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May 22, 2018 By Whitney Belprez 3 Comments

MOOving Home

As many of you know, this past year has been exciting but quite challenging for us.

The past two summers have both been droughts and this winter was the coldest and snowiest winter in decades, followed up by a prolonged cold muddy spring.

As farmers, we’re out in the thick of it – rain or shine, cold or heat, and everything in between. Naturally, the bizarre weather patterns we’ve been experiencing make life a lot harder for us in our day-to-day routines.

In addition to the strange weather, we’ve also had quite a few changes in our family life over the past year.

First, we moved from Lowell to Howard City to expand our business. Almost immediately after moving, Baylor was born, followed by our rapid expansion into the Metro Detroit/Southeast Michigan area, and our absorption of the bulk of a retired herdshare in the Greenville area.

All of these changes have been for the better, but they’ve also come with a cost. Our work-life balance is practically non-existent and we are finding it increasingly difficult to balance our family’s needs with the needs of the farm.

One year ago we had 8 milk cows, while now our total herd has grown to 38, with 2-3 more calves born every month. It’s great for the farm! We are growing the dairy herd and have started crossing some cows with Angus to build up a better grassfed beef line.

The downside of all this, is that our new bigger farm in Howard City, is starting to feel small.

With all that in mind, my mom sent us an ad for an auction on a defunct dairy farm in Eaton Rapids, the town where I was born and where most of my family and extended family still live, it seemed like an opportunity worth checking out.

Dan and I went to see the farm, and at first neither of us seemed to want to admit how much we liked it. It was the trifecta – beautiful farmhouse, all the farm facilities in place, and the perfect location near our family and the support network we’ve been lacking.

On a long shot we registered for the auction and by some miracle found ourselves to be the highest bidder on auction day.

So….

We are moving (again).

That is absolutely crazy for me to write.

One year ago – literally May 16 (our wedding anniversary!) – we moved into our current farm, quickly listed our farm in Lowell and purchased our current property.

Never in a million years would we have thought we’d be finding ourselves in the same position only a year later. But, as both our family and our farm have grown, we are realizing how important to is to us to be near family.

We want our kids to see their grandparents regularly, and to know their aunts and uncles and cousins, and we need that support network in order to continue doing what we do. We are excited to be moving home, but we will certainly miss our farm here in Howard City and all it’s natural beauty.

As for our new farm in Eaton Rapids, the farm buildings are perfect for our operation – until 15 years ago the farm was a fully functional Grade A dairy. The house is beautiful – just in need of some wallpaper removal. And the location is ideal for our family’s needs, central to highways and both our West and Southeast Michigan delivery routes – plus, it’s 80 acres.

We will have enough land to finally keep all of our calves and be consistently finishing beef. We also plan to get back into breeding stock for our pastured Berkshire hogs and run them through the 17 acres of woods on the property. We will continue to expand the dairy herd and cut much of our own hay over the next 2-3 seasons.

The family who auctioned it has had the farm since the early 70’s and the husband died unexpectedly in 2015 in his early sixties of a heart attack, and the wife died of cancer in the fall of 2017. Not one of their 5 children have an interest in the land, house or farming, unfortunately.

Dairy farms notoriously do not ever become available for the public to purchase. Generally, once a farmer dies, the widow stays in the house, and rents the land to local crop farmer until she dies at which point the farmer who is renting the ground snaps up the property before anyone else has a chance.

Usually, they then parcel off the house and buildings on 5-10 acres, pocket the cash and continue cash cropping the tillable acreage.

This happens over and over again.

So, when we saw this listing for the auction we knew we would be crazy to not at least entertain pursuing it.

And, within a week of winning the auction, we had made arrangements and sold our current house to a local herd share family without even listing it!

And, we are thrilled to be closer to the family and friends that we’ve spent over a decade commuting to visit – an increasingly difficult task while running a dairy farm and chasing young children.

After over a decade in West Michigan, we are finally MOOving home.

Below are some notes with answers to questions you may have regarding this news! Please read over everything and do not hesitate to contact us with any other questions or concerns.

What this means for…

Pigs!

We will be combining two smaller batches into one batch that is scheduled to head to the butcher mid-June. We plan to sell a few by the half/whole and the rest will be ground into brats for grilling and breakfast sausage. Our next batch won’t be available again until fall so stock your freezer now!

Click here to reserve yours here

West & Southeast Michigan Deliveries

None of the milk deliveries will be affected by the move to the new farm (beyond the one week while we move) – except the current on-farm pickup folks in Howard City. We will not be continuing a delivery location there. Families can form a drive share to one of our other locations or choose to let the lease expire on their share. You can contact us for more details on this.THANK YOU!

As always, thank you so much for the opportunity to serve you – we are immensely grateful for your business!

-Dan, Whitney, Cecilia, Beau & Baylor

Filed Under: Farm & Family Life, News & Updates, Production Systems Tagged With: Beef, Business, Dairy, Farm Life, non-GMO, Simplicity, Sustainability

September 4, 2017 By Whitney Belprez 4 Comments

A New Season…A New Beginning

blondie-milk-two-sparrows-farmLabor Day weekend either seems to be an end of summer celebration or it ushers in the beginning of fall. This year it seems to the latter. As I’m writing this, I can see bits of color on the trees, the wind is blowing gusts from the west and our apple trees are already ripening. It’s the perfect day to curl up with a book and a cup of coffee!

Fall is bringing a lot of excitement this year {really, this whole year has been exciting – for better or worse!} We have 3 cows that are due to calve this month and 3 more in the first part of October. We have our fall batch of pigs heading to butcher mid-month and we’re one month away from the fall beef harvest! We have just a few quarters of beef available to be sure to reserve yours soon.

We are also hosting our Coffee & Muck Boots Fall Farm Tour this Saturday September 9 at 10:00 AM.

Click here for details and to RSVP, but we’re be providing coffee and fresh, hot donuts from the local Amish bakery…so…yeah. You’ll want to be there. 😉

In September, we’re also working on a few construction projects around the farm. We’re insulating our dairy barn for the coming winter, fixing up our future farm store building, and installing a new pipeline milking system! We also purchased an enclosed trailer this weekend, which we’ll be insulating and turning into a portable walk-in cooler for milk storage and deliveries.

peach-two-sparrows-farmWe’ve already announced our expansion to our herdshare leaseholders but starting in November, we’ll be taking over a retiring herdshare on the east side of the state. With a driver and refrigerated truck, our milk & dairy products will be available at over 20 delivery location in the Detroit-Ann Arbor area. We {& the delivery coordinator} hope to expand into the Saginaw, Bay City and Lansing areas in the future.

We are incredibly excited about this growth, and it has required us to triple the size of our milking herd, upgrade some of our equipment and infrastructure, and scale back some other areas of our farm to make sure we’re scaling up in a sustainable way.

Happy Labor Day to All!

Filed Under: Farm & Family Life, News & Updates Tagged With: Beef, Dairy, Farm Life, Local, Raw Milk, Sustainability

July 19, 2017 By Whitney Belprez Leave a Comment

The Farm Days of Summer

It’s been a while…time to catch up on what’s happening this summer on the farm!

I actually intended to send this post several weeks ago, and ended up having a baby before I could finish it! So, please consider this my official apology/explanation for why this newsletter is so behind. ;D

A whirlwind spring spun right into an intense June for us! We officially moved to our new farm in Howard City mid-May. Of course, it wasn’t without its delays & hiccups, but we managed to only lose a few milkings instead of being shut down for a whole week, like we initially planned. Our deliveries have made the switch, as well, and, overall, I hope our customers felt the transition was as seamless as possible.

We are, of course, offering on-farm pickup for milk {weekends only right now} and deliver to Cannonsburg on Mondays, Grand Rapids on Wednesdays and Lowell on Fridays. One of our projects for this summer/fall is renovating an old chicken coop turned brooder house into an on-farm store…sound familiar? Seems like we just did this a year ago… ;D

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Farm & Family Life, News & Updates Tagged With: Beef, Farm Life, Pork, Turkey

May 28, 2015 By Whitney Belprez 5 Comments

Label Confusion

rooster-two-sparrows-farmWe totally missed the Farm Week in Review this Sunday but I promise we have lots of great blogs coming your way! As the season ramps up our “inside” time decreases – we are still awaiting the arrival of piglets any day now and another calf in another week or so. Lots of projects are underway (function + beauty) on the farm and we are excited to share our progress soon! [Read more…]

Filed Under: Philosophy, Production Systems Tagged With: Beef, Chicken, Dairy, Food, Grassfed, Local, non-GMO, Raw Milk, Sustainability

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9370 Columbia Hwy Eaton Rapids MI 48827
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