April grew up in many different contexts: rural Pennsylvania, rural & urban Cameroon, and suburban Southern California. In all of those places, she always preferred to be outdoors and moving rather than indoors and sitting still. She spent several years teaching high school and junior high, then adult enrichment classes for people in care facilities, and finally worked on landscape and ecological projects before moving to Arkansas. Living through a variety of acute and chronic stressful situations, she found three things to be profoundly helpful in coping with post-traumatic stress: professional therapy, meditation and yoga, and working outdoors in a garden or on ecological restoration projects. She hopes people who visit the farm find—or maintain—hope for a thriving life whether they participate in hands-on work or just enjoy peace and quiet.