Working for Wildlife Habitat Hero: Pettit's Green Thumb Farm by Isabel Nazarian, Midwest Regional Partner Biologist, Pollinator Partnership

Published August 22, 2025

As part of Pollinator Partnership’s Working for Wildlife series, we have interviewed and are sharing the experiences of agricultural producers who have successfully undertaken projects that benefit pollinators and other wildlife with the help of technical and/or financial support through conservation provisions of the USDA’s Farm Bill. We hope their stories encourage and empower readers (including you!) and help foster a better understanding of the programs available to help support thriving food and ecosystems that we all rely upon!

In this installment, it is our privilege to feature Habitat Heroes Hilda and Bruce Pettit of Pettit’s Green Thumb Farm. We invite you to join us in learning about Pettit’s Green Thumb Farm’s habitat journey in the interview below. You can also watch the accompanying video featuring the story of this inspiring Habitat Hero below:

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: Tell us about your farm

Hilda: My name is Hilda Pettit and this is my husband, Bruce. We live in Ravenna, Ohio in Charleston Township. Our farm’s name is Pettit's Green Thumb Farm. In total, across our two properties there are about 11 acres, and we grow fruit and vegetables on both properties.

Q: How long have you been farming and why did you want to become a farmer?

Hilda: In some form or another we have always been gardeners and family farmers. We bought this second property in 2019, but we've been growing fruits and vegetables for our entire married life, which is 43 years.

Bruce: And before that. We had gardens and fruit trees when we lived in Freedom, Ohio, but as far as getting into pollinator stuff, that was only recently.

Hilda: We purchased this property because we retired and at our other property, we had filled up a lot of space with fruits and berries, so we needed a little extra room. This was a very convenient, nice piece of property for us to expand things that we were already doing and keep both of us busy.

Q: Since you started farming, what differences have you observed in farming practices or food access in the community?

Bruce: When I was growing up, plowing the garden was done with horses. Everything was done by hand. Now, through the years, we have developed different equipment. I bought a tractor to do the tilling and some of the mowing with and stuff like that, which we never had when I was growing up.

Hilda: I think we've gone through a long journey of changes. The first kind of gardening that we learned was very traditional. Till up the soil, plant the plants and use a hoe kind of

Gardening and that might still be our preference, but we have tried old and new things too.

We use a rainwater collection system, which is an irrigation system for our high tunnel. We also use buckets to water the trees. Some of those are kind of old things that are back in style again for important reasons. We haven't been stagnant farmers. We've tried all kinds of things to see what works best and what we like best.

Q: What first made you interested in pollinator conservation?

Bruce: It's always been there for me. Where I grew up, almost everyone had bees. They used them for the honey, but they also knew the importance of pollinating your fruit trees and your vegetable garden and things like that. You need to have that to have anything to eat. So that's one of the reasons we want to try to save them as much as possible.

Hilda: I think we have a solid respect for nature and the things that live in it. It's not new to us, maybe it's more focused than it used to be, but it's always been there. We grew up with bees and other bugs, so they are not foreign to us. It's something that we've always lived with in our lawns and garden. The idea that those bugs that maybe we didn't really think much about were useful in ways that we didn't know about was new. Abby (a Farm Bill Biologist with Pheasants Forever/Quail Forever) introduced the idea of some tiny little wasps that don't meet my stereotype of a wasp at all, but those wasps serve to kill the cabbage pests. I was thrilled! I want some more of those bugs. The idea that we might plant an area that would foster the growth of bugs that would help us, that's a great idea. So, we were all in, and we still are all in as we learn.

Q: Which pollinator friendly or other conservation practices have you implemented on your land?

Hilda: On this particular property, we have two pollinator fields. I say two because they were planted during two different years. But we do have two fields, and the total area is two and a half acres. On our other property, we don't have designated pollinator fields, but we also don't have a pristine lawn either. We leave wild things growing so, while there aren't any designated fields, there are lots of pollinator plants there. We don't use chemicals that kill pollinators, insects, or other kinds of animals on our property at all.

Q: What was your motivation to implement these practices and why do you care about pollinator conservation now?

Hilda: Initially, when Kara from the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) came for a site visit for the first field, we weren't even aware that financial assistance programs like the USDA’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) were available for pollinator fields. She mentioned it because I had frankly been mourning about having to mow so much. So, I was like, “oh my gosh, you mean I could plant a field where I wouldn't have to spend so much time and money buying gas and mowing?” It was just an ideal thing.

Bruce: And it doesn't look like a brush patch.

Hilda: It has a beauty all of its own and while that wasn't our initial reason for having the field, having grown up in the country with a lot of nature and wilderness, it has a great appeal to us now.

Q: Have you noticed a positive impact to pollinators and other wildlife?

Bruce: We do see a lot more bees. We also have somebody come up and bring a beehive out here to pollinate fruit trees in our garden and things like that, and when they get the honey off it, they give us a little bit. We are also starting to see more butterflies than we did before, and we see a lot more types of birds too.

Hilda: We have some Baltimore orioles here now. We've seen some yellow birds and even a handful of little blue birds. I think we might have an increase in hawks as well, and while we're not that thrilled about the hawks, they do eat the voles in the field. To complement our pollinator field, on the far side we have a very old-style brush fence where we stack our limbs and brush from the spring, and that keeps us from burning them. This also provides a habitat for birds and small animals that protects them from predators. I think that the field draws in some types of insects and animals, and then we help nurture that the best we can. I think that we'll continue to see that. We have all kinds of grasshoppers in the summertime now. I really don't know if they're pollinators or not, but I love to see them. We also have a pretty good population of lightning bugs here now too. Diversity overall has increased.

Q: What other types of changes, positive outcomes or benefits have you seen after implementing your practices?

Bruce: Trying to prevent soil erosion was one of the first things we talked about when we started talking to Kara. A lot of practices all go together. Pollinator habitat can keep the soil from eroding away and the native plants themselves are really helping us repair some erosion problems that were caused in the past.

Hilda: Our plant yields are good, but I don't really have anything to compare that to before.

Bruce: The health of the soil is something that I'm always trying to improve, whether organic horse manure or planting a cover crop and turning it in. The partners we worked with got us started in that a little bit too, helping us understand what kind of cover crops we could plant. We also have relatives who are big farmers, dairy farming, they plant a lot of crops and stuff. Just talking to them has been helpful. Like hey, what's a good cover crop to plant to help your soil?

Hilda: In the field we planted with Abby’s help (the second EQIP pollinator plot), I believe the initial planting of the field was a recipe that had oats mixed in the flowers for the first year. We didn't know that you could use a different plant as a companion that would nourish the future of the other plant. It's always great to learn those kinds of things and put them into use later.

Hilda: During the planning process, we were given a recipe for wildflowers and ours are all Ohio native. I was particularly interested in the Ohio native wildflowers, and I learned a lot about plants that in the past, I might have just thought us as weeds. This really spurred my interest in natural remedies. I'm not a big fan of chemicals at all, so with the flower field, I started to learn about the plant's values other than the value they add by growing in the field. It took me on a journey of learning about medicinal plants and herbal home remedies, and it's been really fascinating to learn about the useful benefits of plants. There are lots of interesting and useful ideas for those plants that I'm sure I would never have known about had I not had those plants growing in front of me and decided to journey down curiosity lane to find out what I could do with them. I do use some of those plants to make herbal remedies that are helpful for things like itching, coughing, arthritis, or chapped lips, and they work really well. So, I'm a big fan of those plants on a whole different level now.

Q: Describe how your farm benefitted from USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), Soil and Water Conservation District (SWCD). What would you say other landowners can expect when working with NRCS, SWCDs, or other programs?

Hilda: Well, we had we had two experiences. We first worked with Kara (NRCS Field Office) and then Abby (Pheasants Forever / Quail Forever). So, we had two different conservation professionals helping us with these projects. Both of them were great and, I will say, it's important to know that it's not one cut and dry process.

Even though the paperwork process was the same, Kara's planting process and recommendations were a little different than Abby's. With the first field, we prepped and then we planted in December. With the second field, we prepped and then planted in May. So, they were very different in the beginning, but the outcome was great in both instances. We probably preferred the fall process a little more, not because of anything other than it was more convenient for us, because May is a busy time. I think it's important to know that there's flexibility. So, if your needs are something very particular, you should tell that to your conservation planner so they can work around a process that suits your schedule as well.

Q: Could you describe what the process looked like working with Pheasants Forever, NRCS, and your Soil and Water Conservation District?

Hilda: The first one who came out was Kara, from NRCS. She was the first conservation planner that helped us with the pollinator field. Later, we got in touch with Abby from Pheasants Forever who partners with NRCS. I also have a working relationship with Lynn Vogel at Portage County SWCD. They all seem to work together. It's been seamless. I think that we really couldn't find any negative in working with them. They're helpful, they answered a lot of questions we had, and they continue to come out and check things to make sure or help us if there is something that we don't know about.

Bruce: When they first came out, we talked a lot about soil erosion.

Hilda: We really needed that too because the fields that have our pollinators in them now were cornfields at some time in the past. They also had clay drain tile in those fields, and so we did and continue to fix holes that are popping up in those fields.

Q: What is something you wish you knew before going through the process? What is some advice you would give to others interested in implementing pollinator friendly conservation practices on their land?

Bruce: I suppose if you might like to see a particular flower, you should let your conservation planner know that you’d like to add that to the seed mix they put together for you. We did have a lot of questions that we had to call them about. I think we got a little bit bogged down in all the little details of it at first.

Hilda: He's right. When you don't know what you're doing (which we didn't), you depend on some good instructions to get you through the process. It was a little more stressful for us when the instructions for the first field and the second field weren't quite the same, but in the end, we still ended up with great fields, and we were very happy with everything

Bruce: And they might bring somebody with them too. If you have questions about one thing, they might not be the expert in that area, but they'll bring somebody from the department out there who is the expert.

Hilda: They give you lots of recommendations and, generally, we would take all of those recommendations. I think the only time I didn't was regarding a patch of narrow leaf plantain growing in my oldest field and it's not part of the recipe. It might be a little bit bigger of a patch than it ought to be, but I chose not to eliminate it because I didn't feel that plantain was something worthy of using Roundup on, so I left it. Over two summers, most of it's gone now because the other plants took over that space. There are things that are really critical to manage, like l the Canadian thistle or multiflora rose, but there are other things that may be more optional and it's okay to ask about that.

At the end of the day it's your property. Abby says that all the time. It's your field and it's probably important to remember that it is your field and however you manage it, it's going to be yours.

Q: What advice would you have for other landowners who might be interested in a program like EQIP?

Bruce: I'd say do it! Especially if you’ve got land and it's not being used for anything except for mowing it once or twice a week. I don't really believe in that. I believe that you’ve got land, you should use it. If you have land that you're not doing anything with, why not use it to help nature?

Hilda: I think that's right. I would say if you're considering a pollinator field, think about the reasons that you want to have it, and be sure that you understand the commitment that goes with having it. That includes what you might need to do to keep your neighborhood feeling comfortable with it. That might include education, a little fence, it might include inviting them over for a picnic. Whatever that is, understand what you're getting into. While EQIP is a completely voluntary program, once you sign up there is a commitment attached to it. You won't be able to look out very first year and say, “I don't think I like that…Maybe I should just mow it down.” That that's not going to be something you can do. So be sure that you understand what you're getting and that you're committed to taking care of it and giving it the value it deserves later. It’s not like having a prize rose bush in the front yard where you’re going to prune it, fertilize it, and it's going to produce a giant bloom in June every year.That's not the way that this field will work. Some of the plants will bloom every year, some will bloom every other year. You may get some plants you didn't expect to have. You may have to take out some plants that are invasive. It’s low maintenance, not no maintenance. You have to be committed to managing the plot after you get it planted.

Q: What is your favorite pollinator or wildlife species? And since you have benefited a lot from the plants, what is your favorite plant you have seen?

Hilda: I like all the birds. About two summers ago, we had a family of wild turkeys that lived down here. I would see them between the oats and the pollinator field every time that I mowed or was just walking around back there and think “We are proud owners of something great.”

There's a plant called Joe Pye Weed that is absolutely beautiful, and it is one of my favorites. I like the swamp milkweed too. We have feverfew, the black-eyed susans, all kinds of different varieties of asters that bloom in the fall. I like all of them! It would be hard to choose a favorite.

Bruce: I like purple, so when I see purple growing out there, I am attracted to that. Of the pollinators.... I'd say bees because they are such a help to the environment.

Q: What are your plans for the future?

Bruce: Actually, we're going to plant another pollinator plot up in the other field, partly to keep from mowing it. This time we're going to plan the seed mixture on our own. We might ask for their input, but we know what we would like to see in that plot now.

Hilda: Now that we have that experience, we feel confident that we can choose the seeds that we want to look at because this field is in front of our house, and we'll pay for it. Our experience of establishing our current fields through these Farm Bill programs has given us a very clear idea of which plants are the most colorful, when they bloom, how tall they are, all of those kinds of things that will help us make the decision about what we're putting in that patch in front of the house.

We have signs posted here like you see on the side of the interstate, “This is a Pollinator Habitat.” That makes it clear that these areas are valuable. I think it's really important for people who have those fields to think of them as having a lot of value and reminding other folks that they have value too. This isn't just a field of weeds. This field has a purpose. It's here for a reason. Our signs remind people not to spray around them, not to drive on them, etc. It is a designated protected area and I hope that other people who have these kinds of fields think of them in that way too.

Q: How did your community respond to the creation of your pollinator habitat?

Hilda: We have a lot of people who have come and seen it and said, oh my gosh. Actually, we have groups come to visit. We’ve had Girl Scouts, and we’ll have them again this summer. For two summers we had a university gardening class here, and their purpose wasn't to learn about the pollinator field, but they did get to learn about it because they were here. It was really a nice experience to help them learn about pollinators and our habitat. This summer, we have one or two garden clubs coming.

The neighbors, they're probably coming around. You know, a lot of our neighbors like their lawns a lot. They kill dandelions, and we grow them. So,there is a little bit of difference of opinion there.People have asked me, “When are you going to cut that field?”, “What are you doing down there?”

Bruce: When we do cut part of it, they mention, “oh, I see you mowed the field down!” And I say “yea, it’ll grow back."

Hilda: I think it's a fear of weeds to just to be direct about it. People have the idea that weeds are bad. Weeds aren’t bad, they're just plants.

People will want pollinator habitat for lots of different reasons. Our reason for having the fields is a little bit of self interest in saving some time and money, but our real interest is having a natural area and being thoughtful about the environment.

The bees benefit our entire neighborhood even though we're probably the only people with a garden or produce of any kind. They'll make people's flowers and their lawns more beautiful too if they're accustomed to the idea instead of being afraid of having bees in the yard.

We all live here together and do the best we can with all of our differences in beliefs about what our lawns should look like.

Thank you for joining us in reading this installment of Pollinator Partnership’s Working for Wildlife blog and special thanks to Hilda and Bruce Pettit of Pettit's Green Thumb Farm for sharing their Habitat Hero story! Watch the Habitat Hero video featuring Pettit's Green Thumb Farm.

This video series is made possible through funding and support from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and the USDA’s National Resources Conservation Service. The USDA is an equal opportunity provider, employer, and lender.

To ensure you never miss a new video, subscribe to the Working for Wildlife series here: tinyurl.com/mpjszd7k

To learn more about financial and technical assistance available to famers and landowners visit: pollinator.org/nrcs-regional-partner-biologists or farmers.gov

To find out more about Pettit’s Green Thumb Farm and their operations check out the links below

Pettit’s Green Thumb Farm Website: pettitsgreenthumbfarm.com...

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pettits.greenthumbfarm

To learn more about financial and technical assistance available to famers and landowners visit: pollinator.org/nrcs-regional-partner-biologists or farmers.gov  

This video series was created by Pollinator Partnership (P2). To learn more about P2’s mission and how you can help conserve pollinators, please visit the links below: