A Portsmouth family of four are turning their four-acre home into a true farm, with plans to raise animals, provide hippotherapy and riding lessons and teach spinning and weaving classes.

It’s an ambitious plan, but the deButhune family are hard at work turning plans into reality.

The property on Bristol Ferry Road is being cleared to raise a barn that will house two horses and a flock of eight sheep. The family currently owns 16 chickens, five ducks, two horses and visitors of more than 15 different species of birds, thus the farm’s name: Birdhaven Ranch.

Chris deButhune grew up in the East Bay and was given the property by his late mother, Margaret Ann Maurer deButhune, after she passed in 2015. His wife, Megan deButhune, is originally from Los Lunas, New Mexico, where she was a shepherd and weaver for most of her adult life. After coming to Portsmouth three summers ago, she has continued her trade and brought two of her many horses, a quarterhorse named Bullet and an Arabian named Lady.

The family plans to build a farm equipped for hippotherapy, horseback-riding lessons, yarn spinning and weaving lessons taught by Ms. deButhune, with the assistance her two children, Gale (age 7) and Joe (age 4). Ms. deButhune described hippotherapy as “a type of animal therapy using horses. Because they are herd animals, they want to be with people and they build connections with people that are beneficial mentally and physically for people that can’t solve their problems through traditional speaking therapy.”

This type of therapy is said to be beneficial for people with PTSD, physical handicaps, and mental development disabilities. It is also said to quicken the brain development of infants that are slow walkers or slow talkers, to put them on a saddle, to connect the motion of moving on a shoulder-to-hip animal, such as a horse, on how humans are meant to walk.

PTSD is one of the more common mental illnesses Ms. deButhune has treated in the past, and she said, “the way that trauma is instilled in us shows different types of struggles. There are the mean-spirited people that need a horse like the Arabian, in order to build a friendship and trust slowly, and there are some people that crawl up within themselves that need a trusting horse like Bullet to bring them out and into a comfortable environment.”

Ms. deButhune also plans on inviting the community to interact with her sheep and gain a knowledge for animal behavior.

With three looms in the house, Ms. deButhune can upcycle cotton, denim and wool from local thrift stores into bath mats, scarves, curtains, beach towels and coasters.