A Year to Review

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January 14, 2025

To recap a whole year into one short blog feels like a lot of pressure. I am bound to miss some of the best moments of the year, while ignoring some of the hard challenges tackled. At the same time, life on the farm can feel incredibly similar one day to the next when living outside of the moments. But I do understand my worst attempt will be better than nothing, so here it goes.

The Farm

Pastured Chicken Investments. We invested heavily into our pasture-raised chicken program. Developing a new approach to our brooder and finishing on the pastures. Our cement block building was repaired extensively to turn into a brooder. Automatic waters and feeders were installed to help aid in the daily manual chores of caring for the birds through their most vulnerable moments. We also purchased two extra-large mobile hoop houses, fully equipped with automatic water and feed, to move our birds every single day throughout the pasture. We grew rye and finished our birds on the beautiful lush greens. Our chicken program at the farm is something we are all really proud of, not only because of the improvements to better the lives of the birds, but those of the farmer too. And, with the careful combination of fresh feed ingredients ground at the farm, we are raising some of the best tasting poultry ever.
Built a thoughtful team. We know the farm can only thrive with some really smart, caring and hard working hands. This year our focus was to find the best fit of people to help care for the animals every single day. The team now is full of guys with hearts of gold, that deeply care for the animals. One of which just welcomed a baby of his own right before Christmas - we congratulate him and glory to God for this blessing.
Closed-Herd Breeding. To strengthen our genetics, and further protect the quality of the pork we raise, we closed the herd. Which means the sows (mamma pigs) and boars (male pigs) come from this farm alone. We have been preserving the genetics of our own sow herd for well over 50 years, and now are preserving the genetics of our own boars. We control the quality of the pigs raised even further now, and have already noticed the benefits to this breeding technique.
Introduced Lambs. 125 pregnant ewes made their way to our farm this year. What an incredible sight to see! Learning about this new to us species of animal has been incredibly enlightening. Once they began having baby lambs, we monitor them around the clock. My husband Nick takes on the late shift, heading down to the flock every 3-4 hours. He’s aided a few during birth, and likes to make sure the baby lambs are able to secure their first drops of colostrum. With lambing, came a couple babies that needed extra care. Two lambs made their way into our kitchen for a couple weeks, where the kids and I bottle-fed them around the clock, and helped build their muscles up enough to stand on their own. This Christmas will forever be known as, ‘the year of the baby sheep’, as they joined us for our family parties, and pictures by the tree.

The Business

Warehouse expansion. To better service our farmers market customers, and build on to our current market schedules - we leased new warehouse space in Chicago. This allowed our team to expand without the added travel time and pressure on our Michigan team. We hired another full-time employee Isaiah to manage the space, and attended 2 brand new markets - Schaumburg and Wheaton. Isaiah brings a ton of experience with him at the markets, as he worked alongside Lou Ann for several years, starting as a young kid washing coolers. Isaiah’s always felt like a part of our family, and it’s been so nice to work alongside him full-time. This also means we are able to attend two indoor farmers markets during the winter months - you can find us at the Logan Square indoor market every Saturday, or the Green City indoor market every other Saturday.
Home Shipping. We dragged our feet about starting a home shipping program. Some of the reasons being adequate warehouse space, infrastructure, and added pressures to our current distributions. We never want to skimp on the quality of our customer service, so we needed to make sure we were at a good point for growth and change. Adapting to the readily available service of shipping was always in our plans, but finding the right time was even more important. This year we quietly introduced our home shipping program, opening it up without any promotion or advertisements. We were able to personally call every single customer for the first few months, in order to receive valuable feedback about the process. Finding the right packaging, cold storage, and shipping solutions took us some time, but we are working like a well-oiled machine now. We have been pinning all of the locations, and have left only a couple handfuls of States that need to be sent some of our meats.
New Products. We introduced grass-fed and grass-finished lamb this year, and were pleasantly surprised by the consistent demand for it. We also added different great lakes fish pates, dog treats, smoked pork butts, party-style chicken wings, whole ducks, and smoked bone-in loins.
New Connections. We continue to build and grow within the local food industry, by developing new connections with different small stores, restaurants, buyers clubs, and institutions. Some of the newest on our list of connections include restaurants with Michelin stars - top notch meats compliment the best chefs! We’ve grown our wholesale program this year, and are happy to know the local food industry is still thriving. Despite this growth, we also said sad goodbyes to some of our connections that had to close their doors. It is a tough business especially for our local restauranteurs - so keep supporting small business operations, your support really matters!
Semi-Retirement? Nate and Lou Ann are owners of Jake’s Country Meats, and my parents. They created this meat business while farming in 1998. The two of them began farming together in 1976, with Nate being the 6th generation farmer of his family. They’ve been working hard, very hard, their entire life. And have no plans of real retirement, in true farmer-style. However, they do know and want to shift their work to better suit their stage of life. We were able to lessen up Lou Ann’s work-load at the farmers markets this year, to allow more time for her at home and in the office. Nate never stops thinking of new ventures and is our visionary; he has devoted more of his time to developing a new plan for our grass-fed beef program with my brother, and puts in time volunteering for our County’s historical society. Call it semi-retirement if you will, but it’s more like a change of work-pace for them. We carry a lot of gratitude for the farm and the meat business being able to grow and shift to the many needs of many people.
Thanks so much for being a part of our 2024 farm story. You are the number one reason why many of the things mentioned happened, and why it even matters. We are looking forward to more changes and growth in 2025, and more ways to better serve and feed you.
With all of our thanks,
Renee and the entire Jake’s Country Meats Family

What 7 generations of Farming Teaches Us...

Earlier this month, we welcomed the Cass County Historical Society to our farm for their September event and meeting. We gathered together to talk about the history of our farm, seven generations of agriculture, and all the ways farming has changed along the way. Then we loaded everyone onto hay wagons and headed out to see what farming here looks like today. It was an evening about history, but the conversation felt just as relevant to the future. Because the story of how agriculture has changed is also part of the story of how we all buy food today. Walk through a grocery store and there are plenty of labels trying to help you decide what to buy. Natural. Local. Grass-fed. Pasture-raised. Sustainable. Premium. You can spend a lot of time reading packages and researching claims and still wonder what any of it actually looked like on the farm. That's one reason we believe knowing where your food comes from, and knowing the people who raised it, matters. Our Farm Changed, Too Generations ago, farms in this area were diversified because they needed to be. Livestock, crops, gardens and families existed together on the same piece of ground. Animals provided fertility for the soil, crops fed animals and people, and farms relied heavily on what they could produce themselves and on the communities surrounding them. As agriculture changed, farms became larger and more specialized. Livestock increasingly moved into confinement, and farmers became more dependent on commodity systems where they could be very efficient at raising something while having very little control over what they were paid for it. Our family lived that story. We raised hogs in confinement and sold into the commodity market. When hog prices collapsed in the late 1990s, our family had to take a hard look at whether that system could provide a future for our farm. Instead of getting bigger, we eventually chose a different direction: downsizing, diversifying and getting closer to the people actually eating the food we raised. Animals moved back outside. Pigs returned to pastures and woodlands. Cattle and sheep became part of our grazing system. Chickens and turkeys moved across pasture. We began thinking more intentionally about the relationship between soil, plants, animals and people, while building our own market to sell our food directly to you. What Does That Have to Do With Your Dinner? Quite a bit, actually. If you're trying to feed your family well, there's an overwhelming amount of information telling you what you should and shouldn't buy. One of the things a direct relationship with a farmer can offer is something much simpler: a source you can actually know. You can ask us what our pigs eat, how our cattle are raised, where our animals are processed or why we make a particular farming decision. You can visit the farm, see our animals and pastures, meet our family and employees, and follow along throughout the year. When you have questions, there's a real person on the other side of them. To us, that's one of the most valuable things about local food. "Local" shouldn't only mean that something traveled fewer miles. It can also mean accountability, transparency and a relationship with the people responsible for raising your food. We Aren't Trying to Farm in the Past After our talk, we headed outside to see some of these ideas in practice. We talked about grazing, livestock, soil and pasture, and we visited some baby pigs that held everyone's attention more than any story we could tell. Some of what we do today probably looks familiar to farmers from generations ago, but we're not trying to recreate the past. We use electric fencing, portable watering systems, tractors, refrigeration, USDA-inspected processing, delivery trucks, inventory software and online ordering. We're combining principles that have worked for generations with the tools and knowledge available to us today. That's part of agriculture. Farmers have to adapt. The question for us isn't how to make farming look like it did 100 years ago. It's how to take care of our land, raise animals well, produce really great food and build a farm economically strong enough to still be here 100 years from now. Strong Farms. Strong Communities. There's a lot of conversation about supporting the American farmer. When you choose to buy directly from us, you help create a market for farmers who want to do things differently. Those dollars help keep farmland in regenerative agriculture, employ local people, support processors and other small businesses. You help build strong communities, and maybe even more importantly with the average age of the American farmer on the rise each year, you give another generation a reason to believe farming can still provide a living. A Strong farm gives you an option. One that you trust to nourish you well. One that you trust to provide food that tastes incredible. One that you trust will consistently serve you. One that you trust to take care of the animals and land with respect. A strong farm gives its community a better way to feed itself, and a strong community gives its farms enough support to keep farming. Seven generations ago, our family couldn't have imagined what this farm would look like in 2026. We can't know what it will look like seven generations from now either. But we hope the people living here will still have the choice to know where some of their food comes from, to ask questions about how it was raised, and to know the farmer responsible for raising it. Thank you to the Cass County Historical Society for giving us an opportunity to look back at where agriculture has been and think about where it's headed. And thank you to every one of you who chooses to be part of what comes next. Strong Farms. Strong Communities.Real Food. Rooted Living. Renee & the Jake's Country Meats family

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