On the Farm
Meet a Georgia farmer with a big heart.
Life in the city—first Providence, Rhode Island, and later Boston—was no stroll around the farm for hospital executive Robin Rau. To say it was stressful would be an understatement.
“I realized that if I didn’t do something differently I was probably going to die at a much younger age because of the pressure of my job,” she says.
So she turned to agriculture, purchasing 29 acres in Rhode Island and teaching herself the ropes. Then, 21 years ago, Robin moved to southwest Georgia, where today she is proprietor of the 150-acre Shelby Acres Farm.
She still works in health care administration. “My job comes first,” she says. “My hospital, my clinics—they always come first.” But health care, Robin explains, is somewhat seasonal. People don’t usually schedule elective surgeries during the holiday season—and because it’s easier for her to take time off in winter, that’s when the farm produces most of its lambs.
She raises about 500 animals. All of them, including Guinea fowl, goats, turkeys, beef cattle, chickens, Alpacas, donkeys, mini horses and Pilgrim geese, are Certified Animal Welfare Approved by the nonprofit A Greener World. But the farm’s primary focus is pasture-raised sheep, specifically Dorper, White Dorper, Lincoln, Katahdin and Babydoll Southdown breeds.
The Dorpers are generally shipped off as breeding stock, often to places damaged by catastrophic events. “Puerto Rico, Haiti, the Philippines, Japan—anyplace like that where there is a natural disaster, we get a request to export our sheep,” Robin explains.
This is just one way Shelby Acres helps others. “We do a lot of education out here,” Robin says. The three cabins lining her driveway double as classrooms and overnight accommodations. She works with children to teach them how to show animals and hosts workshops for new farmers.
And every two or three years, she plants roughly 9 acres with watermelon, peas, beans, okra and other vegetables, and invites the public to pick what they want, free of charge.
“This is a high-poverty area,” she says, admitting she has more land than she needs to sustain her business. “We’re in the Deep South. There are a lot of people without a lot of resources. So we plant some crops and open it up for people to come on in.”
Asked how she balances the farm with a full-time job, Robin says, “It gives me exercise every day. It keeps me in good health. My job is terribly stressful, so when I get home and no one’s talking to me, it’s pretty darn quiet. It gives me time to reset before I walk into my house.”
Robin completes her farm chores before and after work, and Saturdays are reserved for an intensive check of all the animals. “I’m getting older, so it’s become a bit of a challenge for me,” she says. On Sundays she tries to get some well-deserved rest.
She has one regular employee, “an older gentleman who has worked around farms for years.” He comes three times a week to check the fences and make sure the cattle are on the right side of them. He also puts feed out in winter and rounds up cattle, “a 9-to-5 job,” Robin says, that has to be done in daylight. “He’s a good guy. If there’s bad weather or he knows I’m out of town, he comes on out. He’s like family.”
Considering everything on her plate, does Robin have misgivings? “Absolutely none,” she asserts. “I mean, what else am I going to do? This is just really nice.”