Over the weekend, Hillsdale alumna Alissa Ferry `07 and her husband Scott Ferry hosted “Breakfast on the Farm” at their 100-year-old farm in Litchfield, Mich.
The first “Breakfast on the Farm” was held in 2009 at another Michigan farm. Governed by Michigan State University’s Extension department; the program is part of an effort to educate the general public on dairy farming.
“The general consumer is way more removed from agriculture than they have been in a very long time,” Alissa said.
She pointed out that many people today have never set foot on a farm, whereas a few generations ago most Americans had family members who farmed.
“By the same token, there are a lot of people that are more interested in where their food comes from and how the food is produced,” Alissa said.
People’s interest in the origin of their food is how “Breakfast on the Farm” was born.
The extension department aims to have four to eight breakfasts per year at various Michigan farms. When the Ferrys were asked if they wanted to host a breakfast for Hillsdale county, they said no at first. Breakfasts usually saw 2,500 to 3,000 attendees, and they were reluctant to take on a job that involved months of planning and preparation. Eventually, they agreed.
“They really needed someone down here to do it, so we did. It always turns out to be a good thing, but it was a little bit daunting at first,” Alissa said.
The Ferrys met with 13 other people once a month beginning in Feb. to plan the event. There were 250 volunteers, most of them dairy farmers, stationed around the farm answering questions and serving breakfast.
Although they have now owned the farm for about four years, Alissa and Scott Ferry did not originally envision themselves at Ferry Farm — Alissa went to school for accounting, and Scott earned a degree in finance from Michigan State University.
When Scott’s father passed away in 2008, they decided to take over the farm and carry on the family business. Since 2009, they’ve weathered a large fire — it took firemen seven hours to extinguish, and the ruins smoldered for two weeks — severely depressed milk prices, a wet year, and a drought year.
“We’ve had a lot of people say to us that you’ll see a year like this once every forty years,” Alissa said. “Every year we’ve come back, it’s been something new.”
The average day on the farm for the Ferrys is about 15 hours. They’re up at about 6:30 a.m. and they finish their work around 9 p.m. They take one to two long weekends here or there. The Ferrys’ life forms around the daily activity of their farm; their 2-year-old daughter napping in the back of the tractor as they work. And when asked about farming, their faces beam.
“There’s no better place to raise a family than right here on a dairy farm,” Scott said. “One of the reasons we came back was that we wanted to be part of a great community and raise a family and be able to be part of the grassroots of what we do every day, provide food, so that we can impact people and be able to make a difference in people’s lives.”
