Mike and Abbe Baird
Mike Baird has spent 25 years building and running network infrastructure — systems that stay up, that route correctly, that do their job without drama. That same approach is what FPR runs on. He came to this land not looking for a project but for a place to build something that lasts.
Abbe Baird is FPR's Creative Director. Her work runs through everything visible on the ranch — the Nature Heals product line, the Ridge Collection, the visual identity. She built a following and a practice as an artist (artbyabbe.com) before turning that skill set toward the ranch's output.
Why Pound, Virginia
Wise County is coalfield country. The land here has history — extraction, abandonment, the particular silence of a place that got used and left. We didn't pick it despite that. We picked it partly because of it. Reclaimed mine land at this price doesn't exist anywhere else in the country. What it lacks in easy starts it makes up for in permanence.
We live here. We build here. The work and the life are the same thing.
FPR in numbers
- 7.53 acres, Pound VA, Wise County
- SROI: 7.2:1 — audited, not estimated
- Phase II active: Ridge Nexus, Cottage, food forest, water systems
- Products: Nature Heals botanicals + Ridge Collection apparel