Why I So Desperately Wanted to Leave the Family Farm

Good morning from Roanoke,

Today I’m writing about something I haven’t shared with you before.

Over the years, I’ve told you a lot about our mission of restoring trust in food. That story is true. But it’s only part of the story that drew me back to my family’s farm.

Here’s a photo of us brothers back in 2004.

We grew up pretty simple. In fact, notice my youngest brother Brandt holding a homemade fishing rod made from a tree branch. Several of us are wearing oversized, hand-me-down clothes.

Growing up, we didn't have much, but we always found ways to have fun. 

Even though there was much I appreciated about my upbringing, at this point in time I had no intention on staying on the family farm. 

Actually, with every bone in my body, I wanted to leave the farm as soon as possible.

Why I wanted off the farm

There were a few reasons I wanted out, but one stood out.

Part of it, which may surprise you, is that I never had a knack for the hands-on, mechanically minded work a farm requires. My brother Blake could run circles around me. 

That said, when you do something every day, you can get okay at it. To this day, I see the look of surprise on our team’s faces when their CEO jumps on a piece of large equipment and operates it like it was once my job. Of course, it was. 🙂

Above: Proof they still let me on equipment...

The day the cupboard was empty

But here’s the real driving factor that made me want to flee the family farm as quickly as possible…

Growing up, we were dirt poor and fighting bankruptcy. It was hard to see how my parents would even keep the farm going, let alone provide a single income for one of us brothers.

I remember weeks when we didn’t have money for groceries. At 12 years old, I went to the kitchen cupboard where you could usually find something to eat, and to my surprise, it was empty. 

I've shared previously that, growing up, we were instructed not to answer the phone, and day after day I listened to messages from banks and creditors calling to collect on late payments. 

I remember the day my dad asked my older brother Blake and me to invest the jar of a few thousand dollars we had saved up over our youth. 

Above: Our barn in 2009, during one of the lowest points in our farm’s story.  

As you can imagine, the financial stress put a real strain on my parents. I became pretty convinced the whole farming thing would end in ashes, with a bankrupt farm and a divided family.

By my later teens, I believed in what my parents were doing. But believing in the mission didn’t change the fact that we were near the end of our rope economically.

I didn’t want to stay dirt poor. Like anyone, I wanted opportunity. 

I was ready to get out of Dodge for good. And I wasn’t alone. My brothers were in the same spot. 

A hot pink computer

Then something happened that sparked a passion and direction in me. 

My dad was always a bit of a rebel who thought outside the box. As computers came on the scene, he was quickly attracted to the vision and culture of Steve Jobs' Macintosh computer company. I’ll never forget how excited I was the day he bought our first computer, a Macintosh Performa. I immediately gravitated to tinkering around on it for hours on end.

By age 14, I convinced my dad to buy one of the very first colorful iMacs. In the catalog, the color I chose looked like a transparent red. To my surprise, when it showed up, it was undeniably hot pink. For the next several years I had to explain to my friends how we ended up with a hot pink computer. 🤣

Above: Believe it or not, 26 years later, I found this very iMac in storage.

We hooked it up to the newly available dial-up internet, and I was fascinated with how to build my own websites. By 14, I hand-coded the first website for Seven Sons, and I wanted to make a career in what was then referred to as internet marketing. 

Above: Our first website, hand-coded by 14-year-old me. I still have the files!

By 16, I was walking into commercial businesses, landing website development deals, and quickly had 15 to 20 clients, from car dealers and construction companies to professional services.

I was thrilled. I saw this as my ticket off the farm!

Farms weren’t online. Customers were.

But then my budding marketing and business mind saw a marketplace gap I couldn’t ignore. And it related directly to the work my parents were already doing.

It was the early 2000s, and demand for grass-fed beef was rising, but it was such a niche product that consumers turned to the internet to find farms that raised it.

But here’s the deal: given the nature of farms, most wanted nothing to do with internet marketing. Demand was moving online, yet there was little to no competition. I didn’t know it at the time, but what I’d spotted was a bit of a business and marketing arbitrage.

I couldn’t help but wonder if this could be my ticket to be part of the important work we were already doing, but in a way that wouldn’t keep us dirt poor. A way we could actually make a good living doing this important work.

This was the realization that changed EVERYTHING. Even though we were still in the trenches of massive debt, I could see a potential path out of the mess, not only for myself but for my entire family.

Around this same time, Blake and I were starting to make our way in life. The farm couldn’t afford to employ us, so my parents offered us the opportunity to take over ownership of the Seven Sons-related activities and try to make it go ourselves.

That became a do-or-die moment.

We both worked off-farm jobs and doubled down on the business. Blake handled all the farming operations, and I doubled down on my hunch that the internet could be a breakthrough to connect with customers who valued what we were doing.

Nothing was an overnight success, but my brothers and I all doubled down relentlessly. After a few years, we found ourselves selling more grass-fed beef than we could produce on our own farm.

And that’s when a much bigger vision began to show itself.

What if Seven Sons could become a vehicle not only to pull our family farm through these hardships, but also for so many other family farms in the same position we were?

From dirt poor to soil rich

Fast forward 26 years, and God has allowed that vision to come to fruition in more ways than I ever dreamed possible. 

The boys who wanted off the farm so they wouldn’t stay dirt poor found a better opportunity by literally making our farm soil rich! And the mission my parents started has grown further than any of us imagined.

Above: Our team at Seven Sons that's grown to 50+ mission-aligned folks. 

Because of the partnership and loyal support of customers like you, we’ve partnered with over 100+ family farms. Together we’re impacting thousands of acres every year with regenerative practices and serving regenerative foods to over 30,000 families across the U.S.

And here’s what excites me most...

We’re showing other family farms a path to succeed economically in regenerative agriculture. That’s more important than ever. Too many family farms don’t see a future for the next generation, so they’re selling out to corporate and foreign landowners. 

When that happens, we separate land ownership from land stewardship, which fundamentally changes the relationship between the land and those who farm it. 

That, my friends, is a subject for another article. Stay tuned.

But, I leave you today with this: there is hope.

Together we are pioneering a better way forward.

Thank you for being part of this story.