Then End Is Just The Beginning

My internship will come to a close on Monday, August 5. I am a bit torn about this fact, because I have such a passion for talking about the pig industry and I take a lot of personal responsibility and pride in showing the guests at the Pig Adventure what it is we do.

Some of my favorite co-workers

Having said all that, this has been a once in a lifetime opportunity for me to help develop the programs that are going to be on the frontline of Fair Oaks' agri-tourism and educational tours. The experiences have ranged from exciting and great adventures to extreme stress from plans going wrong, criticism being heavy, and just the normal speed-bumps of life.

 But through the high and low times of this internship I have been able to remain true to myself as a person. My character as a professional in agriculture has been tested many times, and many times has come away with a new way of looking at things and making me a more rounded individual.

The intern team through thick and thin

I have had the pleasure to work with other high caliber interns who are as passionate as I am about our industry and just as excited for the future as I am. I have been able to surround myself with some of the best in the business when it comes to building these agri-tainment and education programs. My supervisors from both Fair Oaks Farms & Belstra Milling Company have helped me grow in more ways than I can think of.

Going into the last few days of my internship I will have one more weekend opportunity to speak to thousands of people that we expect to see over the weekend and at our grand opening on August 5, 2013. I hope for nothing more than to end on a high note, but if it doesn't play out that way, I'm sure I will be able to present myself to the best of my ability as that has grown over the summer.

Looking forward to the future, I can already see how this internship will provide me with many opportunities to achieve a career in agriculture. My exposure to first hand concerns from consumers of all kinds has given me a unique way of thinking that I feel stands out from other internships. My training to answer concerns and questions has been tested and moving forward I think can make for a valuable asset to a company. While I will miss working here, I know that this is the beginning of what I believe will be a great opportunity for both myself moving forward, and many other interns to come!

A special thanks goes out to Malcolm, Jon, Gary, Jamie, Julie, Brock, Jodi, Leah, Phil and everyone else I have had the opportunity to work with at Fair Oaks and Belstra Milling this summer! I hope that the future is bright for us all and that the opportunity to have meaningful conversations continues to grow.

Like Father, Like Son

This week I was given the opportunity to advocate for the pig industry in a new way. I was asked to give a presentation to the Crown Point Rotary Club about Fair Oaks Farms and the Pig Adventure.

I felt a sense of maturity when I was asked to do this because I my father has given a lot of similar talks about pig farming to Rotarians back home in Ohio. In fact dad's passion for educating people about what we do is one reason I chose to study agriculture communication. My father has been a great role model for me as n advocate and has given me a lot of help in the area of public speaking about agriculture.

To me, it was a no brainer to go and speak to a group of local business folks about the exciting things going on at Fair Oaks Farms. So over the past week I put together a presentation discussing many things about the future of Fair Oaks Farms as well as the Pig Adventure. I felt that it was important to explain to people my concern for transparency in agriculture and the importance of agri-tourism as an excellent opportunity to have conversations about what modern day agriculture is.

So Wednesday I gave my presentation to about 40 Rotarians. They were very welcoming and open to listening to my presentation. The questions that followed the presentation were normal ones that I felt comfortable answering, most revolving around the pig industry and the future plans for Fair Oaks Farms.

All in all, it was a really rewarding and enjoyable time in which I felt myself starting to expand my confidence in public speaking about our industry. I know it wasn't much, and it surely wasn't a big crowd, but I really enjoyed it and was able to help provide information about our industry to more people who have a lot of influence in their community.

I decided to stay out in Indiana for the grand opening of the Pig Adventure on August 5, 2013. That will be the last day of my internship, and therefore the countdown is on! I can't wait to see what comes in the next week or so!

What An Adventure : Fair Oaks Pig Adventure

So there's a farm in Indiana, a dairy farm, an hour south of Chicago that has decided, "we are going to show the public what we do on a commercial dairy farm, and we will give them tours of our facilities and educate them about the agriculture industry."

This is Fair Oaks Farms and they have done a great job achieving their goal of educating everyday people about the dairy industry. So now for the exciting news, Fair Oaks is expanding, they want to cover as many livestock species as they can to educate consumers more on what the agricultural community and industry is all about. So the first step in expanding is to build a pig barn which will be known as the Fair Oaks Pig Adventure (FOPA)

This facility, located two miles from the Fair Oaks visitors center and dairy education building will be a commercial pork production operation that will operate 2400 sows (mommy pigs). The tours will be given through a building connected to the pig barn by glass walls, ceilings and floors so that you can see everything that happens in the facility.


The reason for the separate building is because it is important that we (producers) protect the airspace within our pig barns so that no foreign disease enters the air, feed or water from all the traffic and locomotion that comes with giving the tours. In order to keep our animals healthy and in tip top condition we create the safe air barrier within the new state of the art barns. Another way to look at it is the first week of school, a lot more children (baby pigs in the case of producers) get sick from all the new people, places and things going on in their lives. So with livestock, we can use these types of safe guards to protect our pigs, employees and ultimately the pork that goes to the supermarkets.

My family has a small (by industry standards of the day) pig farm in Southwest Ohio. We raise pigs as independent owners/growers. That means we own pigs all the way from birth to market. The Fair Oaks Pig Adventure (FOPA) has presented an exciting opportunity for our family to become even more involved in the pig industry. When the barns are built and the pigs start having babies, my family farm, Standing Oaks Enterprises will continue to raise pigs, but we will no longer raise our own from birth. We will be what is called a private grower, we will purchase baby pigs from the Fair Oaks Farm and own them from wean to market.

The pig adventure is a very big, exciting thing for the pork industry. We are looking forward to teaching as many people as we can about the industry. On our farm, the education doesn't just stop at Fair Oaks in Indiana, we are learning how to be better educators and how to get more involved in many ways, one of which I will talk about in my next blog post.

So if you're interested in learning more about the agriculture industry, Fair Oaks Farms, or the Pig Adventure I want to give you some suggestions. My friends at Feedstuffs, one of the top agriculture publications have covered the pig adventure from the beginning of the construction and continue to do so. They have taken some very good photos and written a couple articles about it. I encourage you look at them. Please follow my family farm on either facebook or twitter. If you're excited about the adventure we have all started and want to help, their is a fundraiser being done by Dennis Sargent at Indiana Pork for those interested who might  want to contribute just contact them and they will help you with that.

My reflections in the past few months have started to center around this adventure that my family is going on and its very exciting to us and we really enjoy telling others about it so be looking for more posts about this from me.

Until then....be safe, be healthy and eat pork!