Of all things to do in life and businesses to choose from....Why in the world would I go from personal training and living in Denver to moving back to Wisconsin to farm?! You can't make a living as a farmer, so they all say...
I can vividly remember a conversation I had with a personal training client sometime during 2008, fresh out of college. He asked me, “Will you take over the farm someday?”
Without hesitation I replied with, “Absolutely not! I have no interest. And besides, I could never live there.” Farm!? Yeah right, I had much bigger plans for myself. I was meant for something so much more! It was as if farming was “down there” and I was headed “up there.”
Or so my 23-year-old wide eyed and busy tailed self thought.
The Universe/God (what ever you attribute it to) had a plan and a very specific path they would take me on during the next 10 years. Now as I’m able to reflect, I can see that home and farming was calling my name at various times but I chose to ignore these signs.
I was born and raised on a small family dairy farm. My Dad was the second generation to farm Valley Ridge Farm in York, Wisconsin. My grandpa would make the 100 yard walk from his house to the barn every single morning at 5am or before, up until the day Alzheimer’s took his true passion and love from him – farming.
The Farm That Made Me Who I Am Today
My childhood is filled with memories on the farm. The FARM, was the place where all of my cousins would come. It’s a place my closest friends would come to play. These were the days before technology robbed kid’s imagination and desire to play outdoors. A farm is a kid’s true heaven. Animals, open fields to run, barns and building to play hide-and-seek, ATV’s and motorcycles to ride, creeks to swim in, trees to build forts…. Today, I drive by city parks to see it filled with moms or dads, their strollers and a dog – this is their closest thing to emulating the heaven of a farm for a kid. It makes me feel completely blessed and grateful for my upbringing.
My kid days on the farm. I loved every day of them.
The days of no video games or iPad as a kid
But then I started to get older and I started to associate the farm with Work, a job and grunt labor. My Dad had a way with making work on the farm feel like anything but enjoyable! I never was able to look past the labor and work portion of the farm and see it for what it truly is – God’s work and LIFE in its truest form. A Farmer is the caretaker and artist. It’s so much more than a laborious job (my strongly held belief). It takes real management skills, an extremely broad knowledge base, strategy, planning, financial skills, people skills, business savvy and this all comes with an insane amount of financial risk.
But all throughout high school and college I could only see the farm as a location for grunt labor, demands, commands, and nothing more. I wanted out. So once I graduated from the University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire, I was gone.
As the months and years went on this association of Farm = undesirable work, started to fade. During my days cooped up in a small studio training client’s day after day, I began to daydream and yearn for the days back on the farm. The outdoors, the open space, working with my hands, doing different tasks, and the oh-so-awesome smell of fresh cut hay in the summer was calling my name and calling it LOUDLY.
But I would ignore this and right it off as just being “homesick.” And even more so, if I went back to farm that would mean I was a failure. Because that means I didn’t make it “out there” and had to settle and come back home. Simply put, my earlier beliefs of farming were preventing me from fallowing this calling.
For years I just completely wrote of any kind of possibility of me going back to farm. It wasn’t even a 1% option. I spent the next 8 years in the health, nutrition and fitness industry. Later in life I would be able to connect the dots and see how 10 years in the health and fitness sector played a very important role.
Then in April of 2014 I received a phone call from my mom. The following is really the only thing I remember about this call, “Dad has cancer.”
I was in denial. My dad having cancer didn’t really mean much. I had full belief that he would be just fine. But in the fall of 2015 I would be proven wrong. My dad had about 1,000 acres of corn and soybeans to be harvested, but he was hospitalized for an aggressive form of cancer treatment.
This was the first time I was physically called back to the farm. I came back home and took over the daily chores of feeding steers, and helped with chopping corn silage and combining 400 acres of soybeans.
The day I was called back to help haul corn silage loads. When I felt truly ALIVE!
I’ll tell you straight up, when I was back home tending to the farm, I felt so damn alive it was crazy. I still remember one crisp fall morning, I was driving the tractor and TMR to feed the cattle and I had this truly euphoric feeling. A sense of completeness, fullness and contempt. I even expressed it out loud by saying, “this is what I’m suppose to be doing, this is it.” It all felt so right.
First year combining beans while dad was sick in the hostpital.
My dad would recover from treatment and came back to the farm. This meant that my days of manning the farm were over.
The day dad returned from the hostipal, he climbed right back up in his favorite office.
Deep down I never really wanted to leave, but I had these “bigger” plans. Earlier that year I quit personal training, terminated my lease, stuffed all my belongings in a storage unit and took a one-way flight to Bangkok and backpacked throughout Thailand for a month. Upon my return, I intended on moving to Denver, Colorado to fulfill a dream of living out by the mountains and adventuring away from the comforts of my home stat of Wisconsin.
So again, if I even mentioned something about wanting to stay back and farm with my dad then I’d be a failure – in my eyes. I had to complete this grand adventure and I couldn’t let this “voice” sabotage my dreams! I don’t necessarily regret this decision because it did serve a very important role in my return – I found my future wife. A wife that supported a return to the land, the farm, and the lifestyle.
So there I was, trailer packed and the car stuffed, driving along I-80 heading west to Denver, Colorado.
Then later that year on September 20th, 2016 my dad lost his battle with cancer and passed away. One of the last things I told my dad as he passed, while holding his hand, was “Don’t worry dad, I’ll take care of your crops.” **I wrote in detail about losing my dad to cancer which you can read about HERE if you’d like.
The 2016 harvest was only a couple weeks away and he had over 1,000 acres to be harvested once again. This was the 2nd time I was called back to the farm, but with an extremely heavy heart.
Ironically, even with a heavy heart, my time spent up in the combine felt right. It was the same feeling; this was exactly where I was supposed to be and there was no where else I wanted to be. This was what I was meant to do.
The first full year of harvesting after my dad passed, just a couple weeks before we started soybeans.
It’s almost as if the Universe/God was saying, “Boy, if you’re not going to listen to us we’re going to completely rearrange your life and force you back!”
Unlike the first time I went back to help on the farm, this time my dad wasn’t coming back to take over. My mom and I were forced with a real decision.
Sell the farm or would I take over the 1,000+ acres of cropland and farm in 2017?
Again, I struggled with a part of me that felt like if I decide to drop all of my other plans and come back to farm, it would signal that I had in fact failed.
At times I would feel like telling my mom to just sell it all. Get out, it’s too much risk. But then I’d ask myself, “If you were never able to be up in that combine and do another harvest season again, would you be fine with it?” The answer was as clear as the Denver blue sky.
If I saw someone else farming our farm I would regret it for the rest of my life. I knew that I would again yearn for those days in the tractor, walking the land, admiring your art, working with my hands, and the shear magical feeling of complete solitude while doing field work at 1am.
I decided that 2017 would be the trial run. I would do the crop farming and my mom would continue the steer operation. It would be my first year of real farming without my dad. I had never actually planted crops in my life (remember why I associated farming with labor!? My dad would never let me do the things he loved doing!) and now I was about to attempt at planting over 1,000 acres of corn and soybeans. Luckily we have an amazing support group that my dad developed through the years that helped me through the process and learning curve.
The 2017 trial run at farming. My first time EVER planting.
I've taken this picture a 100 times before, but this was the first time I took the picture and it was a view of what I had planted - it was always my dad's masterpiece. A proud moment.
I was nervous as hell. I was overwhelmed and felt like I was completely in over my head…I’d be lying if I still didn’t feel that way.
For the first time, I was getting a TRUE look at the nature of farming and it was the farthest thing from grunt labor like I once thought. I began to see the skills required, the planning, the strategy, the impact of uncontrollable weather and the business side of it all.
Even though I felt overwhelmed with this new found view, I was completely fascinated and interested in the entire process of farming. I was invigorated by the challenge and all of the moving parts to being profitable and creating a masterpiece.
We made it through the 2017 season, but it wasn’t until the end of the harvest season that I completely committed to farming for the long haul. There was still something missing. Remember when I said that my 10 years in the health, nutrition and fitness industry served a very specific purpose? Well, it would lead me to farming a specific way.
Harvesting what I planted.
You see, I loved being back and farming but I didn’t feel a deep inner connection to it, other than making my dad and grandpa proud. The way we were farming was not in alignment with my values and I could feel this void.
I needed to farm in a way that was true to me, to my beliefs and values. That’s when I discovered a new way to farm. A way that connected with me on a deep level. I decided to jump in, head first! …more to come on that in the next article….
So now when I think about moving back and farming I don’t think of a grunt laborious job. I see the true beauty of farming and the life that comes along with it. I can see my kids running the fields, riding the tractors with me until they fall asleep just as I did, eating fresh and healthy food grown on the farm. I can see the farm alive again with the friends and cousins of my kids. All playing throughout the farm. I can see them checking out the animals, the open fields, building forts, swimming the creeks, and I can smell of fresh summer grass….
my niece and nephew riding along, just as I did as a kid. All kids love the farm.
Not only can I clearly see those visions, I feel a deep sense of purpose and calling. What is that calling and purpose? Well it has to do with the WAY I intend on farming and it’s quiet different from the modern, conventional and/or industrialized way…. I discovered a new way to farm.
This new discovery as exactly what I needed in order to make a decision with total confidence and with that….
I formally chose to farm.
But aren’t I a failure for going back to the farm? Doesn’t that mean I didn’t make it? I feel the exact opposite. I feel proud not ashamed of choosing to farm. It’s what I was meant to do, it’s where I’m suppose to be and I’m serving a mission driven by a strong purpose – given to me by something far greater than anything I can explain with words.
I’m heading back to York, Wisconsin where it all started – back on the farm and damn proud of it!
I'm coming back home...Valley Ridge Farm - 3rd Generation.
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Sincerely,
Brian Larson – A New American Farmer
P.S. I’m beyond excited to share this journey with you. And even more importantly, share with you a new way of farming to improve our land and sick food system. So in my next article I will share with you the type of farming that I discovered and why I believe in this type of farming with my entire being and why this type of farming is important for YOU too.
**I invite you to leave a comment below and if you’d like me to share anything specific in a future article, just leave me a note! Thanks for reading, the journey has just begun. Stay tuned…
IF you'd like to GET AN INSIDE LOOK of my journey to transitioning the farm to Regenerative Agriculture and learn why it's the best method to improve our health and land, you can sign up HERE.