In Defense of Ballerina Farm
They look exactly how you think they would. Hannah is blonde, slender, and beautiful. Daniel is tall, strong, and has dimples you could, as my grandmother would say, “swim laps in.” I wouldn’t be surprised if the Church of Latter Day Saints strategically positioned them as social media sleeper agents in an online evangelization initiative.
The countercultural always piques our interest. Today, there’s an explosion of therapy-goers, a high divorce rate, and a skyrocketing number of children being born out of wedlock — yet a falling replacement rate.
The most revolutionary thing a person can do is stay married, have a lot of children, cook at home, and be happy. Enter Ballerina Farm, a direct-to-consumer farm fresh brand run by a retired ballerina, Hannah, and her husband Daniel.
Hannah and Daniel recently celebrated the arrival of their eighth child, just before Hannah took part in the Mrs. World competition, representing America. Traditionally, beauty pageants stipulated that contestants must be unmarried. Mrs. World, established in 1984, broke this norm by being the first beauty pageant exclusively for married women. Despite my active online presence, I hadn’t come across this competition before Hannah’s participation. Regardless of whether the judges intended to favor a contestant with a significant online following, it turned out to be a savvy move for the pageant’s marketing.
Online, Hannah documented her travels with her newborn baby. She shared posts from the pageant in which she was nursing in her gowns and browsing for dresses that work with her postpartum body. The positive feedback outweighed the bad. Afterall, her business has been a booming success.
Still, Hannah and the impressively balanced lifestyle she presents faced significant backlash. One comment, a good representation of the typical criticism she receives, read:
“While yes, you’re super woman… This kind of content is super damaging to majority of freshly postpartum moms,” the woman wrote. “I wish you were instead choosing to showcase being a role model for birth recovery, for bonding with baby, for respecting your body’s journey, for allowing nature’s magic to take precedence, for prioritizing family, for nourishing your body with nutrition and rest, etc. Being ‘beautiful’ by society’s standards in an unnatural time frame over these things feels toxic and icky. You could’ve taught other moms self compassion and PRESENCE and healthy mindsets around the maternal transition — body and soul. I’m so disheartened that you chose to do this instead.”
Allie Beth Stuckey and Brett Cooper both defended Hannah on their respective channels. While their analysis differed, both personalities concluded that it is beneficial for someone with a substantial social media following to promote beauty and family life. If such content offends a viewer, that individual should reflect on what internally is driving their anger.
One writer for Evie magazine explained this harsh reaction about Hannah’s pregnancy well: “We feel so strongly about the choices we make during pregnancy and childbirth that it’s easy to feel convicted about another woman’s choices when we see them on social media...”
Yes, the Ballerina Farm lifestyle seems unattainable at first glance. Being a professional ballerina is uncommon, getting married young is relatively rare, and having eight children is downright weird in our post-girlboss age.
Our birth rate is falling. The average American woman had three children in 1950. That number has since declined to about 1.6. The median age of marriage has been steadily rising the past 100 years. Farming as a primary occupation is also increasingly uncommon. Only 1.2 percent of total U.S. employment comes from farm labor.
Despite the popularity of online tutorials for homemade pasta and sourdough bread, they can sometimes serve as aspirational escapism rather than a practical guidebook for living well. Picture girls in frilly outfits, rolling flowers into ravioli in spotless kitchens. Ballerina Farm’s videos at least come down to earth. Although the videos are beautiful, they contain a normal amount of big-family chaos.
Hannah and her husband occasionally document the deaths of animals on the farm, the process of raising and butchering hogs, and the benefits of raw milk straight from the cow. Their content is intentional, but not perfectly polished. Being comfortable on stage as a ballerina, Hannah is naturally comfortable sharing her life on social media.
In a recent video, Hannah gave a condensed history of her family’s “wannabe homesteaders” journey. Hannah and her husband, both not raised on farms, started with four pigs and one milk cow. They invested a lot of time into learning about the basics of ranching and producing food.
Ballerina Farm has come under fire also for their being far wealthier than what meets the eye, affording their natural living empire. David’s father, David Neeleman, is an airline entrepreneur who founded Azul, JetBlue, and Breeze Airways.
Farm entrepreneur Chip McGregor explained in a now-viral TikTok video some of the recent complaints and resentment directed at Ballerina Farm.
“From my perspective, a person who was raised by poor subsistence farmers, this is the problem...,” he said. “Ballerina Farm is essentially dressing up like my mum and my aunts and all these ranch women over time that raised me…That airline that’s supporting Ballerina Farm? That’s what is chasing people off to the farm to be homesteaders. So I can see why she’d get a little backlash for that.”
The American idea of a poor farmer with a couple dozen acres largely died with the Great Depression. Farmland consolidation into large industrial firms and farmers leasing their land to neighboring farms has further changed the American farm landscape.
A wealthy farmer, or at least an upper middle class farmer, isn’t an oddity; it’s the industry standard. Farming is difficult but lucrative work. Not many millionaires would choose to watch animals they raise die every season, to deal with the unpleasantries that come with keeping cows in a state of milk production, or to wake up at all hours of the night when the animals are in need. These tasks are even more difficult to master when you weren’t raised in a farm family and taught the ins and outs of farm life from birth. Hannah and Daniel have been transparent about how they are growing their business.
Farming, like all businesses after the dawn of the internet, has dramatically changed. With animal auctions sometimes being held online, the marketplace for products is essentially unlimited thanks to the specialized demands of consumers. If you genuinely want to know the name, diet, and lifestyle of a cow before purchasing the steak, that information is readily available. Depending on the farm, you might be able to follow the cow on TikTok up until slaughter. It’s a brave new world, baby.
Hannah wears jeans, leggings, Carhartt jackets and work boots. Although sometimes she posts in cute dresses and pageant gowns, her regular outfits are farm-appropriate clothes. Her house isn’t terribly flashy, although, yes, they do have an Aga cast-iron stove, which retails for up to $44,000. They have a wood dining room table, a pantry, and a large fridge. It’s nice but it’s clearly still a lived-in farm family house.
Ballerina Farm’s positive message, emphasizing the ability to learn new skills, enhance cooking abilities, and to have a large family, is something we should celebrate. While Hannah and Daniel may have an expensive stove, anyone can knead dough on a countertop and bake bread in their economical oven. Making more of your own food and gaining insights into the process of food production are highly achievable goals that lead to cost savings and a more nutritious diet.
One person’s success isn’t another person’s failure, and the Ballerina Farm lifestyle — characterized by a stable marriage, cooking, homeschooling, and close family values — is much more accessible than some bitter women on the internet would like you to think.
https://www.theconservateur.com/conservateur-club/in-defense-of-ballerina-farm
