Apple Family Farm

by Jane VanOsdol of Westfield, IN

Debbie Apple still remembers the day in 1993 when her 2 year-old son, Brayden, was crawling around in her garden. She looked up in time to see him pluck a strawberry off the plant and pop it into his mouth. She panicked as she realized she had just spread a pesticide throughout the garden. “I think I had never thought of those things (chemicals) as poisonous before. I always just thought of them as part of the garden … that’s how it had been relayed to me at the co-op,” Debbie says.

Fortunately, Debbie realized Brayden had eaten an Alpine strawberry, which she never sprayed with chemicals. Relief flooded through her, yet at the same time, she knew something had to change. “What in the world am I doing that I would have to be panicked that my child put something straight from the garden into his mouth?” Debbie remembers thinking.

Such was the beginning of an intriguing journey that has taken Debbie, her husband Mark, and their children Brayden, 16, and Rhayna, 10, from gardening as a hobby to sustainable farming as a way of life. The Apples live on a 250-acre pasture-based livestock farm in Mooresville, Indiana, called Apple Family Farm.

Both Debbie and Mark were working in the music business in Nashville, Tennessee at the time of the strawberry incident. Debbie immediately stopped using chemicals in her garden and started researching organic gardening. Her hobby garden expanded to include calves, chickens, and three sheep. “I started killing chickens not knowing what I was doing,” Debbie says. She sought advice at the local co-op where they told her to purchase a chemical to add to the chickens’ water. She bought it but could never bring herself to use it. “Once we realized how they raised things, we became vegetarians,” Debbie says. This lasted about three years until Debbie came across the books ‘Pastured Poultry Profits’ and ‘Salad Bar Beef’ by Joel Salatin.

“God had a purpose for these animals. They were created a particular way; if we can just figure out what that is, then surely they can live … and so we had what Joel Salatin calls a complete paradigm shift,” Debbie stated. Debbie and Mark attended a seminar of Salatin’s and realized that this was farming the way God had intended it to be.

Knowing it would be hard to make money raising pasture-fed animals, Debbie and Mark both decided to keep their part-time jobs in the music business, while raising the animals for themselves, family, and friends. In 1995, information on raising pasturebased animals (where the ruminant animals are fed no grains at all) was scarce. So Debbie called her extension agent for help. Unfortunately, she did not receive a favorable response. “He just had a fit on the phone, cussing up a stormy” she says.

So with the help of books and seminars they had attended, the Apples started on a program. “There were no standards at that time for organic meat certification. We just did it out of necessity,” says Debbie. “We stopped vaccinations, antibiotics, and grain feeding. We just expected everybody to die. We expected black leg and pneumonia and everything we had vaccinated against.” Not one animal died. “We have never, ever lost a lamb or a calf to any of the diseases we vaccinated for,” asserts Debbie.

The one thing they did do gradually was to take the livestock off the wormer medication. Many lamb farmers told them the sheep would die without it. In over one year, the Apples went from worming every six weeks to twice a year, while culling heavily. Debbie had decided to sell any lambs that did not do well on the program, which only turned out to be two or three.

Mark and Debbie replaced the medications with diatomaceous earth, which they sprinkled on the animals’ hay and in with their minerals. They also added Shaklee’s Basic H to the drinking water. “We don’t use the diatomaceous earth anymore because they just don’t have problems with parasites. If we bring somebody new on the farm, which we don’t do very often, then we will go back to especially the Basic H,” says Debbie.

Fortunately, the animals thrived on the program, so Mark and Debbie decided to take the calves to market. Their first time at market was a year when the market price on beef had dropped. They lost money on the calves, and consequently Debbie expected to see that the price of beef had also dropped at the grocery store. When that did not happen, she came home and told Mark, “Somebody is making money off the calves we just sold, and it’s not us.” At that point, Debbie decided she would never do “this farming thing” unless she could sell retail.

Coincidently, about the same time in 1998, Mark’s father died, and they had the opportunity to take over the family farm that Mark had grown up on. It had been a conventional farm—no fences, no grass anywhere. So in 1999, the Apples moved back to Indiana and began the process of converting the land to a pasture-based livestock farm.

The Apples started their farm with sheep, cows, and chickens. At first, they raised the sheep only for their wool, so they practically gave away the meat from a few lambs they had butchered. That soon changed. “People kept coming back wanting more, and I started thinking that maybe we should try this to see what it tastes like,” Debbie says. “It was delicious.” Debbie soon started charging a fair price for the meat.

Additionally, the Apples were selling cows by the whole or the half and raising the chickens for eggs and butchering. “We were the first people we ever knew who were doing pasture poultry,” she says. They were on their way to an organic certification when the USDA took over the regulations. Feeling like that organization was a farce, they quit pursuing the certification, but still follow all the organic standards on their farm and actually exceed them in every way.

About this time, Debbie also became interested in dairy cows. She had heard nutrition researcher Sally Fallon speak on the benefits of raw milk at a conference in Missouri. It took Debbie over two years to talk Mark into getting a dairy cow. He disliked dairy farming from his years on the farm as a child. “He was dead set against the idea of having a cow on the farm, but I was dead set on having it,” laughs Debbie.

The more the Apples thought about becoming self-sustaining and selfsufficient, which was their goal, the more they realized a milk cow fit into that plan. Mark finally agreed, and they purchased a dairy cow.

Two months later, Debbie was at a homeschooling meeting. The women discovered that she lived on a farm and had a dairy cow. The room became very quiet and someone asked if she had raw milk. When Debbie replied yes, the room became even quieter and someone else asked if the Apples had any extra milk. The next day, four women showed up on the farm with jars to get raw milk. “We just gave it to them. We figured they’d only be here one time,” says Debbie. “They kept coming back.”

Eventually, the Apples realized that they needed to charge something for the milk. At that time in 2000, farming for them was still just a side venture. They were not making their living from it, continuing to work in the music business and commuting to Tennessee. So they had no idea of what their cost was—or that selling raw milk was illegal in Indiana. They finally decided on $2 per gallon. The demand for their raw milk increased.

One day a visitor to the farm told them it was illegal to sell raw milk. Shocked, the Apples researched the law and discovered a farmer in Michigan who was legally selling the milk through contracts and cow shares. The Apples switched over to selling cow shares and charging a fair price. Their customers grew from 10 to 40 families.

Life again was about to take another interesting turn. In 2002 they received a cease and desist order for selling raw milk from the Indiana State Board of Animal Health, informing them that they were breaking six laws. Horrified, Debbie says their first reaction was to sell three of their now four dairy cows, just keeping one for personal use. She had, however, recently read Francis A. Schaeffer’s book How Should We Then Live that convinced her to stand up for her rights. “We felt like this was a serious attack on creation,” says Debbie. “God made everything for a certain purpose.” She decided to “take this battle on.”

Debbie was required to go before the board, which meant meeting with the board’s attorneys, vets, and inspectors. Her goal was to prove that she and Mark were not breaking any laws. To prepare, they decided to seek legal counsel. “We called 30 attorneys. None of them would take our case,” recalls Debbie. One attorney did show Debbie how to use the law library, so on her own she began researching Indiana law regarding raw milk and dairy farms.

From the start she also prayed for “favor with God and with man.” Debbie’s prayers were answered affirmatively, as the meeting was successful. The board was respectful, and using what she had learned about the law as well as logic principles she had studied with her children, Debbie was able to prove they were not violating state law. Ultimately, the board required them to follow a few simple steps: (1) Each person purchasing a cow share had to sign a contract, (2) They needed to have a separate bill of sale. (3) They had to sell the cow shares for a fair prices, and (4) The milk had to be contained in a one-time-onlyuse plastic jug with a tamper-proof lid.

The victory was important because the Apples were setting precedent for other Indiana farmers. Since that time, they have had no more problems with the state. The number of families purchasing cow shares from their farm has swelled to 200.

The Apples found that their cow-share customers were also interested in purchasing other natural products, such as Celtic sea salt and cod-liver oil. They began selling those items and soon converted a trailer on the farm into a store. The demand increased even more, and the Apples moved the store into an old house on their property. They now stock chicken, beef, lamb, and veal, and will be adding goat meat in the spring of 2008. They also carry eggs, honey, cheese, butter, and supplies for making dairy products. For a complete list of what is available in the store, please visit their website at www.applefamilyfarm.com.

Along with an interest in natural products, the Apples are also seeing a resurgence of interest in the small family farm. “Large conventional farming is just not sustainable,” says Debbie. “There are too many inputs—fuel consumption, for example; it’s not based on a local model.” The logistics of picking food before its peak and then shipping it long distances also negatively effects the nutrient value of the food. “Unless you know who is raising your food, you can’t trust it,” says Debbie.

So, with hectic schedules and suburbia lifestyles, are people today really looking for help on starting gardens and raising animals? Definitely, yes. Every week at least one or two couples contact the Apples because they have just purchased a few acres and are looking for help on how to raise animals or fruits or vegetables. “Neighborhoods without gardens or livestock are strictly an American phenomenon,” says Debbie. “I’ve been to several countries. It doesn’t matter if I was in Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Malta, or England. People garden on a small scale and it’s widespread.”

A consuming focus for the Apples now is to help spread a gardening revolution. They have seven large beds in their personal garden. But, they also have dug a smaller patch behind the store so that people can see all the crops that can fit into a small bed.

Additionally, to meet the demands of people who want to learn how to produce some of their own food, the Apples are now in the teaching business. They started Farm School and Kitchen Classes that instruct people on everything from pastured poultry and working with draft horses, to organic gardening and food preservation. The Apples offer a stunning variety of over 30 different classes from a ½-day course to a 3-day course. For a complete list of the classes and prices, please see their web site.

As for the future, Debbie and Mark are looking at a new enterprise to make organic food affordable by starting a work-for-food program. For every hour worked on the Apple’s farm, people can deduct money from their bill. The Apples also want to designate Sunday afternoons as Family Days to draw more families to the farm. They will offer horse-drawn wagon rides and other activities to spread the vision of what a family farm can be.

“We’ve created a demand. There’s all of a sudden this place in the market [for the small farmer] where people can grow things, and I know we can sell them,” Debbie says. She needs people who can supply other types of eggs, such as duck and quail and people who raise different types of honey, such as lavender. “They don’t have to do everything like we do. Now we can fill in the gaps and cracks in the market and begin specializing,” she says.

As often is the case in life, one small incident—a 2 year-old grabbing a strawberry from his mother’s garden—started a revolution in the lives of his parents. Fourteen years later, these modern-day pioneers’ enthusiasm and passion are evident to anyone who visits the farm or talks to the Apple family. And the one who started his parents on this path? Brayden is also joining his parents in spreading their vision for the future: to make the family farm a staple of the future.