Looking for the missing pieces

Dear Friends,

Thank you for taking the time to read my first ever blog. It is a new adventure and way for me to connect with you. I’m so glad you are taking a few minutes out of your busy day to be here!

It’s been a long bumpy road for us to get this point, I’m sure as we continue together on this farm journey, and hopefully friendship, more details about me and my story will come up. But, for this first writing, I wanted to give you some insight into why I am here and share some formative memories.

To start, I don’t know what to call myself! Some people will proudly call themselves a “5th generation farmer” or whatever, but for me the line is twisty, long, and not as clear. I don’t really think about it too much, because, frankly, labels are overrated and I’m tired of being put in a box and categorized. What about you?

Farming, raising animals, and a love of nature have always been there for me in some form, but technically I did not grow up on a farm. My dad and mom were farm kids, but Dad became a mechanical engineer and Mom was kindergarten teacher and then a stay-at-home-mom with lots of volunteering and church involvement. My sister and I were raised in the suburbs of north Delaware, where Mom had a thriving flower garden and put in a vegetable patch every summer. (They moved back to Ohio as empty nesters).

Longer holidays we got to come to Ohio to visit the home place where Dad grew up and my Uncle, Grandma, and extended family still lived for hiking, rock scrambling, and learning about nature, but the livestock there were gone for many years. On my Mom’s side, until I was 9 years old, and he died, my Grandfather and Aunt had a busy farm about an hour drive away from our house. Then during my teenage years Aunt Peggy and Uncle Bill had a small ‘retirement’ farm about 3 hours away in central Pennsylvania with some sheep, a variety of poultry, and horses where I’d go to for long weekends and big chunks of summers.

These experiences and times on our family farms led me to study Animal Science in college, Dairy Cattle Nutrition in grad school, and spend my 20s and 30s building a career in Academia as teacher and researcher (yes, I have a Ph.D. that I don’t mention much these days). I felt I was doing important work and enjoyed my students, but that career path really wore on me and just stopped fitting well. Too many hours in an office. I missed family, the sun, woods, and days outdoors with animals, and felt a deep calling to find a new path.

So, our farm is a new beginning in an old place and a recreation and reimagining of myself and life. Through very unexpected events we, my husband Mark and I, had this chance to have the land that was the original homestead of my ancestors and move to Ohio. So, we took a huge leap of faith and jumped. When we started it was ground, a small house, some carports, and an old barn you can see a shocking amount of daylight through. No livestock had been here since the 1960’s. So, we are claiming it back with sheep, chickens, grit, our savings, prayers, and creativity. This farm is the melding of so many things and a realization of my longed-for (but thought to be out of reach) hopes and dreams.

Of course, with any new beginning there are bends, hardships, humblings, challenges, and realizations. In creating this farm, I have been thinking so much about those early memories of my Pop-pop’s and Aunt’s bustling farm. They had what appeared to me as a kid to be a thriving farm. They raised and sold meat chickens, eggs, raw milk, some beef, lambs, assorted produce, and so much sweet corn. They sold by direct from the farm and they had a large weekly customer route. I was so young and looking back I have so many questions I wish I could ask them about managing all that! But one thing I keep circling back on - as a big missing piece to our new farm - is that they had all these customers that were more like friends and family. I was so little I only got to go with Aunt Peggy and Uncle Bill on the market route a few times, but I remember vividly how happy everyone was to see them and how happy they were to see everyone. As a little kid, I’d also sit with Pop-pop manning the summer sweet corn wagon and he knew and chatted with all the friends that came by and it was wonderful. Even at 89 he had such a sharp memory and keen wit. When Pop-pop passed away that farm, so close to Philadelphia, was lost to all the pressures of urbanization. I had never really thought about the impression and impact watching those interactions had on me, until now. It was a glimpse into what having a farm and community of friends around it could be. A small ember in me that I didn’t realize was still glowing.

Today, farming in any form is hard work with terrible odds against you. I try not to listen much to the statistics on new small farms, because they make me feel like a crazy person for starting one. But knowing of your customers is so vital to make it fulfilling and feel worthwhile. In today’s mega complex food system, we have lost most of this nourishment of spirit and community that used to come with the sharing of food. I don’t know about you, but I want to reclaim at least a piece of it! In the self-check-out counter at a grocery or big box store I have never felt a micro-fraction of that joy and sense of community that I saw on my grandfather’s farm as a little kid. And when you know who and how your food was raised there is a deeper sense of gratefulness for it.

Our small farm is still in the building phase; a fledging testing its wings. As you may know, when creating something important and close to your heart we often retreat into ourselves, but now I feel this opening up happening. It is time to not just focus on the physical things (like the shelter structures and sheep numbers, etc.), but also the building of community and friends. So, I am searching now for YOU - the missing pieces or blocks in our farm foundation – those likeminded friends that will make all our farm work worthwhile by letting us know them and provide some nourishing food and experiences to them.

I hope you will consider joining me by just signing up for emails (if you haven’t already) or consider purchasing meat shares or eggs to help support us in these early days, so we can make it to the long run together. I’d love the opportunity to help feed you, have you schedule a visit, and just get to know you too!! I’d love to get an email from you too on something formative in your own childhood about food or farming or just what has made you you!?

Warm regards,

Jill

Email me: Jill.Anderson@quarterpennyfarmsoh.com

That’s me in the front center as a little kid!