my garden and my hoophouse. Wondering what to do next, I started a dream board — and I discovered the center of my dream was sustainable living. The farm.
When I started dreaming of it, my daughter Rose and son-in-law Kelly couldn't help but dream a little too. We called the farm Three Fruits and a Veggie back then. Rose, Kelly, and I were the fruits, and my granddaughter Maggie was the veggie — we'd always called her our stringbean. It snowballed from there, and we moved from the city to the country to launch it.
Today it's Prairie's End — 40 acres in Osage County, where the Oklahoma prairie gives way to Cross Timbers just above Keystone Lake. Rose and Kelly built the Guest House that visitors stay in now. A good portion of the land we've left alone: tall grasses, oak trees, creek beds, and the wildlife that comes with them. The rest we've cultivated, using permaculture practices that work with the landscape instead of against it. We're always trying something new, from vermiculture to live fencing, and always happy to tell you what's worked and what hasn't.
That willingness to share is how the classes started. I'm an Oklahoma Master Gardener, and I teach what I practice — permaculture, pruning, canning and jelly making, seasonal crafts. And because we wanted a place where people could gather, we built the Event Center.
The best way to describe Prairie's End is as a place to be. When we moved here from the city, we had no idea what this land would do for our ability to simply be. We invite you to be here too — quiet and alone, or active and among people. Whichever you need.
Come along with us on our adventures in farming. It could be a real hoot.
— Tchinina, Rose, Kelly, and Maggie
