Livestock farmer stories, tips, and resources for success.
Choosing to Farm: New Generation Stories
Robert Friedman Raises Poultry Intentionally
April 29, 2024

Robert Friedman Raises Poultry Intentionally

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...
Justin Bramhall and Vanessa Rose Are Part of the Solution
April 24, 2024

Justin Bramhall and Vanessa Rose Are Part of the Solution

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 conven...
Bruce Hennessey and Beth Whiting Level Up Their Business
April 20, 2024

Bruce Hennessey and Beth Whiting Level Up Their Business

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 t...
Bruce Hennessey and Beth Whiting Climb Mountains and Diversify
April 13, 2024

Bruce Hennessey and Beth Whiting Climb Mountains and Diversify

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 ...
Haley Goulet Educates Her Community
April 6, 2024

Haley Goulet Educates Her Community

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 kid...
Toby & Melissa Malandrinos Pick Their Battles
April 3, 2024

Toby & Melissa Malandrinos Pick Their Battles

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.— ...
Zan and Kimberly Walker-Goncalves Circle Back to their Roots
March 27, 2024

Zan and Kimberly Walker-Goncalves Circle Back to their Roots

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 Z...
Guest:Kiki and Z
Nicolle Ferrier Breeds Fowl for the Future
Feb. 15, 2024

Nicolle Ferrier Breeds Fowl for the Future

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 rewa...
Ridge Shinn Thinks Big Picture
Jan. 13, 2024

Ridge Shinn Thinks Big Picture

We could actually look into the animal, the live animal, see intramuscular fat and tenderness. We also had these tools, linear measurement tools that we could actually physically measure the animals and began to find almost i...
John Roberts Part 1: Falling in Love with Farming
Jan. 6, 2024

John Roberts Part 1: Falling in Love with Farming

We'd rebuilt the milking parlor, which hadn't been operating. We've done all of this sort of stuff. When we came to close the sale we had two years of numbers to show that we actually knew-vaguely knew--what we were doing. We...
Tricia Park Uses Holistic Management to Drive Her Decisions
Dec. 23, 2023

Tricia Park Uses Holistic Management to Drive Her Decisions

“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 bea...
Erin Meding Grows a Farm
Dec. 13, 2023

Erin Meding Grows a Farm

“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 ...
Cameron Pedigo Farms for the Right Reasons
Oct. 21, 2023

Cameron Pedigo Farms for the Right Reasons

“I'd watch the deer, how they would interact with the cows and turkeys and, you know, other animals. I've always been a keen observer of nature. That started young. That's kind of like the foundation. I didn't realize that's ...
Chris & Samantha Kemnah Find Less Labor in Dairy
Sept. 30, 2023

Chris & Samantha Kemnah Find Less Labor in Dairy

“Neither one of us came from a farm family or any kind of money in our background. We've just kind of done it on our good credit. We've leased the farms that we've been on. We are hoping to be able to buy the farm we're on no...
Brad & Emalee Buttrey Find Real-Life Challenges
Aug. 15, 2023

Brad & Emalee Buttrey Find Real-Life Challenges

“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 v...
Nicole & Jeremiah Vernon Talk Time, Family and Vulnerability
Aug. 9, 2023

Nicole & Jeremiah Vernon Talk Time, Family and Vulnerability

“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 ...
Karen Hoffman is Peaceful by Nature
July 8, 2023

Karen Hoffman is Peaceful by Nature

"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 c...
Bobbie Jean Booth Becomes an Accidental Farmer
June 24, 2023

Bobbie Jean Booth Becomes an Accidental Farmer

“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...
Kate Osgood is All or Nothing
June 10, 2023

Kate Osgood is All or Nothing

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...
Nick Weinstock Goes from Foodie to Farmer
June 7, 2023

Nick Weinstock Goes from Foodie to Farmer

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 const...
Becky Harhaj Balances Calm and Chaos
May 9, 2023

Becky Harhaj Balances Calm and Chaos

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 kid...
Hank & Heather LeTarte Listen to Their Customers
April 29, 2023

Hank & Heather LeTarte Listen to Their Customers

“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 yo...
Carly Farmer Sticks With It
April 22, 2023

Carly Farmer Sticks With It

“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...
Matt Kovarik Thinks Outside the Box
April 15, 2023

Matt Kovarik Thinks Outside the Box

“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...