BACK TO THE LAND
IRWIN, Pa. — Joann Logan wasn’t completely taken aback when the pandemic caused people to rethink their access to fresh meats and vegetables, especially given that in Western Pennsylvania it’s often as simple as a 15minute drive to a local farm.
“People were concerned that the reliance their families had had on the food supply chain — that often comes from distant producers, large grocery stores and massive production plants — was at risk, so they started looking locally for their fresh meats and vegetables,” the Loganfamily matriarch explained.
So, the Logans started a home delivery system for their fresh beef and pork. People ordered online, and the Logans delivered to a drop box at home. It was contactless, which was important at the time.
The first week they did it, they had 15 customers; today they are at ten times that many.
“People have discovered they like the local connection they have with getting their beef and pork straight from our farm — whether they are buying single cuts or purchasing a whole cow and splitting it with other families or friends,” she said.
Inflation and supply chain issues are also a big reason for the repeat business.
“We were fearful that the freezer meat orders would diminish once the pandemic ended, but they have stayed steady. Inflation is a big part of that, but also people enjoy knowing where their food comes from,” she explained.
The Logan family’s farm dates back to 1840 and the Eisaman homestead. When a Logan married an Eisaman in 1894, it became the Logan farm, where the family still calls the original farmhouse home.
“We are considered a beef and hog farm and a crop farm. We raise about a thousand acres of corn and soybean, which we sell into the commodity market,” Ms. Logan explained.
Benjamin — her and her husband Tom’s oldest son — manages the farm. “He married Jen, a nonfarm girl, and — God bless her — she’s taken to the business. She was raised in a printing shop, family business, so she knows what the work ethic is.” She said Jen has taught herself all the details — how many pounds of ground meat come out of a side of a carcass; how many
steaks, if you cut them an inch thick — that customers might ask.
When I met her, Jen was busy at the family retail store on the property, filling orders and refilling coolers with beef and pork for the booth at the local farmers’ market that night. They do a total of seven markets every week, between now and the fall.
Jen’s four-year-old daughter, Claire, dressed in blue jeans and
sparkling pink cowboy boots, was following her mom around and helping her with chores.
Joann said they have plans to movethe retail shop across the Pennsylvania-Turnpike to one of their bigger barns to accommodate their growing customer base; luckily, there is a bridge right by their home that can take them — and sometimes theircows — over the highway to the restof the farm’s acreage.
“The Pennsylvania Turnpike cut us in half in the 40s; originally, they built cattle passes under the turnpike so that we could move cattle underneath from one parcel of land to the other,” Ms. Logan explained. Unfortunately, because of the rolling terrain and the way the highway is situated in the valley, those passes kept filling up with silt, which made them impassable. “At that point, we determined that we would utilize the property on the south side of the turnpike for crop production, and then the north side would be the buildings and land and pasture. When we do have to move cattle or machinery, there is a turnpike bridge where we have to load the cattle onto a livestock trailer and haul them across and then release them, so they get a ride once in a while,” Ms. Logan said.
Christian Herr, the executive vice president of PennAg Industries Association, says the farm-toconsumer direct relationships have exploded over the past two years: “I hear from both consumers and farmers that one of the big benefits is the connection people make with each other in this new dynamic,” he said.
Mr. Herr said people are now having the same relationship with a farmer that their grandparents and great-grandparents had before the boom of the supermarkets and massive production facilities: “They know they can buy their ground beef directly and know exactly who raised that animal and what they are feeding it.”
Mr. Herr said the biggest challenge for farmers is making sure they have cattle readily available all year long, something Ms. Logan said was an early kink that they have now worked out.
Everything is in a constant state of motion at the Logan Farm: Benjamin is working the fields, while Jen is packing meat for orders and for the next farmers’ market while fielding a steady stream of calls from customers and getting ready to go feed the more than 200 cattle — not to mention the pigs.
Remarkably, everyone seems to be smiling. Joann said part of that is pride in work, but it is also because they know they are helping people feel more secure about their food.
“We learn as we go along,” she said. “I’m getting to be an old fart, and I’m happy to be able to pass those kinds of lessons on our son and daughter. Why they want to farm, I have really no idea. You work every day, and it’s physical work. It’s hot, and it’s cold, and it’s frozen. It’s not like when it’s rainy, you can sit in the house and wait to mow the grass. You got to do it when you got to do it,” Ms. Logan said.
Given all of that grueling work, the uncertainty of weather, politics, commodity prices and fuel costs, you have to appreciate the farmers like the Logans who put it all on the line every day to make sure we have access to fresh protein.
Joann said someone asked her husband if he went to the casino, and he replied, “No, I gamble every day.”
But, she added: “My husband says that when you put something in the ground and you have faith, it flourishes.”
Family farms flourish amid food uncertainty