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Rissler Family Farm featured at State Fair
REELSVILLE -- On Saturday, the Rissler Family Farm will be one of 17 Hoosier farms to be featured in the 2016 Featured Farmers Showcase during the Indiana State Fair.
"I'm kind of overwhelmed, I guess," Mike Rissler said. "It's quite an honor. I was surprised ... we're a rather small operation here in today's agriculture. So I was really surprised that we were chosen here in the hills of southern Putnam County. "
Mike and his wife, Sandy, represent the sixth generation of farmers since the farm got its start in 1837. In addition to a small cattle herd, they raise corn and soybeans on the banks of Big Walnut Creek. And though some things never change, the farm and family have adapted and overcome many times since then.
Mike said that his father remembered a time when soybeans were planted as hay for cattle before they became the major cash crop they are today. He also recounted his own memories of tending to sows allowed to wander in the woods, having to carry their feed on his shoulders if it was too wet to drive there, and cutting wood to heat the hog houses in the winter.
But the person he says saw the most change was his grandmother, who lived from 1900 to 2002.
"Through her eyes we saw a lot of changes in that time," Mike said. "She saw all the changes. When we got a new 12-row corn planter, my dad brought her out to see it and she couldn't imagine all that."
Sandy added, "It was fun to watch her when we'd get new equipment. She'd go, 'Who would have ever thought this?' I think that's been a blessing for (Mike) to have that through his family. I like to think though that, being in farming, we're just blessed."
But other people are not so blessed, and the Risslers feel that sharing information about agriculture will be "the main feature" of their time in the Glass Barn at the State Fair.
"They said that someone saw on Facebook that someone had said, 'Well, why do we need to kill animals? You just go to the store and buy your meat.'" Mike said. "You've got to get the message out there of where their food actually comes from."
"And really there's no ignorant question out there, it's just that people need to become more knowledgeable about it," Sandy said.
When asked why this was important, Mike said, "Well, do you eat three meals a day? In this country, food is abundant. There's parts of the world that that's not the case, and we take that for granted."
Fortunately, the Risslers are old hands at educating the public about agriculture. During her time as a teacher, Sandy would bring her kindergarten class for a day on the farm.
"And that's what we found when we brought the kids out here," Sandy said about even rural communities needing agriculture education. "They didn't even know what a combine was or what it did or why we had one."
The Risslers also believe ag education is important from a political viewpoint.
"The uncertainty ... the misunderstanding about the GMOs and things like that," Mike said. "There's so much misinformation and people get so upset about it that it's disheartening to think that what we're doing it trying to feed the world and we're not going to be able to do that. People think organic is a great thing and it may be, but we can't feed the world by organic farming.
"I was talking to the fertilizer dealer the other day about this, and we were talking about the GMOs and the BT, he said that the organic people use that very thing to spray on their crops for insect control and it's okay for the organic farms to use that, but the people are so upset because it's in the corn. I didn't even realize that, so people probably don't know that that's the case."
The Featured Farmers Showcase is sponsored by Dow AgroSciences. For more information, visit www.indianastatefair.com/state-fair/.