About Us
Kenshō Stables and Well-being Weekend Camp are the fruits of a lifetime for Gretchen & Alex Palmer.
Gretchen and Alex met working together on Rugby World Cup at a Silicon Valley startup in 2007 but it wasn’t until 2013 when the couple had their very first date. With a first kiss on the Santa Monica beach under the moonlight, a fairy tale romance began. Even thought Alex was living in London and Gretchen in LA, the two love birds saw each other every five to six weeks — in Chicago, London and Paris. Thirteen months after their first date, Alex made the big move to the US to start their lives together. A four-day fairy tale wedding at a château near Brantôme, France seemed a fitting location for the intimate ceremony.
The international couple spent one year together in LA and six years in picturesque Ashland, Oregon.
During that time, Gretchen launched MTO Agency and grew it into a seven-figure business. The company started as a values-based digital marketing agency that created meaningful campaigns including the award-nominated work that successfully changed the 100+ year Olympic record for legendary Native American Jim Thorpe. But overtime, Gretchen broadened her work as a transformational Fortune 250 executive & consultant into delivering critical culture change with leaders and within organizations to meet the needs of the modern business world.
Today, Gretchen spends her time teaching Conscious Leadership and EQ skills to executives, teams and leaders. It is through this work, that the calling to lead high-impact retreats came to “be what wants to be”.
Serendipitously, Alex made a similar shift from the world of sports marketing and owning a high-end bike parts e-commerce store to discovering his calling to Mens Work. Beginning with his own journey with mental health, Alex trained in men’s coaching while simultaneously working on his Masters in The Neuroscience of Psychology at King’s College of London.
Today, Alex participates in multiple men’s groups and has launched The Fellowman Podcast, a podcast about men’s mental, physical and spiritual health.
During the pandemic, Gretchen and Alex decided to move to the Austin area, a place near Gretchen’s family and with direct flights to London. After a few months in Austin, Gretchen’s high school friend and real estate broker sent them the property of her dreams.
As a little girl growing up in small town Granbury, Texas, she would ride her bike to a beautiful horse property and daydream of a life raising horses in serenity.
It would take almost 40 years to make the dream a reality. The 25 pristine acres with a stunning arena in a cute artist town outside of Austin, Texas would be the perfect home for their work to come together to create a sanctuary for conscious explorers and adventurers.
A ranch wasn’t just a dream come true for Gretchen, tiny Mila also loves ranch life! From this perch, she can make sure the lizards knows who is the new boss in town!
Alex might be a London city boy but he’s adapting to ranch life with the help of a little heavy machinery! So much to do to turn this horse property into the sanctuary we envision for our well-being retreats!
Next step: integrate the horses into a herd where they could all roam freely, grazing and being horses. Trigger, the palomino quarter horse on the right, had lived most of his life in a stall or paddock separated from other horses. To finally, be able to give him a herd of his own, where he was not dependent on humans for food, freedom of movement or socialization has been remarkable. But would he still want to visit his people? Would he still want to ride? After three months of integration, the answer is yes! He seeks human attention, he enjoys the activities and challenges of riding and we are so happy that he is happy with his new life with friends.
And then: baby chicks! We purchased 4 bantam hens to start raising eggs for our family. Domino, the one in this picture and the littlest one, well, turned out to be a rooster. The best looking rooster you have ever seen!
After four months of baby care to ensure their safety, the hens are now free-ranging and our white silkie is providing one teeny-tiny egg per day. Hopefully, once the Texas heat lets up, the other two will start, too.
Of course, any self-respecting ranch needs a livestock guardian dog (LGD). Ollie is the 10th animal at Kenshō and is learning how to dog while also bonding with his livestock.
Ollie is a Great Pyrenees puppy who at 3 months was about the size of a 6 month old Labrador. Ollie lives in the house with us but over time his breed will desire to spend more and more time with his charges. He’s naturally protective and we’re thrilled to have a guardian for our ranch animals, little Mila and our son coming soon!