They’re Not Crazy

When Linda Steiner Pascascio and her husband, Jeremie Pascascio, decided to relocate from Chicago to Door County in order to establish an animal farm, Linda’s fellow university professors thought she was crazy.

Jeremie Pascascio gets some love from one of his Plum Loco animals.

“They started calling me Dr. Doolittle instead of Dr. Linda,” Linda remembers. Once Linda and Jeremie arrived in Door County, farmers on neighboring properties called them crazy too; they couldn’t understand why Linda and Jeremie would establish a farm without a view to tangible results like crops or meat. “The ‘crazy’ element just keeps coming up,” Linda laughs. “People keep asking, ‘Are you nuts?’”

Rather than taking offense at these labels, Jeremie and Linda have embraced them. In fact, it is on this seemingly crazy foundation that Linda and Jeremie have built the (aptly named) Plum Loco Animal Farm in Egg Harbor.

Surrounded by farmland on all sides, Plum Loco (now in its second year of business) is rural even by Door County standards. The farm is simple, too – from the unassuming wood structure of the farm’s fences, to its working silos and pole barn, to the bathroom labeled “outhouse” (actually a sparkling clean flush toilet, complete with curtains and a diaper changing station), Plum Loco is largely free of showy decoration or modern technology.

A Plum Loco pot-bellied pig.

“I’m not anti-technology,” Linda says, “but our focus here is more of a back-to-basics environment.” Accordingly, Linda and Jeremie have designed Plum Loco around the natural contours of the landscape and the farm that already existed on the property when they bought it in 2000. Plum Loco’s ticket booth, for example, is housed in what used to be a manure spreader machine shed. The farm features three shady gazebos, which rest on cement slabs that used to support the farm’s large grain bins. And behind the portion of the farm that guests visit, the Plum Loco property stretches into 41 acres of pasture (which provide grazing for the farm’s many horses, ponies, and donkeys), hay fields (where the farm produces much of its animal feed), and a farmhouse (where Linda and Jeremie live).

While many guests are attracted to the farm’s rustic charm, most first-time visitors to Plum Loco are drawn primarily by its animals. Plum Loco provides a home for over 60 animals, including sheep, goats, ponies, donkeys, horses, turkeys, geese and pigs. All animals at the farm have plaques (all designed, carved, and painted by Jeremie) that explain their name, breed, and background. Though many of the animals are let out to pasture at night, they spend their days in roomy pens, classy even by human standards. For instance, a cedar jungle gym originally designed for kids has been converted into a goat play structure, and two turkeys named Cora and Opal live in what Linda terms a “turkey chalet.”

Though the low, kid-friendly fences (which invite guests to pet and feed the animals) may prompt uninitiated visitors to think of Plum Loco as a petting zoo, Linda avoids the term whenever possible.

Linda Steiner Pascascio

“Our philosophy is really different than that,” she says. For one thing, unlike petting zoos that house primarily baby animals, Linda and Jeremie insist on providing homes for their animals throughout the animals’ lifetimes – at the moment, the animals’ ages range from two eight-month-old lambs to a fifty-year-old donkey.

The Plum Loco mission statement points out that “while baby animals are naturally cute, cuddly, and entertaining, they inevitably grow into adulthood…Here at Plum Loco, our goal is not to maximize consumer dollars, but rather to maximize the comfort and quality of life of our precious animal family as they live out their natural life spans.”

“It probably would be better for business if we had a bunch of babies all the time,” Linda concedes, “but it goes against our mission.” Instead, the couple emphasizes the animals’ long-term comfort. For instance, whereas some petting zoos minimize their animals’ food rations in order to pique their interest in the farm’s food-bearing guests, Linda and Jeremie provide all their animals with shelters and mangers full of food.

Showing me the sheep pen, Linda explains, “We designed this facility so it’s the animals’ choice to approach us, so when they’re here it’s because they want to be here.” As if in affirmation, a sheep named Jordan butts me gently through the fence.

“The animals aren’t here for the kids; it’s the other way around,” Linda continues firmly. “I treat animals according to the Golden Rule, the way I think they’d like to be treated.” Linda believes this kind of treatment is the reason the animals are always friendly to guests.

“They aren’t mistreated,” she says simply, “so they aren’t suspicious of people.”

Linda and Jeremie’s close attention to their animals does not result in inattention to their human guests. On the contrary, Plum Loco offers a host of attractions aside from its prized animals. When I arrived for a visit late one afternoon, several adult visitors were relaxing in the shade of bright gazebos, watching their children play across a green yard in an extensive “mini-farm” of playhouses, complete with a clothesline and a rocking-horse corral. In addition to seeing the animals, kids and their parents (or sometimes, Jeremie reports, even couples on dates) relax in the yard, whiling away the hours with the croquet, ladder golf, board games, checkers, chess, books, and playing cards that Plum Loco provides.

Linda says, “There’s only so many galleries and shops you can drag your kids through. We wanted a facility where parents could let their kids off the leash and have a breather.”

Though it requires a lot of work to run (Linda and Jeremie run the farm on their own, without help from any other employees), Linda thrives at Plum Loco, reveling in the work even when she’s tired from commuting to her full-time university job in Green Bay. In fact, Linda and Jeremie plan to expand Plum Loco in the coming years, adding to the array of children’s playhouses and creating a photo gallery that will trace Plum Loco’s development over the years.

So although others may call them crazy, Linda and Jeremie plan to continue living into the dream they’ve created for themselves. Business has more than doubled from last year, and Linda seems both hopeful and proud.

“When I see a mom and a kid playing cards or ladder golf, it’s a dynamic that you don’t get in your daily life,” Linda says contentedly. “And we just provided an environment to make that possible.”