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Family Farming

          If anyone has ever told you that the farming life is easy, they weren’t being honest. It is not for the faint of heart. In complete honesty, how would you respond if someone promised you a livelihood that often depended on things far from your control? That it was possible to work 80 hours a week for an entire growing season only to lose the entire crop because it flooded, dried up, or withered due to disease? A sane person would probably decline such an offer. Yet across this great land farmers beat the sun out of bed every day to put food on the plates of the world.


          This blog is not intended to throw a pity party for the American farmer, rather I want to bring to light something incredible about this life. It’s people and the bond that forms amongst them. Every farmer can empathize with each other on the basic understanding of how one setback can ruin a year’s work. That is why when trouble arises for one farmer, a whole community of farmers stands up to respond. Here are a few examples of how incredible our neighbors have been when disasters have struck our farm.


            Roughly a dozen years ago, one of our fields caught fire in the mist of harvesting. As the dry corn stalks went up in smoke and the flames raced to our remaining crops, three different tractors appeared with plows to intercept them. They all came from neighbors who were in their own fields, saw the smoke, and came flying in to help. Another time a small tornado swept through and ripped up several of our trees. Relatives and friends arrived with chainsaws, skid loaders, and willing hearts to remove all the debris in a single afternoon. It would have taken us three weeks to clean up the mess by ourselves.



          It isn’t always the big things that bring out helping hands. It can be as simple as employees taking on a few extra hours this past weekend so we could travel to Kalamazoo, Michigan for a family wedding. (It was an incredible time; thank you to everyone who pitched in so we could all enjoy it.) It is as small as lending a piece of machinery for a few days while ours is being fixed. (Thanks again, Irv.) Another time it is being willing to step in for someone when a family emergency pops up.



          Some might say the day of family farms is gone, but we are willing refute that statement any day. Whether or not an employee of VG Farms is a relative of the Van Gilst family (most are) we treat them like they are. We always aim to treat them as a member of our farming family; always considering their personal lives being balanced with their working one. Additionally, our farming family is not constrained to our singular operation – it is much bigger. It is all of our neighbors. No, farming is never easy, but we do our best to make it easier on each other. 

- VG Farms 

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