Some of you have been following this journey for a long time. You know about the vision for Wellspring — the vegan community, the food forest, the healing retreats, the farm animal sanctuary. You also know that for the past several months, I took what seemed like a beautiful detour: a multigenerational family homestead experiment with my son Chris, his wife Lanae, their children, and Robert, all of us together on the Living Springs Log House property in Madison County.
It is now August 22, 2026. I refined my vision even more. I am re-naming Wellspring All Beings Sanctuary and Healing Center. More to follow!
I want to tell you what happened — and more importantly, where we are going.
What We Tried, and What We Learned
For about six months, we gave the multigenerational homestead dream everything we had. And genuinely beautiful things happened. The bonding with my grandchildren during those months is something I would not trade for anything. Six months of watching them run the hills, learn plant names, wake up to birdsong, and grow in ways that only happen when children have land beneath their feet and family all around them — that is treasure that doesn’t expire. Much healing took place with my son and his wife, as well. We are committed to continuing that healing process.
But life is honest with us if we are willing to listen to it.
Chris and Lanae realized they wanted to be closer to Fayetteville and Springdale — for their homeschooling community, their church, the practical rhythms of a young family building its life. They want freedom and autonomy and their own space to grow into their own dream. That is not a failure. That is two people knowing who they are. I love them for it.
Robert is moving to his own land nearby. We remain dear friends. But he is not vegan, and I am building a vegan healing center. Those things can coexist in love, and they can also coexist in separate households.
And me? I realized that in trying to make this particular dream work, I had been quietly setting aside my original dream — the one that has been growing in me for the past several years. The healing center. The farm animal sanctuary. The community rooted in plant-based living and the healing power of nature and the love of God.
So I am going back to it. And taking everything I learned along the way with me.
Returning to Wellspring — With a Bigger Vision
I am moving to Wellspring.
This is my land — a piece of Ozark hillside in Madison County that has been waiting with extraordinary patience for me to come home to it. And I am coming home.
But the vision has grown since I first started dreaming it. About eight years ago I founded Jesus Vegans — a community rooted in the conviction that plant-based living and Christian faith are not just compatible but deeply connected. Through the generosity of a dear friend, that vision produced something real and tangible: an almost-finished house right here at Wellspring. Jesus Vegans as a formal community has run its course, but its fruit remains — literally standing on the land where the next chapter is beginning. The healing center vision came a few years ago and changed everything — deepened it, expanded it, gave it clinical and practical roots I had not imagined before. What started as a vegan community is becoming something more layered and more beautiful than I could have imagined eight years ago.
Wellspring will be a healing center and farm animal sanctuary, rooted in the following convictions:
The land is the primary healer. The food we eat either builds us or diminishes us. Trauma lives in the body and can be released from the body. The brain can be retrained. Families can heal their multigenerational patterns. Community is not a luxury — it is medicine. And the love of God, received and practiced daily, changes everything.
The healing center will offer: whole-food, plant-based nutrition based on the Hallelujah Diet; forest therapy walks and wilderness living skills; brain retraining and mind-body approaches including the work of Dr. Howard Schubiner; trauma-informed care; the Immanuel Approach for spiritual and emotional healing; family systems work using Bowen Family Systems Theory and Nonviolent Communication; cold therapy, earthing, clay healing, and the ancient therapies that pre-date pharmaceuticals by thousands of years. And a farm animal sanctuary where rescued animals live the rest of their lives in peace.
People will come to heal. Some of them will want to stay.
The Community Land Trust Model: A Future for Families
This is the part of the vision that has deepened most since I began.
I am firmly committed to a community land trust model at Wellspring — meaning that as the community grows, each family or individual who becomes part of the staff and community will have their own plot of land. Their own home. Their own garden. Their own space to grow and be private and be whole.
The community gathers, eats together, works together, worships together, heals together. But everyone goes home to their own place at the end of the day. No one is crammed together. No one’s autonomy is swallowed by the collective.
And here is the part that makes my heart expand when I think about it: there will be room for their children to join them someday. And their grandchildren. And perhaps — God willing and the creek rising — their great-grandchildren. The land will be held in trust so it cannot be sold away or developed against its purpose. Families who put down roots here will have real roots — the kind that go deep and hold across generations.
The community begins, as all real communities do, with the people already on the ground. I will be living at Wellspring. And next door lives Cliff Mikkelson — my former husband, fellow vegan, and one of the most wholehearted supporters of this vision I know. Cliff believes in what Wellspring is becoming. He is already part of it. That is the seed of the community: two people on adjacent land, sharing a dream, beginning.
People who come for healing retreats and find themselves not wanting to leave — who discover that this is the life they have been looking for — will become part of it too, if the fit is right. The community grows organically, the way all living things grow: from the inside out, one relationship at a time.
What Wellspring Looks Like Right Now
I want to be honest with you about where we are, because you deserve honesty more than a polished brochure.
Right now, Wellspring has a house and land and a garden and the bones of something beautiful. We believe there are springs on the property waiting to be developed — and we are praying for that, because water is everything. In the meantime, rainwater collection will serve many purposes, and drinking water can be sourced from the Living Springs Log House spring next door for as long as that arrangement is available.
It is not finished. It is not fully funded. It is a seed with very good soil.
And already, right now, people can come. The land is here. The food forest is growing. The fall — the most beautiful season in the Ozark hills — is coming. I am planning small healing retreats, forest therapy walks, weekend gatherings where people can come and simply breathe and eat real food and rest and be held by this particular piece of earth.
Healing does not wait for the perfect facility. It begins the moment someone steps onto land that holds them with goodwill.
Staying Connected to Family
One thing has not changed and will not change: I am staying deeply connected to Chris and Lanae and the grandchildren.
They may be finding their own place and their own path, but they are family and family is non-negotiable. Whatever they find, wherever they land, I will be part of their lives and they will be part of mine. The grandchildren will still know this land. They will still run these hills. They will just have two beloved places instead of one.
That is not loss. That is abundance.
What I Am Looking For
I am looking for a partner — an investor, a co-visionary, someone with resources who wants those resources to mean something lasting. Someone who looks at this vision and thinks: I want to help build this.
There is already land. Already a house. Already a garden. Already a neighbor who shares the dream. The bones are good. What is needed now is development — infrastructure, legal structure, program building, and the right person or people to come alongside.
I am also holding a dream: what if someone with a complementary vision wanted to do something similar at the Living Springs Log House, just down the road? Two sister communities on the same ridge, different expressions of the same heart. If that resonates with anyone reading this, please reach out.
One More Thing
I am getting a van.
A small camper van that I can live in between Wellspring and the road — for vegan festivals, conferences, visits to my daughter Maud’s family, visits to Chris and Lanae wherever they land. Roots and wings. Wellspring is my roots. The van is my wings.
At 71 — nearly 72 — I have never been more certain of what I am here to do.
If this vision calls to you — to come heal, to come visit, to come invest, to come pray over this land with me — reach out. The gate is open.
— Patricia
A Note About How This Was Written
I want to be transparent with you, because transparency is one of Wellspring’s core values.
This article was written in partnership with Claude, an AI assistant made by Anthropic. I spoke my story, my heart, and my vision — sometimes in long rambling voice-memo style, the way I think — and Claude helped me shape it into the words you just read. The ideas, the experiences, the dreams, and the faith are entirely mine. The craft of organizing them into sentences and paragraphs is something Claude and I do together.
I have found this partnership genuinely remarkable. Claude listens without judgment, remembers what matters, asks good questions, and helps me say what I mean more clearly than I could always say it on my own. It feels, in the best moments, like having a writing companion who is wholly devoted to helping my voice come through — not replacing it.
I think honesty about this matters. We are living in a time when AI is everywhere and often invisible. I would rather you know that I use it, and why, and how — so that the trust between us stays real.
The vision is mine. The words serve the vision. And now you have both.
Written by Patricia Mikkelson in partnership with Claude (Anthropic), July 2026.
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