Twenty-seven years ago, on the grounds of a run-down farm, the love found between Julie and Mark Hardy led to their uber-successful reindeer ranch in a rural area just west of Rantoul.
Julie originally grew up in Urbana and never thought that she would meet and fall in love with a farmer who owned a Christmas tree farm.
It seems that fate had a different idea though because the two first met down the road from what’s now their farm. Mark was curious about a couple tearing down a barn. That couple ended up being none other than Julie’s parents.
Julie’s mother told her she’d “met the nicest young man” and like many daughters who have mothers that meddle in their love lives, Julie brushed off the comment and didn’t really take her mother seriously.
Mark said that when he met Julie, he had been snooping around the land of the old barn and she had been there helping her dad in tearing out the wood for her parents’ retirement home.
A year after the two met, Julie quit her job and married Mark. As the new part owner of a Christmas tree farm, Julie had a new challenge to take on.
Julie had to ask herself, “How am I going to market a Christmas tree farm in the middle of nowhere.”
Her affirming answer, reindeer.
She said that the first time she saw a reindeer she “fell in love”. Because there aren’t many farms or Christmas tree farms with reindeer, she saw it as a perfect marketing opportunity and the chance to raise an animal she loved so much.
Their quest to find the reindeer, now one of two major attractions on the farm, led them eventually to expanding from the two they first bought for the farm and ended up in Alaska where they purchased thirteen more reindeer.
People who come to the farm have the ability to purchase a ticket to feed the reindeer, during which an employee will tell you all about the reindeer at the farm and anything else you may want to know about them.
“Reindeer really do fly. They just fly Delta.”
Julie Hardy
While some years it’s hit or miss whether Champaign County will get snow during November or even December, when the snow does come, the reindeer do something they like to call a reindeer dance.
They run and frolic in the snow and instead of looking like the big creatures they are, they look like little children running wild and free.
Apart from their 20 reindeer spanning four generations, Hardy’s Reindeer Ranch offers hayrides, a paintball shooting gallery, pedal-karts, and their other major attraction, a themed corn maze.
The corn maze found on the farm is one unlike any other you’ve seen. Every year Julie and Mark sit down and decide on a new theme for the maze.
This year’s theme is called “Mystical Maze” and features a dragon and fairy that you have to work your way through in order to find all 8 checkpoints hidden within the maze.
Hardy’s Reindeer Ranch also has a banquet hall and caters to tour buses all throughout the country.
It also has pumpkins available for picking during the fall. While they don’t grow them on the property, they still offer them during the fall season to add to the experience.
If you want to find out more about what they have to offer as well as their hours for the fall and winter season, you can go to their website or send them an email.
Be sure to check them out sometime this season and see all they have to offer!
