From farm to market
Local vendor is big-city carpenter by day, small-town farmer by night
You wouldn't use an adjustable wrench or a sliding T-bevel to operate an animal farm, just as you wouldn't carry around an egg incubator or a flip-top chicken feeder to do a bit of carpentry.
Eric Sexton, though, uses all of the above during a typical day of work.
(Mary Compton/SouthtownStar)
PHOTO GALLERY
Suburban Couple Change to Farmers
For the past four years, the Chicago Heights native has spent his days amid the urban chaos of downtown Chicago, working as a construction carpenter, and his nights and weekends overseeing Nature's Choice Farms, a business he operates from his quiet farm in Grant Park, in eastern Kankakee County, that specializes in all-natural animal products such as eggs, chicken, turkey, duck, pork and grass-fed beef.
"I've always had an interest in natural farming - not the commercial confinement operations, but more out on pasture and not using any drugs or antibiotics or medications or anything like that," Eric said.
"I'm a carpenter by trade, so I don't have people come and say, 'Thank you for building me this condo,' but I do have people come up and say, 'Thank you for making these products available and basically raising it in this manner.'"
Eric operates the farm with his wife, Samantha, who also works another job as a second-grade teacher at Peotone Elementary School.
"I help him more in the summer by doing farmers markets and chores in the afternoons when he's not home and washing eggs and things like that," she said. "It is a little harder when I'm teaching because teaching takes so much time and so many hours and weekends."
Working two jobs and 18 hours a day is a grind that Sexton believes is worth the effort.
"It's rough this year, but if I'm going to build this up to the point where it could be my only job, it's got to be my second job for now," he said. "As it gets bigger, it gets harder."
To afford the 20-acre farm, Eric sold his former house in Crete and asked his father to take a line of credit on his farm in Princeton, Ill.
"A lot of farmers inherit their farm and get to walk into an already-developed, already-established farm, and Eric didn't have that luxury," Samantha said. "I admire him for that. He just decided, 'This is what I want to do,' and he took a big chance and went for it."
A typical work day finds Eric waking up around 3:30 a.m. For the next hour, he lets out the laying hens, checks the water for all the animals and feeds the pigs and chickens. Then he goes to work in the city.
On the weekends, Eric and Samantha divide their time among the New Lenox, Frankfort and Crete farmers markets.
"Because we both work full time, we can't do the weekday markets," Eric said. "It works out, though, because generally the weekend markets are the better markets. People are off work, and the products that we sell are ones that have to be taken home.
"It's not like I'm selling cheese that you can just eat or take to work with you and stick in your little fridge; you're buying something like a chicken, and people aren't going to buy a whole chicken on their lunch break and take it back to work with them."
The farmers markets can be a mixed blessing, Eric said.
"They are less advantageous in that you have to pack everything up," he said. "You have to be a mobile operation. We have to load freezers and coolers and then get to the site to set up, but overall it's nice because you've got customers that are here to shop, so it works out well."
Eric said the daily grind he and his wife must endure is all leading towards a better life for both of them.
"The fact is it's growing," he said. "It's not a sinking ship. I can see this hopefully in the near future becoming a full-time job, which in turn would actually give me a little more free time than I have now because I wouldn't have to constantly be doing two jobs."
For Samantha, working on the farm has become a normal part of life.
"Now that we have it, it would be hard for me to go back to living in town or in a suburb or something because now I'm used to the open air and the space," she said. "I really enjoy it. It's fun, and it's even more fun to see Eric's dream actually come true."
Jason Freeman can be reached at jfreeman@southtownstar.com or (708) 802-8808.
Eric Sexton said he's seen an overwhelming response to the all-natural products he sells.
"People can't believe the eggs. We get some people that are from other countries that say they finally get eggs like they used to get at home. They've had to eat the eggs in the American stores and they hated it."
The chicken also is a home run.
"People don't have to put seasonings on it or try and cover it up in some way," he said. "It actually has chicken flavor."
Sexton's pride and joy, however, is his pork products.
"Our pastured pork isn't as fatty and greasy as the confinement hogs," he said. "Everybody just seems to love anything off our pigs - the sausages, the bacon, the ham, the ribs, the pork chops - they all just go."
Eric's success at selling pork starts with how the animals are treated on farm, he said.
"They used to raise hogs out on pasture; it was common practice," he said. "Now, rarely does the pig touch the ground in a commercial operation. Ours are out there all the time. There's a hut where the sow and the piglets sleep, and when they want, they go outside. Everything we raise is on pasture."
Eric said Nature's Choice Farm products simply taste better than their store-bought cousins.
"There's definitely a difference," he said. "Honestly, I wouldn't go and pay this much for something if I didn't notice a difference. You can go buy eggs in the store for probably $1.50 a dozen, and ours average $4, but I'll be sold out in two hours. That tells me there's a difference."