Isabelle & Garrett Heydt - Building Community Around Food, Farming & Family | #83

Farm tour #8.

Isabelle and Garrett Heydt, of Rucker Farm in Virginia share their journey from vastly different childhoods to building a thriving regenerative farm and raising three young children. They discuss how they started with just a handful of chickens, grew into pigs and cattle, built community through barter events and markets, and navigated the challenges of balancing family life with the demands of farming. Their story highlights both the struggles and rewards of choosing a life close to the land.

Rucker Farm is a regenerative family farm in Virginia raising pastured beef, pork, and poultry with full transparency and care for the land. They rotate animals daily, avoid confinement, and even invite the public to their on-farm harvests to reconnect people with real food.

Key Topics

• From contrasting childhoods to a shared farming path
• Starting with 50 chickens and scaling up
• Raising a family while running a farm
• Family, farming, and community at the center
• Regenerative vs. conventional cattle operations
• Marketing, markets, and authentic customer ties

Timestamps

00:02:00 – Isabelle’s upbringing on Rucker Farm and her family’s farming background
 00:07:00 – Garrett’s childhood in Baltimore and path into outdoor guiding
 00:12:00 – Meeting in West Virginia, homesteading, and renovating their first house
 00:20:00 – Moving back to Rucker Farm in 2020 during the pandemic
 00:23:00 – Why they started with chickens and how it scaled into pigs and cattle
 00:25:00 – Hosting barter tables and building community around food and farming
 00:33:00 – Partnerships, land access, and support from American Farmland Trust
 00:37:00 – Advice for new farmers on building relationships and opportunities
 00:39:00 – Isabelle’s approach to marketing, storytelling, and authenticity
 00:45:00 – The realities and challenges of farmers’ markets
 00:55:00 – Educating consumers on cooking grass-finished beef
 01:01:00 – Raising children on the farm and connecting them to nature

Connect with Rucker Farm

Website
Instagram

Follow the tour on YouTube