Princesses and Pig Farms

On a pig farm in Jacksonville, NC, there live two little girls named Kyleigh and Aliza. While no crowns may top their heads, they are most certainly the princesses of the farm, blowing kisses to Nibbles, Elsa, and all the other pigs, riding in their chariot (the tractor), picking flowers, and helping make sure everything is as it should be.

A little over a year ago, Kyleigh and Aliza’s parents, Sarah and Seth Turner bought a hog farm after wishing and hoping to buy one for over a decade.   The wean to finish farm was dubbed K&A Turner Farm after Kyleigh and Aliza. The farm was a dream come true for the whole family.

Both Seth and Sarah had grown up in agriculture. Sarah’s parents owned a hog farm, and Seth’s uncle was a farmer. Seth has worked with chickens, hogs, and row crops.

“I always knew I wanted to do something in agriculture. I’ve always enjoyed it,” said Seth who is now a serviceman for Smithfield.

Seth and Sarah didn’t just want to buy a farm for themselves; they wanted their girls to have the farm experience they did. They wanted them to be able to take care of something and learn what it is to help feed the world.

“I was about Kyleigh’s age when my dad built his hog houses,” Sarah said, “I used to help out, and as a teenager I said I’d never work on a farm again. Now we own a farm.”

While Sarah said she’d never work on a farm again, she loves it and can often be found with the girls, snuggling the little pigs. She’s even had one fall asleep on her shoulder! Sarah and Seth realize that the girls may not always have the same affinity for the farm that they currently do but hope that they’ll learn responsibility and look fondly on it all in the future.

“They may grow to dislike working out here and mowing when they are teenagers, but they’ll learn to appreciate it as did I,” said Sarah, as Kyleigh interjects, “I’ll never get tired of it!”

And, if you ask the girls what they want to be when they grow up, they want to do just what their parents do—be pig farmers. They also want to be a hairstylist like their mom and maybe a dance teacher.

At 9 and (almost) 4, Kyleigh and Aliza have many years before they need to narrow down their career choice. For now, they enjoy being pig farmers, dancing, softball, spending time with family, and popscicles at the farm (blue ones give Frozen powers). Their absolute very favorite things to do are be with the pigs, dancing, and go to Disney World (Aliza said this one). They also enjoy taking care of their miniature donkeys, goats, chickens and helping their grandpa with his cows. As a family, the Turners are active members of Bethlehem Free Will Baptist Church, enjoy going to the beach, and going to Bush Gardens.

Dance Recital

While the purchase of the hog farm is a lot of work and overhead, it has enriched the Turner family’s life. Together they care for the pigs and farm. Seth and Sarah’s dream to own a hog farm came true, and now they are able to watch their daughters enjoy the whole experience. While the affinity for Elsa from Frozen may fade, Kyleigh and Aliza will probably always remain the princesses of K&A Turner Farm.

Photos: M. See Creative

Following the Footsteps of a Farmer--The Coombs Family

The love of farming is, in many cases, passed down from generation to generation. Each new farmer carries on the legacy of previous farmers from years past. While they may work towards expanding the farm, or making improvements in various ways, they tend to have one thing on their mind—make them proud. The them is the generations of farmers that came before. For Joshua Coombs, generations of his family have passed down the love of the farm, and it doesn’t seem that it will stop with him.

Josh’s great-grandaddy grew hogs on the ground where soybeans are now planted on the Coomb’s farm. His dad built hog houses in 1995 to be able to take the pigs from the ground and move them inside.

“My great-grandaddy started it and my granddaddy expanded it. Then, my dad built upon that expansion,” said Josh, “I was here when they built those first four houses. I was here during the whole process. I knew I never wanted to leave,” he continued.

And he hasn’t left. Josh is continuing in the footsteps of previous generations in many ways. He is not only a farmer, but he is also a paid fireman with the city of Clinton (a role he’s played for 16 years), something his dad also did. Working nine, 24 hour shift days a month, Josh serves the citizens of Clinton, Sampson County and anyone commuting through Clinton. Josh is a captain for Clinton Fire, he is an EMT, and he is a pig farmer. Perhaps the two biggest reasons Josh has taken on these roles is his love of helping others and being inspired to be like his dad.

“My dad was a fireman. He started the farm. He also made it to fire captain. I’m basically following his footsteps and doing what Dad did,” said Josh.

When it comes to the farm, Josh is making his own stamp on things. Josh is an avid outdoorsman and loves to fish and hunt. His love for the outdoors is one reason why protecting the environment is so important to him. He protects the environment in many different ways like following regulations. He has also worked with the NC Forestry Service to manage the wooded areas on his farm. When it was time to clear-cut acres of timber from the farm, Josh thought it was important to not just let the areas grow back with brush, so working with the Forestry Service and guys who specialized in planting trees, he planted 166 acres of Loblolly pine to provide habitat for wildlife. He hopes to do the same thing to other tracks of land on the farm.

“ I see a lot of wildlife here. Just about every afternoon, my boys and I will watch the deer around the bean field and the hog houses. They’re so busy munching on the soybeans, they don’t even care that we are there,” said Josh about the wildlife he sees on the farm. He also sees turkeys, quail, dove, and more on the farm. Farms are many times a quiet, peaceful place with open spaces for wildlife to enjoy.

Being a farmer isn’t just about enjoying the outdoors or carrying on the heritage of generations to come, for Josh, it is also a great place to raise a family. Josh and his wife Jessica, have two little boys and just recently announced a third baby on the way!

“I love raising the family on the farm. It’s relaxing. It teaches my little boys to have a good work ethic and it also teaches them the values of life like how to be a good neighbor, how to be a friend, that hard work pays off, and always put God first-- family second,” said Josh.

The Coombs boys love being on the farm. They are full of energy, and the farm gives them wide open spaces to run around. They also love to check on the pigs and watch for wildlife with their daddy.

The Coombs’s farm family extends beyond just Josh, Jessica, the kids and immediate family, though. It also includes their integrator, Prestage Farms, and the entire pork industry. In 2017, Josh had to have open heart surgery. Many people called to check on Josh and offer to help on the farm, even though they didn’t have to. But, that’s just how the farming world works. We are one big family.

Today, you can find Josh at the fire department, at home, or on the farm. He’s doing what he loves—helping others, feeding others, and leaving a farming legacy for others. Who knows, in a few years, we may be interviewing those little Coombs boys in the pictures here, and they say, “I followed in dad’s footsteps. I’m a farmer too.”

Perception vs Reality: How did college students’ perceptions change after visiting a hog farm?

As the divide between rural and urban communities becomes more pronounced, there are fewer people in North Carolina who know what it’s like to actually live around a farm. That’s one reason we wish the courts would have allowed juries to visit the farms being targeted in lawsuits — we know that when people visit a farm in person and get an up-close look at how it operates, they come away with a more favorable impression.

As for those who rely solely on media reports to inform their perception of hog farms… well, there’s no telling what they might think.

NC Farm Families recently invited a group of students from Mount Olive University to visit a hog farm in Duplin County and learn more about how our treatment lagoons work. It seemed like a good opportunity to see how perceptions change after visiting a hog farm, so we asked each student to complete a short survey before and after their visit.

UMO students walk the perimeter of a lagoon.

The results were telling:

Nearly 75% of the students had a more favorable impression of hog farms and treatment lagoons after their visit. The other students’ perceptions remained the same.

When we asked students to rate the odor near the lagoons on a scale of 1-10 (with 10 being the strongest), they expected the odor to rank as a 6.6 before their visit. After the visit, they rated the odor next to the lagoon as a 2.5. Nearly two-thirds of them rated the odor as very faint (1 or 2).

An even higher percentage of students — nearly 75% — rated the odor on the farm in general as very faint (1 or 2). Perhaps that is why none of the students who visited said they would consider this particular hog farm a nuisance.

When we asked what surprised them most about their visit to the farm, many students focused on the lack of odor:

“Hog farms are much cleaner and safer than the media portrays.”

“The odor was not bad.”

“It smelled a lot less than I imagined… The media makes them seem terrible when they are actually well maintained and regulated.”

Our experience with these students reinforces what we’ve always known: When people actually visit a family farm and see how it operates, they are impressed with our farms and the dedicated people who run them.

Perceptions of hog farms changed after the students visited the farm