|
Our
Farm
Kupiec Farms - Established 1988. There’s a little something on
the farm for everyone in my family. I raise goats and love to
fantasize that I am a “real farm wife”. You know, a wife that
can milk a cow with one hand tied behind her back and washes
sheets on an old washboard in the backyard while the lids on the
last batch of canned tomatoes rattle on the stovetop. Just
because I grew up in Chicago and don’t have a lick of real farm
common sense, doesn’t mean that I’m not a farm girl through and
through. I have the necessary flock of laying hens (my girls),
my own barn, and a lot of imagination. The truth be told, we are
a large hobby farm. Both my husband and I have “real” jobs, but
if you define a job as something that gives you pleasure and
satisfaction, then farming is our real job. We have enough
blood, sweat, and tears tilled into our 400 acres to prove it.
Our main crops are soybeans, wheat and corn ---in that order. We
sell off the wheat stalks to other farmers who bale it for
straw. We also grow our own alfalfa / grass hay for our goats.
We just let someone else do the baling work. We’re actually
sissy farmers. Tough farmers have dairy cattle and bale their
own hay and straw. They also have pigs. We only harvest grain,
the easy stuff, and provide care for easy keepers like goats and
chickens. I have a small egg business on the side and everyone
knows that if they so much as breathe on the old mason jar in
the kitchen that holds my precious egg money, they will be hurtin’ for certain.
My husband, John, finds being alone in a tractor driving,
plowing, or planting is a release and an escape from business
life. He is on phones and planes and in meetings and around
people all the time. The click of a tractor cab door triggers
some “whoo-saa” decompression time. He is in love with his land.
He knows every corner of every field and in the early evenings,
year round, he puts on his blaze orange cap and straps on his
bino-buddies. He is ready for action when he walks out our back
door and scours his woods looking for animal sign and the
unfortunate trespasser. John won Conservationist of the year in
our county in 1999 for his land management skills. He has
acreage dedicated to Pheasants Forever habitat and has
personally hand planted more than 40,000 trees on our property.
He is an avid sportsman and big game hunter, working on his
Grand Slam. He has a ¾ Slam right now, with a bighorn sheep left
to go. He has a deer management plan on our farm and, so far,
he, his dad, and our sons have done very well each November. A
deer killed on our property must be a big, meat doe or must have
eight points or better to be harvested. John placed a camera in
our woods along a deer runway and captured this big boy on film.
No one has seen him in the daylight, but he’s here….laughing at
us, watching and eating our soybeans up!
Barns are strange things. We have two 60’x90’ Morton building
barns, a wooden 100 year old, two story behemoth red barn with a
Dutch roofline, and two more barns on top of these. Even with
all this barnage, you still can’t fit a piece of paper in
sideways. We belong on Ripley’s Believe it or Not! The more
space you have, the more space you need. Our entire farm is
outfitted with John Deere equipment and we’re proud of it.
Farmers get attached to their colors. Most of our equipment has
been purchased used at farm auctions. Each spring and fall there
are several of these come one, come all auctions in our area. I
love to go to them to “see what they are giving away” and
especially to marvel at the human sea of brown caps bobbing up
and down at the auctioneer until the bullhorn screams out,
“SOLD!”
What I most love about farming are the people we’ve met along
the way. Grand Blanc is an up and coming city and our land is
the exception. Until we began sowing and harvesting crops in
1988, we never knew about the rural roots planted here—the old
timers within our community. I believe we’ve connected with the
most genuine people on the face of the planet. They certainly
are the most patient. We’ve asked every farmer we’ve met along
the way some of the dumbest questions ever asked. Sure, we’d get
a look, but they never outright laughed at us (at least while we
were still there.) If Jeff Foxworthy was with us, he’d have
said, “Here’s your sign.” When we began, we didn’t know anything
about what to do, when to do it, or how to set the equipment up
or even what equipment we really needed. All we had was desire
and a dream. We had to ask about EVERYTHING. What we didn’t
expect is the acceptance we received. Farmers stopped working at
their farms and came over and helped us all day. Fellow goat
breeders are the same way. We are forever grateful and try our
best to carry on the tradition and refrain from saying to any
visitors, “Here’s your sign.”
 We were so dumb when we began operations in 1988. Our first
soybean crop was harvested and I’ll never forget my dad pulling
two heaving orange gravity wagons behind the Deere 4430 into the
barn and we all cried. Really, tears of joy just started rolling
down our cheeks as we realized that we city slickers-- “we did
it!” Later, a truck came and we augured the beans into the semi
and down the road they vanished on their way to the elevator.
Grain is trucked in from farms and deposited at a grain elevator
for shipping by rail or huge semi to Lake Erie. I kept thinking
that I’d get a check from the elevator “any day now” and it
would be time to go shopping. Two weeks went by. Three weeks
came and went. I grew brave enough to call Joe at the elevator
and asked him, “Hey Joe, where’s my check?” He said, “Well, you
haven’t sold the beans yet.” I said, “What are you talking
about?” He said, “They are in storage. You have to tell me to
sell them on the commodities market, otherwise I hold ‘em for
(hopefully) a higher price.” OMG I said, “Sell ‘em!” We had to
pay almost a month’s storage on that first harvest because we
didn’t know any better. Now we listen to the morning farm report
on the radio, coffee-clutch with other old timers leaning on the
counter at the John Deere dealer, and we are sophisticated
enough to place some futures contracts on our wheat, corn, and
soybeans.
Our farm is always changing. Brown fields turn green and back to
brown again as the seasons roll past. Our ground is churned,
planted, and plowed until some greenbacks (finally) spring
forth. Warmer weather in the springtime brings us new baby goats
to love, fences to repair, fields to plant, and a lot of oil to
change. Things quiet down during the summer. We measure,
fertilize, spray and compare our crops growth to the next guy’s.
No one wants to grow a “dirty crop”…one that is chuck full of
weeds. There’s a lot of quiet competition between neighbors and
knowing winks or nods flash back and forth. Cooler fall nights
show off a big, harvest-orange moon that makes gives way to
heavy, foggy mornings, especially by the lake. Our woods begin
to burn blaze orange, canary yellow, and ruby red. Grey and
black squirrels get busy cracking and storing hickory nuts and
acorns. The deer lose their reddish summer coats and bustle up
in winter greys and browns. There’s no rest for the wicked (or
the farmer) in October and November. We work as soon as the dew
is burned off of the fields in the mid morning hours until long
past sun down. Sometimes we work in between raindrops or
snowflakes—it just depends on Mother Nature’s sense of humor.
We always carry our John Deere moisture tester with us so we can
scientifically be sure that the grains we are harvesting are dry
enough to be accepted by the elevator without being docked by
the bushel for additional drying. We also bite down on them
sometimes, in a much less scientific way, to see how hard they
are. After a while, our teeth work just as well as the $500
electronic tester. Hot meals are prepared in the kitchen,
wrapped up, and delivered to noisy, rumbling bellies in the
fields. We’ll drive up with the food and flash the car lights to
signal “chow time.” Then those tractor operators find a whole
new gear and boogie twice as fast to the grub hub. We’ll set a
small, red cooler on top of the front weights of a tractor, our
makeshift table top, and dig in. Sometimes well lay out a
blanket and sit a spell. Other times, when the weather is not
cooperating, we eat on the fly. They don’t sell enough Gatorade
to quench our thirsts. Food always tastes so good when you eat
it outside, gobble it in a hurry, and talk with your mouth full.
When night falls, we come in blacker than the dirt we are
working with only to get up and do it all over again.
 I’ve been raising Nigerian Dwarf goats for three years and all
sorts of chickens for ten years. Both make me happy. I love to
pull up the driveway and see chickens on the front porch or
heading for the hills. I toss all my kitchen scraps out into the sideyard just so I can yell out, “Here, chick, chick, chick,” in
my seasoned farmwife calling voice, and see yellow, white, black
and burgundy fluff balls half-run and half-fly across the yard
to my feet. They are faster than the devil when food is
involved. They’ll gather around and grab treats, hog the pile,
and then swipe treats from each other’s beaks and make a break
for it. The goats are just plain sweethearts. They are silly and
determined and one-for-all and all-for-one all at the same time. We built a play yard for them so
they can “walk the plank,” play king of the hill, and climb over
and through a six foot tall tractor tire. This year we added
some big, square wooden boxes that they can lay on top of, or
inside of, or hide behind. Nothing gets them moving, though,
like the sound of grain pouring into a metal pail. Their eyes
widen, their hearts beat wildly, and they bolt for the bucket
without merc y for the next guy. All their one-for-all goes right
out the window. I do have to brag here: my goats are such good
mothers! They let their kids stand on top of them, poke and prod
their udders without mercy, and test their patience as they grow
older and braver. My does save their kids from all sorts of
scuffs and tiffs. Still, they keep a watchful eye. Woe to any
aggressor. I’ve seen a doe run full steam ahead and head butt
another goat, ass-over-tin-cups, when they perceive a hint of
unfriendliness toward their baby. But by far the most special
thing about a doe and her kid are the sweet calls they send to
one another throughout the day. If a kid loses sight of momma,
it just bawls and bawls until momma, always on watch, comes
running. If a kid is getting out of range, momma just calls it
back to her. They sleep curled up and nested together in the
barn straw all night long. Sometimes the doe will take a big
sigh, lift up her face to look at me, and then go back to
licking and nurturing her own. Goats are loyal, playful,
forgiving, loving, fun, silly, adventurers. They are always in a
good mood and I swear that mine can really smile. Okay, they
might actually be smirking. I’ll do a double take only to see
that they’ve wiped the grin off of their face and then,
masterfully, they play dumb. Sometimes, though, I catch them
winking at one another.
Thank you for visiting our website and “spending time” on our
farm. If you are interested in learning more about our farm or
our goats, please do not hesitate to e-mail me at Mellen60@gmail.com.
Of general interest might be our FOR SALE page where anything
and everything from household gadgets to heavy equipment could
be listed. For those interested in purchasing or learning more
about a Goatastic Acres goat, please click on our “HERD” or
“BREEDING” pages. My goats are registered with the American Goat
Society (AGS) and the Nigerian Dwarf Goat Association (NDGA).
Our next kidding season starts in March ‘07 and we are taking
reservations now. Happy Holidays to all and we’ll update in the
spring.
Kelly & John Kupiec
|
|
Return
to Home Page
Send
e-mail