If you’re in need of medical services, no matter the specialty, chances are you’ll find it in St. Clair County.
That wasn’t always the case. Little more than a decade ago, an aging hospital served the community, but it was not able to keep pace with a quickly growing medical industry. A new, state-of-the-art hospital – Ascension St. Vincent’s St. Clair – soon took its place, offering everything from one-day surgeries to a comprehensive list of specialties, procedures, imaging and quality healthcare close to home.
The Col. Robert L. Howard Veterans Home, a model for the nation, and the School of Nursing and Allied Health at Jefferson State Community College, round out the medical landscape fronting Interstate 20 and serves an entire region.
Main Street Pediatrics opens in Pell City
Just announced is the hospital’s acquisition by UAB Health System, known throughout the country and around the world as a leader in medicine. The move is predicted to enhance the hospital’s ability to provide top-notch healthcare throughout the region.
Meanwhile, Pell City is home to two growing and thriving primary care practices – Complete Health-Pell City and Pell City Internal Family Medicine. They offer much more than primary care with specialists of all descriptions providing services. Pediatric care in offered through Springville Pediatrics in Springville, Purhoit Pediatrics in Moody, and Main Street Pediatrics in Pell City, which has moved into the clinic formerly occupied by Children’s.
Complete Health also operates practices in Moody and Trussville along with its Birmingham locations, and Grandview is located in Springville.
Physical therapy services can be found in Pell City at Therapy South, ATI at PCIFM, Drayer in Leeds, Ascension St. Vincent’s St. Clair and Back in Motion in Springville.
No longer do residents have to travel to larger cities to have access to state-of-the-art diagnostics with MRIs, CT scans, colonoscopies and other advanced technology testing and imaging are available at Ascension St. Vincent’s St. Clair. Complete Health provides advanced imaging as well.
Orthopedic medicine is available through Montclair Orthopedic Surgeons and OrthoSports Associates at Complete Health and Andrews Sports Medicine at PCIFM. Orthopedists Dr. Carter Slappey and Stephen Cowley also practice in Pell City.
Birmingham Heart Clinic, located at the Complete Health campus in Pell City, offers full-time cardiac care at that location as well as its headquarters in Trussville.
ENT Associates of Alabama has just opened an office in Pell City for ear, nose and throat services, and Alabama Vision Center just joined the eye care community at Physicians Plaza in Pell City. Callahan Eye is located in that same building, and longtime vision care provider, Bedsole Eye Care, has expanded in recent years, operating from a new, larger facility on U.S. 231 South in Pell City.
For Dermatology, you’ll find a number of specialists – True Dermatology at PCIFM, Brookwood Dermatoloy at Complete Health, Southern Skies Dermatology at Physicians Plaza and Coosa River Dermatology on Martin Street South in Pell City.
Need a specialist? Check with local practices and the hospital for a complete listing of what services are available right here at home.
High School catcher Tyler McGrady had his eye on the runner at first.
The runner broke for second. McGrady came up throwing, looking to nail the sliding runner. The catcher’s right elbow popped in pain. He knew something was wrong.
He was right.
Tommy John surgery and a year of intense rehab kept McGrady off the basepaths, instead putting him on a career path.
“I was in the therapist’s office more than I cared to at that time,” the Pell City native said. “But the impact of the therapy and the return to function drew me in.”
He elaborated. “I was drawn to medicine anyway, but just wasn’t sure which avenue I wanted to pursue,” McGrady said. “When you’re in high school or college and you’re an athlete, and you have an injury, your athleticism in that sport is kind of part of your identity as well. It’s tough to stomach that injury or being on the sideline or in the dugout.
“But just going through that process and rehabbing back, doing a lot of therapy, returning to throwing, all the way back to playing at the college level … The satisfaction you got from completing that process and being able to fully return (to baseball), seeing that firsthand is really what drew me to PT.”
Nearly two decades later, McGrady has 12 years’ experience as a physical therapist and serves as clinic director and partner at Therapy South in Pell City.
While most of us would define “athlete” within the narrow confines of the diamond, gridiron, track, court, course or pool, McGrady sees more broadly.
“There’s a saying that we use a lot of times,” McGrady said. “Everyone’s an athlete. Their sport is different. It may not be baseball or softball. It may be gardening or yardwork, skiing or whatever it is the patient wants to get back to. If we can help facilitate getting them back to something they want to do, that’s a validating feeling on our end.”
Physical therapy is a high demand, rapidly expanding profession in the United States. According to an April report from the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment of physical therapists is expected to grow 15 percent by 2034.
Closer to home, along with its clinic in Pell City, Therapy South also has a clinic in Gadsden. A second St. Clair County clinic is expected to open by year’s end. Nationwide, Therapy South is also expanding.
Baby Boomers are fueling the growth in physical and occupational therapy services, McGrady said.
“That’s the largest generation of people in the country that’s ever been,” he said. “There have to be enough practitioners to provide service for that many people coming through the system. That’s the growth of it.”
The profession, McGrady said, justifies its growth through evidence-based research. “What that does, is it allows us to make valid arguments to insurance companies, to physicians and to clients as well on the need and benefits of our service.”
A graduate of Jacksonville State who did his graduate work in physical therapy at Alabama State University, McGrady has also authored or co-authored scholarly articles for professional journals.
“It’s always important to learn and grow and to do more,” he said. “Any limitation of mine in the clinic is going to be passed on to my patient. So, I feel like it’s my responsibility to be up on the newer things and staying well versed so that I’m providing the best quality of care possible.”
Therapy South is an independent, faith-based, therapist-owned provider, with a nearly four-decade record of effectively treating patients in Pell City. The company now has 43 locations and is expected to grow to 46 by year’s end.
The Pell City clinic has six physical therapists and one occupational therapist.
“We don’t have any deals with anybody,” McGrady said. “We’re completely stand alone. All of our (location) owners – including myself — are still physical therapists and the majority of them treat patients in clinic every day. We really like that about Therapy South.”
He added, “We believe we’ve been given success by God, and it’s important for us to be good stewards of that success and grow and give people opportunities into the future.”
For McGrady, this work is a calling. “We’re all called to something,” he said. “If you are lucky enough to find that purpose and make a career out of it, I think that’s a really special thing.”
The company also mentors young and aspiring therapists.
“We spend a lot of time at Therapy South trying to identify younger people who will come in and do observation hours with us and try to develop relationships with them and find the right person that we want to grow with. You can teach a good person how to be a good therapist, but you can’t always teach a good therapist how to be a good person.”
In Alabama, the profession experienced a “huge” change this past June, McGrady said. In the past, physical and occupational therapists could not see patients without getting a physician referral. Now therapists have unrestricted patient access for up to 30 days.
“For the last 12 years, we could evaluate a patient, but without your physician providing a referral or providing oversight, we could not treat a patient. Now we have more unlimited access to patients.”
While technology has affected the entire medical profession in recent years – making it easier to schedule appointments, etc. – there’s no substitute for the hands-on treatment at the heart of physical and occupational therapy.
“There’s something valuable about being able to put hands on patients and really evaluate what’s going on, to provide that hands-on care,” McGrady said. “At Therapy South, we spend tons of money trying to make our clinicians the best we can so that they are doing the best they can to get our patients better as soon as possible.
“That’s the part that technology will never be able to replace,” McGrady added. “The old adage is that medicine is an art and a science. It’s tough to replace that balance with something like (artificial intelligence) or something that doesn’t have the human touch.”
In a competitive market, Therapy South is committed daily to doing its best for its patients. Most of its staff are homegrown, St. Clair County residents.
Thinking back, McGrady could not have foreseen his life’s work when his elbow blew out. But McGrady’s baseball setback provided lessons for his life and practice.
“Sports teaches a lot of lessons outside of how to throw and catch a ball. You learn how you’re going to respond to adversity. If you’re not the main guy, how are you going to respond to that? If you are the main guy, how are you going to respond to that? There are so many lessons to be learned on the field that correlate to later lessons in life. The lessons learned were more than worth it.”
His philosophy – and that of Therapy South – is simple.
“First and foremost, we’re called to love God and love people. If we treat everyone with respect, be a friend to them and listen to them … Just being able to spend time with patients is unique to therapy. Developing those personal relationships is unique to our profession.”
McGrady and his Therapy South colleagues are affirmed every day by their work, sometimes in sweet ways in keeping with small-town tradition.
“Every patient who comes in trusts you with their care. They come in four to six weeks later doing great. It’s really rewarding to improve someone’s life like that.”
When David Sawyer was only 4, his father, Dr. Joe Sawyer, would pick him up from Avondale Mills kindergarten at noon, and he’d spend the afternoon with him in the denture lab.
“I don’t know much else but dentistry,” Dr. David Sawyer said as workmen were putting the finishing touches on his new building in Eden, replacing the facility his father and then, he, practiced in for decades.
On April 6, 2022, the Eden Family Dentistry/Affordable Dentures building fell victim to fire, and a brand new, expanded facility took its place in mid-July under the name, Eden Dental.
Within days of the fire, Sawyer was able to secure the building and practice of a retiring Pell City dentist, Dr. Sandy Lanter of Restoration Dental, and he has been operating there until the new quarters were ready. “We missed one week of work,” Sawyer recalled.
Now, he opens a new chapter with his associate of 20 years, Dr. Andrea Cibulski, as they welcome three new associates, Drs. Jennifer Reaves, Hannah McCalman Henley and her twin sister, Elizabeth Collier McCalman.
Eden Dental, now operating with five dentists, is a 7,000 square foot, all digital, state-of-the-art facility with 14 treatment rooms and an onsite denture lab. The practice includes children’s and adult general dentistry, implants, one-day dentures and soon, one-day crowns. They accept most insurance, including Delta Dental, which serves Honda.
Sawyer began his general dentistry practice in 1989. While he and his father took similar paths, they headed in different directions. The elder Sawyer started a general dentistry practice working with Dr. Bob McClung, but also worked with one-day dentures in the afternoon.
In 1976, he sold the general practice to McClung, which today is known as Pell City Dental, and worked full-time in dentures. (Coincidentally, Pell City’s one-day dentures were famously mentioned in Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Bragg’s book, All Over but the Shoutin’.)
The younger Sawyer worked with his father, but when he graduated from dental school, he went into general dentistry and sold the denture lab. In the new clinic, dentures are back as part of the services offered, and he has hired a specialist along with nine other new employees to complement existing staff and make up the team at Eden Dental.
It’s a homecoming back to Eden, where it began for Sawyer, a native Pell Citian. He and his wife, Karen, owner of WellWay Whole Health Shoppe, are graduates of Pell City High School as are their three children. Kathryn just graduated from medical school. Hayden is a chemical engineer, and Evan is a certified financial adviser.
Sawyer points with pride to his hometown and the growth it is experiencing, noting that his expansion in terms of staff and services is aimed at serving the needs of that growth.
Complete Health’s Joy St. John has had a lifetime desire to take care of people
Story by Paul South Photos by Mackenzie Free
As a teen, before Joy St. John and her family moved from the Dallas County community of Tyler to Pell City, the health care bug bit her.
She was a candy striper, one of a small cadre of young women clad in red and white striped uniforms, who dispensed bedside smiles and kindness to the sick and their families.
“That’s what started everything and drew my interest to nursing,” she said. “Seeing (nurses) help people, I thought that was something that I would want to do.”
Joy’s medical assistants Heather Barnett and Angela Wolf are a key part of taking care of people at Complete Healthcare
Fast forward. St. John earned a degree in nursing at UAB and a graduate degree from the Ida B. Moffett School of Nursing at Samford to become a nurse practitioner and worked as a nurse at Children’s Hospital of Alabama in Birmingham.
Now, she’s back home in Pell City, serving as a nurse practitioner at Complete Health.
A nurse practitioner is a registered nurse who is qualified through advanced training to assume some of the duties and responsibilities once reserved only for physicians.
In Alabama, nurse practitioners are required by law to work under the supervision of a physician.
According to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, nurse practitioners are one of the fastest growing professions in the United States. It was projected that the number of N.P.s in the country would grow some 45 percent between 2022 and 2032.
Increasing demands on doctors have triggered the growing demand for nurse practitioners, St. John said.
“(Doctors) just don’t have the time to see the amount of people that they have at their practice. (Nurse practitioners) are a great way to get patients in and seen, and we can actually be their primary care doctor if that’s what they wish.”
Complete Health Pell City is part of the Complete Health family of clinics in Alabama, Florida and Virginia. But while the Pell City facility is part of a larger corporate umbrella, it still cares for patients in a hometown way.
St. John works primarily in family medicine. “I’m a primary care physician for a good number of people. I diagnose problems, take care of chronic problems,” she said. “Sometimes people come in with undiagnosed medical problems. And then, we can start being their primary care provider and start doing preventative care.”
Complete Health Pell City also seeks to educate patients and their families about their condition.
As Pell City and St. Clair County have grown, St. John has seen her practice change. Complete Health has become a “one stop shop” for health care. “It’s definitely gotten bigger, with the addition of more doctors and the addition of more nurse practitioners,” St. John said.
“I have been here for 14 years. It’s been a great service to the community because we have CT scan, ultrasound and MRI, our own pharmacy, and we have a lot of specialty doctors that come in so (patients) don’t have to drive to Birmingham or Anniston to get specialty care.”
What sets Complete Health Pell City apart? “We can take care of the whole person,” she said. “We even have an urgent care that’s open seven days a week. Even after hours, they would have access to their records as far as their chronic conditions. We generally get people in pretty quick within one to two days.”
The business of healthcare, specifically navigating the huge health insurance marketplace, is the profession’s biggest challenge, she said.
“You sometimes have to modify a person’s plan of care because of insurance,” St. John said. “Their insurance sometimes won’t cover a certain medication or a certain test they need. It’s sometimes very frustrating to try to diagnose problems and take care of the patient when insurance won’t cover it. So, you have to make other decisions and talk to patients about what’s best for them.”
She added, “There’s no use in me prescribing an expensive medicine when they’re not going to pick it up (because of cost), when we can talk about it and go to another option. The amount of insurance plans out there is challenging for us.”
The presence of Complete Health and other healthcare providers has impacted rural communities in a positive way, giving those once-underserved areas better access to health care.
“Companies are able to put nurse practitioners out in rural areas where they might not be able to place doctors,” St. John said. “That’s very important for them and all the surrounding towns and cities to have access to health care.”
In the South, perhaps the most trusted people in the community are pastors and doctors. St. John has lived in Pell City since the 11th grade. She believes that makes a difference in terms of the doctor-patient relationship. That difference sometimes is seen in tangible ways.
“They send me cards on my birthday, send us Christmas cards, or you know, they know the details about me and our staff’s lives. It makes a difference, and they pay attention. We care about them, too.”
There are other little things that make her clinic seem like an old-time country practice that stretches beyond paying a bill.
“They bring us fruit, cakes, things like that,” St. John said. “Just like the old days. It’s one of the joys of practicing medicine in a small town.”
And, as you might expect, she often encounters her patients at the grocery store or elsewhere out and about.
“They’ll speak to me, or give me a hug,” she said. “It means a lot.”
And sometimes, they want a diagnosis for a malady among the cucumbers and collards in the produce aisle. “Sometimes they do,” St. John said. “But that’s a whole other story.”
St. John has served as a nurse practitioner for 24 years, beginning with a decade at UAB. Before that, the mother of two grown sons and a grandmother of two boys worked for 10 years as a registered nurse and nursing assistant at Children’s.
Like the candy striper experience, something closer to home deepened her commitment to a health care career – her dad, Lee Rhoden, and his last, long battle.
“When I was 26, my father passed,” she said. “He had lung cancer. I was able to offer my services. Just having someone in the family that knows medical terminology after a diagnosis is a blessing. Caring for him was a blessing. It pushed me toward the nurse practitioner part because I just wanted to do more than punch a clock every day. I wanted to really make a difference.”
The youngest of four girls, St. John recalled one piece of advice her dad gave her, wisdom that sustains her on hardscrabble days.
“He always told us, ‘You get an education and be able to provide for your family. Don’t depend on anyone else.’ He always pushed us to set high goals. That was the beginning for me.”
For St. John across the years, a number of patient encounters affirm that she embarked on the right career journey. Those happen, she said, “all the time. I’ve diagnosed several new diseases or caught things that were missed before,” she said. “We have to take those moments and make them last until the next one. It’s the little things. People really do appreciate you.”
She added, “It’s tough not to bring things home with you. We’re human, too.”
Sometimes, she said, her profession gets unfairly labeled as not caring enough. But she and her colleagues at Complete Health Pell City are deeply committed to their patients, she said.
“This is a hard profession,” St. John said. “If you don’t love it, you aren’t going to make it. And you have to love people when they’re well and when they’re sick, when they’re mad, or they’re depressed. You have to show them empathy and sympathy. You won’t stay in this profession if you don’t love it.
“The Lord has a reason for placing us where we are,” she said. “We may be the one person who needs to tell them it’s going to be OK, and we’re here to talk about it.”
When Dr. Steven McKinney and his wife, Janella, decided to open his chiropractic practice in Ashville, it was a homecoming of sorts.
Originally from Boaz, the couple bought a farm just outside Ashville a few years ago. They established their church home there, too. While he was practicing elsewhere, church members asked him to participate in the Ashville Health Fair that was being held there. He agreed and soon came to realize that there was a need to be filled.
A suite became available in the shopping center just across U.S. 231 from their church, and Healing Vine Family Chiropractic Center was a step away from becoming reality. He closed his Boaz practice and opened April 1 in Ashville.
McKinney shouldered much of the cosmetic work himself. The end result is an impressive chiropractic center with exam rooms, office and reception area, offering services from pediatric to geriatric. A former football player, Dr. McKinney also specializes in sports injury and prevention.
Why Healing Vine? The name comes from a piece of artwork displaying the Chiropractic Prayer given to McKinney by his daughter. It featured a vine as the art with the prayer. McKinney put the two ideas together – the healing hands of chiropractic medicine and the vine as a Christian symbol of sustenance.
By combining the two, he said, it expanded the meaning and mission as a Christian-based chiropractic center. Serving families, it is built around his own family with his wife and daughter both working there.
Since the opening, “Ashville has been really great,” said Janella McKinney. “It brings health care to Ashville it was in need of.”
New Springville barn uses horses to heal peoples’ bodies and souls
Story by Joe Whitten Photos by Mackenzie Free and submitted Photos
“There’s something about the outside of a horse that’s good for the inside of a man.”
While that quote has been wrongly attributed to several famous people, including Winston Churchill and Ronald Reagan, research indicates it probably dates back centuries before they were born.
Nevertheless, the sentiment expresses in a nutshell what Nicole Whitehead Tucker has in mind for Canoe Creek Stables in Springville.
“Canoe Creek Stables is home to Light Of The World Adaptive Horsemanship, a faith-based nonprofit with the mission of helping others heal and grow while enjoying one of God’s greatest gifts, horses,” she says, quoting her mission statement. “We use adaptive horsemanship to provide both physical and emotional benefits to those in need.”
Jake and Nicole Tucker
Adaptive Horsemanship is recreational horseback riding and horsemanship lessons adapted for each individual’s needs, goals and abilities. It utilizes mounted and unmounted activities to provide both physical and emotional benefits.
Potential students include autistic children, children suffering from emotional and physical trauma, those with crippling diseases such as cystic fibrosis and veterans suffering from PTSD. Nicole wants to use horses to help these folks and more. That’s why she is working on her certification from CECTH, the Council for Education and Certification in Therapeutic Horsemanship.
Nicole has had horses all of her life. But her dream to use them to help others mentally and physically began when she was a teenager.“My younger brother, Kyle, was born with cystic fibrosis,” she says. “I watched him grow up battling this disease. He inspired me because he never gave up. He died in May of 2019, when he was 29, but he never lost his spirit. I owe a lot of my personal and spiritual growth to him.”
Her husband, Jake, also comes from a horsey family. He lost his brother the year before Nicole lost hers, and it helped Jake develop the same passion she has. “I also want to take horses to places like Children’s Hospital, church events and nursing homes,” Jake says.
“My brother and I talked about doing this for about a month before Kyle passed away,” Nicole says. “I told him about my dream, too, and he said, ‘That’s awesome, Sis.’”
The Tuckers broke ground on a 100 x 100-foot barn on April 1, 2023, after Jake had sketched the design. They contracted to have the outer shell erected, and they finished the inside themselves. “What a journey,” she says. “Jake even built the wooden fence, and he has never done that before. He has no training in carpentry. He was a fuel truck driver for McPherson Oil for 10 years, and now he’s maintenance man at the new Big Canoe Creek Nature Preserve, which is next door to our property.”
Ella and her horse Shady
One side of the barn measures 30 x 100 feet and has 15 stalls. The arena is 50 x 80 feet and covered with sand, while the other side is 20 x 100 feet and has space for seven more stalls. Ten skylights and a chandelier in the center of the arena light up the premises. “I ordered the chandelier via Amazon, and Jake built a crank system so we can lower and raise it,” Nicole says. When he asked her why she needed a chandelier in the middle of a riding arena, she replied, “For barn dances and fundraisers.”
The structure is bathed in Scripture, literally. Several posts and internal walls are covered in Bible verses because Jake and Nicole invited people to write their favorites on them. Some wrote the Scripture reference, while others scribbled entire verses.
“If you take out the wall panels of the social room, for example, you’ll find the internal walls covered with verses,” Nicole says. “Friends, family members, even the Alabama Power crew and concrete contractor wrote them on studs, posts and the plywood under the paneling there.”
To handle the $250,000 price tag of the barn, the couple dipped into their savings account and took out a loan that comes with $1,400-a-month payments.
Lessons are one hour long, and include riding, grooming, lunging, tacking up, learning the parts of a saddle and building a relationship with the horse. They cost $65 per hour. However, low-income persons can be sponsored through donations and fundraising.
“This barn has been a Band-aid for me,” says Nicole. “In the past few weeks, I’ve had conversations with families about what they are going through, including a couple of people who were autistic, and a couple with sensory disorders. They found me via Facebook.”
She started a Facebook page in October, before the barn was even finished. As of Feb. 29, she had 5,500 followers, but her goal is 10,000. “Imagine if 5,500 people said a prayer for our program,” she says.
The barn houses nine horses and three ponies, with five of those used for equine assisted activities. The others are personal ones. Two activity horses include a white horse and a pony from a woman in Mississippi who learned about Nicole’s mission via mutual friends on Facebook and contacted her. “She drove them over the next day, along with some hay and feed,” Nicole says. “That’s a four-hour trip one way.”
Other donations have included two Haflingers, a brother and sister named Candy and Cane. “These are our two main buggy horses, but we use them in our adaptive horsemanship program, too,” Nicole says. “They were given to the program by the family of my great-uncle in Tennessee, who died in the summer of 2022. We got them that November.”
Open house was a great time to meet the animals
A more recent equine donation was the return of her “heart horse,” which she had sold when her brother was ill. “As my brother got worse, I started riding less, because I was just too emotional to enjoy it,” she explains. “So, I sold Handsome to a sweet lady in Georgia. I stayed in touch with his new mom for five years, and she’d update me on him from time to time. Then in February she gave him back to me because she wanted him to be part of something special. I still can’t believe it!”
Handsome is a 16-year-old Tennessee Walker with a lot of personality. “We used to compete in local horse shows in Western and English gaited classes,” Nicole says. “I feel like I got a HUGE piece of my heart back. My brother would be so happy!”
Other in-kind donations include the bathroom, three carriages and the sound system for the barn. The donation of the three carriages came as the indirect result of fulfilling another lifelong dream, that of becoming an airline pilot.
“I had wanted to be a pilot since I was 6-years-old,” says Nicole, who is 43. “My grandmother lived near the Birmingham airport, and I grew up lying in her yard and watching the planes go over. I’m stubborn, and I had no back-up plan.”
She got her pilot’s license at 19, started her aviation career as a flight instructor, then did corporate flying to get jet experience. Later, she was a commercial pilot for ExpressJet, a regional airline, for five years. She quit to start a family. “I’ve gone back to corporate aviation so I can control my schedule,” she says.
During the Springville Christmas Parade of 2022, she saw people like the homecoming queen riding in cars, and joked to her husband about how great it would be to have a carriage so she could auction a seat in it and donate the proceeds to a charity. The next day while she was co-piloting a corporate client to a meeting in Texas, he came into the cockpit and struck up a conversation.
“I showed him pictures of our horses and told him about my dream, and when we landed back in Birmingham later that day, he asked if he could talk to me. He said he had three carriages he wanted to donate, and he did. He paid for the delivery of the first one, and we picked up the other two.”
And that’s why an additional side of the barn was added to the original plans. The carriages include a Purple Princess that has hydraulic brakes and battery-operated lights, an Amish buggy and a covered wagon.
Other animals besides horses are being added to the mix. “We were given a five-day-old lamb whose mother rejected her, and we are working on adding more little critters to the barn, including a mini cow,” she says.
“We will also be taking over the petting zoo at Homestead Hollow this year. I’ll be working the May events with Anne Sargent, who has run it for 10 years. She’s going to show me the ropes, and then I’ll take over for future Homestead Hollow weekends. The petting zoo will be a big part of our barn, as it will bring lots of smiles to children. I’m so excited!”
And what about those “dream crushers,” the people who said she and Jake can’t do it, it won’t happen, they need deep pockets to make this dream come true? Nicole says phooey! “Think of what would not be accomplished except through deep faith.”
