Locally raised meat offered at Red Barn Farm Meats in Highland

John and Kiersten Schoen walk a fine line on their farm four miles northeast of the town square in Highland, the site of their business Red Barn Farm Meats, LLC.

Cattle graze rotationally on grass in pastures and on cover crops in fields. Hogs eat corn and oats grown on the farm and supplements of soybean meal and vitamins the Schoens buy locally from the Hamel Co-op. No animals are confined in dungeon-like barns you could mistake for a factory. They aren’t pumped full of growth hormones. They only get antibiotics when they’re sick.

What you buy from Red Barn Farm Meats the Schoens raise from birth.

But they don’t do it because they want to “stick it to the man” by subverting the industrial scale agriculture that feeds most of the world. They do it because they think that’s what’s best for their family and their farm, and they offer the products for sale on the chance that local families might feel the same way.

“We don’t want people to think they can’t buy good, wholesome food at the grocery store,” John, 35, said. “That’s not why we do it. We don’t want to trash them.”

“We’re doing it this way because this is how we want to do it,” Kiersten, 35, said. “There’s not one way to farm. We’re not doing it the only way that’s right.”

The red barn

The Schoens still work the land John’s great-grandfather first started farming. The red barn that gave the farm and business its name isn’t a recently-built marketing ploy, it’s a real structure that was built in 1898.

“This all goes back to my grandpa Lenny Plocher, he inspired me,” John said. “He was always here. He lived and died here.”

John got interested in livestock thanks to easy-going parents who let him have whatever animals he wanted.

All together, the farm’s 140 acres support 30 cows, 70 pigs, a smattering of chickens, goats and turkeys and a single donkey John says protects the animals from coyotes. That’s not to mention the three Schoen children, Luke, Rhett and Leni.

“Anything Old MacDonald had,” Kiersten joked. “When he left, we took over.”

The Schoen family harvested animals on the farm for their own use anyway, but when Kiersten was laid off from her job in November 2015, the family decided the time was right to try to turn their passion for livestock into a business.

“We were doing it anyway. We have the farm; we’ve had the animals for quite a while,” John said.

‘Quality of life’

John unplugged the electric fence from an outlet near that big red barn and then rode out to what last fall had been a corn field that’s now over-seeded with cover crops. He yelped to get the grazing cows’ attention, but many already knew what was coming and were lumbering his way.

The fence separates the field into halves: On one side, the vegetation was gnawed down to nubs. On the other, the vegetation was lush and green. The cows rushed in to graze.

Industrial farms often confine livestock to small spaces and use hormones to get animals to grow larger more quickly. John doesn’t begrudge them for that. He said fewer than 1 percent of Americans are farmers, and yet they feed the world. People have to eat. It’s just not the way he wants to operate.

“I’m not giving them anything to promote growth other than giving them the environment to grow in,” he said. “I can answer people’s questions. You buy a product from us, I can tell you where it came from. I can tell you it had the best quality of life I could give it.”

When it comes to meat from Red Barn Farm Meats, the route from farm to table is simple. When animals are ready for harvest, they’re loaded onto a trailer at the farm and shipped to Korte Meats in Highland, an eight-minute trip. Processing begins moments later, and when that’s done the meat heads right back to commercial freezers in the Schoens’ garage. Kiersten takes orders by phone or via Facebook.

The Schoens aren’t getting rich. John still works full-time as a seed researcher for Syngenta. While he said he’d eventually like to switch to farming full time and see the farm grow, any short-term expansion will be modest. Farming is hard; land is expensive; and profit margins are razor thin.

“We dreamed up this idea; it took quite a bit of time and money,” John said. “I know we’re going to have it rough. It’s not going to be easy. But I feel inspired to do it.”

Kiersten agreed, saying they run the farm the way they do because it’s what they can manage.

“It’s why we’re putting cows in the field and not tractors. We can’t afford it,” she said.

The Schoens feel the pressure to “go organic,” and if they did, their product could command a much higher price. But they won’t do it. To be certified as “organic” requires a lot of things, including not using antibiotics on animals even if they’re sick.

To John, that doesn’t make sense. “I won’t watch an animal die,” he said. And he referred to that fine line the family walks: They understand the need for industrial scale agriculture, where antibiotics and hormones are applied generously. The world’s appetite requires farming on an industrial scale, and farming on an industrial scale while remaining profitable requires the use of those substances.

“If we’re going to feed this world, how are you going to see starving people and say ‘You need to go organic?’” he said.

On the other hand, the Schoens think it’s strange that some meat in supermarkets is sold in packaging with pictures of meat printed on it instead of just showing the actual meat. They fork over the extra 13 cents per package to Korte Meats to vacuum seal their products in clear plastic wrapping.

“We’re not ashamed of what our product looks like,” John said.

Red Barn Farm Meats can be reached at 618-791-0007. Their website is redbarnfarmmeats.com.

This story was originally published April 10, 2016 at 8:59 AM with the headline "Locally raised meat offered at Red Barn Farm Meats in Highland."