Explore the importance of local food

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November 23, 2021

I can't turn the news on in the morning without hearing the words shortage, supply disruption, cargo ships, inflation, or empty shelves. These terms carry even more weight when they are describing our food, something we all need in order to live.

The industrial food system we all helped create was shattered last year during worldwide shutdowns. Demand soared for food to consume in our own homes and completely stopped for the foodservice industry. This dramatic shift in our behaviors caused pressure on the system and empty shelves in the grocery stores, leading to feelings of fear, anxiety, and panic.

I will never forget the overwhelming response from our community during those couple of months. I was on the phone or computer communicating all day long and into the night for weeks just to barely keep up. My children ran around with babysitters who were suddenly out of school, while we all consumed ourselves with helping people understand and access the food we produce.

We moved more meat through our little on-farm store in one week than we did in a typical month. Our system was pressed, yet, we managed to keep food in our freezers and maintained animals on the ground for the future months. Hot items of bacon or pork chops were limited, but we had alternative meat cuts available such as cutlets, pork steaks, shanks, cottage bacon, and bacon ends n pieces.

The local food industry's most strained piece of the puzzle was felt by the people working with us. We needed more help than ever before to sustain through the instant demand. More people were needed to pack boxes, answer phones and create invoices. Luckily for us, folks were looking for things to do during the shutdown and didn't hesitate to help until we caught up, and implemented different processes to relieve some of that stress.

All of these past experiences contribute to where we are right now, still hearing and seeing shortages in all of our mass-supply systems. What can we as local producers offer to you that you are missing from the industrial food system? A consistent flow of credible information allows us to easily adapt.

A farmer, the person whose hands are literally growing your food, is involved in all decision-making and can provide you with information quickly. All the while, you can offer input to us which can be relayed directly to the farmer. You trust us to work hard producing food that meets your standards, and we trust you to participate, providing us with support and feedback to grow your food.

Through this communication, we've learned that diversity within our product line helps provide even more resilience. Having multiple sources for food you can trust allows us to navigate through any disruptions without completely shutting down, and gives us the ability to grow steadily with demand.

We maintain partnerships with two different Michigan fisheries, an egg producer, a cattle farmer, produce farms, bee-keepers, and sugar-makers in our neighborhood.

Thankfully, through this relationship, we can adapt quickly to sudden changes, and work through problems, together. There's a much bigger picture to the small-scale local food system, one that we believe will only grow in importance as time keeps on ticking.

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

Beef In The News

There has been a lot of beef in the news lately. Beef prices are high, cattle numbers are low, and now there is talk about bringing in more imported beef at a discount to help combat prices for consumers. Then, almost in the same breath, there are announcements aimed at helping American farmers and ranchers by addressing some of the processing and market-access challenges we face. Despite what feels like whiplash, anything in the news today - will take it's effect on American farmers overtime, and the outcomes of these decisions will all be determined in due time. So what do these current events mean for our small family farm? And what can you actually do to help American farmers?

Create Your Own Job...

That’s exactly what my parents instilled in us kids growing up on the farm, among many other things. But this one…this one really stuck with me. And I bought into it a little too far, I’ll admit some days, and created a job with responsibility much bigger than I ever dreamed.

Explore the importance of local food

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What 7 generations of Farming Teaches Us...

Beef In The News

Create Your Own Job...

Jake's Country Meats