Arbuckle creates sustainability at Singing Prairie Farms

By FRED KRONER
fred@mahometnews.com

Mahomet native John Arbuckle was raised on a farm and now – as an adult – is involved in farming.

It may seem like a simple case of following in the footsteps of his father, Chuck, but the story is much more elaborate for a person who is a ninth-generation farmer … “in America,” said Arbuckle, who hasn’t tracked all of the ancestors before him who worked the land near Glasgow, Scotland.

The 1994 Mahomet-Seymour graduate grew up in a traditional farming environment, surrounded by acres of land that grew various grains and an assortment of livestock that included a thousand pigs and several dozen cattle.

Arbuckle and his wife, Holly, haven’t followed the well-worn path. They live in Maine – about 30 miles from the Atlantic Ocean – and operate Singing Prairie Farm.

Unlike in his childhood, “we don’t own a tractor,” John Arbuckle said.

They primarily raise pigs, about 250, on their 200-acre farm. The main grain is barley from a nearby brewery and it is used as supplemental feed for the animals, who graze on pasture land nine months a year.

“We rotationally graze them, which is a pattern that mimics nature,” John Arbuckle said.

Each lot is between 2 and 3 acres.

“The hogs are there two to three days and then it’s usually 45 to 60 days before they are back (on the same lot),” John Arbuckle said.

That allows the ground not to become depleted from over-use and gives the grass time to replenish.

Since pigs are not sun-tolerant, there is work to do in the relocation process.

Temporary fences are in place, but wagon-loads of grain as well as shade structures must be moved from place to place.

“We use draft horses for simple farm tasks,” John Arbuckle said, “when we have to drag the wagons or structures.”

Though he acknowledges, “there are times a tractor would be extremely helpful,” John Arbuckle said it’s important to keep costs in mind.

“If you need something, but can’t afford it, you shouldn’t get it,” he said. “We don’t want to farm for five years and quit. We want to farm for the rest of our lives.

“We’re content doing our small tasks with horses.”

Much of the family’s income is derived not from the sale of pigs, but what they become.

Their estate is known as Singing Prairie Farm and – with the help of between six and nine employees – they market and sell Roam Snack Sticks online.

Among their outlets are Butcher Box and Wild Pastures.

They have three flavors of the snack mix as well as three flavors of old-world salami.

The snacks, Arbuckle said, are shelf stable and are “a healthy version of Slim Jims.”

The Roam Snack Sticks product name was chosen, John Arbuckle said, because their first choice was not approved.

“The government wouldn’t let us write ‘pasture-raised,’ on the package, so we decided to imbed the message,” John Arbuckle said.

**

John Arbuckle took a circuitous route from Mahomet to Maine.

While he was single, Arbuckle had a stop in Colorado not to mention locales such as Argentina, Ecuador, Mexico and Nepal.

After meeting the woman who would become his wife, they worked on a small farm together in Maryland (three years), before expanding to Missouri (eight years) and for the last year-and-a-half, to Maine.

A life with adventure and intrigue was the original calling John Arbuckle saw for himself after high school.

“I had a desire to work in national parks,” he said. “Every young person likes to strike out and do their own thing.”

Before any of his applications were accepted and resulted in a job offer, former Mahomet-Seymour English instructor John Pottorff provided a recommendation that landed Arbuckle a position with a rafting company.

“I was a rafting guide for 12 years and was in nine different countries,” he said, “with the intention of wanting to share nature with people.”

The jobs had their downside.

“It was very transient,” John Arbuckle said. “Every three to four months, I would leave one national park and go to the next one.”

While waiting for the summer season to arrive in South America, Arbuckle journeyed to Maryland one fall “to teach kids about nature.”

He had a dual purpose for the trip.

“I really wanted to teach outdoor ed to kids,” he said. “I figured it would be a good trial run at parenting.

“Second, it was close to a river I had always wanted to guide.”

He found more than a willing set of young learners.

“I met a pretty girl,” he said. “It was time to get out of the young person’s chapter of traveling and always going on adventures.

“That’s not how I wanted to raise kids.”

He and the former Holly Jones spent three years in Maryland, working on a 10-acre organic vegetable farm.

“It was a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) for about 300 families,” he said.

On Fridays, the CSA patrons would shop at a temporary storefront at the farm and pick out their produce.

Although Holly – who became his wife in 2013 – wasn’t raised on a farm, John Arbuckle said, “she grew up in a rural county in the eastern shore of Maryland,” and enjoyed the peaceful lifestyle of country living.

Collectively, they moved to northeast Missouri – LaPlata – which is about 77 miles north of Columbia.

They were there for eight years and raised a variety of livestock, including beef cattle, pigs, laying hens, broiler chickens and Thanksgiving turkeys.

“For a lot of people that would be awesome,” John Arbuckle said.

Their family was growing, however, and included a son (Noah) and a daughter (Zea Mary).

“Everybody has a bucket list,” John Arbuckle said, “and we decided not to wait until we’re 100 to start checking things off.”

The area where they lived was so small John Arbuckle said, his daughter’s school “had only two other girls her age.

“Our little girl is very social and we wanted to get the kids into a school system where there were more people and opportunities for sports, drama and band.”

His wife had attended Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, and remembered “a supportive agriculture social climate,” in the state, John Arbuckle said.

In the summer of 2018, they uprooted themselves and moved their operation across the country to Newcastle, Maine.

“We can go to the ocean on weekends and watch the kids build sand castles,” John Arbuckle said.

The family is part of a thriving school district.

The children – Noah is now 12 and in sixth-grade and Zea Mary is 9 and in third-grade – are involved with numerous extra-curricular activities.

Zea Mary is surrounded by a large peer group.

“There are four classes for little kids her age,” John Arbuckle said.

**

The staff at Singing Prairie Farm is somewhat seasonal but never drops below six workers.

Three are in administration and have duties ranging from marketing to bookkeeping (and tracking inventory) to accounting.

On the production side, there’s need for veterinary work and other assorted jobs that are a part of tending to a large-scale operation that features more than a big number of animals.

“Some of our boars weigh 800 pounds,” said John Arbuckle, who serves as the Chief Operating Officer.

Holly Arbuckle is the Chief Executive Officer.

It’s imperative, he said, to have a balance in all aspects of the operation.

“A lot of families enter farming with a passion to be a producer,” John Arbuckle said. “The production part is fun, but financial literacy is what will allow you to farm for a long time.”

The couple’s children are being exposed to farm work and what is involved.

“My girl is interested in agriculture,” John Arbuckle said. “I was teaching her to castrate pigs when she was 4.

“She has shown an interest in plants and animals. Our son shows an interest in the business side.”

Neither John nor Holly will push the children in one direction or another.

“My job is to provide a loving foundation and let them search for their vocation,” he said. “And then, I would like to assist them and support them in whatever that vocation is.

“I want them to understand they are on Earth for a reason. We do not require them to be farmers, though traditionally (the family) has found contentment in the countryside.”

Massive changes have occurred in the agriculture industry throughout the many decades that the Arbuckle clan has been involved in farming.

“In every generation, the game has changed,” John Arbuckle said. “When my father started, it was a completely different ball of wax than when he finished.

“That happened in my grandfather’s generation and I’ve noticed it in mine, too. Things that worked in 1980 don’t work now.  Things that work now weren’t even thought of then.”

The retail side of his business is one example.

“People are going to want to buy food the same way they buy airline tickets,” John Arbuckle said. “The knowledge of how to use the Internet and electronic systems to get food to them is changing.

“That’s how we move our product and it can’t be ignored how quickly the game is changing. 

“Outwardly, you’re doing the same thing, taking care of cows and pigs, but the outlet – how the product leaves the farm – is different.”

The business name was derived from setting at home in Missouri on a spring evening watching what John Arbuckle said was “a sea of grass spotted with an island of trees.

“We were on the porch and heard coyotes, wild turkeys, bull frogs, owls, crickets and maybe a dozen species. You would think the place was alive and could say that they were singing.”

While he understood their family circumstances were not unique – “every farm within 150 miles sounded the same,” he said – that evening gave birth to the name, Singing Prairie Farm.

Though they no longer reside in a prairie setting, the business title remains unchanged even as there are folks who are confused by the name.

“Some people think we’re a musical group,” John Arbuckle said, “but we don’t sing, at least not anything anyone would want to hear.”

That he no longer lives in his hometown is not a reflection on how he feels about the community or his upbringing.

“I see how incredibly lucky I was to grow up on a small farm outside of Mahomet,” John Arbuckle said. “There’s nowhere else I’d rather have grown up than in Mahomet.”