By Bill Barth and Stephanie Klett
LAKE GENEVA, Wisconsin – When you open the door to Pine Hill Farm wellness boutique, prepare to open your mind as well.
“A lot of people come to us as a last resort because they’re sick, they’ve seen multiple specialists, doctors, even functional providers and they have gotten nowhere,” says Jackie Phillips, one of three sisters who own the business. “I can not tell you the number of people who come in that way and leave a happy customer because they finally got the answers they need. Your body was built to balance itself naturally as long as you are giving it the right tools.”
Jackie is the eldest of three “sister-owners” at the shop, located at 704 W. Main St. in Lake Geneva. The middle sister is Leanne Anthon, the youngest is Lynley Gray. They grew up on the farm near Watertown, which has been in the family since the 1850s.
All three sisters have backgrounds in the health field. Jackie’s experience is in home healthcare and rehabilitation. Leanne is a registered nurse who holds a doctoral degree and teaches nursing at Madison College. Lynley worked in occupational therapy. Like farming, being a health professional runs in the family. Their mother is a nurse.
The sisters opened the first Pine Hill Farm shop at Watertown in 2020. The Lake Geneva store opened in July of 2025.
Leanne explains how the farming and healthcare backgrounds translated into a retail wellness business.
“We knew we wanted to keep the farm in the family, and we also knew we didn’t want to milk cows twice a day,” she told us, adding, “She (Jackie) is the oldest sister, so she’s the boss.”
It’s clear in our conversation that Jackie is a leader, a true believer and something of a mad scientist in creating formulas for many of the wellness products sold at Pine Hill Farm. It was a dream to transition to organic farming, which included growing a small acreage of hemp. The rest is leased to a certified organic dairy farmer so the entire 80 acres is fully sustainable.
Yes, for those who may be wondering, hemp has a connection to marijuana. But hemp-derived CBD (which stands for cannabidiol) is non-psychoactive and federally legal containing less than 0.3% THC, the active ingredient of marijuana. Think of it as generating the benefits without the high. Pine Hill Farm is not a pot shop; there’s science behind this.
“I’m creative and I like to bake recipes,” Jackie said. “I made my own skin care products at home, my own facial toner. I thought I could do this. I did a lot of research, with lots of trial and error.”
After raising the first hemp crop the decision was whether to sell it to somebody else or create their own brand using Jackie’s line of recipes. The sisters came together, operating first at regional farmers markets before taking the brick-and-mortar plunge with the Watertown store.
“All of our products she (Jackie) formulated at her house,” Leanne said. “She created them in the basement. She truly is the brains behind the products.”
Opening that first shop in Watertown at the height of the Covid pandemic sounds like a risky gamble, yet the sisters had confidence not only in the products but also that a strong need existed.
“Our mom was a nurse, but she always raised her three girls to have an open mind when it came to our health, having more of that holistic side,” Jackie said. “When I started growing hemp, I said to my sisters I want to bottle this up, I want to make our own product. It aligns with my passion for holistic health and my medical background and I see how it benefits people.”
During Covid, she said, “A lot of people were very afraid of what was going on in the world, and they wanted to do anything they could do to keep themselves healthy. They were looking for more options. We were offering some other ideas to stay healthy. We were very well received.“
Shelves and displays are filled with a wide variety of products formulated for specific symptoms. Hemp-derived CBD can be helpful for pain relief, inflammation, mood disorders, sleep disturbances, gut issues and more. Some remedies are topical, others oral. The sisters’ own brand, Cultivating Wellness, appears on most products.
The store also stocks a number of other items, many in partnership with local and regional vendors, ranging from honey to snacks to organic mushrooms, even a wine selection. Household pets also experience issues so there’s a line of products including probiotics and tasty but healthy treats.
The sisters’ healthcare backgrounds are important in providing direct client consultations, so it’s about more than just picking products blindly off a shelf. For us, the most science-driven aspect seemed to be what the sisters call BioScan SRT, an FDA-approved technology designed to detect and guide restoring balance in the body. Without getting too far in the weeds, BioScan involves screenings that include DNA-based science to measure what may be causing symptoms, helping Pine Hill practitioners specifically target a healing strategy.
Leanne, the Ph.D.-level college educator and a Navy veteran, understands skeptics because she had her own reservations before experiencing how Jackie’s passion for holistic wellness helps clients.
“I’ve done a lot of work at how the VA looks at not only CBD but marijuana,” she told us. “Not that they’re prescribing it, but they’re accepting it, because they know there are a lot of veterans with things like PTSD that might need something a little stronger. We got in trouble with pharmaceuticals like opioids, so it’s a more natural form that can help with quality of life.”
The Watertown and Lake Geneva shops are open seven days a week. As Lake Geneva’s summer tourist season ramps up, so will the store’s hours. There’s a robust e-commerce element on the website (pinehillfarm.co).
As readers might guess, we did not leave the store empty handed. After all, everybody wants to feel better.
The column is produced by the husband and wife team of Bill Barth and Stephanie Klett. Bill is the former Editor of the Beloit Daily News, and a member of the Wisconsin Newspaper Hall of Fame. Stephanie is the President and CEO of Visit Lake Geneva, and the former Secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Tourism.
