Ray Ramsey

“I gotta work there.”

Ray Ramsey knew it the moment he stepped onto Sanborn Mills Farm during an open house visit. He told his wife on the drive home, and six months later he applied for a farm educator position. After the role was pulled and fifteen months of back-and-forth, he officially joined the team in 2016.

A lifelong farmer raised on grain fields in Indiana, Ray also brought years of experience as a process welder in breweries. He was hired specifically to strengthen the active farming side of the craft school—particularly grains—where expertise and equipment had been lacking. What drives him most is the success of this place and the urgent need to restore the broken connection between people and their food. He believes deeply that children (and adults) need to see, touch, and understand where their sustenance truly comes from.

When not at the farm, Ray lights up around cattle—showing working-class animals at fairs or competing in pulling events. He gardens with quiet satisfaction and pursues a personal fascination with American history, especially the interplay of draft animals and early industrial machinery in the Revolutionary era through the late nineteenth century. Most people are surprised to learn he originally hails from Indiana.

Ray hopes every visitor who walks these fields leaves with a renewed respect for the patient, practical wisdom of traditional farming—and perhaps a little more connected to the land that sustains us all.