Inside Vernon Family Farm's Fight For Survival

Hey everyone, it's Troy. The following podcast originally aired on September 30th, 2024. Since this podcast came out, the three neighboring families that Nicole and Jeremiah Vernon speak about in this episode have begun to speak out. For more information on their story, you can visit the links in the show notes now on to the episode. The quote I remember, my butter Scott telling me when we the day we moved in was, "I mind my business, you mind yours." Before even saying hello, I left it at that and he's been basically going downtown or finally complaints for the last 10 years. Welcome to Seacoast Stories, a podcast about the people, businesses and newsmakers that make the Seacoast an American hidden gem. I'm Troy Fargas, and on today's episode, how a 10-year legal battle has almost shut down a popular Seacoast farm. And why its owners are finally speaking up about it. Today's story starts on a dead end road in New London, New Hampshire. It's the 1980s, and a young Jeremiah Vernon is busy cleaning turkeys. He stops his work for a moment and takes a glance at the farm that's operating across the street. There, as he watches customers pick strawberries and walk through the corn fields, he feels a slight bit of envy toward the kids who get to live on that farm. Jeremiah's family owns some turkey, some chickens and sheep, but the operation they're running pales in comparison. But a seed is planted. Through his high school, Jeremiah later takes an intensive trip that tends to feel to cross the state. He works with sheep and lamb, and then he goes to Bates College in Maine and rarely goes to class. Instead, he spends his mornings eating breakfast at the dairy farm down the road. After his meals, he and his buddies walk the length of the farm, taking in the sights and the smells, and then Jeremiah wonders what a career in farming would be like. Somehow, Jeremiah graduates with a biology degree and then desperate to leave the Northeast after spending his whole life there, he moves to San Francisco. As you may have guessed, he gets there and hates it. Jeremiah is not a city boy, and he misses life on the farm. After two years of working odd jobs on the West Coast, he receives a phone call that would change the course of his life. And that's where today's story begins. Friend of mine who was working at the organic dairy farm in Maine, it's called the Zinscott farm. It's still there in operating. The Zinscott farm was the farm that was right outside Bates. He was leaving his job there. He knew I wanted a farm job. So he called me and was like, hey, I'm leaving. Owner said, they'll hire you if you want the job. And I took the job, flew home. And I remember the first day I showed up at that farm to work. I don't think I was there for more than three minutes before I had a five-gown buck in my hand. And it was all grain and low on feeders. So what is it about farming when you first started really getting into it professionally? What was the big appeal for you? I've always known. I never knew what I wanted to do for a job. What I've always known, my job would have to be outside. I am not an indoor person. Never have been. All my jobs as a kid, or either landscaping, or golf courses, or kayaking, all outside jobs. So I knew that I wanted to be outside. I very much love and appreciate the concrete productivity of farming. This morning I was a sweaty mess because I've been hauling buckets and filling feeders and trucking water around and moving fences. And if I walk out there now, it's explicitly you can tell that I've done all of those things. And it's not some sort of like I have to wait for some result to come back from some other third party. They're on fresh grass. The feeders are full. The water is clean. The fences are tight. It's obvious I did all those things. So I feel very like a concrete sense of accomplishment by farming. I also do not agree with industrial agriculture. I didn't know that. It wasn't like I grew up and was born like, big egg is bad. But once I got to experience what local and small farming is in comparison, I can't go to the grocery store and buy chicken. I can't go to the grocery store and buy beef. It's just not OK. I think farming meets a lot of my desires. But it's very like fundamental and concrete. And you don't feel like you're wasting time. I feel like you're doing something real. I want to talk about a lot of those reasons that you just laid out because a lot of that is at the heart of what Vernon family farms is all about. But now I want to bring Nicole and Nicole, at what point do you enter Jeremiah's life? So I enter Jeremiah's life when he starts working at Nison Scott Farm. So for a little bit of background context, I was born, raised in Syracuse, New York, upstate New York. And if I look back on my life, there was definitely experiences and opportunities in my life that now in retrospect, it makes sense that I am here. But back then, I probably wouldn't have put all those pieces together to lead me to where I am. So I enter Jeremiah's life when he's working at Nison Scott Farm. I am a Spanish teacher. And I was a Spanish teacher at a school, at a private boarding school called the Hyde School, which is in Bath, Maine, probably about 30 minutes from where Jeremiah was farming and working. And my dormer roommate hooked Jeremiah and I up. So she was a friend of Jeremiah's at Bates College and upon getting to know me and sort of our friendship growing through being dorm parents and private school educators at the Hyde School. She says to me, I think you'd really get along with Jeremiah. And I did. And our first date was at Nison Scott Farm, Shovele and Manoeu and we had a lot of really amazing adventures and experiences during that year of him farming and me teaching. Jeremiah, shoveling Manoeu on the first date that was how you were trying to impress her? Yeah, I had just gone out of a five-year relationship like a year earlier and I had this thing where like, you're gonna love me for who I am, take it or leave it. So I might have thrown it on there a little harder than I should have, but Manoeu seem to be a good starting point for like, let's see if she's game. Okay Nicole, what was the appeal here? So the appeal I think after the manure date was really connected to the fact that I also loved the outdoors and when I was younger, middle school age into high school, I attended a sleep awake camp known as for Estelle Farm Camp. So I had already had some farming experiences and like small little farming background moments that were really appealing and I really enjoyed. So getting to know Jeremiah and then spending this time on the farm just sort of made sense, I guess. Well, I would just add too that when we first met, you weren't have, you had a full-time career. So it wasn't as if like the date of us, you know, fracturing and shelling manure around wasn't like, now Nicole, you're a farmer, you know, like you, she went back to her teaching job and she taught until this year full-time. So I think like, it just was a random date and then we did more formal dates after that. Yeah, it was not just shoveling manure. Okay, thank goodness. Oh God, together. Because, you know, I think I have a lot of single friends and I think, well, first date, like what do you do? This would not be at the top of this. (laughing) Yeah, perhaps not. But it worked. Yeah, maybe there's something to it. Yeah, well, in Jeremiah, it's very handsome. So that's how long it took. Oh, no, there it is. The truth comes out. (laughing) So for context, what year is this? This is probably like 2006, 2007. 2007, 2007, 2008. Okay. So Jeremiah, when does the idea of owning a farm first and through your mind? So we bought the farm in 2014. So probably about five years prior is when like we the first itch to own our own farm started. I don't think when we had that first itch, it was this vision you see here. But yeah, about five years prior. So 2014, 2009-ish is when we sort of started that journey. And what that start looked like was I had worked on four or five different farms at this point, everything from a lowly farmhand carrying buckets to a farm manager to a nonprofit, educational farm sort of thing. So I had done a lot of different farming things. We were living in Exeter, in an apartment. And we had just had our first child. And I was absolutely miserable because I was landscaping, which although wheelbarrowing mulch around and wheelbaring manure around, it's still a wheelbarr with full stuff. The purpose I couldn't get behind. Like I can't spend my days helping this super wealthy person bed their gardens. But I can spend my days. Why? It's just because of that reason why? Like why? Why should I spend my time carrying mulch around? Like this is just for someone's aesthetic. It's-- not doing anything good for the world. It's just a, I had reached the sort of ceiling of my potential at that place, unless I wanted to get out of farming. And Nicole had a stable full-time job at Exeter High School, public school teaching Spanish. So, you know, we had the benefits, we had the salary. We were living in this upstairs apartment. I was absolutely miserable because I'm an outdoor person and we had no green space. And it was just like every day in this stuffy little apartment. And so we decided that I would quit my day job. And before you can get financing to start a farm, you have to start a farm and show two years worth of knowledge and like bookkeeping to show that you're like serious about this. So I quit my job. I started, well, we started leasing farmland at a farm down the road that is no longer a farm. And for two years, we started raising chickens there. And that was sort of the building for the first step in trying to basically show that we can get financing, et cetera. So we did all that, we got financing. And then for what three to four years, we just looked for farms. We knew we wanted to be close to Exeter High School and stay in the district. And I drove past this farm and I saw the four sales sign up. And we pulled in to check it out. And we already had all of our financing lined up. Like we were ready to go. And so we put an offer in. And then in July of 2014, we bought the farm. But we already had that two years of business before was very important because when we moved here, even though it was minuscule compared to what we have now, we had customers, we had a business. So what about this property in Newfield, the 33 acres that we're on right now, what was so appealing about this specific property? A few things. One is it's a two mile walk to Nicole's high school. So Nicole was able to walk to school from here. The road is a 35 mile an hour state road. So we had like a good location. There's really no farms in Newfields. So there was no immediate competition or anything like that. In retrospect, I wish there had been other farms in Newfields. So yeah, it was sort of like an ideal location. And I think also just like, you know, it was in our budget and most farms were not. Yeah. So that was also just part of it. So Nicole, in your words, what was the original vision that you two had for Vernon Family Farm? So, you know, Vernon Family Farm is sort of a compilation of all the farming experiences that Jeremiah either has had alone or with me. So we really wanted this space to be a community space. We wanted this space to be a gathering space. We wanted this space to be a space where people not only shop for their groceries, but they can also have a transparent experience where their kids can run around and go see the animals, where they can go see the animals, and where they can just learn more about what it means to grow your food. Without food, we're not alive, right? And so food is such an important piece of the puzzle. There's not enough understanding around what it takes to grow food. And I don't really fault the average person for that because there's not really a lot of examples of how we grow our food. There's a really big disconnect with how we grow our food, how we grow chickens, how we grow, you know, sheep, garlic, all of it. So I think that the overall idea for this piece of property that was really important for us was just creating a really positive, beautiful, warm environment in space where all are welcome to be able to purchase delicious food and get to know their farmer. And so that's what we have tried to do. And I think, you know, while Jeremiah and I have different roles here at Vernon Family Farm, that's also one of the reasons why I have been and so open and transparent and just around on social media. I think 10 years ago when I started doing social for the farm, there wasn't very many other farms doing social media. And so through doing that consistently, we really have built a robust number of followers, both customers who do come and shop with us weekly, monthly. And also people that have just sort of like seen our family grow and seen this farm grow and they might be living in Kansas, they might be living in Florida, they might be living in Poland, but they really do still feel like they have an authentic connection to who we are. And it might sound silly, you know, there's a lot of pros and cons to the virtual world, but I would say for the most part, that that aspect has been really helpful as well for us. - So both of you are wearing shirts that say, know your farmer. This is, I feel it very, very popular phrase these days. I don't know whether this was planned or not. - No, it's scary how often we actually wear the same exactly right? - Nicole, why is it so important to know your farmer? - Yeah, so that's definitely like a buzz phrase. We use it a lot, but I think it's an important phrase. So in my opinion, it's really important to know your farmer because if you know your farmer, you can have conversations about the food that you're buying from them. When you get to know your farmer, you get to know the stories behind what it takes to grow a chicken. When you know your farmer, you're able to ask questions that if you were to ask in a grocery store or any other larger department store, the person helping you probably wouldn't know the answer to. So that's why I think it's important to know your farmer is just to be able to have that really special intimate connection and conversation so that you know more about what you're eating and what you're buying. Aside from the legal challenges, which we'll talk about a bit, what are the biggest challenges of running a farm business? - Oh God, there's a lot. So to what Jeremiah's already talked about, like cash flow is a huge issue, especially for first generation family farms like ours because not only am I worried about paying our mortgage, but I'm also worried about paying the green bill and I'm also worried about making sure there's enough customers coming in on a weekly basis, even after 10 years so that we can make ends meet. That's sort of like the truth of the situation, even after 10 years. And Jeremiah, do you have more to? - Well, I think the financial piece is the hardest part. And the cash flow is probably the part of that financial piece that's the hardest. I think there's many other issues, but I think food regulations are not helpful for small farms. I think other issues relating to farm businesses is there's just not many farm businesses around. So as far as customers don't know how to shop at the farm, I know it sounds silly, but like you just walk through the door and you shop like you would at a grocery store, but people don't know how to do it because there's not farm stores around the people shop at. So like there's this like education side of it, there's the financial side of it, there's the regulatory side of it. I would say it's hard on all fronts. There's not an easy side to farm. - So another key part of the business to help with cash flow is agritourism. Why did this become a critical part of your business? - So agritourism has always been an important element of our business and important piece of Vern family farm, not just because it helps the customer become more comfortable, but it also allows for Jeremiah and I to have more opportunities to educate our customers around why shopping local is important, why supporting your farmers important, why knowing your farmers important, and then this doesn't necessarily speak to agritourism, but it does speak to that idea of like shopping locally. Something that's really cool about Vern family farm in my opinion is that our farm store not only sells the goods that we sell, but it's a one stop shop for local food. So we are also selling anywhere between 30 to 50 products from other family farms, small businesses that people may have experienced at farmers markets, but now they're able to experience in a way that is like routine year round, Wednesday through Sunday, they know that from nine to six p.m. they can come and shop at our store. And agritourism in the state of New Hampshire comes in many different forms, whether it's a farm to dinner experience at the farm, like we have here, whether it's a corn maze, a pumpkin patch, a sunflower festival, all these events and all these occasions and opportunities for the public to frequent their farmer is really important for the growth of that farm and for the sustainability of that farm. - So you had an event on the day that we're speaking last Saturday night. Jeremiah, can you paint the picture of that day for me if I'm coming to your event on a Saturday, what am I walking into? What's the scene? - When you come to the farm, we have organized parking, which it's the small things that make people get frustrated, but we have organized an ample parking and the calls at the welcome table. So when you walk in, she gets you oriented to where you are. So you feel like when you're walking in, you're not like, where's the bathroom? Where's the food? Where do I sit? That is laid out for you in an organized way. We have probably about seven years ago, six years ago, we built what we call the patio, which is where all the fire pits are. There's like a green space for like common green space where the picnic tables are. So we have enough picnic table seating for like 150 people. We have a stage for the music with the living roof on it that's overlooking the wildflower meadow. And so I think like when you come, it's this good balance of rustic and outdoorsy with enough accommodations that you don't feel like you have to try extra hard. So, you know, you get to sit by campfire and you're going to smell smoke and there's going to be some bugs, but the campfire was made for you ahead of time and you don't have to about lighting it and the chairs are nice and they got clean. There's not bird poop all over them. Like, we've done the basics to make sure that your experience is you can just come and sit down and you don't have to worry about anything else other than enjoying the space. So it's definitely a community feel. It's definitely a family vibe. A lot of young kids running around. A lot of young kids out exploring the fields and seeing the animals, young families and then, you know, across the board, we get a lot of older folks too who just enjoy good music and good food and a good space and yeah. So it's a robust experience when you come. You're like, wow, there's a lot going on here and it's a lot of fun. When you're at these events, I mean, I'm sure they're crazy and busy and whatnot, but do you ever allow yourselves to take a moment, step back and bask in what you've built over the years? I have trouble answering that question because of the last four years. Coming up, an angry neighbor makes life very difficult for the Vernon's and how his efforts have shattered their mental health. Stay with us. This is Seaco Stories. The story you're hearing is one of many important stories I'd love to tell you for years to come. The Seacoast is littered with people fighting for what's right, for what they believe in, and it's my job to shed a light on these stories. But to continue getting access to people like Nicole and Jeremiah, I need you to press the follow button on Spotify, Apple or YouTube. The more followers the show has, the more likely that someone will want to come on this show and share their story. So will you help me out? It's free. There's no spam, no headaches, just new episodes straight to your phone every Monday. Thank you so much for doing that and for being here to dead. I really appreciate it. Now back to today's story. Jeremiah, when did these issues first begin and what exactly were the complaints? The issue started in 2014 when we brought the fire. Seriously, our lawyer, Amy Menzelie is an amazing lawyer and she's been our lawyer for 10 years now because we needed her. We found her and needed her the year we started our farm. A little background about this property. Before we bought this property, it was owned by the Anderson's. Bert Anderson had died 70s and then his widow, Meg Anderson, ran, will live here and own this property. The fields, roughly 15 acres of open fields were all hailed once a year. Otherwise they were just this rolling pasture. She would grow tomatoes and hand them off to neighbors and stuff. That was it. A little old lady come and go. That was it. When we bought the farm, we had obviously the vision of farming as a career. All of a sudden there's customers and trucks and tractors and employees and new driveways and noises. From the very beginning, one of our butters was against us and was going downtown to try to shut us down for you name it, anything, anything that he could try to waste our time or shut us down with. For example, the main one was he tried to stop us from being an open to farm store. We had to spend $10,000 roughly on legal fees to just open our store because of our neighbor. One person, his name is Scott Waxmith. It's all on public record. He's persistent. What he does, he shines lights into our house. At the time when we first moved in, there was no sound ordinance. He would blast music into our house. It's messy and it's neighbor stuff. We have never felt welcomed to new fields and continued to not feel welcome in new fields. Have you been having any direct conversations with your neighbors or is it all through the law? The quote I remember, Maya Butter telling us, Scott telling me when the day we moved in was, "I mind my business, you mind yours." Before even saying hello, that was my memory of what he said to us. I have never talked to him since. I grew up dead and dirt road, rural life. If you didn't like what your neighbors were doing, that's where that ended. You just didn't like it. You figured out how to get along and tolerate each other. I left it at that and he's been basically going downtown or finally complaints for the last 10 years. We don't talk, which is for the better. I think at this point, it's all just through lawyers and stuff. Is this something that, in general, if you open a farm, is it the courteous thing to do to ask your neighbors and be like, "Hey, we're going to open a farm business here. Are you guys cool with that? Do people do that?" I will say before we bought the farm, we went to the Newfields Planning Board and told them to the best of our knowledge when we were starting what our plan was. In a sense, we did do that. We didn't knock on each door and say, "By the way, we're opening a farm." Also, just to clarify, I don't know any business that knows what they're going to look like 10 years from now, especially the year one of their business. It's different if you're 50 years in. You can guess what year 60 it's going to look like. But if you're zero years in, it's pretty hard to say what year 10's going to look like. I do feel like, especially in Newfields, there's this unbelievable expectation that somehow we can predict everything that we could possibly do or might do for the next 10 years. Yeah, I mean, where does a farm go? Where does a farm start? Where they are able to succeed? What I mean by that is most farms are going to be located in residential agricultural zoning. They're not going to be located in commercial zoning. It's not like they're going to be on a main street. For a couple of reasons. One is, farms can't afford to buy land downtown. It can't afford to buy stores downtown. The other thing is farms need farm land and there's no farms downtown. You have to buy your farms in residential agricultural zoned areas. What residences are going to want a farm to move next door and then bring an extra 100 cars down the road? What residences are going to want a farm to move in next door and turn over compost pile and it smells like manure for 24 hours. I don't know where farms go where they can start up and not immediately get kicked back from a butters, neighbors or municipalities for becoming successful at what they're doing. I genuinely think that if our farm had failed or stayed as a failing small little side of the road dump, no issue. Having more customers, new trucks, tractors, that's a problem. We don't want to. I say we, I'm speaking for our neighbors and my guess is that they don't want that type of success next door. And I think that's a huge problem in New Hampshire or New England or anywhere. Where do farms go where it's okay to become successful? We've had a butters tell us, "Oh, you should buy a store on Main Street." I'm like, "Well, how? With what money?" Sounds sweet. Yeah, sounds good. I don't know. I have a lot of concern for the success of agriculture in general. I just think it's not set up to be successful. You referenced Scott has been on your backs since 2014 but also other neighbors have followed suit as well. What are they complained about? Well, I think it's interesting. When COVID happened in our business exploded, we focused on feeding people. What we should have focused on are municipal regulations. Seriously, we should have focused on, "Uh-oh, our business has grown and gotten successful. We better make sure that we have everything good to go with the town because that will become a major issue." We didn't do that. We didn't. Arguably, we didn't need to do that, but the town thought we did. So, the business explodes. It grows. We've been doing things we've been doing forever and all of a sudden the town decides that this needs to be regulated. We had to update our site plan and that was basically a three-year battle with the neighbors and the town board members themselves actively trying to shut us down multiple times. Were they claiming that you were in violation of your original site plan? Correct. 2014. Yes, plus. Yes, and. Yes, and. So, we got through that when I say, "I don't want to gloss over too quickly." That was one of the most horrible, worst things I've ever experienced in my life. I mean, it was harder than starting the farm, harder than having kids. It was the worst experience of our lives. And we're not done with it. What was so. Terrible about it. It got personal. So we had board members in town, called me Farm Boy versus my name. We had board members in town say we're a fake farm. And that made sound like, "Yeah, someone said you're a fake farm." But when you work so hard for no money to try to create a real farm and then some piece of shit is just like, "Yeah, it's a fake farm." No one farms anymore. No one knows what farming is. So it's not like we went downtown and we're talking to board members who are like, "I raise cows." You know, like we're talking to board members who are like, "I mind the Amazon." You know, like I have a mining company. Like these people have no frame of reference as to what it means to farm. Like not an inch of understanding. So like we had this like uphill battle of like, you know, people saying that they don't raise any chickens over there. And I'm like, "You know, minus the 10,000 we raise a year. I don't know what you're talking about." You know, it just was like the fundamental understanding of what farming was we had to fight. So it was just exhausting. It was expensive. The town did these like very malicious things where, you know, we thought we had permission and then we'd find out like an hour before operating that we didn't have permission and we'd find out via an email. Like, you know, and it was like, "Is this a season to this or is this a slap on the head?" Like, you know, it just was this walkie like in between for three years of like what is even happening. I also think that as a fundamental issue, the town had no idea what farming was. And we didn't have a comprehensive understanding of what all the regulations were. And both of those parties should have met with. We don't each of us don't understand what we're talking about. Let's understand each other. My take is that we didn't understand. The town didn't understand and the town decided to be punitive on us. Not let's reflect on ourselves and what farming is. Let's just be punitive and punish for any family farm. So I mean, it's just like endless. It's endless. The minute we got through the town stuff, our three of butters won, including Scott, the others are the Gerards and then the Patterson's. They all teamed up and got a lawyer from Middleton, McLean, and now we're trying to shut us down through their own personal legal actions. Two of the three of butters, the Patterson's and the Gerards, moved in five years ago. We were already here for five years operating. The wax misch have been here the whole time. Two of our three of butters are seasonal. They don't even live here all summer or all year round. Scott doesn't even live next door anymore. He lives down the road, but his kids live here. So he still owns the property. So he still is technically in a butter, even though he actually lives down the road. But did he go down the road to get away from you guys? I have no idea why I moved down there. But literally he comes to he drives from his other property to his property across the street. For every agritors and we then we have any videotapes. The people us. I'm not sure what he's that legal. It is. Okay. We've looked into it with our lawyer. But it's scary, right? Like someone's videotaping your kids running around. I mean, it is creepy town. But town a new field is okay with it. So that's what goes. So it's my understanding that this whole ordeal, past and present is taking a huge hit on your mental health. What does that look like? What has this done to your mental health? Oh, well, this is very sad. So like people who have met me in the last five years, they know who I am now, but they have no clue. The kind of person I was for the previous 35 years. So I was a very positive, like happy, go lucky person. Like hard work and goodwill is going to equal good outcome. And I also enjoyed people and lights talking to people. And I would be going to the farmers markets every week. And now for all intensive purposes, I would be happiest being a hermit. Few people to talk to the better. I'm clinically depressed now. Never was on any medications at all. Now I take any depressants. I don't like people in general. I know it sounds mean to say, but like I'd rather not talk than talk. It doesn't matter who the person is. I just would rather be by myself. I don't trust anybody, like anybody. We live in a surveillance town. I mean, my neighbors watch us. And most of them don't work full time or at all. They just watch us. And you know, any business with having someone watch them all the time is going to make mistakes and have someone call it. Like you can't operate without making mistakes. So all of our mistakes though are video recorded by our neighbors. I don't know. I still love farming. I still love animals and love growing food and love being outdoors. I don't like people. They're dangerous. Most people are dangerous as where I've come to. Don't talk is better than talking. Because if you talk, it can equal a whole bunch of trouble. So just silences where I've gotten to. So it's good we're doing this podcast, but this is the opposite of how I normally operate. I'd rather just not talk. So Nicole, what about you? Would have been the biggest effects this has taken on your mental health? Yeah. So for example, I took a year-live of absence from my teaching career. That's a big effect on my mental health. You know, arguably, teaching, farming, being a mom to three girls is a really heavy load for anybody to carry. However, it did feel sustainable before being just absolutely annihilated by both regulatory boards and now-napers. So, yeah, it's had a huge impact on my mental health, germia, as mental health, it's had an impact on our family, on our children. I'm hopeful that our children will want to take over the farm in the future. However, the difficulties that we as a farm have experienced over the last three to four years have been such fundamentally impactful years for three young children that I don't, I wouldn't really be that surprised if they decided not to farm. So, yeah, mental health has definitely been a big challenge throughout the entire three years. And, you know, I think the one thing that I'm really grateful for at this point is I'm grateful for opportunities like this one to amplify our voice because what we've experienced over the last three years is not right. And no farm, no family, no small business should ever have to experience what Jeremiah and I, our family and our business have had to experience here in Newfields. Yeah. Your three daughters, Magnolia, Indigo and Pingri, what have they done for you two in these last three years? Thank God for them. They have been joys. They have been like the light, they have been the funniest, most positive distractions. I'm really grateful for that. This farm, any farm, I think, can swallow you up whole. You know, there's always work to be done. There's always something more to do. But when you have children, you have to take care of your children. And that means that we have to step away from our job, even if it's our lifestyle. We have to step away from our jobs. As farmers, as teachers, and we need to have family time and we need to take care of our kids. And so for us, I think the girls have always been wonderful in that way. They've helped us sort of find some amount of balance or equilibrium to a pretty crazy way of living. And specifically over the last three years, they've just been like, they've been wonderful. They have watched us move through some really painful moments, but they are still extremely optimistic, positive, loving individuals. They have forgiven us. Yeah, they have forgiven us for moments of real stress. But yeah, I mean, when you live where you also work, it's really hard not to bring in those stresses from the field into the house. And I think for the most part, Jeremiah, I have done a really good job with that. We've really tried to keep the stress of the neighbors, the stress of the regulatory boards, the stress of the fields outside of, you know, like this tiny little farmhouse where there's still a lot of joy. and a ton of laughter and some crazy dance parties to singer songwriters that most parents probably wouldn't let their children listen to. So yeah, our mental health has been very impacted and I'm happy to have a platform now to sort of talk about that. Last year my mental health was so impacted that I really couldn't speak openly about how depressed I was and how much trouble I was having the year before that. Jeremiah was very depressed. It was hard to, yeah, still, yeah, it was really hard to support him and also try to be the voice of what it is that Vernon needed. Now though, now that I am, you know, I stepped away from teaching, took a yearly of absence and here full time, I just refused for our voice to be silenced. So. - What steps have you to take into curtail the toll of this? - So yeah, so me personally, I see a therapist, I go every other week to a wonderful therapist where I'm able to get some counseling, stepping away from my full time teaching position is definitely giving me more room to be able to focus on things that need to be focused on self care. I know it's an overused term, but a really important one for me. I am a very new explorer of EMDR therapy. I'm just starting that. So those are some of the things that I am doing to sort of try to remedy or improve the situation, massage therapy in the wildflower meadow is a beautiful way trying to relax. So those are some of the things that I personally have done. - What about you, Jeremiah? - Similar to Nicole, like I've had a therapist for 10, same therapist for 10 years now, so which is thank God. I don't see him much in the summer, just because I'm so busy, but in the winter, at least once a month, sometimes every other week too. I also love getting a massage, so I get a full body massage like once a month, and then I also have bad feet. So getting my feet massage is like genuinely, incredibly wonderful. So I go and do that once a month. And then for me, especially, it's just quiet time, just quiet space. And that can take a form of, like for example, when the winter ones are events are done, the kids go to school and I won't talk. I won't make noise, like literally don't talk for eight hours. Like I don't want to communicate. And that silence has been huge and I crave that silence. Like I'm already aware of how much I'm looking forward to a cold, dark winter day where no one talks to me, and I don't talk to anybody. And I just read my book, "Watch a Show, Disappearing to the Woods." Like I am by myself. And that for me is also very healing. I don't want this to sound like we have this really inflated view of ourselves, but like the last four years were fight or flight two or three years we have a fight or flight to the extreme. So just knowing that the world can go around without you engaging with it, I know it sounds like, of course the world will go around if you don't engage with it, but like I just want to know that if I do absolutely nothing today, the world's still okay tomorrow. And so just like being able to disengage from the world in a way that you come back to it and it's all okay. And I just need to remind myself of that 'cause I get too caught up in this whole thing. So yeah, this is a bit of a story, but my daughter, Pingri, our youngest was homesick last winter. Woke up in the morning with a fever, not feeling well. She didn't do anything all day. And then by the end of the day she's feeling better and she sort of like sits up and she's like, "You know what? I'm feeling better now." And I had this realization that the entire world basically paused for her from the minute she got sick to the minute she woke up. Like it wasn't like she had an accumulation of homework or emails or expectations. The whole world just stopped and then it started up again. And I am so envious of that. And I want to have moments where I can disappear and then come back and it's not some consequence for that. So that's for me where I'm the quietness. And then the last thing I will say is Nicole's family's from Poland and she still has European family over there. And we've been fortunate enough to have some family help financially with just getting some more travel in and just getting away from the farm and increasing our perspective and recognizing that this 33 acres is not the most important 33 acres in the world. So that's been also important. With the years now of constant complaints dealing with the regulatory boards, the legal fees accrued. Have you guys ever just considered, you know what? We don't need to do this anymore. Yes. We asked one of our butters who's quite wealthy. If they'd buy us out, just that doesn't want us here. The butter doesn't want us. I was like, you can buy us out, we'll be gone. No idea what we would do, but we would just go. And that never came to fruition. So we're still here. Maybe we're not as stuck as we feel, but we feel stuck. Where would we go? Like we don't want to stop farming. We like farming, we're good at it. So like where would we go? Like where would you physically find a farm that we could afford? How would you get your customers to follow you there? You know, I know farms that have moved and their customers really didn't follow them. So yeah, we've talked about it for sure. It's very bizarre to do something that is a passion-driven project and feel like your passion's waning. I mean, if you go outside and you spend your time and you make a million bucks, so like at least you have a million bucks in your account. But if you just go outside and work hard, and you just want to come back with satisfaction, or that's the most likely return is going to be satisfaction, not financial. Like when that gets corrupted, it's really hard to go out there and be like, I want to have all these animals looking as good as possible, me and as healthy as possible, when that's a lot of hard work in the rain for no reason sort of. Yeah. Nicole, when you guys are experiencing all of these things, what do you keep coming back to that keeps you going? What about running this farm, this business? What's your why? The community. Honestly, I feel like a tremendous amount of responsibility to feed. And nourish our customers, especially now that I'm behind the counter, interacting with these customers. I have been able to witness firsthand how many people depend on our farm store for a living. Like they shop with us, and it is purely Vernon Family Farm proteins that are sustaining them and their family. So for me, what I keep coming back to is like this is really important. The work that we do is essential for the community. And that's sort of at the end of the day, my why. It's also really important to me to feed our family. And I kind of see the community as an extension of our family. So that's, I think that's my why. That is my why. And you've taken it upon yourself, Nicole, over the last few years because Jeremiah, he doesn't want to talk to people. You want to speak, you've been speaking very publicly on social media on your Instagram and Facebook accounts. And also to the media, magazines, newspapers, to to fight this battle publicly. Why have you chosen to do that? Yeah, because I think for several years, Jeremiah and I were fighting this battle privately. And it didn't feel like we were winning. It felt like we just felt like it was just getting harder. And especially over the last three years, that have been just intense years with a lot of litigation, a lot of lawyer costs. It just got to a breaking point where it was like, fighting this privately just between, you know, in the comfort of her home is just like not going to work. We need to have the community, we need the help from the community. And we need the community to know that farming is hard, but farming in new fields is even harder. We need the community to know that if they're debating between a quick stop at market basket for something that they need versus a quick stop at Vern Family Farm, that quick stop at Vern Family Farm is where they should be going, 'cause it's going to impact not only a small family farm, local business, but also have a significant impact on other local businesses that we work with. You know, we lost to go fund me page probably now, like month ago, five weeks ago, where we just came out to the community and said, "Hey, we need help paying off our legal costs." We have a first goal of $70,000, we're at $55,000. And that money that has been donated, has been donated from, you know, close to 800 contributions or contributors. - Wow. - So it's like a lot of local, small people putting down small donations because they believe in the impact that this family farm has on the sea coast of New Hampshire. - Jeremiah, what does that let us know? level of support mean to you. - Genuinely it overwhelms me because this is, I guess you asked me personal questions for me personally, because I'm in this awkward moment right now where I'm really just not into the mood to talking to people. If you combine that with people being very generous, it's very awkward because I feel like I should be out there saying thank you and showing gratitude, but I really just wanna be left alone. And then on top of that, I don't wanna do any of this. I don't wanna have to ask people from money and do a go for me. I don't wanna pair a lawyer. I don't wanna argue with it. None of this is what I want to do. All of this is just forced upon us and we're just reacting as we go. And it's just exhausting. You know, it's exhausting. And yeah, it's just exhausting. I am so sick of it. - Your three girls, obviously children learn so much by observation and whether you're trying to teach them things intentionally or not, they are picking up things observing as you know. What lessons do you hope that you're instilling in them right now from this ordeal the last few years? - Well, I think whether we wanted to instill the lesson or not, they've learned that it's easy as a kid to prop your parent up as being some perfect human being. And the girls know that we're not perfect human beings. And personally, they've seen me in some pretty sad moments over the last few years where I'm not proud of my behavior and what I've done, but they've witnessed it and they've forgiven me and seen it all. So I think that they've learned that humans are human. Humans have good days and bad days. And that's been their emotional spectrum, I think is quite large. They know how to have a wonderful time. They know how to be empathetic with you when you're in the down time. And that's amazing. Physically, just like logistically, like the girls are learning how to grow food. And they're learning that when you eat meat, an animal's gonna have to die for that. And most of their friends do not know that, which is sad. But our daughters know that if you want to eat lamb, lamb's got to die. And they've seen that. They've participated in processing animals with me. And they also know that when an animal gets sick, you give shots and fix it. And if you can't fix it, you sometimes you have to put it down. And the girls name every animal on this farm. (laughing) But people, how do you do that? And it's like, it's honestly very simple. You just love the animals alive and you love them when you eat them. And both of those things are true for us. That might sound weird, but the girls name every lamb and then we'll be eating lamb. And is this tulip? And yes it is. (laughing) And they, but that for them is a more connection and more appreciation. It's the opposite of like you gross. It's like, oh, now I truly appreciate this because I bottle fed this baby and I took it for a walk and I knew this lamb. There's enough animals here now that they don't get overly attached to one animal forever because there's new lambs that come and there's new pigments that arrive and new chicks that arrive. So it definitely is like, and they're also just old enough now that they just know that's how it goes. But they still name every animal on the farm and our daughters drive tractors. They participate in the food system. They're gonna be good stewards of the world moving forward for sure. - This thing that you've been dealing with the last few years with the neighbors, how do you think this ends? - Well, it's a war of attrition is where I've come from. So it doesn't really matter right or wrong. It doesn't matter who's good or bad. It's just who's got the resources to last the longest. So I honestly don't know how it ends. I, well, how about this? I don't think it's gonna end unless we decide for it to end. I don't think someone's gonna be able to shut us down. But they could put us in a position where we don't have either the emotional financial resources to continue and we'd have to make that decision on when that moment is, but I don't know. And some of the butters that are against us are incredibly wealthy, like multiple island homes. And they tell us in their Christmas card. They said, "New Christmas card, not anymore." But the Christmas card we got a few years ago said, the first line was, "Renmind me not to buy an island home again." And then it was all the poor trials and tribulations of having to update their island home on when a Pasoque and how stressful that was. Not too stressful because they just bought a second. So you haven't spoken to your neighbor, Scott, face-to-face since 2014. If you have the opportunity to speak to him tomorrow, what would you say to him? - Jeez, that's a good question. It's a dangerous question. I guess, I don't know what I would say to him, but I just wanna know why. Like, why do you spend so much of your time? 'Cause he spends a lot of time, like he's got a binder full of information about us that he brings to meetings. You know, like, why are we the most interesting thing going on in your life? That blows my mind. You know, he just yesterday, he's putting up more cameras to videotape us. And I'm just like, are we that interesting to you? Like, really that outrageous to you what we're doing over here. But I guess so. - So I guess why? Just why do you spend so much time making our lives miserable? - We've got one final question. And I thank you so much for being here and for sharing your story. We ask the same final question at the end of every episode every week. So I will ask this first to Nicole and then Jeremiah, you can take the microphone after that. Nicole, what is the mission that you are on in your life at this moment? The mission that I'm on in my life right now is to be able to be in the present moment. Be grateful for what we have. Be open to the universe. And to continue to do what it is that I and we do best, which is share our family and our farm with the community. That's the mission that I'm on right now. How about you, Jeremiah? - I wish I had a positive thing to say about this. I'm on a mission of survival. I don't know what, I honestly, I have trouble answering that question. I sort of, I feel missionless right now. The mission that I was on got so corrupted that I'm sort of like, what is my mission now? So I don't know. I don't know. That's Jeremiah and Nicole, a Vernon family farm in Newfield's New Hampshire. If you'd like to join them and their fight for survival, you can donate to their GoFundMe. The link to which is in today's show notes. Before we go, I just had to ask Nicole and Jeremiah more in depth about the painstaking process of what it's like to grow chicken. It's very fascinating. And if you've got eight more minutes, I really think you should hear it. I recently bought some chicken from the farm, so tasty, by the way. And so I wanted to know the step by step process of how that chicken made its way to my plate. Here's Jeremiah again. - Yes, it's very interesting. So chicken in particular, more than probably any other animal out there, maybe pigs are the same, has been completely monopolized by Big Ag. So even though we are a small little farm in order for us to operate this farm, we have to go and purchase things from Big Ag. So what I mean by that is we raise cornice cross chickens and there's a whole host of reasons why we do and why it's hard to get away from them. Those cornice cross chickens are mostly bred in Arkansas and Texas. And there are these massive breed houses down there. All those facilities do is create, or is grow fertilized eggs. And then those eggs are shipped to hatcheries. Many of the hatcheries are in the mid-Atlantic. And those hatcheries then distribute the chicks to farmers. We have to pay for our chicks three weeks before the chicks arrive. So when that egg, that fertilized egg goes into the incubator, we pay the hatchery roughly a dollar a chick for that future chick to come to us. So other interesting facts are hatcheries give the best genetics to the biggest growers. So we are a very small grower relative we're speaking. So we get leftover genetics. Whatever genetics didn't get sold to the biggest growers. So that's a huge issue in how our birds grow and develop. But so anyway, we've bought the chicks now they arrive at the farm, they get driven to the farm from the hatchery in Pennsylvania. Ideally, they're delivered within 12 hours of being hatched. So they hatch that morning and we get them that evening. Once they are here, they live in our breeder for four weeks. And the breeder is a climate controlled environment where we can keep the temperature at what we need it to be. So 95 degrees when they first arrive. And they'll live in there for four weeks, feed, water. And then after four weeks, we move them outside to these outdoor pens that we have. And they'll live in those outdoor pens for another three weeks, same thing, feed, food, feed water. And then after three weeks in the middle of the night, we load them, we just clarify, all chicken moving happens after the sun goes down because that's when all your birds are calm and are not flighty. They've all gone to roost. So you can easily pick up a bird without stressing them out. So after the sun goes down, down and it's dark. We have a crew of folks, we load chickens into these poultry crates, the crates get put on a truck, and then we drive our truck to New Jersey to the slaughterhouse. And there the chickens now are taken from alive to the packaged, boneless breast that you buy. That product is then frozen at the slaughterhouse, and then we get it trucked back. We pay a trucking company to truck it back for us. And once the product is back here, then we sell it packaged piece by piece to our customers. To give you an idea of the cost of all that, which I think the cash flow is, I think is the biggest crisis for farmers, this lay out of cash for the $1 per check. Then we got to pay for the grain and the labor while the birds are here, the housing, all that stuff. And then we got to pay for the slaughter. The slaughter runs an average of $9 a bird by the time you include the transport and everything. And so, roughly for a batch of 1,500 birds, we're going to lay out $60,000. Before we even start selling that single package of chicken. So that's the life of that chicken for how it gets to the farm store. There are obviously a whole host of other little things that happen in between all that, but that's the basic just to get a chicken to the shell. Now, why should all of this matter to the consumer? Well, chicken, I think, is very special in the sense that, as much as I would prefer to raise something other than a cornish cross for a whole host of reasons you really just can't. Yeah. Big egg. When you go to the supermarket and you buy a package of chicken, you can't get that chicken to the shelf at $3 a pound or whatever costs. I don't even know. Without sacrifice. Right. So you have to sacrifice the big egg tends to sacrifice all three, the environment, the animal, and the farmer. And the consequence of that is what we're seeing. You hear about methane emissions from cattle lots. You hear about disease outbreaks in these poultry facilities. And you hear about, you know, laborers in slaughterhouses getting treated terribly. And stuff, you know, and that's that is what needs to happen for those companies to get you a $2 a pound package of bone spress that you're paying for on the shelf. Small farms tend to avoid all of those consequences. You know, like we are concerned about the environment. We're concerned about the health of our animals. We're concerned about the health of our farmers. The reason we go to this slaughterhouse in New Jersey isn't because we like driving five hours in the middle of the night. It's because that's the only slaughterhouse that we've found that treats the farmer well, treats the employees well. And I know it sounds weird, but they treat the chickens as well as can be as in addition. So small farms are farming with the conscience. Big farms and big ag are not. They're farming based off of pennies and dollar bills. Yeah. So I think, you know, the average consumer, if they care about animal welfare, if they care about the quality of the meat that they're eating, if they care about the environment, you know, I think many of us in New Hampshire think like, oh, we're outdoors folks, we're environmentally conscious, etc. You know, how you eat is probably one of the most consequential ways that you can impact the environment. And you go to the supermarket and you get yourself some industrial packaged chicken. You know, you're not helping anybody. And, you know, you don't hear about disease outbreaks on small farms. You hear about disease outbreaks that Purdue and Tyson and Big B facilities. Yeah. That's because they're cramming so many animals through those facilities. Right. Everything that you've just laid out sounds like a lot of work, a lot of potential headaches, a lot of things that could go wrong. In addition, all of the added efforts of driving New Jersey, Pennsylvania, sending things away, getting them back here. Have you ever considered cutting corners and just being like, we don't need to do that this month. This, this route would be much more convenient and or cheaper. Well, for sure, I mean, like, for example, we're not certified organic. And there's a whole host of reasons for that. One is the certification programs kind of been co-opted by Big Ag anyway. But when we first started, we did certified organic grain. And now we do non-GMO grain. And I've talked to many farmers like, you can't let your moral, I mean, if you were to grow animals the way they like, in quotes, should be grown, you'll go bankrupt because no one's going to pay you for that value. No one's going to pay for that animal to be that well taken care of. Right. So I don't know if cutting corners is right. The right word is much as like made decisions to not do certain things because they would be more expensive. You've played an opportunity cost of more as versus business decisions. Yeah. And you also learn what your customers care about. I don't think our customers really even consider certified organic as a decision maker when they buy things. They're much more like, was the animal out to go outside, was the animal? Did it have fresh hair and fresh grass? Was it clean bedding or was it sitting in its own shit? Thank you, Jeremiah for the explanation. And thanks to all of you for listening and for supporting this podcast. I've got some big things brewing for the show and I can't wait to fill you all in and do time. And guess what? I just moved to the west end of Port Smith. So perhaps you'll see me this week at White, Harren, Blaney, and Lou are walking aimlessly around the hand of her parking lot. If you do, please stop me and say hi. I would love to hear your story. Until next week, everybody, live free or die.