Choosing to Farm: New Generation Stories

From Becky: My husband and I moved our kids to a farm in rural southern Minnesota in 2016 to grow better food. We were already purchasing most of our meat from local farmers, but wanted to do it ourselves while giving our kids a better life. I was working fulltime as a hairstylist and teaching at a cosmetology school in the Twin Cities while my husband was working at his own company doing engineering services. We knew we wanted to get away from the chaos of city life, but we had no farm experience. We purchased books on farm practices and watched an endless number of YouTube videos while reading blogs and visiting other farms. The day after we moved in, we had cows, chickens, and a goat delivered. Since then, we’ve added another child, more goats, guineas, ducks, quail, horses, bees, and we also grow gourmet mushrooms. My husband helps with projects when he can, but he travels often because his work takes him around the country. The responsibility of the farm falls on my shoulders. We have no family close by and only a few friends. My kids are my support system. Unexpected moments happen almost daily on the farm and I know that everything I encounter is “figureoutable”.  We add new things to our farm yearly as well as learn new skills. Just when I think I’m starting to get good at farm life, I am humbled by opportunities to learn.

“We cleared eight acres and piled the trees by hand. Not the trees but the brush.  We had 96 brush piles in one field. And we had no friends left, because we would say to them, ‘Come on over for the weekend. And we'll give you beer and pizza and you can help us pile the brush.’ Nobody would even answer the phone.”

Hank and Heather LeTarte of White Gates Farm in New Hampshire started clearining their land in 1982 out of largely pine woods and a prospective view. They built a home, a family, and a family around their farm. When their kids grew up, Hank & Heather's life as farmers didn't stop, it just changed as their customers, labor availability, and goals evolved.

Show Notes:

“I can't express enough how just beautiful it is to watch the growth. The growth of a farm year after year where you're putting your inputs in, which may just mean your animals, they’re just fertilizing and grazing for you. I say ‘just’ lightly because that's huge for the field. Those are inputs, and then the next year to see that come back bigger and better--it's just so cool.” Carly grew up in the suburbs of Massachusetts with a passion for animals. She received a degree in animal science and continued on to earn her PhD in Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems, with a focus on ruminant parasite management. Continuing this focus, she then went on to receive post doctoral training with the USDA Agriculture Research Services. To be closer to family, she moved up to Vermont where she now runs her own farm raising chickens, sheep, and rabbits on pasture.

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“I think that you have to listen to what everybody has to say, and then just pick and choose different parts of their advice. That's complicated for some people; they just want a How-To Guide for starting their farm. It’s not that simple--at least it hasn't been for us.”

Shannon and Matt raise waterfowl and grassfed sheep on leased land in Maine. After working on farms for other people in North Carolina after college, they gained experience before heading to Maine to start their own venture. What they've created and steadily grown over the past five years is based on flexibility, high value and working with their own instruction book rather than someone else's.

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"I get a lot of people saying, you're living my dream life. I'm so jealous. I know it's a compliment. But I'm not living your dream life. I'm living my dream life. And I know what it comes with. I know all the s-h-i-t it comes with. And it's still my dream. But for most people it's not. It's not their dream."

Former vegan and marketing communications professional Katie Steere was 2,000 miles and ten years away from her family's longtime-shuttered farm in Rhode Island. A TED talk convinced her to give two weeks' notice, hike the Pacific Crest Trail, intern at Polyface Farm, and move home to rebuild her family’s farm. After four years spent investing everything to bring it back, Katie was told the farm was sold to her brother. Devastated, she was on the verge of quitting it all when she happened upon a land linking opportunity that changed her life.

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Show Notes:

“I am very delightfully holding on to the things that I hold dear about myself that are a part of my life as a farmer, and not integrating that into my life going forward, where I'm not commercially farming. I really appreciate being remembered, and that people still value the thoughts that I've had over these years.”

Falling in love with farming as a young boy on his grandparents' farm in Pennsylvania, Brent Beidler dreamed of starting his own dairy farm in Vermont. He worked on many farms growing up, went to school for agriculture, volunteered internationally on farms in Africa and Indonesia, and finally bought a farm in Randolph Center, Vermont with his wife Regina to live out his dream.

After 24 years living this dream, Brent and Regina transitioned off the farm by their own choice and in their own timing. With so many farmers entering and leaving agriculture, the Beidlers' story is a great lesson about love, gratitude, caretaking, and knowing when it's time to move on.

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Here’s a quick mini-episode I wanted to share about agritourism. I recorded it while driving home from the International Workshop on Agritourism last fall. Fair warning that it’s only lightly edited. I just came across this recording and thought it might be a useful thing to provide some background about what’s happening. I talk about agritourism and farmstays a bit in various places especially my social media, and this debrief kind of gets at why I think it’s a big deal.  I’m so excited about it as an opportunity for farmers and ranchers looking for new options. I’m really motivated to help more people bridge the gap between wondering if this is a good fit for them and helping them figure out next steps, which is how the Five Star Farmstays course came about.

Five-Star Farmstays is a four-week online course that starts February 13. This course is aimed at farmers and ranchers considering overnight stays as an additional way to bring in farm income. It’s built around modules to take at your own pace, and live meetings with plenty of opportunity to ask questions. We talk about time, money, people, and bringing all of these things together. We’ve got folks registered from around the country, so there’s as much to learn from each other as there is from the course materials themselves! Registration details are below.

Hope you enjoy this car chat!

“From what I’ve learned, it's always best to learn from other people. Learn from people who have been doing this before. If you can find a mentor in the field that you are interested in, I think that's the best thing you can do for yourself.  I think it's super important for folks who have the knowledge, to share that knowledge."

Katelyn Duban was born and raised in Southern Alberta, Canada and married into agriculture in 2016. At the time, it was not her intention to be an active member of the farm but she quickly found a passion for the farm life. Katelyn continues to develop her skills as a grain farmer on and off of the field.

As an avid podcast listener, Katelyn found herself searching for a podcast that shared the important roles women in agriculture provide for the industry. When she could not find a podcast that met her criteria she began working on her own podcast. In the spring of 2019 she launched The Rural Woman Podcast.

Since then, Katelyn has shared the stories of incredible women involved in all parts of agriculture from farming, ranching, homesteading, agribusiness and beyond.

“I really love the sheep. They're not stupid. Nor do I think they desire to die, as I've heard on more than one occasion. I do think they require awareness. They also are so instinct driven--which makes sense, based on what they are--being totally prey-driven. They will do things entirely based on that instinct. If it's fight or flight, I'm flighting first and fighting never.”

Jessica Newman of Southview Station moved back to Pennsylvania to combine her nursing career and love of genetics with a growing Texel sheep operation. She’s had to navigate starting from an open field with no infrastructure, to figuring out roles and relationships with her parents, to balancing off-farm vacation breaks with her non-farming partner.

Coming soon! The second season of Choosing to Farm is bringing you even more great stories of the journey into--and sometimes out of--farming.

We'll talk about new models, new ways of being successful, and where new farmers are coming from. 

I might even ask about a few of their Worst Days. ;-P

So excited to get talking--see you soon, friends!

“I didn't have mechanical background, I didn't grow up fixing tractors. I had never driven a tractor. I wasn't good with equipment. Grazing was very approachable. It just really appealed to me. You're outside, you're working with the environment. It just grabbed me really fast.”

Jascha Pick is a sheep farmer based in Northern Vermont, who didn’t set out to be a farmer but caught the farming bug. He fell in love with farming, and especially with grazing. He’s used a lot of creativity to get started, including a trip to New Zealand, grazing plenty of back yards, and living in a tiny house on leased land.

Some resources mentioned in this episode:

“Go and work for a bad boss. Go and spend some time breaking somebody else's machines, losing tens of thousands of dollars on their payroll, before you're doing it on your own payroll. That timing is probably somewhere between, two years at a minimum, and maybe ten years at a maximum. If you do it for much longer than ten years, you're probably going to be so dependent on that salary, it's gonna be really hard to step away from that and make some bold moves.”

Dallas Mount is the CEO of Ranch Management Consultants, which is the home of the Ranching for Profit (RFP) School and the Executive Link program. As a town kid who fell in love with ranching to an Extension agent and eventual RFP Instructor, Dallas has spent most of his adult life around ranches in various stages of challenge and opportunity. He’s learned a lot. Our conversation ranged across topics like learning on other peoples’ places, being a good boss, becoming a competent business manager, owning land, and taking time to re-create yourself.

Some resources mentioned in this episode:

“I think sometimes the choice to farm also means that folks choose not to have a life. They may not recognize it as that. Sometimes the choice to farm or ranch doesn't necessarily automatically set them up for that. Responsibility weighs really heavily on the shoulders of farmers and ranchers. I think everyone deserves to have a life but I really think that farmers and ranchers deserve to have a life. I just don't know if that always happens. And I don't know if the choice to farm is actually enough.”

We can look at how we farm and ranch, we can look at all the technical stuff. We can change a lot of things about our business. But if we don't look at ourselves and actually start to change from the inside, then well, we're going to be in the same place. And I don't know if you want to be in the same place.

Four years ago, I didn’t want to be in the same place. It took a different perspective and some work, but I’m on a new path and the load on my shoulders is a lot lighter.

A little bit of a different episode today. Enjoy, friends.

Some resources mentioned in this episode:

Books:

“For people who get into extension and especially stick with it, there's this compulsive need to make those connections. Now I consider myself a bit of a subject matter expert on goats, but as an extension agent, I wasn't the subject matter expert on pretty much anything. Especially since it was a crops county, and I'm a livestock person, but I was the connection finder.  I was the one who would say, hey, you need to talk to X, Y, or Z, or I know so and so's doing this in whatever county, or here's this researcher who I know is looking for people to help with that.”

We finish up our second part of the chat with Margaret and read some listener comments. Lots of gold to hear and respond to in this episode!

“For a long time, it's been just like struggling to get my farm to the bare minimum of what I would consider acceptable in my head. There was no pride, no accomplishment, because before that I was failing. So I was simply not failing now that I've done this thing. I'm trying really hard to be able to take accomplishment in the improvement, and the continuous improvement.”

Margaret Chamas fell in love with goats through 4H. That was a life changer. She went to college for animal science, started working for farmer organizations after graduation, and began building her farm life piece by piece. Now she’s a full-time farmer running a Goats on the Go affiliate, shows goats, and does a heck of a lot of public education and customer service.

“Since coming back, it's been sort of this really challenging and interesting evolution to understand how a working mother who is not farming with her partner can take over an operation that has traditionally been run by four to six people. “

Abbie Corse grew up hating cows. She went to school for journalism and got involved with arts administration. Then she realized what a lack of seasonal work and attachment to a land base was doing to her mental health. She and her husband chose to move home and Abbie began to reconstruct her relationship with the farm, the experience of working with her parents, and the role of women farmers in the future of Vermont agriculture.

“The jobs that I worked were a pickle factory and a spinnery and an apple orchard, All of those were learning how to operate in a system watching how other people create systems and deal with the logistics of production. I think now that's made me a pretty strong systems thinker. I'm good at being strategic and good at looking at the entire large moving sort of juggernaut of the farm and identifying where it's not working.”—Ashlyn Bristle

Ashlyn Bristle and Abraham McClurg come from a variety of backgrounds in art, education, cooking, and non-profit management. They met at a dance and “have been dancing ever since”. Their dance has included homesteading, renting land, buying a steep hillside farm, and growing a business through the stresses of COVID. Along the way, they’ve focused on setting up good systems, balancing farm time and couple time, and figuring out what enterprises they’ll keep doing and which they’ll drop.

Rebop Farm media:

“It feels scary to work with a dangerous animal, but it's within our wheelhouse. To do something that is unknown--to reach out, to ask for help, to admit we don't know--to go into that sort of dark place outside of our circle of control and our circle of knowledge into some nebulous “out there”, so that we can make that circle bigger--THAT’s scary. I gotta tell you, once you open that door, once you open that circle, it's COOL. It's really cool. You sort of see the world in a different way. And feel lighter.”—Jenn Colby

A fun two-solo-minis in this episode, with host Jenn Colby. First, a Chore Chat…headphones on, chores in the background set of observations and ruminations around the topic of leadership and what makes a leader, or even how leadership skills can be developed. Is this something you think about much in farming or ranching? I sure do! There are plenty of leaders around us all the time in agriculture, who just don’t see themselves that way.

The second mini is the story of my first sheep and the moment of clarity I had—after years of raising animals—that NOW I was finally a REAL farmer.

Some resources mentioned in this episode:

“I think that climate change, and the collapse of so many of our ecological systems is the pressure that's going to push human evolution into a new phase. And I think that has to be the story. “

Part 2 of my conversation with Vermont farmer Jesse McDougall ranged a little more widely than just the choice to farm, but that choice shouldn’t be something made within a vacuum. Processing, marketing, aggregation, and broader environmental impacts are all part of the picture in a farm ecosystem. We also talk about Jesse’s use of a new, regeneratively focused funding source that matches up farmers in need with farm supporters seeking to invest their money in growing a healthier world.

This episode is the second part of two.

Studio Hill Farm media:

“It was the next generation for the farm…and so it came to [my wife] Cally or nobody. And we thought, well, hell, we might be better than nobody. So we raised our hand and said, “Let us give it a shot.”

Jesse McDougall had never farmed. His wife Cally had grown up adjacent to her four-generation-family’s farm, but neither had any idea what might happen when they decided to shift from coding web sites to managing land. Through their painful introduction, they learned firsthand what happens when chemical-dependent land loses its crutch and found themselves stumbling toward the path of regenerative agriculture, scaling their businesses, and the pieces and parts needed to rebuild a whole food system.

This episode is the first part of two.

Studio Hill Farm media:

“I think part of the reason that I have pursued a career in real estate development in addition to being involved with my family’s [ranch] business is because there’s so much overlap…if you don’t understand the land piece, then you’re missing a big piece of the picture.

Christian Wiedemann is the 5th generation on his family’s ranch, located near San Francisco. He grew up hosting school field trips for cattle branding events, and watching the increased interface between the suburbs and their livestock-land management. He went away to school, working in renewable energy and real estate. After a failed effort at a family management transfer, Christian is pivoting in a new direction—working to solve the challenge (and often disconnect) of land values and livestock businesses.

Christian’s question for our listeners to consider: “What if it was possible to purchase ranchland in a way that provides an attractive return for investors, improves the health and productivity of the land, and enhances local communities?". What would that look like?

Please send him your thoughts—he’d truly like to know!

Christian’s media:

“So I went around on the farm tour and I went to check out all their barns and I spent like eight weeks almost every day going to visit somebody, talking about their sheep. Going from barn to barn I realized, ‘Oh, everybody does this really differently.’

Kristen Judkins didn’t expect to become a farmer, in fact, she’s not even sure she’s comfortable with the term, but she moved to Vermont and fell in love with fiber arts. Then the Great Goat Giveaway happened…well, she’ll tell that story.

As a solo farmer starting from scratch, she’s had a lot to figure out. Starting with goats and now raising sheep, Kristen has learned plenty from her neighbors, listened to shepherds all around the region, and experienced the full range of emotions that farming can bring. She balances farming with her other career and—one of my favorite topics—thinks that vacation is something all farmers need for their mental health.

“Rangeland science is this crazy complex combination of living and non-living things and people. It’s not simple at all.”

While the Art of Range host Tip Hudson is an experienced rangeland ecologist on the technical side, I was deeply interested in his take on the value and importance of “long form conversation”. We chatted about brain science, new and old(er) ranchers, who should be listening to and learning from (both of) our podcasts, and the fact that our grazing ecosystems require both knowledge and wise application.

Some resources mentioned in this episode:

“I think for me, my pre-farming life had little experience in farming, but I think the way my parents raised me, it’s just being honest. It’s working hard and trying to build something bigger than you.”—Austin Troyer

Austin and Maggie Troyer of Crossroads Land + Livestock in Ohio figured out pretty early in life what they didn’t want to do, which led them to farming right out of high school. Austin started by working on a beef ranch for several years and then out on his own with custom cattle, sheep, pigs, and poultry. He and Maggie have tested and tried plenty of enterprises and have lessons to share for us all about time, family, marriage, profitability, and quality of life.

Some resources mentioned in this episode:

“Problem solvers make the best farmers. If you’re not a problem solver, it makes your farming life so much harder.” 

I’ve known Jinny Cleland of Four Springs Farm in Royalton, Vermont for more than 20 years, which is about half of the time she’s been farming. We’ve had great long talks about farming, business, faith (she is a Christian Scientist), and much more while processing turkeys together. When you are elbow-deep in bird carcass and wet feathers, you really get to know a person. 

I have great appreciation for the way she embraced farming from a very different background, the lessons she has learned, and how her enterprises have evolved to better fit her desires, skills and profit targets over the years. It feels like we all talk a lot about getting farmers and ranchers onto the land, but we don’t go back often enough and ask them how that went. 

As Jinny says, “We only know what we know; it doesn’t matter how smart we are. If we haven’t had exposure to it, we don’t know.” 

Some resources mentioned in this episode: 

On first thinking about ranching bison, Matt said he thought “I’m a kid from suburban Chicago, I could never do that.” And then he went on with his day. As he describes it, “I didn’t entertain the thought of it, really. But then months later, it was still there.” 

Matt Skoglund didn’t start as a ranch kid or even a kid from the country. He had a couple of different careers before deciding in 2017 with his wife Sarah to find a ranch and begin raising bison outside Bozeman, Montana. In 2018, North Bridger Bison was born. Along the way, Matt has learned a lot about working with bison, finding and accessing property, that great people are everywhere, and a sense of humor and humility is essential for this type of work. 

Some resources mentioned in this episode: 

“People who don’t farm don’t realize how much it really governs what you can and can not do with the construct of your lives. Unless you’ve got the systems in place to manage that stuff.”—Chris Sargent

When I had the idea to start this podcast, my husband Chris Sargent was fully on board and very supportive of my goal to share the stories of first-generation and other farmers making the conscious choice to make livestock farming a serious part of their lives. After a few interviews and a question I posed in our CTF Facebook group (“As a farmer what do you wish someone had told you?”, he realized he’d wished the question had been “As a farmer’s spouse, what do you wish someone had told you?”. That prompted this conversation around what happens when one partner wants to farm and the other is not a farmer.

Some resources mentioned in this episode:

“Yeah, neither Lisa or I grew up on a farm. So this is all new. This was not in our plans. I was chasing the corporate ladder. She was a public-school teacher. Then we started to look into food, which is a spiral. A downward spiral, if you start to do that, because you discover that so much of the food in a supermarket—that’s not really food, and it's probably not healthy for you. And so our solution was, fine, we'll just grow our own.”—Randy Robar

Randy and Lisa Robar didn’t expect to become dairy farmers, in fact it was the furthest thing from their minds. Then they moved to Vermont, met a fellow named Joe, and fell down a rabbit hole of local food appreciation and production. They've raised pigs, cows, chickens and hundreds of interns all while learning about the enterprises that work (and don’t) for them, the tools of the trade (ice trackers!), and teaching patience to a whole new generation.

Some resources mentioned in this episode:

“I would say the overarching of all of this is actually understanding that this is a business. Right? It’s great, it’s farming, it’s pastoral. It’s all these things., but at the end of the day, this is a business and a business needs certain things to exist and function.”—Cheryl Cesario

Thanks for joining our inaugural episode, featuring Marc and Cheryl Cesario of Meetingplace Pastures in Cornwall, Vermont. Marc and Cheryl have been farming at their current location since 2009, joining their personal and business lives together right from the start. They currently graze cattle and sheep through a combination of owned and [mostly] rented land, but have run through different enterprises since their start. As the Cesarios discuss...farming, business, family, and life are all works in progress, though the specific challenges have evolved over time.

Enjoy!

Some resources mentioned in this episode:

When we do physical work, lots of us think deep thoughts. I recorded this mini episode as an experiment...what sort of deep thoughts come out on the topic of setting intentions, in the middle pf chores? 

Let me know if you like this format...and I would love to hear your thoughts about other topics for a Chore Chat!

For more than 25 years, I’ve been working with farmers on all kinds of production, natural resource, business, and success issues. What I’ve come to realize is that it’s rarely animal health or production skills that cause folks to fail or succeed. It has a lot more to do with the NON-farming side of being business owners. The upshot is that no one taught us this, and there’s a lot to learn about from other industries. I’ve been digging into this over the past few years and have a few lessons to share.

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about why I even wanted to do this podcast. (Why I think this is even a good idea, I mean.)

What I have come to realize is that I want there to be more farmers and ranchers in the world. I want there to be more people managing livestock on the land, in responsible and regenerative ways. I want there to be more livestock farmers who actually make a living managing livestock. I want there to be profitable livestock farms and ranches, and healthy families. What I'm hoping to accomplish with the podcast is that we help people connect to other people who have success of all kinds, and with resources to help them learn more about running farms and ranches like businesses. I really want there to be livestock people who take vacations to allow themselves to rest, to be at their best for themselves and their families. And I don't think that those have to be mutually exclusive. 

I hope you enjoy this mini episode...full-length interviews start January 1!

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