This Pennsylvania farmer loves the entrepreneurial opportunities agriculture provides
By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com
Leading up to National Ag Day on March 22, Farms.com will be connecting with American farmers to find out why they love farming.
Andrea Brown and her husband, Ryan, a fourth-generation producer, raise cash crops, cattle and hay on CornerTop Farm in Cumberland County, Penn., along with their two small children.
“I fell in love with the farmer not with the farm, but it soon became clear that’s the direction my life was going,” said Brown, who didn’t grow up in a farming family.
She has multiple reasons why she loves farming.
She enjoys how many aspects of the lifecycle her family gets to experience, how many entrepreneurial opportunities exist within ag and how farms showcase progress.
Her appreciation for the lifecycle in agriculture started as a young girl.
She began horseback riding at the age of nine. Then, in high school, she enrolled in agriculture classes and joined Future Farmers of America.
While in high school she learned about sheep and goats, and raised and showed livestock at the county fair.
“As I started breeding and raising my own market goats, I fell in love with watching them grow and seeing how genetics over the years improved my herds and the animals,” she said. “And really, there’s nothing that’ll make you smile more than a barn full of baby goats.”
She also loves the lifecycle of the plants that grow on the farm.
“We know it’s not instant gratification and a lot of hard work goes into those crops, but the end target has such a huge feeling of reward and accomplishment,” she said. “Looking to the end goal is what helps us get up every day.”
Working in agriculture gives farmers multiple opportunities to explore their entrepreneurial spirit.
That kind of creativity is another reason why Brown loves farming.
“There’s so much freedom to be the ultimate entrepreneur and be creative to help the success of our businesses,” she said. “At our farm, we’ve gotten into beef sales. And in the wintertime when things are slow, we do private snow removal. And in the springtime we do landscape supply sales. There’s no shortage of opportunity when working on a farm.”
Brown also appreciates how farms are designed to show progress and innovation.
Brown and her husband purchased the family farm from Ryan’s late grandparents about seven years ago.
Their farm looks different from previous generations. And the next generation of producers will do things differently than today’s farmers, she said.
“We’ve adapted and taken the opportunity to grow,” she said. “And if our kids take over the farm someday, there will be changes and they don’t do things the same way we do. And that’s okay. They’ll be telling their story of the land using their tools of the day, the same way previous generations have.”
Telling Farms.com why you love farming could win you a prize pack.
Until March 22 at 11:59PM, a social media post on the @FarmsNews Twitter account with the hashtag #ForTheLoveofFarming and includes a photo or video explaining why you love farming, automatically enters you into a draw for a prize package worth $250.
Winners will be announced on March 28.