Nick & Ashley Richards
Owners and Head Handlers.
Ashley is a region native, but Nick hails from a small town east of Cincinnati. We met and married in Colorado, criss-crossed the country during Nick’s Air Force career, and finally bought a piece of dirt in Porter County to start building our dream ranch.
A professional firefighter, Nick enjoys the peace that comes with cultivating the earth and working with God’s creatures in his time off. You will often find him sneaking the barn cats into the house or playing with the livestock.
Ashley manages all things behind-the-scenes. She loves to use her creativity and organizational skills to inspire beauty and joy. When she’s not immersed in a project, she’s curled up with a classic book.
Tristan, our baby, gone before we met, but loved from the first we knew of your beautiful soul. He may have never greeted this world, but he changed our hearts and built our faith. The ranch is named in his honor.
Adler, our spunky middle child, is Head Chicken Tender and Livestock Attendant. He loves Miniature Crafting, Dinosaurs, and Dirt. When he’s not buried in a fantasy land of his own imagination, you can find him hanging out with the hens or making some sort of mess.
Elijah, our oldest, is the Ranch Hand when he is home from boarding school. Motivated and self-disciplined, his head is in the clouds, literally. He dreams of becoming an Aerospace Engineer! When he’s not busy studying, you can usually find him on the back of a horse, riding, doing tricks, or even reading a book.
Our Sons
Our livestock consists of:
Freya, our mini Highland cow and Beer Steer
Engine Rose “Ginny,” our catahoula leopard dog
The Barn Cats: Barnaby the Barn Foreman and his sister, Smokey the Mousing Master
The Goat Herd: Dante, Fawna, and their kids Virgil and Agnes
The Flock: don’t ask how many chickens, only Adler knows
It is our primary responsibility to maintain the health, happiness, and safety of our animals. While we strive to meet your event needs, we cannot predict how our animals will feel the day of your event. We will always prioritize their well-being.
Party Animals
Our Patroness
St. Brigid of Kildare, patroness of Ireland, dairymaids, cattle, midwives, Irish nuns, and newborn babies, is the intercessor of our ranch. Many legends surround this 5th century saint, but throughout them all, evidence abounds of her magnanimous spirit and peaceful soul. She inspires us to careful stewardship over our land, generous hospitality, and persistent prayer and contemplation.
Of the numerous miracles attributed to St. Brigid during her earthly life, most involve animals or food. As a milkmaid in her girlhood, she had an intimate connection to animals and the land. St. Brigid frequently gave away her father’s stores of butter and other produce to the poor. The family’s dairy prospered regardless. One time, she prayed and God replenished her butter after having bestowed it upon beggars.
Another legend tells how St. Brigid provided an injured wild boar with sanctuary and healing after being chased into the Abbey at Kildare by hunters. The monastery, founded by our patroness, was also a center for learning and art, particularly known for its exquisite, illuminated manuscripts and intricate metalwork.
St. Brigid’s hospitality and fondness for beer became apparent when she visited a leper colony and found them without clean drink. She turned their dirty bathwater into ale and then repeated the miracle when a group of priests later visited. St. Brigid even penned a poem describing her vision of heaven:
I would like a great lake of beer for the King of Kings.
I would like to be watching Heaven’s family drinking it through all eternity.
This poem has a wonderful Franciscan feel to it with its earthy, human but ultimately God-loving delight. The Franciscan motto, attributed to their founder St. Francis of Assisi, “pax et bonum” which means “peace and all good,” is displayed by their Tau cross, a part of our livestock brand and reflected in our logo, conveying trust and joy in God’s Providence on the journey we travel towards our home in Heaven.
St. Brigid demonstrated this act of faith and trust when she requested land for her monastery from the King of Leinster. At first, he refused, but she told him to give as much land as her small cloak would cover, to which he agreed. Upon sending her sisters, each with a corner, to stretch her cloak in every direction, the miraculous garment blanketed many acres of pristine forest, lake, and farm, and St. Brigid was granted the land for the Abbey of Kildare, named “Cil Dara,” Church of the Oak.
St. Brigid’s legends and miracles resonate with the Tristan Ridge family and our experiences of faith, community, and life. We hope we can live up to her precedent. St. Brigid, pray for us!
Christus in omni creatura habitat (Christ dwells in every creature)
-St. Brigid of Kildare
Octave 444, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons