The Guilford Farm Store That Opened Itself

As told to SEI Times by Tami Sallee-Thomas

Some businesses are built on a plan. This one was built on a lifetime of hobbies, a family farm, and a hundred-year-old recipe box.

Tami Sallee-Thomas, a retired special education teacher, opened the Split Oak Farm Store in Guilford almost by accident. For years, friends and coworkers had been asking to buy her farm-fresh eggs. Then came requests for her jams, her salsa, her preserves. She started delivering to them. By the time she opened the store, the business was, in her words, already in the works before the doors ever opened.

Her path there wound through several states and four decades. Born in Northern Kentucky, Tami moved to Ohio in fifth grade, graduated from Madeira High School, and earned her bachelor's and master's degrees from Arizona State University, where she met her husband. The couple married in 1983 and returned to the Midwest in 1990 to be near family. 

Indiana always held a special place in her heart, so she and her husband bought a farm in Rising Sun. They named it Split Oak Farm, after a magnificent oak that had been struck by lightning and split down the middle. Eventually they left that farm and settled in Greendale for twenty years, but they could never get farm life out of their system. When their grown daughters asked them to buy a farm again, one where the whole family could live together, they did just that. Today, four generations share Split Oak Farm & Orchard in Guilford, the name a tribute to that first beloved farm.

The store itself grew out of a season of change. As retirement approached, Tami watched women in the online farming community using their homemaking skills to open farm stands and earn a living doing what they loved. It struck her as the natural next step, a way to supplement her retirement income while being a stay-at-home grandmother for her grandchildren and helping her daughters at the same time. She calls it the best of both worlds. Every hobby she had collected since girlhood, from gardening and canning to baking, sewing and crafting, finally came together under one roof.

She modeled the store after the country general store her great-grandfather once ran. It carries far more than baked goods: preserves, home goods, health and wellness products, even clothing. Small-batch is the rule, a deliberate choice after she noticed many of her customers, including men and retirees, didn't need large quantities. Their comments and suggestions guide what she stocks next.

Getting the word out was the first real hurdle. The farm sits on a dead-end road with little passing traffic, so Tami leaned on the social media skills she first developed in the classroom, where she used a private Facebook group to keep parents connected to their children's learning. Neighbors shared her information, and her hairdresser stocked flyers in the salon. The response, she says, was amazing. Today, she has a lively social media presence where she shares behind the scenes videos of life on the farm and what it takes to operate her business. She believes what resonates most is her commitment to real food, grown organically, free of additives and preservatives, a message rooted in her own health journey. 

That focus shaped who the store serves. Her goal quickly became helping families who want to put good food on the table but struggle to find the time between work and running kids around. When customers began messaging with specific needs, allergies, and dietary restrictions, she found she could meet most of them, and doing so, she says, makes her heart happy.

The balance is the hard part. She admits she gets excited and sometimes takes on too much, though help has come from an unexpected place: her 92-year-old mother-in-law, who lives with the family and still wants to stay productive. She loves doing the dishes and the laundry, which is no small thing given how many dishes a busy farm kitchen can generate.

Community has become the heart of it all. A recent addition, a Free Little Library just outside the store, reflects how much Tami has come to love giving back to the neighbors who have shown up for her dream. One of her favorite connections began when a woman with a large flower garden reached out, not looking to sell anything, just hoping to share her blooms rather than let them fade in the field. She asked only for jars to put them in. Now her whimsical arrangements sit in the store free for anyone to enjoy, and the two have become friends. Around the farm, she is known simply as the Flower Fairy.

For all the daily work, what Tami finds most rewarding runs deeper than sales. She is passing down skills, knowledge, and recipes learned from her mother, her grandmothers, and her great-grandmother, some of them more than a century old. She is already watching her own daughters cook from those same recipes for their families.

She hopes more people will support farm stands and stores, preserving a way of life she worries could be lost to big-box retail. When you buy from a local farmer, she points out, most of that money stays in the community. The food hasn't traveled thousands of miles. It is picked ripe, sold fresh, and often comes with the chance to meet the person who grew it. One customer told her she would rather buy her eggs, even though she knew someone who was giving them away for free, because she knew exactly how the hens were cared for. That trust, she says, really resonated with her.

As for how the community can help, her answer is simple: spread the word. In a crazy world, she says, we could all use a little more of that kind of kindness, passed hand to hand, jar to jar, neighbor to neighbor.

The Split Oak Farm Store is located at 19327 Turkey Point Rd, Guilford, IN 47022, and is open daily from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Follow along on Facebook (Split Oak Farm Store and Split Oak Farm and Orchard), Instagram (@split_oak_farm_and_orchard), and TikTok (@farm_family_fun).