Illinois Farm Families Blog

‘Is that an Easter Bunny on the corner?!’ I thought as I drove through the nearest small town on Friday. Add that to my list of “Things You’ll Only Find In A Small Town”. It’s been six years since I’ve moved from the Chicago suburbs to outside Peoria, IL, and I’m still in awe at the things that take place in small town USA versus those that don’t in busy cities. The big, white bunny was standing at the four way stop outside the new corner doctor’s office in town waving to the cars driving by. In all my years, I’ve never seen the Easter Bunny find his way to a street corner to hail the passing cars.

While I’m still not quite sure why the Easter Bunny was there, I noticed that the bench outside of the doctor’s office had a colorful rug underneath it. He could have just wanted to wish Friday commuters a happy Easter, or he was there for families to stop to take pictures with him, courtesy of the new doctor’s office. I’ll assume the later for the correct answer. I regretted that my own toddlers weren’t with me in the car; I definitely would have stopped to have them sit on his lap to take a yearly picture with my own camera, free of charge, and without having to wait in a line.

My first experience taking my first baby to see the Easter Bunny consisted of standing in line for two hours at a mall in the Chicago suburbs. While visiting my family before Easter, my mom insisted that I had to have my son sit on the Easter Bunny’s lap so that I could have a keepsake picture of his 1st Easter Bunny encounter. Not only was the wait incredibly long for the less than 30 seconds my son was on the Bunny’s lap , but it was not cheap to get a set of pictures to take home for his baby book and all the grandparents.

Suburban and city families share in this annual adventure to see the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus at local shopping malls. I remember years of putting on a holiday outfit to go to the mall with my mom and and grandma, only to stand in a long line of other impatient children to get a picture with Bunny or Santa. I now have years of these pictures to look back upon, and they make for some good laughs, especially those where myself or my brothers want nothing to do with either holiday friend.

This tradition now carries into my own family, but because I now live in outside of a small town, I’ve found that there are multiple opportunities to engage in holiday festivities that the local communities, schools, and businesses support. Not to mention, activities that are usually free of charge and without a two hour line. This week’s Weekly Post newspaper reported, “There is no shortage of Easter egg hunts schedule for this weekend,” followed by a listing of eight different activities in local towns. While we ran out of time to catch a photo-op with the Easter Bunny this year, next year, I’ll definitely keep my eye out for the Bunny on the corner. You can bet it’ll be free with no wait.

Kristen Strom
Brimfield, IL
Kristen is a city-gone-country girl after her marriage to her husband, Grant, who is a full-time farmer.  You can follow her stories and adventures on her blog at Little Dahinda.

My quest to further educate myself {and my family} about local Illinois farmers started when I recently enjoyed an insider's journey into Wards Farm in Sycamore, Illinois. The Wards Farm is a family grain and pork farm located 55 miles northwest of Chicago, Illinois. I was able to learn all about the Wards Farm's history, agriculture, land preservation and sustainable food production from their family.

Agricultural roots run deep in this father-son Ward team as the 7th generation runs the farm today. Raising hogs has been a family business for over 150 years. The Wards Farm is a wean to finish hog operation. I was able to take a personalized tour of the finishing buildings with Steve Ward -- not open to the public -- where I was able to feel like a privileged insider peeking inside to witness the hard work that goes into the hog operation.

Before I arrived, I just assumed the hogs would be free-range. I never considered that the hogs would be kept in finishing buildings. These buildings are quite elaborate and there is a delicate balance between the nursery and the finishing buildings that house the hogs until their ideal weight is met. I was informed of the purpose of each building as well as how the Wards have changed their buildings throughout the years in order to improve the life of the hog. The Wards have created an environment that is the best for the hogs.

Because of bio-security issues, I couldn't simply just go walking about these buildings at my leisure. I was suited up and properly covered to insure the health of these hogs. I was able to fully grasp why pens are used on the in-depth tour of these buildings.

After the informative tour of the finishing buildings, our small group headed inside to have a chat with Illini Farms and Farmland^®. Illini Farms actually birth the piglets and keep them with their sows until they are ready to move to Wards Farm for finishing. The piglets arrive at approximately 12-14 pounds and leave at approximately 250-300 pounds. This all takes place in a six-month span.

Farmland is the end of the production line for the hogs. Farmland processes quality all-natural pork products that are locally born and grown. Farmland's excitement for the pork product and enthusiasm at creating new and inventive dishes utilizing the entire animal is truly fantastic.

I think that as adults we take the concepts we have as children to keep a visual alive in our heads. In our perfect visualized stories we hear of pigs frolicking about with rats, geese and spiders and we forget these animals are not cute, cuddly pets to be coddled, nurtured and loved. Instead, these hogs {on Wards Farm} are valued, cared for and provided with the best conditions to be raised as food for consumption.

We are not going to quit eating and there are more people everyday. The Wards Farm will continue for generations and we need to support local farmers in our local economy and most importantly, remember that our local farmers have the highest possible standards of animal welfare.

Teresa Buse, Streamwood

Meet the Sturtevants - a family farm for five generations

Our family has farmed in northwest Illinois for five generations. One part of our land has belonged to the Sturtevants for 150 years! This ground has seen the desperation of the great depression and was once planted with three-horse hitch teams. Now it’s farmed using huge four-wheel drive John Deere tractors and equipment (yes, had to say John Deere, it is a big deal to us farmers what color our tractors are!).

And, our farm continues to be a family affair. Our boys, Bryson and Jaxson, love to ride our gator (a small farm utility vehicle) around in the fields to pick the big rocks and boulders that work their way to the surface in the spring thaw, so the rocks don’t damage machinery later in the season.

When my husband Brian and I first started farming with his family, we had a sow-to-finish hog farm. By 1998, we decided to switch to a wean-to-finish facility, and we moved all of our pigs to indoor facilities. By doing both of these things, we drastically cut down on sickness and death loss on our farm. Controlled-temperature buildings that keep the pigs out of the elements and a good balanced diet have made our animals happy and healthy. 

 

Now, our piglets are born at a sow farm called Elite Pork near DeKalb, Ill. This is a farm that many family farms own together. This type of collaboration is very common among Illinois pork producers. The sow farm has the perfect set-up and expertise for taking care of sows (mother pigs) and baby piglets, while our farm can provide the best care for pigs as they grow. When the pigs “move in” to our farm, they will stay with the same group of animals as they grow. They develop social relationships with the other pigs and enjoy their space to run around together. You can follow a group of pigs on our farm through the Field Moms’ Acre and Pen.

Farming teaches patience. You have to work hard, and it humbles you. But most of all, farming makes us thankful every day for what we have.

Jen Sturtevant
Hog and grain farmer
Lanark, IL

I love the smell of bacon or a wonderful glazed ham don't you?   I got the privilege of enjoying a trip to Old Elm Farm where some of your bacon may come from!  I assure you that we did not smell any great smell like ham or bacon while arriving at the farm.  The pigs lived up to their reputation and smelled like pigs. Many of you know my great love for pigs and my husband's cousins Glenn and Maryann invited us to the farm one spring when they had 2 piglets. I loved seeing them in their little pen and enjoyed taking pictures of these darling creatures wagging their tails and enjoying their time on the farm.   When I saw Maryann again at Thanksgiving I asked how the pigs are doing and she said, “Oh! They’re in our freezer.”  Seeing the horrified look on my face she replied, “You didn't know that's what we do with them?”  In my mind I DID know but the city girl in me didn't know they have such a short life span.   Plus stories like Charlotte's web and Babe give the animals human characteristics and make us forget that they are really being raised for food.

Old Elm Farm is a pork farm where pigs come after they are weaned from their sow and are cared for until they are finished fattening up to 270 pounds.  I enjoyed meeting the Ward family and admired their hard work maintaining the crops as well as their pork farm. They are contracted to be caregivers for the pigs from wean to finish while Illini Farms are the owners of the pigs. The Ward family takes great care of them and gets them ready for harvesting (the new term instead of the less amicable slaughter).   I learned that 6 months is the average life span from wean to finish so my previous experience at Glenn and Maryann's farm holds true.

Pigs are not fed spoiled food as we would think from seeing movies where they “slop” the pigs with a slurry of garbage and table scraps. Instead they are provided 16 different diets in the process of getting them to the average market weight. The way they formulate the feed for the pigs is innovative, cooperative and resourceful. They are fed a mix of corn, soy, DDGs, bakery products, and other ingredients.   The largest portion of the pig's diet is corn.  Due to the growing ethanol industry corn was getting more scarce and was driving up the price of feed for farmers.  Being resourceful, the two have learned to work together which resulted in the product called Dried Distillers Grain (DDGs). It is the corn co-product (what is left after the ethanol production) turned into feed. I enjoy seeing this cooperation between two industries needing this staple of corn!  In the cut-throat corporate world someone would try to put the other out of business.   

Another innovative use of a co-product is the use of bakery products to feed the pigs.    Wondering whether those carbohydrates will really make you fat?  Take it from the pigs' experience at the farm able to enjoy stuffing, crackers, pizza crust, and tortilla chips ground into feed to get them to the desired 270 pounds.  All these bakery products that were either damaged or inconsistent in production used to go to a landfill.  Thankfully someone thought of a better use of these products in a resourceful and eco-friendly way.

I was impressed by the entire process from birth to harvest. It was clear to me that the farmers truly care for the animals.  It is logical that there is nothing that would benefit them if they would mistreat the animals in their care.  It was evident by the way Steve interacted with the pigs that they genuinely care for the well-being of the animals. It is incredible how he uses his instincts and experience to separate a sick pig from the rest in order to treat them properly and preserve the health of the others.  The time they spend at the farm is entirely about eliminating anything that would jeopardize the pig's health or the quality of the finished product.  This is only a fraction of what I learned at this farm. I can't wait for the next farm visit!

 Susan Herold
Rolling Meadows

The Illinois Farm Field Moms had the wonderful opportunity to tour a Hog Farm at the Old Elm Farms in Sycamore, IL (February 23, 2013) 

Give them a label-Not a name

"Don't get attached, the hogs are our income and food." This is the advice Steve Ward, president of Dayton Farms of Sycamore, IL, gives his two children Sarah and Dayton, when a new litter of piglets are born.

It's in the Marketing

Of course it's in the marketing. Marketing is key; it is what sells the product. So from that said did you know that hog producers never give hormones to their hogs, EVER! So why does that packaged pork you just picked up today at the grocery store say NO Hormones Added? To clarify Steve Ward and other hog farms like his just are the wean to finish farms and have nothing to do with the label you see in the grocery store. The final destination (or grocery store) of each of Steve Ward's hogs is unknown to him. The big companies who sell the finished product may add that "No Hormones Added," label. According to the Ward family this is just a marketing scheme to make the buyer believe they are getting a healthier piece of pork for their family.

To Market to Market

To buy a fat pig. Two hundred and eighty pounds that is.  Free Range, Barnyard, Organic Pork? You might want to re-think this option next time you buy your pork at a grocery store especially if you are on a budget. Tim Maiers who works for the Illinois Pork Producers Association questions what exactly makes that choice of pork healthier. Tim, along with Steve Ward and his father John Ward, president of Old Elm Farms, described the possible uncleanly conditions of hogs raised in the outdoors and the added cost of grain needed to keep the hogs warm in the winter(hence the markup in price at the supermarket). We learned that these hogs have to share their living space with other rodents and birds that may carry diseases. Hogs raised inside such farms like the Ward Family Farm provide a more controlled environment which means less grain is needed for consumption since it is all climate controlled. The hogs living conditions inside the farm are very clean and the hogs definitely have more roaming room then I previously envisioned. However, what this all comes down to are choices for the consumer. Steve and Tim stress nutrition-wise, free range or not, they are both the same.

Five Key Observations

I’d like to recap my experience with five things that I learned and found to be very interesting.

1. The children who are born and raised on the farm willingly take on the responsibility at an early age to help their parents with much of the work on the farm.
2. The hog manure never goes to waste but instead is plowed into the corn fields.
3. Farmers recycle almost everything.
4. Hogs are killed by means of gas.
5. Old Elm Farms got its name from the oldest living Elm tree in Illinois. It lived to be 375 years old until it was cut down due to Dutch Elm Disease.

Christina Lee
LaGrange Park

Being a typical mom who wants to feed her family well, I was very excited when our Field Mom program officially started on February 23. I was determined to find out myself how our food is produced and by whom. It is not hard to panic in today’s environment when it comes to food production. Should I buy organic? Is the meat safe? Where did the meat come from? How do I buy locally produced food? And what does politics have to do with food production?

I joined the other field moms and a few farmers on February 23 when we started our year together, all full of questions. We had a lot of them answered on the bus on our way to Sycamore. Deb, Pam, and Jim were able to give us very concrete background information on farming in Illinois today.

While we were mostly talking about pork production, it was also obvious that all farmers have a lot in common: family farms are still the most common form of farming in Illinois where 94% of all farms are family-owned. Children join their parents from young age and learn to work on the farm. Some of them enjoy it and want to stay on the farm, some of them want to leave as soon as they are done with high school. But the common theme was the children’s attitude to work and their pride in growing up on a farm.

Our visit to the Ward family’s pig farm could not have been more informative. The farmers, John and Steve, were willing to answer all of our questions about pigs’ lives from birth to the slaughterhouse. How the pigs are fed, whether they are given antibiotics (only for medical reasons), are they given hormones (no), etc. We also had a long discussion on GMOs, why a farm is or is not organic (requirements on available space to access to organic feed), corn and soybean crops, the needed equipment, and the availability of land in Illinois where subdivisions are creeping closer and closer to farmland.

On our tour of the pig sheds, Steve was once more willing to answer all of our questions about the pigs. Why are the pigs kept inside (controlled environment, health and nutrition of the pigs); what the pigs eat (corn, soybean meal, bakery products); and how you make sure all of the pigs are doing well (an experienced farmer sees signs immediately). Yes, there is a smell in the sheds, but the pigs were surprisingly clean and they are able to move around. There were absolutely no signs of animals that had been mistreated (I expected chewed ears and tails as signs of stress).

My first visit to an Illinois farm (or any farm in the U.S.) was eye-opening. The amount of work, investment and time needed to farm is enormous. My guess is that even though there are differences between farms, the basic work and commitment to a lifestyle is the same for all of them. One of my reasons for joining the Field Mom program was to be able to tell my children where our food comes from and we have now been able to have several discussions on pigs and meat production in general. I’m looking forward to our next visit and learning about other farms.

I had an extremely informative day at the Ward farm, thanks to both generations of the family!

Five things I learned on our trip to a pig farm (there would be many more, but here are the first five):

• The price of farmland whether you buy or lease in Illinois is very high. It is hard for farm families to be able to buy more land to support more than one family.
• The life cycle of a pig from birth to slaughterhouse. I had no idea about the time it takes for a pig to grow to market weight, etc.
• The tour of the buildings where the pigs are raised was important. Heating/air-conditioning, cleanliness, etc. were important pieces of information.
• Information on how the pigs are slaughtered was informative and useful.
• Information on the use of hormones and antibiotics was useful.

Tanja Saarinen, Oak Park
Field Mom

 

In the farmyard:

• Hauling grain. My family has hauled corn from on-farm storage to processing plants that are buying it to produce ethanol fuel, industrial alcohol, livestock feed and food-grade corn meal. Soybeans go to a terminal on the Illinois River, where it either is railed to processing plants for domestic use or barged downstream for export.
• Field edge repair. Winter provides a good time to clean up brushy field edges. 
• Equipment maintenance. We like the tractors and implements to be ready when warm weather prompts field work this spring.

Inside the farmhouse:

• Bookwork. We “farm” at a computer, a desk in the office, the dining room table and kitchen counter. 
• Tax preparation.
• Paying for and/or placing orders for seed, fertilizer and crop protection products. (a.k.a. more bookwork – bad thing is, bookwork gives me the munchies)

Off the farm:

• Farm trade shows and meetings. Gives us an education in anything from new equipment to trucking regulations and crop insurance.
• Pesticide applicator exam. Our family’s farm must be educated and licensed to buy and apply restricted-use pesticides. 
   

For fun:

• Playing in the snow (or rain puddles!).
• Family board games and card games.
• Extra movie nights. 
• Watching for bald eagles. Our family’s main farmstead is near a small river, which attracts the majestic birds every winter. Pretty cool.

 Happy Winter!

Joanie Stiers farms a little, writes a little and mothers two young kids in western Illinois.

So let's get started on some good conversations. But first, introductions are in order.

Hmmm. What can I tell you about myself?  I suppose the basics are always good, so here goes.

I grew up on a close-knit farm family in western Illinois. My parents, Roger and Julie Newell, raise corn, soybeans and alfalfa, manage a herd of cattle with my grandparents and my two uncles and also run a small swine operation. I spent a great majority of my days working outside with my Dad, taking care of our livestock. On a day like today, when there was no school, my brother, sister and I would leave our Christmas presents in piles on the floor and venture outside to help Dad feed and water the pigs and scoop near-frozen manure. Ahhh, memories.

When all of the water tanks had been thawed and the feed buckets have been hauled, Dad would usually reward us in giant snow piles (if there was any snow to be had). A giant snow pile held such great potential for three farm kids. It could be anything, a fort, a hill for sledding on or a peak for playing king of the mountain. Most often though, giant snow piles were hollowed out and used as backyard igloos. It was during days like these where I really wished that we had neighbor kids that could walk (within a reasonable distance, of course) over to our house.

Nowadays, I don't have any pigs to feed or manure to scoop, but I definitely consider myself a "farm mommy". My husband Matt and I make up part of the fifth generation of Murrays to farm in Champaign county. Our two year-old daughter, Teagan, makes generation number six (or so we can hope). We raise corn and soybeans and the occasional chicken flock when we feel so inclined. Matt and his two cousins, Jack and Christopher, also make a living in the farming "off-season" selling Pioneer brand seed products.

We are in our fourth year of marriage and farming together and are just beginning our journey as a young couple dedicated to agriculture. Life is pretty good.

I am so glad to meet you and I am eagerly looking forward to many more blog posts to come!  Here's to a happy and healthy new year!

 

Roganne Murray

Roganne is a farm wife, mother to a spunky two year-old and all-around farm girl. She and her husband Matt live in a white house on the Illinois prairie, and you can follow their adventures raising what they hope will be the sixth generation of Murrays to farm in Champaign county at White House on the Prairie.

This time of year, I always have people ask me the same question: “What do farmers do in the winter? They don’t have much work to do, do they?” While this is an honest question, and I’m sure my husband and in-laws would like some much-needed weeks of rest, this is not the case. Yes, my husband gets home earlier than usual, but this only means he’s home by about 6pm rather than midnight. During the winter, he works the typical business hours compared to the early mornings and late nights of planting and harvest seasons. There are no crops in the ground to tend, but he still has paperwork to file and bills to pay by the end of the year. There is also a list of projects on the farm to take care of that go by the way-side during the busy seasons (some projects have been on the to-do list for years). Farm families are business owners, so time spent out of the tractor is used to repair equipment, prepare financial statements, tend to relationships with customers and suppliers, attend conferences and seminars, and the list goes on (just like that list of projects at home that need attention). 

While winter does bring colder weather and snow, it doesn’t always mean that harvest is over. January 5th, 2010 was the last day of the 2009 harvest. That Christmas, my mother-in-law joked that we should decorate the tractors with Christmas lights and wreaths in order to get everyone in the Christmas spirit. Many mornings, the farmers went out to harvest the corn only to be brought inside by a snow fall that stopped them from picking.  Harvest is always an exciting time of year for farmers, but by the last couple of weeks they are anxious to get out of the fields. You can only imagine the frustration at harvesting through Thanksgiving, Christmas, AND into the new year of 2010.

Thankfully, this year our family farm was done harvesting and assumed “shorter” working hours by Thanksgiving. That meant we could go to the suburbs to enjoy a long Thanksgiving weekend with my family. This will also be true for our Christmas where we can travel and celebrate the holidays with family and friends. In addition, his winter days keep him home on weekends where we can take care of our own to-do list around the house that grows during harvest, catch up on missed TV shows, spend some much needed play time with our two children, and schedule family parties. We even squeeze in some date nights, which we don’t get during the harvest months of September-November and again from April-June during planting.

While this schedule, ruled by the seasons (and the weather), is typical for farm families, it is not what I grew up with. In the almost six years of being a farmer’s wife, I’ve learned to live the life of the farm family and really look forward to having my husband home during the winter months. While winter brings the joy of the holiday season, for farm families it also means that husbands are usually home for the holidays, which I’m always thankful for.

Kristen Strom
Brimfield, IL
Kristen is a city-gone-country girl after her marriage to her husband, Grant, who is a full-time farmer.  You can follow her stories and adventures on her blog at Little Dahinda.

There are many times that I question why we live where we live, geographically speaking. 

And then I have a mid-day like I did today, and I am thankful to live where we do.

So, quickly because I have pumpkin bread in the oven, small group to attend, birthday party invites to address, laundry to fold, and some other odds and ends to do, here’s my list.

*If we didn’t live 30 minutes from a Target, then my girls wouldn’t have the opportunity to ask me great questions like, “What does indescribable mean?” because of a song we heard on the Christian radio station. And, I was able to take the time to answer the question in great detail, only to be answered, “Well, I can describe Jesus…he’s the Christmas baby!”
Point well made.

*If we didn’t live where we live, I wouldn’t have to be truly diligent in my list making for a Target run…and if I do forget something big, like, oh…let’s pretend it was SNACKS for small group this afternoon…then I wouldn’t have been able to make pumpkin bread and smell up my house with that yummy cinnamony goodness that is pumpkin bread baking.

*If we didn’t live in the country, I wouldn’t be able to look out of my kitchen window to see my two big girls running through the freshly Turbo-chopped field, chasing the dog and getting excruciatingly dirty. My mantra for this to not drive myself crazy is, “I’m thankful; I’m thankful; I’m thankful.”

*If we didn’t live where we live, my kids would probably go to a different church. Instead, we go to a church in a neighboring community, a community where the kids go to the rival school, and we’re the outsiders. Although this is sometimes annoying, because sometimes I wish my kids could be with those whom they attend, we’re teaching them that friends can be from all over, and it doesn’t matter if they’re a Farmer or a Trojan. We’re all on the same basic team.

*Finally, I’m thankful for my gravel road. Although dusty and dirty and the bane of my OCD condition to keep my car clean, it announces the presence of a car with its dust and crackly sound, allows my life to slow down once I head off the hard road, and remind myself that nothing is perfect. Nothing can stay perfect, and I should be focusing on the things that I love and cherish and be thankful for them.

Timer’s dinging…bread done! Thankful for that!
Emily Webel
Emily, a town girl plunked out in the middle of nowhere, chronicles the surprises she's found living life with her husband and four children on a working grain and livestock farm in Farmington, IL. Confessions of a Farm Wife: The Good, TheBad, and The Dirty Truth of Life on the Gravel Road allows Emily, a former teacher, to use her educational expertise to share the truth about food and farmers to consumers everywhere. As a Farm Mom with the Illinois Farm Families campaign, Emily has enjoyed one on one experiences with city moms, fielding questions from fashion to fertilizer.