A Distant Dream Brought to Life

 The photo on the left was taken in October 2021 and the one on the right over 3 years later from nearly the exact location. One is in the middle of a hay field and the other from the middle of a kitchen. It represents our dream that we thought impossible followed by the reality that we managed to accomplish that dream. Starting a first generation farm is extremely difficult with significant capital needs and not much return. It has been tough for my analytical self to get past this but I’m trying. For lots of families, farming is a lifestyle choice rather than a financial one and I wish it didn’t have to be that way. When you don’t have the size and scale required to make it in a commodity business, you need to find ways to innovate and add value to your product. We are utilizing rotational grazing to return nutrients to the soil. We also built a mobile chicken coop that gets pulled around the farm to the fields the cows were previously in. The chickens provide us with pasture raised organic eggs. In the summer we raise organic meat birds utilizing a homemade chicken tractor to rotate them through fresh pasture. Our next project is to turn an old cinder block building that’s on the farm into a farm store. We’ve crossed many hurdles to build our first generation farm. I’m hopeful we can continue to find a path forward through the farm to table movement. Knowing where you’re food comes from and who produces it is beneficial to both the consumers and producers. Once you start buying your food from local farmers, you’ll never want to go back to store bought.