Sarah Butte wanted to use her background in sustainable horticulture to start a business creating herbal products from garden-grown and foraged plants. She created a CSA and then sold her products through a natural medicine clinic, but she never earned enough for it to be more than a hobby.

She took a chance and moved back to Florence, her rural hometown on the Oregon coast, to operate a hundred-year-old homestead and launch a bioregional apothecary as a side job.

Sherry Parker was single mother to three children when devastation rained down.

California’s Camp Fire, the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California’s history, and the most expensive natural disaster in the world in 2018 in terms of insured losses, devoured their rental home; and in the process took three of their pets along with it.

The family was temporarily relocated to Auburn where they stayed in the home of a kind stranger who donated a cottage to the wild-fire survivors.

Amelia Smith is building her first home through the USDA Rural Development's Mutual Self-Help program in collaboration with Six County Association of Governments (SEAULG), which improves local government coordination of mutually beneficial programs where she lives in Sevier, Utah.

As a single mother of two, Amber W. works as a youth counselor, a YMCA fitness instructor, and a dance instructor for children and adults with disabilities in Helena, Mont.  Amber had long dreamed of becoming a homeowner and, in 2021, her vision came to fruition through a combination of USDA Rural Development (RD) Single Family Home Loans and Grants.