Hometown Focus Interview

Recently Janna Goerdt, the farmer behind Fat Chicken Farm, and reporter from the Virigina, MN weekly newspaper Hometown Focus interviewed me for an article she was writing about 3 women farmers. The article was in preparation for the second annual Iron Range Earth Fest.   Jean Cole from Hometown Focus kindly gave me permission to reprint the portion of the story about us here at Bear Creek Acres. Thanks Janna and Jean for the lovely profile!

• • • Shannon and Mary Ann Wycoff had always been “do it yourself” type people, according to Mary Ann.

When they wanted fresh vegetables, they learned to garden. When they wanted to till that garden soil, they bought a brokendown tiller and made it run again. When they wanted humanely-raised meat, well, you can guess what happened.

After moving to an old Embarrass farmstead with a picture-perfect red barn, the family wanted to raise food and meat for their own use. Shannon, who works at Northshore Mining in Babbitt, was supposed to order two piglets from a co-worker. Instead, he ordered four.

Here’s what he told Mary Ann: “Everyone says not to worry, you’ll have no trouble selling [the extra two].”

It turned out that Shannon was right. The night before the Wycoffs planned to take the pigs to the processor, someone called to order the last available meat. In the meantime, Shannon had ordered more feeder pigs.

And so it began – soon enough the Wycoffs were raising eight pigs at a time, then 12, then 25, Mary Ann said. They added beef cattle and “chicken tractors” that the Wycoffs move around their fields so the plump chickens can peck at bugs and fresh grass.

And the more animals they added, the more they sold. They sell the meat from Bear Creek Acres directly to customers, to the Natural Harvest Co-op in Virginia, and at area farmers markets.

“We never looked at each other and said, ‘Wanna be a farmer?’” Mary Ann Wycoff said. “It just happened by itself, it was entirely unexpected and unplanned. We still haven’t said, ‘Wanna be farmers?’”

They have tapped into a market that wants their products for a variety of reasons, Wycoff said. Some customers want to know the animals were raised humanely, others want to support sustainable and local agriculture, she said. Some customers believe they are getting a more healthful product, and others “like to get to know their farmer,” she said.

Shannon Wycoff still works in Babbitt, and, though it’s a hard way to try and earn a living – “there are lots of ways of losing money doing this,” she said -- Mary Ann has found that the rhythm of farming at Bear Creek Acres suits her.

“I don’t do monotony easily, so I like the constant challenges of farming,” she said. And she looks to others to help her and her family meet those challenges – whether they are neighbors, fellow farmers, retired farmers, or anyone else willing to talk about their own experiences.

“Every day, I’m reading something, learning something,” she said. “I could do this for 100 years, and never know anywhere near enough.”