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It's a place where people of all ages find hope, support, and a path to their God-given potential.

Hello, I'm Peter Noll.

On this edition of Tennessee is Talking, we're talking with the co-founder of the Sheltering Tree Ranch.

Their mission is to partner with families in providing Christ-centered education, character development, and personal growth for both children and adults with learning challenges.

Let the conversation begin.

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West Tennessee PBS presents Tennessee is Talking.

Let the conversation begin.

Thanks for joining the discussion here on Tennessee is Talking.

I am Peter Noll.

Education isn't one size fits all, especially for those with learning challenges.

Since 2007, the Sheltering Tree Ranch in Savannah has been providing instruction, spiritual growth, and community support to help children and adults thrive.

Joining us today is the co-founder of the Sheltering Tree Ranch, Dave Boroughs.

Thank you for being here.

What a pleasure and honor- -Welcome to Channel 11.

-it is to be with you.

-Thank you.

-Let's start out with just an overview of what the Sheltering Tree Ranch is all about.

Well, as you said earlier, it's a place of hope for all families, really, that have children and adults with special needs.

We are a 501(c)(3) public nonprofit, so everybody owns us.

They can help, support, and give, and know that they are pouring into themselves.

They are also in their families.

We are board-driven and board-run, and we have educational and horse therapy.

We have a special needs general store there that we have our 21 and older kids in and adults in.

There's just a lot of things that we do at the ranch to help folks with special needs kids.

Where in Savannah are you located?

We're at Highway 226, 3100, and right across the road from the Hardin County Savannah Airport.

If you can make it to the airport in Savannah, then you can see Sheltering Tree Ranch right across the road.

How did it all start?

It's a miracle, number one, with really just a family in need of help and support.

Bobbie Ann and I, back in 2000-- That's your wife.

That's my wife, Bobbie Ann.

We have a son that's 30 now, and his name's Jordan.

He was diagnosed with autism.

At the time, 1 in 500 kids was diagnosed with autism.

Through the years, today, it's 1 in 32, so that's how much it's increased.

During that time, not known of a lot.

We were confronted with the fact that our son was diagnosed with autism.

We made a five-hour trip back from Knoxville one day, where he got diagnosed there after the doctor had shared with us that our son would never really do a lot, and he wouldn't accomplish anything in his life.

We just figured out that day that would be determined to the Lord.

That whatever Jordan's life could be, that's what me and his mom would allow that to be.

That we'd work as hard as we possibly could each and every day.

How old was Jordan when he was diagnosed?

Jordan was five when he was diagnosed with autism, which really is late on today's standards.

At the time, back in 2000, that was probably at the right age, but he was five.

I bet you and your wife were wanting an answer.

We needed an answer, wanted an answer.

He wasn't meeting major milestones in his life, those type of things.

We were actually going to Jackson to get therapy at different places here - STAR Center, Kiwanis - doing those things here, and just trying to get all the resource help we could for him.

At that time, we just wanted Jordan's life to be the very best that it could be.

We didn't know really what that would entail, but over the years, it involved Bobbie Ann learning about ABA.

It's Applied Behavior Analysis, is what it is.

At the time, it wasn't used a lot, just making its way to Tennessee, basically.

We were trying to get Jordan the most help we could get with the ABA.

We also had heard that the hippotherapy, the horse therapy, was working with kids with autism and helping in therapeutic learning and occupational, speech, and physical therapy.

Also, out of 10 marriages at the time were divorcing with special needs kids.

We were having all of these challenges and issues around us each and every day.

As just a dad, a husband, a pastor, different things that were involved in my life, I began to ask the question, also, "What can we do to help other people?

What can we do to make Jordan's life better?"

One day, the Lord said, "Well, you're going to have a place called Sheltering Tree.. and you're going to build a ranch."

I said, "Okay, Lord.

With what?"

"By faith."

Anyway, started talking to Bobbie Ann that day about that conversation we had with the Lord.

Since then, that was actually 2012 when that happened, we started this 501(c)(3) public nonprofit called Sheltering Tree Ranch.

We are board-driven, as I told you before.

We found a piece of property there in Savannah that was 50 acres, that was going to be a place called Airport Meadows.

It did develop, and we were able to purchase that 50 acres.

We were able to get all of our paperwork signed and turned in for all of our tax exemption forms and all those things over a period of a year and a half or so.

We got that finished up, and we moved out to the ranch.

-At the ranch--.

-You sold your house, and you guys moved out there?

We literally sold our home, everything that we had, for the most part, and moved across town to Sheltering Tree Ranch, we did.

We live there today.

We're the only home there today, the director's home.

We're there today just overseeing the vision and the mission of the ranch.

We move out, and we thought that the school building would be first, but it actually wasn't.

We had a guy that was a local guy that believed in what we were doing.

He called me one morning and said, "Dave," he said, "you want to go down and take a look at something with me?"

I said, "I sure do."

We rode down to an area on the river, and they had this Morton horse barn there, probably a $60,000 barn.

He said, "Dave, would you look at the barn?

Would that barn work at Sheltering Tree Ranch?"

I said, "Oh my goodness, it's phenomenal."

He said, "Well, the Lord told me to give it to you this morning.

If you've got a place there, we're going to bring it.

Take it down piece by piece, metal, wood, the whole deal.

Take it down, and we're going to bring it out to you.

Can you have a spot ready in two weeks?"

I'm like, "Well, we'll try."

Anyway, our barn was donated to us first.

We had a couple of gifts from some donors there in Hardin County that, just out of two donors, raised $22,500 for the barn project, was able to get all that going.

That was the beginning of '15, and then we were able to find our first school building.

It was in Chattanooga at the time, and we had to have a green-label school building for the state of Tennessee for a school.

Back years ago, Miss Tennessee was deaf, and she performed and she got Miss Tennessee as a deaf person.

She lived in Chattanooga, and she started a non-profit there for special needs kids, basically the deaf kids and the blind.

They had outgrown the building, and we were able to find it, purchase that building with a gift and a grant from-- the Darryl Worley Foundation actually had give us a $10,000 educational gift.

We purchased that building, moved it to Savannah to the ranch.

That August, we started our first school with 15 students, and I think we had probably five teachers at the time.

That was in August of '15, and then we were able to find another school building within the next year.

With autism, as I shared with you before, the numbers from 1 in 500 when Jordan was diagnosed to where today it's 1 in 32, the numbers are growing.

We had a waiting list at the time.

We found another building in Dixon, Tennessee, and went and looked at it.

It was green label also.

The lady there, Lori Seacrest, I'll never forget Miss Lori and Ryan there.

She showed the building to us and said, "Would this building work for you?"

We're like, "Yes, it really would."

She said, "Let me pray about what we want to do."

She called me back in a week, and she said, "Dave, I was an Easter Seals baby, and I never repaid my debt back to the people who gave the Easter Seals, and I want to do it now."

She said, "We're going to donate this building to you."

We had some guys at AG Trucking go to Dixon and pick up those buildings and bring them back and set that building up.

We had Lowe's Pros in Williamson.

We had all the local contractors there help us with that building.

It's a pretty large building.

Allowed us to go up from 15 students up to about 30 or so at the.. Then we were able to find another green-label building from the county that we purchased from those guys, and we moved over to the ranch.

We went from basically 30 or so students to where we are today.

We've got three buildings there for school.

We've got nearly 40 students that are in them.

We have 71 families that's on our waiting list today, so we're in desperate need for another building today.

Found another building in Lebanon, but it hasn't been donated to us.

We need to raise the funds for that building.

That's how the school got started.

That's all the buildings we've got there.

Then we had local folks that helped us with our 21 and older program that we have, which is a ranch hand program.

We will have 30 full-time residents that live on the property one day, like my son that's 30 now.

Those kids are getting older every day.

Parents like Bobbie Ann and I, we wonder a lot, will we outlive our children?

So many people are thinking that right now.

They're in their 70s or 80s, and their autistic kids are now 50s and 60s.

"What am I going to do with them?"

They don't want to put them in a facility necessarily.

At the ranch, we have five residential homes there.

We have 30 full-time residents.

There's a piece of property there that we don't own that we made an offer on back a few weeks ago.

We're hoping and praying that God will open up the door for that prop.. to become available so we can purchase it.

We are waiting on them.

We also do respite care for families.

Tell us about that, because that's-- You always hear that there's a need for that.

There's such a need, and 8 out of 10 families today that divorce, it's special needs kids.

With Bobbie Ann, we understand the pressures that are in a marriage with children with special needs.

Most of the time, the family just doesn't make it.

With our biblical counseling that we do there, we will have five 24 by 24 A-frame cabins that sit over a really beautiful creek area there at the ranch.

We've got the foundation dug on one of them right now, waiting on the block layers to get there the first week.

We raised $21,000 on the cabin project that we have waiting for that project to go up.

We've got some people who are going to lay the block.

We've got folks that are going to frame it.

We've got folks that will do the electrical.

We've got people who will do the plumbing and all those things.

We've just got to get the floor and put it in first.

That'll be for families to be able to use a night or two a week, free of charge, that need respite care.

We'll take care of their kids for them.

If they'll go through our biblical counseling, they can stay there at no charge.

Then also, it'll be a place that if they're not being used, if somebody wanted to come to Hardin County and stay the night, which a lot of people do, then they can come there.

They can rent those cabins over the creek, beautiful, and they can get to see the miracle at the lowest [crosstalk].

I want to go stay there.

I do.

It sounds beautiful.

A-frame cabins, 24 by 24, and little awesome front and back porches, and just the most wonderful place in Hardin County over Horse Creek.

It's beautiful.

Now, Dave, before your.. did you work with horses?

Did you have any experience on a ranch?

Did you grow up on a farm, or is this all new to you too?

I did grow up with horses.

My dad's horse was killed when I was nine.

The horse business left us at that time.

My wife, Bobbie Ann, loved horses.

Bobbie Ann is dyslexic, and went through school.

No one ever knew it but she and one of her teachers.

She's dyslexic.

Horse therapy, really horses, really was therapy for her and her life.

That's where the horse came in.

She loved horses.

I met her when I was 19, and I was praying for a wife.

Then I met her, and she said, "Do you like horses?"

I went, "I love horses."

"Can you ride horses?"

I'm like, "I'm a cowboy.

What are you talking about?"

Anyway, that's how I got back into the horse business, just simply because Bobbie Ann loved it so much.

Through the years, she gave lessons to a lot of folks.

Once, we learned that horse therapy, the hippotherapy, was really working with individuals with autism and other needs.

Men and women who've been in armed forces and who have some serious mental challenges, the horse therapy works for them also.

We wanted to offer that at the ranch.

We started with a borrowed horse and a borrowed barn for the first year.

We had 14 kids that started our horse program.

We did it at a person's home there in Savannah.

Then the next year we were able to move from there to a little bit larger location, then out to the ranch.

Today we have seven horses.

We have probably 80 folks, at least, that use the horse program one way or another today.

We have a 60 by 50 barn for the most part, a 200 by 120 arena.

We've got round pens and we've got an area out there that we use for just equine sports, and the creek that we have there, you can ride on it.

We've got a wonderful facility to ride the horses in today.

Yes, I've read about veterans who have PTSD doing horse therapy.

I've heard they use it for people that are incarcerated.

Horses have this special power to connect with people in need.

They do.

Like some dogs need to be trained to be service animals and work with people with special needs, do horses go through that too, or not really?

There are some special horses out there that really can sense kids and adults with trauma and issues.

They sense it.

They just feel it in some way, shape, for.. What do you think it is- I don't know how the Lor.. -about the connection with people and horses?

I don't know.

I really don't know.

I just know that it's there and it works.

With our kids that come, our horses and our ponies that we have there, they just stand there for them.

Then when they're on them and riding them, the kids will stim, and they'll flap and they'll do different things.

Our horses that we have, they just are so calm and so peaceful, and it just gives the adults and the kids a sensation that's different.

They learn trust and they learn how to have feelings and emotions for things, and they show it on the horses.

It's a real big deal.

We do the occupational speech and physical therapy, basically, with the horses also.

How do you do some of those things and teach the little kids?

If they want the horse to go, then you got to go learn how to cluck.

[clucks] You use your tongue muscles for.

You were good at that.

I can tell you've done that before.

I've done it a time or two.

Hand-eye coordination for children with autism, or any type of basically special needs disability.

Taking just a clothesline and putting it in the mane of a horse, and having a child sit up on the horse and reach up and grab the little clothespin and take it off is hand-eye coordination.

Then, to go to another step and put a little bag on the horn of the saddle, and take that little clip off and put it into the bag.

Then they get real adventurous, and it's not from there to the bag.

Then we set up a little bucket and they'll take the little clothespin off of the hair.

Then they're walking with a horse, and they reach over and they drop it in the bucket.

That's how you do that.

You learn how to do speech, and you learn how to do occupational and physical therapy with the use of the horse, just in some little simple things like that.

Did your son, Jordan, does he-- [?]

horses take after his mom?

He absolutely does not like hor.. Are you serious?

I'm very serious.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

He loves the music and loves the computers and loves those things, but there are so many other children that do.

My wife, that's her therapy.

When she's had a really tough day, about an hour worth of just getting away from school, getting on the horse.

She just works so hard, but after about an hour of being on the horse, everything just smooths out.

It makes me a lot easier to live with at that moment.

Anyway.

You told us all the miraculous steps and donations of.. the Sheltering Tree Ranch bit by bit.

Fast forward like 10, 20 years, where do you envision it?

What would be your dream?

The vision we have-- and the Lord gave me the vision the day that we went on the property.

The vision for the school there will be 120 students in school there every day.

We are a fully accredited ACSI school, K-12.

Now we have been for the last seven years.

We are one in a few schools in the state that is certified.

Also take the IEA vouchers that are available to kids with special needs.

All the criteria needed to grow is there.

We are going to 120 kids.

We've got a 11,000 square foot schematic design on a building that will be a permanent building.

One of my mentors shared with me years ago, from Jackson, Mr. Gary Taylor.

Gary said, "Dave, you've got to go build it slow, build it slow, build it slow, a piece at a time."

We've listened to him.

We've done one building, two buildings, three buildings.

We will have another fourth modular building that'll let us go from 40 kids up to about 58, 60, and then a fifth building that'll get us up to nearly 80 students.

Then we'll build our permanent building there for school, which will be the 11,000 square foot building, for 120 kids.

There'll be 25 staff that will be there that'll work in that particular permanent building that'll be there.

The [?]

will move off at that time.

Then the barn program that we have, we have one part of that today.

We have seven horses, and the arena there is not covered.

We want it to be covered so we can do the therapy year-round.

We can only do it for certain months right now.

We'll add on another end to the barn just like the one that's there.

Will let us go up another seven, eight horses.

We'll get up to 15 or 16 horses that we can use there in the therapy and all that we do there.

Our special needs ranch, our ranch hands that we have there.

The General Store is a little restaurant that we created back a couple of years ago.

That's open to the public.

It's open to the public.

What are the hours?

Monday through Friday, you can go in the General Store from 10:00 to 4:00.

Then Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, we feed lunch there from ten o'clock to two o'clock, those days.

Wonderful food, wonderful.

Our ranch hands there, they'll come up and they'll meet and greet you.

They'll wait on you and wait on your table.

They learn how to face the aisles and the shelves, and they learn to sweep and mop and clean and clean the windows and the doors.

They learn all of those cleaning techniques and all.

They learn how to wash and dry.

Ultimately, when the 30 full-time residents live there, they will be trained in the store.

Then our five cabins that we have over in the creek, those five cabins every day will be cleaned and kept up by adults with special needs.

They'll leave their little home that they'll stay at night with a nanny.

They get up and get their clothes on in the morning.

They'll go out of there.

They'll go to the General Store, get on a golf cart.

They'll ride over to the cabins that's been used that night, and they'll walk in.

The same techniques they use in the General Store on swee.. the floors and cleaning the windows and the coffee makers, and getting the bedding off the sheets and the towels and all, they will take those out of the cabin.

They'll go back to the General Store.

They'll wash and dry them.

They'll get the cabins ready each day.

That's going to be their job.

We also have church there on Sundays.

For families who have kids with-- they're on the spectrum, they stim and they flap and they make different noises, which a lot of times, in a lot of churches, that's not the best situation.

Back in 2015, we started a church there at the ranch that's open there 10:30 every Sunday morning.

We use that time for church and spiritual needs for our kids there.

You mentioned you're a minister.

What were you doing before all this?

I actually work for a living still today, okay?

I do home care for a living.

I had a business there and a partner there for 25 years in Savannah called Riverside Medical.

Six years ago though, with a vision of the ranch-- This is a side gig?

Sheltering Tree Ranch, which is the side gig?

I work 20 hours a week for the company now called Quipt Home Medical.

They bought us out six years ago.

I work and make my living off-site.

I don't take a dime out of the ranch.

Gary Taylor told me years ago too, "Dave, don't ever take a dime out of the ranch.

You always work harder than anybody that's there.

You give back, and don't you ever take a dime out of it."

Do you find time to sleep?

I do, and I sleep well.

I don't stay up long once my head hits the pillow.

Yes, I don't have a problem going to sleep.

I make my living 20 hours a week for Quipt, and then the rest of the time I'm there at the ranch.

We're at the General Store three days a week, Wednesday, Thursday, and Fridays.

I'll run the cash register there.

We're involved in all the growth.

We're trying to raise the funds now, another $130,000, for a school building.

That was my next-- Before we leave, it sounds like community support has been instrumental from across the state.

This streams across the country.

Anyone can stream Tennessee is Talking.

How can people watching this program help, support, find out more?

Where should they go?

First of all, pray.

We believe that prayer answers [?].

The Lord answers prayers.

Prayer, first and second, is resources and funds.

Right now, we are trying to purchase a building in Lebanon that's at a school system there that they're going to be done with in June.

We need $130,000 that we want to purchase that building with.

We'll go and get it, move it to be our fourth building, to allow us to start the next school building for next year.

If people want to contribute, donate, how do they do that?

There again, we are a public nonprofit, tax-exempt.

All right?

You can use that for your tax advantages also, but they can call the ranch there and speak with our director of our schools and/or me.

That's 731-925-2922, I think, is the number there, or my cell phone, 731-607-7777.

-You owe this guy.

-Please do.

Do you have a website?

We have a website that is up and is very,.. You can go to the website, get all the information you need.. What is that website?

It's www.shelteringtree.org.

We are also on Facebook with Sheltering Tree and our school, and also the General Store's on Facebook.

We have plenty of ways that you can reach us and get in touch with us.

We need money for schools.

The only thing that we owe for the property at the moment is the dirt.

Every other building, every tractor, every 4x4 Ranger, every bush hall, all the horse, everything there is paid for.

Every building outside the home that we live in, we rent it from the ranch, we don't own it, and the dirt.

Our little church that we have there, every dollar, every dime that is taken up on Sunday mornings goes to pay for the dirt and makes the dirt payment.

Then every dollar, every cent that anybody would ever give to the ranch goes specifically in to taking care of our children and our teachers and the light bill and electricity, the water, and the things that we need there to support what we do.

Nothing goes to me, and everything goes to the ranch.

What a wonderful program.

Thank you for stopping by.

It's a miracle.

It is a miracle, and you said that at the beginning of the..

Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you so very much.

Keep us updated because it .. -Just [crosstalk].

-Thank you.

Thank you so much for joining us.

I wish we had more time, but that is all for this edition of Tennessee is Talking.

Again, a big thank you to Dave Boroughs and the team at Sheltering Tree Ranch for their dedication to our community and helping people.

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