I came into farming really, as I got into it, being like--I'm a grower. That's where I want to grow my expertise; how to be a better caretaker for these animals, how to be more efficient with my time, with the land that we're using. To lean on people who are in processing, lean on them because their resources, their expertise are in processing or on the kosher side, lean on those people who really know what is required for it, bring them in and have them apply their expertise. The growth for me ...

The occasional summer I would go to Arkansas for a few nights when my family would make the trip out there from Dallas, Texas, they would only stay for a short period it was my aunt and uncle's Chicken farm. They were conventional growers for Tyson. It was a fun time out there, but I do remember thinking this is an enormous amount of hard work. My aunt and uncle never get to leave this farm and there's one thing I know for sure. And that's--I don't want to be a farmer.—Vanessa Chickens can't be...

It feels good that we're providing this product for people's nutrition, for their families. They keep coming back to us and appreciating that. We are who we are; we're the face, we talk to them, we have them to our farm for tours. That's what people are looking for.—Beth We both have a full time job figuring out how to move this business forward that that you can't get done if you're picking eggs and putting down bedding in the layer houses or fulfilling orders. Can't do it.—Bruce Be...

I describe farming as really just one long extended expedition. It's very much like a mountaineering expedition where you wake up every day, you're working outside. You have problems, often new problems that crop up at least weekly. It's very much like being in a big mountain expedition where you're constantly working with the weather. You're working with the people on your team. You are focused on a goal. That takes all of your effort that you really have to commit to a hundred percent.—Bruce ...

Watching them [kids] come to the farm; at first, it can be quite challenging. There is definitely an arc of sort of comfortableness just with being outside doing chores, hard manual labor. That takes a minute for a lot of kids to adjust to. But as they adjust, it's so cool to watch them come out of their shells.--Haley Hello my name is Haley Goulet, I am a livestock manager at a community farm and work to educate the public about livestock farming. I am passionate about teaching folks about t...

I remember being seven or eight years old and drawing… having construction paper, big rolls of paper all over the living room floor, drawing pictures of where my cows and my sheep and my chickens would go on my future farm.—Melissa You pick and choose your battles for sure…do we want to focus on cleaning up all of our step-in fence for the sheep and do all the outdoor stuff or are we going to focus on a house that we can bring friends into? So unfortunately, our game nights have taken a hi...

We had bought this house in Brattleboro. We'd bought the truck. We bought the sheep. We bought dogs. We did all of this long before COVID hit, but then we were like, okay, this is our pandemic project.—Kimberly Kimberly and Zan Walker-Gonҫalves were both kids exposed to animals but not raised on farms. As parents, they circled back to growing food and raising the maximum number of livestock their town in Massachusetts would legally allow. Five years ago, they packed up everything and moved...

I've wanted to quit about a hundred gazillion times, a lot- a lot. But I want to do what I love. So that is the key, right? To do what we love. And this is what I love to do. It comes with difficulties and it comes with rewards. I have to be able to handle both and know both. Nicolle Ferrier and family moved from Southern California to central Vermont to experience a more relaxed lifestyle, but soon found themselves creating a farm and business with plenty of excitement. They raise six differ...

There is a legacy throughout my family of having at least one member who served in all major conflicts back to the Revolutionary War. The other side of that coin is they were all farmers, homesteaders and innovators of their time from Eastern Tennessee and Kentucky. In 2009, my wife and I kept grew our first garden in a community growing space in northern Vermont. There was a moment of clarity and renewed sense of purpose after being recently discharged from the Marine Corps with multiple com...

“My husband had been fascinated by Scottish Highlanders. We would drive by this place and you'd have to stop, get out of the car and like look through the woods to see them. And I was like, they're just big, shaggy horned beasts. I don't know about horns, you know, and it was like, oh my gosh. They wanted to sell the herd. They were getting older, had health problems. They wanted it to go somewhere local. A young family. I'm like, well, we're young, we're a family, maybe we could buy some calves...

“I did not grow up in a farming family. I grew up in a small town in the Midwest…there's no one in my family that has ever farmed. I'm pretty sure most of my siblings think I'm crazy.” Erin and Charles Meding purchased their 27 acre slice of heaven in 2008 and raised their now grown children in the Sunapee Region of NH. They transformed a run down little ranch (900 square feet) into their current farmhouse, built a 3 story barn and established too many gardens to count. They currently have ho...

“We did have the sense to look and say, you know, God created ruminant animals to take advantage of grass and low input. You know, if we've got a grass base, and we take care of that, that's as low input as you're gonna get versus hauling in feed.”—Emalee Buttrey “There's a lot of challenges that you just don't come across in the classroom or the textbook.” –Brad Buttrey Raised in McEwen, TN on a small cattle operation, Brad developed a keen interest in reproduction, learning to AI w...

“I have a specific memory of the first time we ever did sheep, I was so mad at my parents, we were going to kill the sheep. And then fast forward like an hour into it. And I came running into the house holding a sheep tongue and being like, Mom, check this sheep tongue out.”—Jeremiah Vernon Vernon Family Farm (VFF) is a 1st generation, pastured livestock farm on the Seacoast of New Hampshire. Established in 2014, VFF works hard to provide wholesome, delicious food to their community throug...

"There was a guy in my office for years, who used to refer to people like me as hobby farmers. And it drove me crazy. One day I finally said, “You know what? These hobby farmers, if they are getting up every day, and taking care of animals, it's not a hobby. A hobby is something you do when you feel like doing it.” Karen Hoffman started working for Cornell Cooperative Extension for a few years after grad school, and then began working for USDA-NRCS as an Animal Scientist to help dairy farm...

“I got involved with sheep and farming purely by accident. Aside from a semester Work Study program at UVM dairy, I had no background in farming and no interest in sheep. Then, one cold February while I was farmsitting, 6 out of 8 of the ewes on the farm decided to give birth. I knew nothing about shepherding except for the basics of care while the farmer was gone, and had to dive right into a lambing season completely green. All sorts of lambing issues and farming challenges came up and I had t...

Kate Osgood of Birch Rise Farm in Sanburton, NH, along with her husband Ken and sons Hunter and Henry, loves to go all in on whatever they do. When they decided to move back to the east to raise their family, they didn’t know they’d be starting a farm, renovating a house, and adding a second child all within a few months. From pigs to meat birds to sheep to farmstays, Kate at Birch Rise Farm has plenty to share. Birch Rise Farm website Birch Rise Farm Facebook Birch RiseFarm Instagra...

Nick and his family have a productive history as small business owners, investors, and planners. After getting his construction management degree from Michigan State University in 2009, Nick returned to join the family construction company fulltime as a general contractor and supervisor. Starting in 2013 Nick interned on a sustainable livestock farm in New Jersey gaining invaluable knowledge. Nick is not only handy in the sense of being able to fix things, but in being young-ish while already ha...

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 experien...

“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...

“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 ...

“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. Wha...

"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...

“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 en...

“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.