Family Turns to Farming for Quality of Life
Published: Friday, July 3, 2020
Compelling reasons for quitting farming these days include high stress, too much debt and ungodly hours, to name just a few. And yet, despite having no background in agriculture, Joel and Anna Parker are living proof that getting into farming during these uncertain times makes a lot of sense.
Only in their early 30s, the Parkers pulled up stakes in Colorado three years ago to buy a 70-acre farm in Buchanan, Mich. By trade he's a construction contractor specializing in remodeling and carpentry, and she works as the stay-at-home mom of 4-year-old Edna, Lucy, 3, and Jane, who's approaching her first birthday.
The Parkers live on rural corner parcel they named "Upstream Farm" after the brook that runs across their land into the Bakertown Drain that feeds the St. Joseph River.
"We want to be good to those who are downstream from us," explained Anna.
The house, with its wraparound front porch perfectly suited for sitting and quiet conversation on a recent rainy Friday afternoon, is shrouded from the road by ancient oaks. The house, among the first in the area, once burned down, as the story goes, and was rebuilt in the 1890s.
Across the street is the former community schoolhouse that years ago was converted into a neighbor's residence
About 17 acres of the Parkers' spread are wetland, 18 are wooded and 35 are used to pasture beef cattle, pigs and chickens. They have what Anna calls a "symbiotic relationship" with another neighbor who's growing a market garden on an acre of their land. At the rear of the house, a smoker is being used to prepare a picnic ham from the Parkers' own stock.
Not too far off in the distance stands a bank barn believed to have been built in the 1870s, and which Joel is in the process of saving from collapsing. It has ornate windows and stanchions in the basement indicate it housed a dairy operation decades ago.
The Parkers' small-scale operation isn't quite homesteading — bananas for the girls don't grow in Michiana, after all — but it's a long way from big-time industrial farming and exactly where they need to be. While they want to be as self-sufficient as possible, they also want to market some of what they raise.
The decision to become farmers wasn't about making a living; it's about a quality of life that can't be found in a big city.
"I grew up in Lydick, straight south of here in Indiana on the far west side of South Bend," said Joel.
At the age of 21, Joel moved west as footloose young people in search of adventure often do, and worked in construction. Anna is originally from suburban St. Charles, Mo., and has a degree in psychology from William Jewel College in Kansas City.
"We moved here from Denver, where we met and got married," Joel said. "We kind of had the itch to have more space and try to do something on the land."
But, said Anna, "There's no water in Colorado and it's hard to grow stuff there."
"It just didn't seem like something we could pull off there financially," Joel said. "So we moved here with very little farming experience—little to none."
After finding their vintage farm via the Internet as a for-sale-by-owner property, the Parkers moved to Michigan armed with knowledge gleaned from a few books and Joel's experience with selling fruit at an orchard when he was in high school.
"We lived on a half an acre in Denver with a lot of restrictions on what you can do, and we had two little kids and were like, 'Did we choose to live here; is this how we want to raise our family or did we just kind of end up in a very suburban existence?' " said Anna. "We wanted more space and less concrete."
The Parkers' approach to farming was shaped by reading about and viewing videos of Joel Salatin, the Virginia, direct-marketing ag-guru and a leader of the restorative farming movement. Salatin preaches that goods should be sold within a four-hour radius of the farm and animals should be free to graze on healthy grass that gets naturally fertilized in portable systems allowing for their movement.
"I think we gradually developed an appreciation for good food that's locally grown, that's respectful of Creation and nature as we see it, and adds to the environment rather than just taking away from it," Joel said. "We got excited about that vision of simple and efficient minimal infrastructure, animals on the ground and animals expressing their nature.
"(Salatin) talks about the 'pigness of the pig,' which talks about being able to dig up the dirt, and chickens able to scratch the ground."
Joel still works close to full-time hours off the farm, and is currently building a house for his sister just down the road.
Ten feeder hogs and eight head of cross-bred beef-cattle are being fattened for the butcher's block and eggs from a flock of chickens are eaten by the Parkers or bartered with friends and neighbors for goods and services.
The Parkers own an old loader tractor and have another on loan with a few attachments. They started making their own hay, with the help of some neighbors, last year, have cooked up their own maple syrup, but only for home use and gift-giving, and haven't purchased meat or chicken from a store in two years.
They built a plucker and "we butchered the chickens ourselves," Anna said. "We're getting pretty good at it."
The Parkers are gradually growing their operation and will probably add five more head of cattle in the coming year. They are also raising a boar with the intention of someday advancing into breeding.
"We're just buying weaned calves from a friend down in southern Mishawaka who has a small herd of mixed genetics," Joel said. "He's dabbling in anything from Limousin and Angus to Belted Galloway, and there's some Jersey in there. He's breeding towards quick growth on grass, smaller frame size so there's a little less impact during rain events and focusing on pasture health as much as the cattle's health."
The Parkers have had success at selling beef quarters directly to customers, mostly friends and family. Their timing for joining the small-scale movement couldn't have been better, given the stresses placed on the food chain by the pandemic.
After the pandemic started, they acquired a Michigan retail food license and sell USDA-approved meat. Most of the money they make from sales is re-invested into the farm.
"The meat was pretty easy to move this year, and so was the pork," Joel said. "We consider ourselves still to be in farm school, so I'm really hesitant to push scaling up too fast because I feel like that might come back to bite us.
"There's a little bit of a feeling that the neighbors might think we're crazy, but we're not too daunted by it. It can be a challenge to talk to them because they obviously have a lot of experience and we have different ideas."
One farmer told Joel that the pigs have to be moved to crowded onto a concrete surface because if they walk around too much they won't reach market weight. However, Joel pointed out one —with a happy walk and a dirty snout—pushing 250 pounds and more than ready to be processed.
The Parkers feel like they are part of a like-minded group of people who are gravitating toward small scale-farming. In March, Joel attended the Indiana Small Farm Conference at Purdue University with some 500 people he said think almost exactly like they do
"I think we're unique in that we were able to purchase a farm that's a decent piece of ground, since most people would have family land they can move onto," Joel said. "I think there's a ton of people who would like to get into it, but can't acquire land.
"The bigger picture painted by the media is of the high suicide rates, the lack of land, the debt, and I've tried to educate myself on the economics of large-scale farming and it is bewildering that people can do it. The big picture can be pretty grim, but we're getting a lot of encouragement.
Added Anna, "I would say, we're here and it's felt right since day one. We kind of thought we knew what we were doing, and every year we say we've learned a lot and have more to learn, but it's always, still a yes—to the farm, to the plan, to this as a way of life."
Return to Top of Page