On any given morning in West Liberty, before the sun has fully decided what kind of day it will be, there’s already life stirring in two places for the Kauffman family: the farm just beyond the castle-lined roads of 287, and the shop on the Logan/Champaign County line. There, neighbors push open the door looking for something. Sometimes it's a product, sometimes it's an answer, sometimes it's just a little hope.

For Alan Kauffman, the rhythm of the land has always been present, even when he briefly stepped away from it.

There was a season when he traded boots for scrubs, working in cardiology as a nuclear medicine technologist—running stress tests, studying hearts, helping people understand what was happening inside their bodies. It was meaningful work, but not quite home. Even then, he spent his vacation days not relaxing, but attending farm conferences, quietly holding onto something deeper that hadn’t been let go.

“I was trying to help on the back end,” he says now, with a half smile. “But I kept thinking, what if we can help people on the front end?”

That idea, the quiet conviction that health begins long before the hospital visit, would eventually guide him back to agriculture. But by then, the circle had grown larger than he ever imagined. Because alongside him, his wife had been walking her own path of discovery — one that began not with farming, but with figuring out what she wasn’t meant to do.

In college at Goshen, where the two of them first met, thanks to a roommate date, neither of them thought much about it at the time. She was studying biology and planning to become a physical therapist, but an internship changed everything. It just didn’t fit.

So she went home, unsure, working at a bank, searching. It was her dad who gently nudged her in a new direction- speech-language pathology. A trip to the library, back before Google could answer life’s questions, set her on a completely new course. She found her calling there.

Today, she works through the Madison-Champaign County Educational Service Center, stepping into preschool classrooms in Urbana and West Liberty. Daily, she now helps children find their voices, sometimes literally for the very first time. She doesn’t pull them out of their class; she steps into it, weaving therapy into play, learning, and laughter.

“I see kids with all kinds of needs,” she says. “Autism, Down syndrome, articulation delays, but the goal is always the same. Help them communicate. Help them connect.”

In many ways, that’s what her family’s business does, too. Because five years ago, in the middle of a world that suddenly felt uncertain and overwhelming, the Kauffmans opened their doors, not just to sell products, but to start conversations.

When you walk into Heaven’s Dew Healthy Home, 8874 U.S. Route 68, West Liberty, you don’t just find shelves. You find intention. There are soaps without chemicals you can’t pronounce. Toothbrushes that don’t end up in landfills. Honey, teas, essential oils and lotions that feel like they belong in your home.

Join the Kauffmans for their fifth anniversary celebration of the opening of Heaven’s Dew on Saturday, June 13, during their store’s open hours. For more information, visit the Heaven’s Dew Healthy Home Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/HeavensDewHealthyHome or their website at: https://hdewag.com/ .

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