Our Mighty First Generation Farm

Our Mighty First Generation Farm
That first year. Photo by Michael Wilson

This is our first publication to be published in the Foxhole Journal!  Newsletters will remain free for anyone to access.  Future weekly writings and how-to's will be available to those subscribed to the Foxhole Members and Sustaining Members only.

It might have been the morning when I was hand-seeding 15 acres of our new property with our baby May strapped to my back that I first recognized the gravity of founding our first generation farm.  With the seeder mounted to my chest, I paced my cranks with my steps and looked up to see our neighbor off in the distance, a fourth generation farmer, precision drilling his seed corn with elephantine John Deere equipment.  I walked on, certain he was grinning at the ridiculousness of my undertaking, but maybe also with a bit of reverence for the effort.  Having dumped our savings into a downpayment, a tractor, and the basics to get us seeding, harvesting, and washing produce, we couldn't afford more appropriate equipment to plow and seed the 27 acres of corn stubble with pasture mix for eventual sheep to graze, soil to benefit from, and wildlife to inhabit.  So we found an old single bottom plow (entirely too small for working smarter not harder) and cultipacker at a farm auction, prepped the ground and loaded batch after batch of seed into that little Earthway chest-mounted seeder.  I lay on the floor of the empty farmhouse which we were yet to move into as May crawled around to find all the outlets in the house.  My underarms chafed from the hours of repetitive motion and my back happy for the respite, I smiled that we were wise enough to seed our fields on the same day as such a practiced grower.  But it felt like such a little victory in the shadow of the unknown that lay ahead...how was this leap into the rabbit hole going to pan out?


As it turned out, consistently gentle rains fell that spring of 2018.  The pasture came in so thick, you'd think it was three years mature.  We had two local farmers ask if they could hay our fields, having seen how lush it was.  To me, the success of our first seeds planted on the farm was an affirmation that we were in the right place.  Having grown up suburban kids, neither Rich nor I had that inherent sense of the land nor inherited land to our names.  What we had going for us was an incredible desire to live off of the land.  This yearning was born in 2011 when we started as apprentices on an educational farm started by a philanthropic family.  That's where we met too...at this beautiful place , but one where we could have never learned how much grit it would take to get a small farm business on its feet.  


All the turns we took from that farm nestled in the Hudson Valley of New York, which eventually landed us back in Dayton, Ohio enriched us with enough experience and belief in ourselves to quit our jobs and establish Foxhole Farm.  Stepping into our 5th season here, we can acknowledge that the fourth generation lad next door was right if he was shaking his head at me that first spring.  We've got to have some sort of madness in us to try to jump the hurdle of purchasing land at a 20th century price per acre, with a one-year-old baby depending on us to make it work out, and to try to establish a new name in a midwest town that I might as well be a stranger to after having been away from it for years.  If you asked me a couple of years ago why I thought we were seeing success with our new venture, I likely would have said it was the grinding late nights and hard work.  Now that we have paid off the original debt we took on starting the farm, and a year earlier than projected, I am able to sit back and be more thoughtful about answering that question.  What I really attribute our growing business to is that it was born from good intention and love.  We weren't trying to escape another life or make a point, we were simply walking into the light.  


There are obvious hurdles for us.  But you know, there is something pretty exhilarating that works in our favor as a first generation farm.  There are no rules or expectations of how we do what we do.  What a rarefied experience we have here on a piece of land that has seen many stewards, but none of our own blood...to make a life for ourselves that is tailored to what we consider a good one.  What does that look like for us?  Two little kids running around the outskirts of a field full of life and fresh air and surrounded by trees...mealtimes together and the freedom to drop it all for a day and adventure...not to mention a tangible and honest way to make a living and participate in our community.