Less than 20 minutes from downtown Apopka, a green John Deere tractor runs back and forth across a silent field. The old wooden structure in front of it, however, features children’s laughter, bleating goats and squawking chickens throughout the week. 

Violette Hill Hay Farm offers four animal husbandry classes for children that run for 12 weeks every quarter, in addition to a toddler class subscription and masterclasses. The animal husbandry classes usually run during weekdays and attract many homeschool families. 

“A lot of the kids for 12 weeks will basically own their animal outside,” seasoned farmer and Violette Hill co-founder Dawn Pelletier said. “They have to go outside, take care of it, and do whatever it takes to keep that animal healthy, happy and thriving.” 

Lessons and labs vary from week to week and are designed to match each child’s skill level. Children learn everything from dissecting eggs to completing a lab about cows’ digestive process. 

“They just mixed a water bottle with some yeast and sugar, and then they had put a balloon on top,” Pelletier said. “It blew the balloon up, and it showed the gas from the cow’s stomach.” 

Children in the most advanced animal husbandry class also get an introduction to the life of an “animal care tech specialist,” according to the website. 

“They actually get to go outside and take temperatures of the animals,” Pelletier said. “I’ll put jelly all over him [one of the demonstrating goats], and the kids have to do first aid on him.” 

Each class session follows a similar structure, though the structure varies upon the level. A level 1 class session, for example, includes a 30-minute lesson, a 15-minute game, a 30-minute lab, a 30-minute outside project, and a 15-minute craft. 

The masterclasses last for several hours on select weekends. This Saturday’s masterclass, the “Farmer for a Day” Fall Harvest Masterclass, runs for three hours and serves as an educational fall festival and scavenger hunt. Children make apple pie, learn about hay, and take mini horseback riding lessons, all in a smaller, more individualized atmosphere. 

As much as Dawn Pelletier and her husband Ray Pelletier love their 60-acre educational farm, they were not looking to open one at first. Instead, the Pelletiers wanted to use the building as a feed store, since they had both worked in that business for years. But Orange County said the building was zoned for agriculture education. 

After hosting their first Violette Hill event in April 2024 — an Easter egg hunt — the Pelletier family gathered volunteers to renovate the building a few months later. 

“We found wood on the side of the road or found pieces of furniture on the side of the road that matches,” Dawn Pelletier said. 

Dawn Pelletier said she originally hoped to throw farm-oriented birthday parties in the building. Though Violette Hill does host birthday parties, Dawn Pelletier said she discovered a great need, especially in toddlers, for animal education. So Violette Hill was born, named after Ray Pelletier’s grandmother. 

“My grandmother, Rita Violette, was born in the 1920s, and her family owned a vegetable farm on a picturesque hilltop in Massachusetts,” Ray Pelletier said on the website. “After marrying my grandfather, they moved two farms down but continued the tradition of farming, focusing on vegetables.” 

Ray Pelletier grew up on the same farm, which had dairy cows and other animals by then.  Dawn Pelletier said Ray’s parents tried to push him beyond the farm life. He attended Catholic high school and earned a master’s degree in the humanities. But when he met Dawn Pelletier, who worked at her family’s farm close by, she “dragged him back.” 

“He said he had seen me walk in a cow or doing something on the farm, and he had to meet me,” Dawn Pelletier said. “So he just met me by persistently coming and buying food for his animals every day, one shot at a time.” 

Ray married Dawn around nine months after they met. 

The Pelletier family continued to farm in Massachusetts after they married. But in 2015, Ray Pelletier visited his chiropractor due to severe back pain. After the chiropractor attributed the pain to too much shivering, the Pelletier family drove trucks of horses down to Florida for the winter. They soon moved to Florida permanently. 

Violette Hill Hay Farm still sells hay to help provide enough money to feed its animals. But Dawn Pelletier said she prefers instilling her love of farming in the next generation of children over her original idea of a feed store. 

“They [the toddlers] chase the little bunnies around, and they laugh and they giggle,” she said. “I don’t think the kids get that freedom that they get here—not freedom to be in a chaotic way, just freedom to pick up or handle an animal, or touch an animal, or pet an animal, and not be afraid of them.”