HILL CITY — Farming and small businesses can be dicey propositions — reliant on weather, healthy plants and animals, and finding customers in rural places.
Jenna Akre is a fifth-generation farmer who operates Akre Homestead with her family of six. Along with farming, raising animals, homeschooling kids and making soap, she also takes the time to chronicle what she calls her “busy and wonderful life.”
In her latest blog post, she wrote, “Earlier this year I saw so many people putting a specific word to their year to come. This year, my word chose me. And that word is ‘humbling.’”
Akre joined the Wednesday, May 3, KAXE Morning Show to talk what inspired her post and how her small farm is coping with a stressful spring.
“We had a lot of things go wrong on our farm this year,” Akre said. “We lost a lot of pigs this spring and and pigs are our main — that's what we put most of our energy into. We've been raising pigs for three years, and the first two years went pretty well, and this year was very hard.”
The Akre family briefly considered quitting the pig business amid the loss, but decided they love it too much to give up yet. But Akre, once a farm kid herself, noted the difficulties of facing farming realities with her own children.
“I wasn’t the parent or the farmer who had to deal with everything, I was kind of told what to do and how the situation was going to be handled,” Akre said. “Now I’m the farmer and I’m the mom, and I have to handle the situation all on my own. … It just seems a lot more heavy than when I was a kid. So that’s definitely been another humbling experience.”
"This year, my word chose me. And that word is ‘humbling.’"Jenna Akre
Farming is a busy life. In a typical day Akre is homeschooling, getting cows out of wrong pens, helping kids with rabbit and chicken chores, bottle feeding pigs and calves, and milking the cows at the end of the day. In the afternoons, her four kids head over to her parents' house next door so she can focus on her soap business.
“Soap-making is my very, very favorite thing to make,” Akre said. “I work really hard on the recipes, and it reminds me of an art.”
Her latest soap is Milky Mint, made with raw milk, tinted with a light green color and scented with peppermint oil. Akre says raw milk makes a really nice, gentle soap.
Akre said she is excited for the opening of the farmers markets in the region. Grand Rapids Farmers’ Market opens May 10 and the Deer River Farmers & Artisan Market begins June 2. Akre will also continue with the The Night Maker’s Market, which opens May 11 at Rapids Brewing Co. in Grand Rapids.
