About Us.
Hey there! We are Jared & Shelby Rottmund, two crazy kids who bought a farm before it was cool to be a farmer. Everyone thought we were crazy when we said we were buying a farm. Boy were they right!
Today we grow meat we actually want to eat, but that was not always the case…
Our farm story has had some twists and turns throughout the years! Jared grew up on a farm much like a homestead, riding horses, milking a family cow, and raising pigs. I grew up in farm country, but the only thing I knew about farming was that you don’t hang wash on the line when the neighbor is spreading manure!
When we got married, we were both bankers. There were no thoughts or talks about ever living on a farm...until there was. As an Ag Banker, Jared was around farmers all day, and it started to give him the itch to get back to that lifestyle, work for himself, and be outside all day.
Long story short, we bought our first farm in 2004! We were hog farmers...BIG hog farmers. We raised over 10,000 hogs each year on contract. Yes, we were ‘factory farmers’. The idealistic lifestyle we dreamed of being our own boss and working outside all day quickly turned into being bossed around by a large conglomerate meat-packer who held all the cards and dictated everything we did. We were spending more time inside a concrete barn fixing stuff than we were in the fresh air. Now don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t all bad. We actually loved what we did and it provided a wonderful life for us!
Fast forward to 2008, my dad was diagnosed with cancer. I was convinced if I just researched enough, I could find a way to get him healthy again. I was immediately drawn to food being medicine and learned A LOT that year about what we put into our bodies and how it affects us. There began an internal conflict for me about how we were raising meat and the kind of meat I wanted to eat. They were no longer the same thing. At the same time, we became rabid Dave Ramsey fans, which created another internal struggle. All that debt! How would we ever get out from under it? We couldn’t see any end to it the way things were going. We plodded along for quite a while like that, just living life, and getting by, not knowing how we could change our circumstances.
Then, our hand was forced. We lost our contract, and could not find another one. We hit rock bottom. Zero income, zero back-up plan, 7-figure zero’s of debt to pay (our kids still talk about the year we didn’t have a Christmas tree 🙄). We decided we had had enough, and it was time for a change, a major change! I think in the beginning, talking about moving out of state and farming like we wanted to was an escape for us. A way to dream about what could be. Then we really got into it and decided, ‘what do we have to lose?’ We packed up the kids and headed to Farmville to meet with a realtor and see 3 properties. We ended up buying the last one we saw. It was love at first sight!
We have been farming in Virginia since 2015. Now, we get to call the shots and control what happens on our farm. We get to decide what our animals eat, and how they are cared for. It is amazing! Our beef are on pasture 365 days a year! The pigs are in the fresh air, rooting around like they were designed to do. This is how farming was meant to be… and it tastes delicious!
Do you need a farmer? You’ve come to the right place!