The Gentle Barn has been Ellie Laks Weiner's dream since she was a seven-year-old girl growing up in St. Louis.
“There were lakes and forest around my house and I would play out there with the tadpoles and the frogs and I just absolutely was obsessed and loved nature and animals,” Laks Weiner says.
When she got older, Laks Weiner says, she would find birds falling out of their nest or turtles with broken shells and bring them home (her parents put them back while she was at school).…