From Dream to Reality
by Sharon Heiber • Photography by Jamie Conners
On their 15-acre farm animal sanctuary in Clinton’s Maxwelton Valley, Sarah and Ansel Santosa are out to build a kinder world—reimagining our relationship with farm animals and keeping food waste out of the environment. They were teenage sweethearts in the suburbs of Minneapolis when they started envisioning their future together, which included living on a farm and having a child.
“We met on the first day of school, in our freshman English class. I fell in love with Ansel instantly,” Sarah said. “It took him a bit longer to reciprocate.”
“By the time we graduated, we had our daughter’s name picked out,” Ansel added. Together, Sarah and Ansel attended the University of Washington. They married and launched their careers in Seattle—Ansel working in technology, Sarah managing a bridal boutique—but they never lost sight of their teenage plans. After a decade in Seattle, they began looking for somewhere to grow their family and establish a farm.
They started exploring areas within a two-hour radius of Seattle, at first focusing their search on Port Townsend. They hadn’t considered Whidbey Island until they visited and fell in love with the farm in Clinton that officially became their home in 2018. They named it Ballydídean, which means farm sanctuary in Irish, a nod to Sarah’s ancestry. Soon after, they adopted their daughter, Gwen.
