Ballerina Farm, by ‘city folk turned ranchers’ Hannah and Daniel Neeleman, has captured the hearts of consumers by combining rural charm with high-quality, eco-conscious goods, while being kind to the planet.
Ballerina Farm
Hannah is former Miss New York City and graduate of the Juilliard School in dance. Daniel has a BA in history and a masters in business. Daniel left his job as a director at Vigzul, a home security company started by his father, and by 2017, the couple was raising livestock at their ranch in Utah. They turned to social media to promote their artisanal meat business, gaining a niche following of customers and fellow farmers. There’s no looking back since.
Ranchers, social media influencers, designers, chefs, and parents of eight kids, their homegrown brand now has millions of followers on social media. “The channel is an expression of my real life. It’s beautiful, rewarding, and I get to do it with my family. We have many dreams still to accomplish,” says Hannah on the official website. Let’s examine how Ballerina Farm has positioned itself as a trailblazer in sustainable business, offering high quality goods that doesn’t compromise on ethics or the environment.
What is Ballerina Farm?
Ballerina Farm is a homegrown brand that merges rural traditions with stringent quality and sustainability to retail apparel, homeware, food and wellness products from their farm to your door. Founded with the vision of creating sustainable products of the highest quality, Ballerina Farm embraces quality over quantity, craftsmanship over mass production, and sustainability over waste. The founders, inspired by the slow, deliberate processes found in farming and traditional craftsmanship, seek to challenge the traditional approach to luxury goods.
The idea behind Ballerina Farm began when former professional ballerina Hannah decided to embrace a simple, self-sufficient lifestyle after retiring from her career in the arts. Moving to a farm in the Utah countryside, she and Daniel began raising livestock and cultivating crops, initially with the goal of living off the land and sharing their farm life with their growing online audience. PS The farm’s unique name reflects Kristi’s background in ballet and farming, and today she is the poster child for a wholesome, rural life.
The brand officially launched as ‘Ballerina Farm’, with the aim of providing high-quality, farm-to-table products while showcasing the hard work and beauty of rural life. Through social media, particularly Instagram and YouTube, the duo shared their farm experiences, which quickly gained attention for its authentic, personal approach. Ballerina Farm’s presence grew rapidly, attracting followers who were eager to learn about sustainable farming, homesteading, and the simple joys of rural living.
Ballerina Farm: Growth And Expansion
Ballerina Farm’s growth is fueled by the couple’s genuine passion for organic farming and commitment to quality and sustainability. As the brand expanded, the direct- to- consumer business began offering products such as meat, eggs, vegetables, home goods and apparel. Today, Ballerina Farm is a well-established name in the sustainable farming space, with a loyal customer base and a significant social media following, all while staying true to its roots of offering homegrown, ethically produced food.
Ballerina Farm
Its massive success can be attributed to the duo’s ability to build a community around their values of sustainability, self-sufficiency, and wholesome living. Today, the ranch itself employs full-time workers, who work in fulfilment, customer support, marketing, purchasing and product development. The couple cite 2020 as the year Ballerina Farm really became popular — with more people cooking at home during the global pandemic, ordering meat online and having it delivered.
“I am so grateful for social media in that sense because it has allowed me to stay home and to be with my kids, but at the same time to create a business and sell our products and be a business woman and write cookbooks and open up markets but still be with my family so that’s been a huge blessing” Hannah tells Tatler.
The Ballerina Farm Store opened in mid-June in Midway, with a high-end rustic charm that appeals to locals and luxury tourists. Per BoF: “The store sells everything from the brand’s Farmer Protein Powder with colostrum to soap made from sourdough crumbs and pig lard, as well as dairy products of the pasteurised variety… Los Angeles is the top city for e-commerce orders, while 62.5 percent of Hannah‘s social media followers are outside the United States, according to Daniel Neeleman.”
Ballerina Farm: The Power Of Social Media
Ballerina Farm is a rage on social media. The rancher and entrepreneur, reigning Mrs. Utah and Juilliard-trained ballerina who gave up her dance career to buy and run a family farm with her husband, has attracted nearly 22 million followers across social platforms. Every day, Hannah broadcasts life on the 328-acre ranch to her millions of social media followers, where the family drink raw milk that comes from their herd of cows and collect eggs from their chickens, and where the children are home-schooled in a stylish barn. The world can’t get enough. ‘Ballerina Farm’ has 10.4 million followers on Instagram.
Per BoF: “On TikTok, the hashtag #ballerinafarm is up to 2.5 billion views. That hashtag will bring you to a mix of Neeleman’s own videos, depicting milking sheep or rolling dough, but also an ecosystem of fans and critics who react to her every move, whether it’s receiving an egg apron from her husband or competing in a beauty pageant two weeks after having a baby. With their massive and highly engaged online audience locked in, the Neelemans are moving fast to expand Ballerina Farm into a real-world lifestyle empire.”
Ballerina Farm
Jasmeen Dugal is Associate Editor at FashionABC, contributing her insights on fashion, technology, and sustainability. She brings with herself more than two decades of editorial experience, working for national newspapers and luxury magazines in India.
Jasmeen Dugal has worked with exchange4media as a senior writer contributing articles on the country’s advertising and marketing movements, and then with Condenast India as Net Editor where she helmed Vogue India’s official website in terms of design, layout and daily content. Besides this, she is also an entrepreneur running her own luxury portal, Explosivefashion, which highlights the latest in luxury fashion and hospitality.
