Reintroduction: An Update on Us!
Hello all! Through the various farmer's markets and events we've been participating in this summer we have gained a significant amount of new followers. Which is absolutely amazing to us and we humbly thank each and every person who spends just a few moments checking in on us from time to time! We thought we would give a reintroduction and update on your favorite farming family so everyone can be involved in our journey through each phase of our farming adventure.
Farmer’s Markets are where we really get to meet a lot of our customers!
You may know us as the person who sells meat at your farmer's market, the person who contacts you once a year for your yearly quarter beef or half hog, or even just someone you met and talked to for a few minutes at a special event. What you don't see (unless you happen to follow us on Facebook and Instagram) are the hours upon hours that we spend working every day on the farm in order to bring dinner to your table!
We, John, Emily, and Grayson Crain, are a farming family through and through. We operate a 700 head beef feedlot that we use to raise our animals in the best living conditions that we can provide. Other than the cattle, we also raise pigs, sheep if we can, and have two hay-burners (a.k.a. horses). We operate the farm as a family and hope to one day own a farm of our own! We are located in the beautiful city of St. Johns, MI currently and hope to remain there permanently when we buy our own land. While we do live in the city, we hope to build our dream farmhouse and our dream cattle feeding facility outside city limits when the time is right.
Farming family from sun-up till sun-down.
John has a certificate in Agricultural Industries while Emily (that's me!) has a bachelor's in Animal Science, both from Michigan State University. Though we are the same age and were at college at the same time, we did not meet at MSU (that's a different story for another day). We've been married just over 3 years and have the cutest 19-month-old son, Grayson. Grayson is a farm boy and loves petting the cattle, pigs, horses, and the dog. More than anything, though, he absolutely loves "driving" the tractor. Blessed doesn't even begin to describe how fortunate we feel to be able to raise Grayson on the farm.
Now, when we first started this farming journey we would have told you that our future included expanding the number of cattle we could feed up to a 1,000 head. This would allow us to utilize a lot of technologies that are quite costly unless you can divide the cost over a large number of cattle. Feeding cattle is something we will always do, even if we both have jobs that aren't farming related at some point. The number of cattle we will feed is a bit more of a mystery to us now.
One day we’ll own our dream farm
We just recently decided to pursue the option of opening some type of "farm market" store. The details are blurry and the specifics are still out of reach but we have become fairly sure that opening some type of storefront will be in our future. That might mean a small store right on the farm when we own our own land, that might mean a retail space in town, that might mean partnering with other stores so they can stock our product. We just know that this new path is the path we need to be walking so with a significant amount of trust and faith, we are forging ahead into the unknown with the thoughts and prayers of a lot of people behind us.
We’re always ready and willing to answer any questions you may have!
More than anything, our hope is through our lives we can spread the truth about agriculture. There are so many lies and misinformation being spread about how animals are raised and the public needs to hear from producers like us to know what's really happening behind our barn doors. We want people to always feel like they can come to us with questions about what a label means in the grocery store or how a specific animal is raised. Transparency is the only way modern agriculture will continue to thrive and, with so many negative misconceptions out there, we strive to be 100% transparent in all of our operations.
We hope you continue to follow our journey and give our product a try. Nothing makes us happier than hearing how much someone enjoyed a blog, Facebook, or Instagram post and learned something new in the process. Please, if you ever have any questions or concerns don’t think twice about contacting us with them. Part of our job is answering questions and we can guarantee that if we don’t know an answer, we will find one for you! We hope you enjoyed learning a little bit about us and continue with us on this crazy ride we seem to find ourselves on!