Our Story
Meet the Rappe Family - Black Horse Ranch
Your first question might be, "Why is your ranch called Black Horse Ranch? I don't see any black horses!" Well, actually you are looking at five "black horses" - our last name, Rappe (pronounced Ruh-pay), means "Black Horse" in German; thus, our ranch is named Black Horse Ranch! And although we may not have any black equines on our property at this moment, we would like to have some in the future!
Our family has been following a dream for the last decade - a dream of starting our own ranch and raising clean food and happy animals, offering natural pastured meats to the local community. Although our dream started as a desire to own an acre on the outskirts of Boise, it has grown with our family and our experiences, culminating in the creation of Black Horse Ranch.
Trent and Hilary were married in Boise in 1999 and have lived in Oregon, Idaho, and Australia; We finally settled down in the lovely little community of Midvale, Idaho. Our daughter Beaux, and sons Jones (right) and Jax (left), have been very involved throughout our journey.
As our dream evolved and changed over the years, the Lord put key people in our path to fine tune our goals. What simply started with a desire for more room to roam, our dream has turned into a reality based on the foundation of healthy food and humanely raised animals.
We have also learned throughout our journey that community is very important to us. Although we will probably never be considered locals by the generations of homesteaders who still dwell in Middle Valley, our little community of Midvale has been so very welcoming of our family. Starting a ranch is tough, but would have been much harder without the help of our friends and neighbors! Midvale is full of numerous individuals dedicated to their community in ways that would baffle today's society. This community is a true testament to the fact that there are still absolutely amazing places to live in our great United States of America where we can still find model citizens and true, caring Americans!