There are no grazing pastures and cornfields surrounding the Rollman family farm.
No signature red barn to house their more than 100 4-H animals.
Nor is there the silence that’s typically associated with country living, because the Rollman homestead is as urban as you can get.
Their modest, nondescript, two-story family dwelling on less than an acre of land sits almost under the Veterans’ Glass City Skyway in East Toledo, a couple miles from downtown, where the sound of expressway traffic helps drown out the crowing roosters and bleating goats.
The property is headquarters for the Toledo Pride, a 4-H club advised by Melissa Wheeler, the Rollman family matriarch. The small club includes her four children (Destiny, 18, Christopher, 16, Marissa, 14, and Antall, 10), and another young boy, DJ McKinney, 9, who lived in the city but now resides in Blissfield, Mich.
Despite the urban conditions, they make the makeshift farm work and sell market livestock, save animals for breeding, and participate in showmanship contests with them at the fair.
“Having a farm in the inner city, well, sometimes it’s crazy, and sometimes it’s, ‘Why did I get myself into this?’” Ms. Wheeler said. “Other than that, it’s been a very fun experience. We’ve had numerous people stop by and say they enjoy looking at our animals.”
PHOTO GALLERY: Rollman family farm
Ms. Wheeler said that the first animal to inhabit the backyard was a single rabbit for one of the children.
“Then I thought that wasn’t fair to the other three kids,” Ms. Wheeler recalled. “The next thing we know, we have four rabbits. And as years went on, they’ve gotten more and more. Now they have more rabbits than you can count on your hands and toes!”
The city is certainly not a typical place for a 4-H club headquarters, and Ms. Wheeler acknowledges that her neighborhood environment isn’t the very best.
“There’s been people trying to break into our yard to mess with the animals or take whatever. A lot of vacant buildings. A lot of kids getting in trouble,” she admitted.
Keeping her own kids out of trouble is a driving force behind maintaining the 4-H club she founded five years ago.
“My kids got responsibilities at home. They’re not allowed to run the neighborhood. They are always doing something; if not watering or feeding their animals, they’re cleaning cages and underneath cages,” Ms. Wheeler said. “The 4-H club helps teach them all to care for things.”
For 51 weeks of the year, the crew works diligently together to prepare for a common goal: showing livestock at the Lucas County Fair in July.
“It’s an enjoyment to watch them be judged, because they work so hard with their projects. And when they place it’s even more exciting,” their proud mother said.
A week before this year’s fair, Marissa finished prepping her rabbits and then went to the goat pen to play with the goats. As she stood in the pen petting one behind the ear, the young teen contemplated her involvement in 4-H.
“In the future, I hope to be a vet because all of the animals I was raised with. I live in Toledo, in the city, and we have over 45 rabbits, 20 ducks, nine fancy chickens, 15 market chickens, two market hogs, five goats, two pheasants, and a barn cat,” she counted.
“The goats and the pigs were hard because we had to go to the health department and get permits and had to go around the neighborhood in the middle of the winter to ask for people’s signatures so we can actually raise the goats here. So, it was definitely a challenge to get the goats,” Marissa said.
Then she added: “Going out to the fair for a week and showing them can be really exhausting, but then we just all get into it, and it just flows along.”
Contact Lori King at: lking@theblade.com.
First Published July 24, 2016, 4:00 a.m.
