Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, Nothing is going to get better. It’s not.
The Lorax
Why start a farm & mill?
As a union Journeyman Millwright, Dominic has personally worked for several large corporations including ADM, Cargill, General Mills, Coca-Cola, etc. He has labored for several years doing literal body-breaking work for what is considered “high wages” at roughly mid-$30’s per hour to barely make ends meet while working along side several immigrant and temporary agency workers in these factories that made maybe more than minimum wage while the CEOs of these companies made more money in an hour than Dominic would make in an entire year. It was while seeing the exorbitant waste at each of these facilities, while seeing the continued “growth” of sales and the “inflation” incurring on their products where we knew this was all fake. The inflation is completely created by the wealthy and their greed and we were paying all the price, with our time, energy, health, happiness, and overall life. While the few people at the very top of these organizations work very little in comparison.
Jennifer has worked as a Licensed Veterinary Technician for several years and has seen more and more small practices become bought out by major corporations for management because no veterinarian under the age of 60 can afford to purchase a veterinary practice as they are all still swimming in student loan debt. In such, there are fewer and fewer practices with the freedom to create their own business structure, streamlining and overall reducing the quality of veterinary care provided to small communities.
It is because of these continued atrocities, as well as many others in our society that we chose to “opt out.” We sold our house, opting out of a mortgage, sold several of our belongings, opting out of debt, and chose a very hard, simple life without modern utilities, until we could provide them for ourselves, opting out of utility bills. We “opted out” so we could have the freedom we thought we were promised as American citizens. Freedom to work less for the few at the top and more for ourselves, our family, and our community. We want to create our income by sharing what we can create and provide for others around us, not a few people we will never meet and who won’t care if we’re there one day and gone the next. We also keep our money in our community through shopping locally and supporting local businesses BEFORE considering large corporations as an option.
These have not been easy decisions to make, nor is it an easy way to live in our “modern,” instant gratification based society, but it is what feels morally just to us and supports our way of helping and supporting those closest to us: our family and community.
We also understand a thing or two about business, our environment, and our current economic state and their interconnectedness and have ideas on how to turn things around for future generations.
First, we need environmentally regenerative industries for local people that pay a livable wage and don’t require a sacrifice of one’s health in return. In his career as a millwright, Dominic has seen and repaired several aspects of nearly every food production-type facility available in the Midwest from grain elevators to bakeries to meat processing plants and more and feels confident that given the right team of local food producers, he could help lead a huge increase in local industrial food production for locally growing farmers to support. We, personally, want to focus on increased local textile availability produced from locally grown and harvested natural fibers such as angora, alpaca, wool, and mohair. We will start with a centrally located cottage mill that will take in raw fleeces and produce yarns, then eventually knitted, woven, and felted products as well.
Second, we need to reduce the artificial inflation by eliminating as much overhead as possible. Personally, we have taken on the hard task of living without a lot in order to pass that savings on to others. We hope to be able to continue this track with our fiber mill by utilizing renewable energy sources and refurbishing old processing equipment with our career technical skills, eliminating hundreds of thousands of dollars of upfront debt that we can pass along as decreased prices for customers and increased wages for future employees. In the last year, we have become increasingly aware of legislative inflation where antiquated state laws or newly lobbied laws have restricted not only locals access to higher quality locally produced foods such as salsas and pickles, but also created a financially restrictive barrier for several market avenues that hinder small startups with mandatory fees to the state or various government agencies. These sorts of over regulation do not actually uphold the standards they claim to be doing but rather just increasing product costs and overall limiting free market access to small local producers. The rules were written by people, so by people they can also be unwritten. Please call your local representatives and talk to them about these issues.
Finally, we need every Yooper and UP visitor to vote with every dollar as if your great grandchildren’s lives depended on it. What does that even mean? Most of us work extremely hard for every dollar we have access to. Who you give your money to and what you spend your money on should reflect the world that not only you wish to live in, but the future you wish the world to have for future generations. If we want to continue to have the exquisite, charming, and welcoming communities we are known for in the Upper Peninsula, we need to support our local farmers, our local small business owners, American made products, repurposed products, and products that will endure and are repairable. These are key facets to a successful, healthy, sustainable, local economy and are changes we can all make every day.
Kush & Pronk Farm 