We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Doreen Cross a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Doreen, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea
My husband, Jesse Cross, has always wanted to have his own farm to offer living history field trips for kids. He worked on his family’s farm that did similar things. I actually met him when my daughter was a Daisy in Girl Scouts on one of his field trips at his previous location in Cherry Valley. He needed someone to help him with marketing at the time, and I was really excited about what he was doing. So although I had no marketing experience, my enthusiasm seemed to be enough for him to ask me to help!
Fast forward about 3 years to 2015 and we are now married. Haha!
His parents received a large inheritance and helped us procure a 12-acre piece of land near Julian, California.
We moved in together after we were married and started a life together at this new location. And let me tell you, it was not easy to go from city life to rural backcountry life with a new roommate, a kid, and no income!
When we moved in, the property consisted of 2 small and rundown houses, a water tank, a broken well, and 5 acres of very neglected lilac groves. So we went to work right away trying to fix things up.
I remember a day when it was my husband, my 10-year-old daughter, and me out there shoving electric wires into pipes and gluing together conduits, and then placing them into the dug-out trenches so that we could have water and electricity throughout the property. Those early days were a culture shock.
But we made the best of it with romantic dates that consisted of scoping out the free Craigslist ads and loading up the truck and trailer so that we could get some cool “junk” and old wood to build up what is now Fort Cross. When you don’t have money, you get creative! Jesse has turned this place into an art installation from some of our best hauls.
Our grand opening was our first annual Lilac Festival in the spring of 2016. We sold lilac bouquets and had activities like hayrides, hoedowns and jug band shows, farm animal visits, crafts, candle dipping, and things like that. It was a very exciting start! From there, we kept going with agritourism and living history field trips.
The first few years here were hard not knowing if we’d be able to pay our bills and lose the property that we put our blood, sweat, and tears into. But we just kept pushing on, reaching out to teachers and booking field trip events. Soon, word of mouth started spreading. I’d like to think that I got a little better at marketing, too….
Although people still refer to Fort Cross as a “hidden gem”, it’s been really wonderful to see our business grow over the last 7 years.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
For me, personally, I had no experience whatsoever with farm work, agriculture, living history, or anything involved with marketing your own business. Jesse has a BA in liberal studies and planned to become an elementary school teacher. He’s a natural leader, hard worker, loves history, music, art, and is amazing with kids. So he taught me a lot before I felt comfortable. But he’s a great teacher! With his experience on his family’s living history farm, he had a pretty good idea of how he wanted to do things. We now offer over 10 different field trip programs. Not to mention the seasonal festival events (Autumn Jubilee, Haunted Harvest, Holiday Hayride, and Lilac Festival) and other weekend activities throughout the year at our little adventure farm.
What I believe he and I are most proud of is the genuine love that we have invested in this place. Having gone from an almost blank slate, to what it is now… I hope people can feel the love that we’ve put into it. We are so excited to share it with everyone who comes. We love being a part of their happy memories. We love having the same families come year after year and seeing their kids grow up. We really love being able to share this truly special gift with everyone. It’s not just a business for us, it’s us welcoming you to our home to become part of our family in a way.
Another aspect that we are very proud of is our team. It takes a quirky bunch of people to make Fort Cross happen. It wouldn’t work without the group of misfits that we’ve been lucky enough to have with us throughout the years. I think everyone that helps make it work has a genuine love for people. They are definitely part of our family, even when they move on to bigger and better things! We couldn’t have it any other way. I am very proud to have so many wonderful people who want to be here and help make Fort Cross what it is.
Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?
As I mentioned before, Jesse was already in business doing living history field trips at his previous location in Cherry Valley. My daughter’s Girl Scout Troop took a field trip out there with him and it was the best field trip I’ve ever been on in my life. It was full of hands-on activities in a natural outdoor setting. We were allowed to run around and touch things! That may sound trivial, but there are so many places where you can’t pick up rocks and sticks, or things like that. But Fort Cross was great because we were encouraged to learn through play and experience education with all of our senses. It was nothing like I’ve ever experienced before. And the tour guides were so knowledgeable and friendly.
After that field trip, I followed his page on Facebook and started asking about future events. I couldn’t wait to go back, even though it was an hour’s drive from where I lived. That’s how special it was. Because I was so excited to participate in more things, he made me a job offer to try to book more field trip groups.
Even though I had no experience or education in this field, I was more than happy to do it as a side job.
From there, I started dressing up in pioneer dresses and helping out with the field trip events. It was very different from my hairdresser job that I was working at the time!
Very soon, we began dating. My daughter thought he was great, and he introduced us to the wonders of being off-grid and adventuring outside of city life. I didn’t realize how different the mindset of a city girl was until he opened my eyes to a very exciting new world where it was okay to get dirty and have fun like a kid again.
We’ve leaned on each other a lot, as married business partners would have to do. He works hard at creating and building new areas and activity stations, as well as the never ending farm work. And he leaves me to handle the office work and behind the scenes stuff. It’s been a great partnership, but I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone. We can drive each other bananas sometimes, especially working with each other every day. But it’s been a wonderful life so far!
Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?
I think it helps a lot that people see Jesse and me out there working on the farm and being very involved in the day with them. Even my daughter is out there working with customers and teaching at the activity stations. People see us out there, joyfully involved in the activity tours. We don’t just hire people and have them run the business without us. Although, I suppose that is the goal for most businesses… to have something that you can hand off to someone else to run so that you can relax and enjoy the profits. But our joy comes from being involved. We love to see people and be a part of what makes their day great while they’re here.
I’d like to think that’s what’s made the biggest difference anyway! It’s not really a strategy, just a natural occurrence when you genuinely love the life that you live and the work that goes into it. I hope people don’t just see us as business owners interested in getting rich (even though it would be nice to feel some financial security!), but as people that genuinely want to share the things that make us happy… with hope that it will make them happy, too.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.fortcross.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fortcrossadventures/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fortcrossadventures
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNLdfmWq89Q7TUYqQZwLHGA
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/fort-cross-old-timey-adventures-santa-ysabel?osq=fort+cross+old+timey+adventures
Image Credits
Krystyna Cahill, Brooke Nevins, Doreen Cross