The Story of Cassidy Station and Its Upcoming Second Location

After school was out for the summer when he was a boy, Kyle Estes couldn’t wait to visit his grandparents at their farm between Ozark and Nixa. Country life was familiar to him, growing up on his own family’s farm in Mt. Vernon, yet those summer days with Gene and Doris Estes were special. Kyle looked forward to helping with chores like taking care of the cattle and dogs raised on the acreage, first homesteaded by the Estes family in 1872. “We worked stock dogs, border collie dogs were what [my grandfather] had, and did that together all the time,” he says.

Now, a few years after celebrating the farm’s 150th anniversary, this Ozark commercial real estate developer and his wife, local insurance agent Hollie Estes, have restored five original buildings and opened about 20 acres of the Missouri Century Farm so visitors can make their own treasured memories there.

Cassidy Station at Estes Farms has a name harking back to the early Christian County town along the old Chadwick Flyer railway line. It opened in December 2022 with the Cassidy Mercantile Store, located in a carefully preserved 100-year-old house that was once his grandparents’ home. “We took this house down to the studs to make sure it was going to be here another 150 years,” Estes says.

Inside the Mercantile, the shelves are filled with curated goods. They offer everything from fresh meat sourced from their own cattle to the Diva laundry detergent line from the Tyler Candle Company, one of their most popular items. Near the front door of the mercantile, there is a fully functioning kitchen where they display goods for sale, such as sauces, honey, tea and candied nuts. Also featured in the kitchen: Kyle and Hollie brew fresh coffee for their customers every day (a special Cassidy Station blend), and they like to partner with local bakeries to set out free desserts for the Mercantile’s visiting customers.

The success of the Mercantile has led Kyle and Hollie to make plans for a new Springfield shop that is soon to arrive. On March 1, Kyle and Hollie will have the grand opening for Galloway Mercantile, nestled in the Galloway neighborhood. This sister store allows them to expand Cassidy Station’s “warm welcome” to the Springfield community. It will offer products similar to the Mercantile’s and is housed in a building with history for Kyle’s family. It was originally his great-great-grandfather’s general store.

Back on the Nixa-area farm, there is even more for visitors to see than the Mercantile. Cassidy Station has a full-service flower shop  that is operated out of the back of the house in what used to be Estes’s grandfather’s workshop—and the workshop of his father before him.

In the years since opening Cassidy Station, Kyle and Hollie have also hosted regular events on the farm, like seasonal markets, first farm-to-table dinners, yoga classes, crafting and floral workshops, Christmas ice skating and more. There’s even an event space in the old barn and a bride and groom venue. The black and white Belted Galloway cattle graze in the fields along with the grass- and grain-fed Angus Herefords that Kyle raises for the beef sold at the farm.

“My generation and generations before, lots of people grew up going to their grandparents’ farm, and that was so many good memories for lots of people,” Estes says. “As time goes on, that’s further and further removed because nobody’s grandparents have farms anymore. So this is a way for people to experience that and get those same kind of memories.”

Inside the restored buildings, visitors find family heirlooms and artifacts. A 19th-century rifle his family once brought from Kentucky hangs above a store doorway, historic photos of Estes’ ancestors hang on tin walls salvaged from the barn and railroad tracks repurposed as drying racks and chandelier beams trim ceilings.

“We’ve got a bunch of antiques that have been stuck around here for years, and I’ve just pulled them out to make them come back to life,” he says. Estes says they were fortunate that his family kept so much over the years.

“Everything from the sales counters to our display tables, we’ve built out of either the old doors from the house or workshop tables,” he says. “Even the shelves on the wall were built out of reclaimed wood from the farm. We used hayloft floor for a lot of the accent walls We’ve used some of the original siding from the house.”

His family members who live close by often stop to see how everything is coming along at Cassidy Station. “I think everybody’s been kind of excited,” says Estes. “Everybody just likes to come see the project, cheer us on.”

And best of all, it’s just what Estes envisioned only a few years ago. “I sat out here in my farm truck, feeding cows, and dreamed this up,” he says.