Skip to main content

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 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Backing Away from Basics

How many times have you said to yourself or to others that there is a need to get back to basics? A return to the basics can help us realign with the fundamental principles of the task at hand. It’s generally very helpful. When I was struggling in a sport, I often backtracked to the fundamentals to discovered my point of error. Other’s use it in work, family life, and in cooking. Unfortunately, I believe that we have remained a bit too basic in our approach to pork. Go to a retail store and you will see the same cuts that have been available for the past 30 years. You will see chops, shoulder and loin roasts, tenderloins, ham steaks, etc. Now there is nothing wrong with those cuts as they present a myriad of cooking opportunities. But the wonderful pig produces so much more! Take for example some of the dishes we served this week at a pork education event. We made street tacos out of pork steaks (it’s the Spinalis muscle if you want to get technical). We made Chulet
1 comment
Read more

Can you power wash?

              Can you power wash? It may seem odd, but this is often one of the first questions I ask someone interviewing for a job with us. There are generally two reasons for asking this question. The first is practical in nature. Pigs can kind of be like your kids sometimes, leaving a mess where ever they go.            This makes power washing a frequent event especially in the farrowing house. Grant does a good job of making sure the next mom has a clean place to have her babies.             The second reason is it may give you an idea of the persons work ethic. If they hesitate or try to appear that they are “over qualified” to power wash that may be a red flag. All jobs here are important, whether you are in charge of the books or cleaning farrowing pens, what you are doing is vital to the success of the farm.             Last week I talked about getting projects done. We took advantage of the Labor day weekend to get one of those projects done. The white stripes went
Post a Comment
Read more

Merry Christmas!

Christmas has finally arrived here at VG Farms. It is finally white and actually looks like Christmas. Before I go on, let me issue an apology for the lack of blog posts these past few weeks. Between my end-of-semester finals and my father’s busy work-load, it has been difficult to find the time to write. So consider this special Christmas edition a gift from us to you. As any family does, the Van Gilst’s hold several Christmas traditions. Some are small and informal – like watching National Lampoons Christmas Vacation at least a half dozen times. Others are a bit more significant – such as gathering with each side of the family (Van Gilst and Branderhorst) to celebrate the holidays alongside grandparents, aunts and uncles, and an endless supply of cousins. We watch the Iowa Hawkeyes play in their bowl game (fingers crossed for a victory in a few days) and occasionally us boys will head off to Iowa City to catch some hoops. Whatever it may be, there is never a dull moment ov
Post a Comment
Read more