Landwehr finds the best of both her worlds at The Urban Farm

Christy Rucker Landwehr

Life has taken a decidedly rural turn for Christy Rucker Landwehr (‘96 MA).

“My husband, John, and I have bought a second home in southeast Aurora. Horse property,” she said. “Our house sits on 10 acres on which we can now build an arena, stalls, pasture, etc.”

From there she commutes twice a week to Denver – and works on a farm.

“I am the part-time development director for a nonprofit organization, The Urban Farm (www.theurbanfarm.org). It is located at the former Stapleton airport site. We serve 2,000 inner-city kids from the Denver metro area and teach them and their families them about agriculture, farming, gardening, horseback riding and taking care of all kinds of farm animals,” Landwehr said. “I also teach kids how to ride there and privately am helping to train the young horses. The farm has 45 horses, two cows, sheep, pigs, dogs, cats, donkeys, chickens and even a llama.

“One of the projects we work on is the Black Stallion Literacy project. This is a national literacy campaign aimed at first- and fourth-graders. This year we are working with 1,000 Denver metro first-graders who received two hardbound books of their very own – ‘Little Black: A Pony’ and ‘Little Black Goes to the Circus’ by Walter Farley. We took the farm’s own little black pony to the classrooms to meet the kids and then gave them their first book. They read it with their classes and then came to our farm for a tour and received their second book there,” Landwehr said.

“Some of the teachers said that kids who never read were reading out loud to themselves right away,” she said. “It’s amazing the magic that can happen when you put a kid and a horse together.”

Another big project she is working on is the Denver Fair.

“Denver hadn’t had a county fair in many years. The Urban Farm brought it back last September to teach metro Denverites about the farming community Denver used to be. We had a Zucch-A-Rama, which was a zucchini-growing competition, and a dog agility fun match, since dogs are urban livestock,” Landwehr said. The Denver Fair is set for Sept. 7 this fall at The Urban Farm.

Landwehr also works part-time out of her home office for the Certified Horsemanship Association as its development director. She said she coordinates the national conference, is the editor of the quarterly newsletter, travels to trade shows, updates the Web site (www.cha-ahse.org) and recruits and works with the association’s sponsors.

“I love working for two companies that I believe so much in their missions,” Landwehr said. “It has been great to be able to combine my journalism skills with my passion for horses.”

She said she is pleased that the CU equestrian team, which she helped start, is doing so well. She also said she gets to see and talk with former School undergraduate adviser Kay Rock quite often. landweh@aol.com