Robert White, Returning to the Farm
Robert White grew up on a Guernsey dairy farm of 80 acres next to his grandparents, who had hogs, beef cattle and chickens, both layers and broilers. He learned to drive on Farmall tractors, an H and an M.
His parents were avid readers of Mother Earth News, and some of the practices on their farm incorporated various things from MEN. When Robert graduated high school, he knew he didn’t want to do conventional farming like all the FFA farmers and neighbor boys were going to do, not thinkng much about other choices, so he left and went off to college.
As they say, you can take the boy out of the country, but not the country out of the boy. He’s gardened off and oon over the years and now it has become an all-consuming passion and something he wants to pursue as a career, providing healthy produce, meat, poultry and eggs, using sustainable organic practices. He will work land at his parents’ farm, near Falls City, Neb.
To get started, Robert will attend the Growing Farmers workshop through Community Crops of Lincoln, Neb., beginning in January 2012, and other workshops and seminars. He’s also conducting tons of research online through the library, books and magazines.
Robert is a divorced father of three grown children. He served as the pastor of a small rural church for three years. At the time, he lived in a parsonage on two large lots on the edge of a small town. Robert salvaged a shed from a neighbor’s place and converted it to a small chicken shed with some rabbits stacked in cages on one wall, and had a huge garden with a little left over to sell at a very tiny farmers market in the town.