The story

Meadowlawn Farm is a miraculous culmination of serendipitous events, more good fortune and luck than I deserve and the courage to blindly follow my intuition.

I left my company of 25 years during Covid, sold the mid-century home where I’d raised my son, put too much stuff into storage and experienced nomadic life for a year. At the time, it felt like blindly stepping off a scary cliff. Then bridges magically appeared.

My great grandparents, Violette and Floyd Hayes, were farmers of very little means in Iola, Kansas. From a very young age, they survived off the land. Summers at the farm, the first iteration of Meadow Lawn, were spent riding on the combine with my Grandpa Daddy harvesting wheat, picking the perfect strawberry, weeding carrots and most importantly, working hard and valuing the seemingly simple workings of nature.

My Nana was pure magic, able to turn a potentially boring day without Gilligan's Island into a twinkly, creative journey. She taught us to knit, made up games under an old oak tree and dressed us up in her fancy weird clothes she kept in an old attic trunk. Nana taught us about canning for the Winter, we’d help bake her famous caramel bread and she'd make us any shaped pancake we could imagine. She showed us, by example, to have gratitude and appreciate every single moment, as it was happening.

The farm was eventually sold, Nana and Grandpa Daddy passed, I grew into a young adult and moved from hot and often nasty Texas to the gloriously rainy, green Pacific Northwest. I felt a strange sense of home the first moment I stepped into Oregon, more at ease than I’d ever felt. Here, I started a new life, got married, had a son, got divorced and experienced a wide variety of jobs from retail sales to computer tech support and somehow, I stumbled into an assistant job in advertising. I worked my way around Wieden+Kennedy for 24 years and 364 days, learning and growing from the best in the industry, searching the world for exceptional creative talent in places like India, China, Japan and Brazil. I lived a very exciting, often exhausting and incredibly privileged existence.

Yet, something was missing.  

My connection with horses has been my guide for as long as I can remember. I’d get up before the sun so I could ride before work, which helped balance the increasingly fast-paced world of too much phone time, screen time, Zoom time. Deep in my soul, I knew being in the country, surrounded by horses and trees and flowers and dirt, the simplicity of drinking water from a well and breathing sweet, hay-infused air, that’s my happy place. It heals physically, mentally and emotionally. 

After talking with work friends who also had drastic, life-changing dreams, I started to look for land. At the time, I didn’t think it would actually happen, but I'd look every morning, searching the apps for my dream farm. A few years passed, I continued to work myself ragged while searching for THE place. 

One day, David Kennedy, the soul-of-the-earth co-founder of W+K and very talented designer, walked into my office, threw a t-shirt at me and told me he'd had a dream. “I came up with your brand. You know, like a cattle brand. I couldn’t stop thinking about it the last few days, so I figured I’d have to make you the fucking thing so I could finally get some sleep. Here’s your brand on a shirt.” David, who bears a very close resemblance to Santa wearing a uniform of faded blue jeans and a black t-shirt, gave me a giggle and shuffled his worn cowboy boots out of my office, keys clanking from his belt loop.

And there it was. David had no idea I'd been looking for land all these years, but he did know I was a crazy horse girl from Texas.

It felt like a sign, an incredible moment the Universe was screaming to me, "KEEP LOOKING!"

From there, things happened. Weird, unexplainable things. So many coincidences. People popped out of nowhere and helped guide me without either of us knowing it. The strangest things I’ll never be able to fully explain, I just kept following my intuition, instinct, gut feeling, whatever you want to call it. I just followed what my heart kept telling me. And here I find myself, still shocked by it all.

What I know - this place is meant to be shared. Meadowlawn Farm is an open, inclusive and beautifully meandering space that is as magical and grounding as Nana & Grandpa Daddy’s farm in Kansas. It’s where you step off the hamster wheel and reconnect with nature, people you love and yourself, it’s a place that brings your mind, body and soul back to what matters most. 

As a wise and trusted mentor taught me, while trying to find the courage to walk away from an increasingly frustrating and political work situation towards a life surrounded by peace and tranquility, we can have whatever we want to have in our life. We have to trust and believe we can have it, then we must allow things to unfold by following the cosmic, unexplainable signs that present themselves to us. When the doors keep opening, go towards them. 

If this speaks to you in any way, please reach out and let's discuss creating an experience or workshop or event that will give you more of what you need. 

I trust I landed here for a reason, and I believe those compelled to come will be additive. There's so much good and necessary work to be done, so let’s keep the magic going and maybe, together, we’ll help heal the insane world we find ourselves in.

Trust, believe and allow, 

Melanie, Jay, Jack, Finn, Violet, Floyd, Kennedy, Janis, Joan, Grace, Rosie, Steve, Steven, Steffan and Steve-O