(upbeat music) - Hillside Farms started off as a group of smaller festinating farms.

So family farms, probably in the early 18 hundreds, and it was consolidated by the Cunningham family in 1881.

The family obviously grew into a gentleman's farm.

A lot of historic buildings, definitely a farm with impressive buildings and landscape.

After a while, the farm became less important pieces were sold off to development.

And in the early two thousands, the founder of Hillside Farmers, Dr. Douglas Ayers started negotiating with the Cunningham family to purchase this farm and turn it into a backdrop for our mission, a sustainability mission.

So, at Hillside we have a huge diversity of animals.

The core of this is going to be our dairy herd.

If you look at biomass, how much weight of animals do you have?

Well, we have 90, a hundred cattle around different calves and adult cows that are giving milk and heifers, which are going to be a cow someday.

But we also have one alpaca, we have several sheep, we have goats, we have donkeys, you know, horses.

We have all this round and those particular animals, obviously they're not part of a food system.

They're here for educational purposes.

So maybe on the weekend, people see this place and they're like, oh, a petting zoo or whatever, you know, they can...

But we actually use those animals and tool for what we call green guides, which is our education.

The animals are the green guides where we have this human animal interaction.

And again, the welfare of people and the welfare of animals.

Beyond that, beyond also have chickens.

We sell eggs here.

And so that's more of the science end of it.

When you're rotationally grazing through these pastures with the cattle and sometimes with the chickens and the sort of the natural system of fertilization, natural tick control and all of that.

So all in, we probably have a good 800 animals here in this whole system.

We also have a couple pigs, but the Otis is just, you know, a Potbelly pig.

He's little, everybody loves him.

He's cute.

Mercury and sunshine are seven, 800 pounds.

(pig oinks) So our educational programs are completely based on the word, sustainable or sustainability.

But for us, that doesn't mean just recycling.

So of course there's the environmental aspect, the system that this is the farm, worrying about how carbon travels throughout our farm and the impact we have on the environment.

But way beyond that is the relationships between people treating our neighbors well and caring for those who are in need.

For us education starts with small children, even pre-K or K through 12 and goes up into college.

And then we have programs for adults.

(upbeat music) When you bring these kids, and sometimes adults into this and they empathize with the animal and give that animal that Hey, don't worry.

It's okay.

An empathy it's, it's really cool how it opens them up about themselves.

Hillside here's how we look it, is it a business?

Yes.

So we look at ourselves, we're a nonprofit but you see this dairy store in the middle of it.

And it's us, we think that's part of our mission to sustainability that rather than everything's fundraising for a nonprofit.

You have to ask for every dime.

That we should be doing as much work as we can to support ourself.

And part of that, and part of the attraction we hope is that.

we grant freedom to our visitors and they're just walking around.

I mean, in a normal farm, you're not walking up to the cowboy barn.

It's just not happening.

And we're trying to open more and more to the public.

So they feel that Hillside is a community asset to them, not just a place for milk.

I mean, you could come here and not buy anything and just park your car and go for a walk.

And we love that.

That's really important to us.

(upbeat music)