Why we are Tilted Barn

In 2021, Tilted Barn Family Farm planted itself in Eaton Rapids, Michigan, and began a long journey of building a brand-new farm: building a small barn, a modest house, planting pastures for our animals, and caring for nearly 30 acres of tillable land, woods and wetlands.

But that's not where our farm began. Our farm story begins in 2016, when we bought a much smaller farm in Eagle, Michigan in need of a lot of work. As we say in our family, "We bought as much as we could afford, and we couldn't afford much!" The Eagle farm needed so much TLC in those early years, and we were proud of how that farm evolved while we were stewards of it. The entire operation revolved around a small, rickety "barn" that was definitely punching above it's weight.  During every storm, we worried that strong winds might take it down to the ground. Every foray into the barn was to take a chance of injury on a hodge-podge of protruding hardware that seemed to be holding the whole thing together. Animal feeders that needed to be secured to the walls of the barn risked taking the whole wall out. "Support beams" that didn't go anywhere......Any attempts to reinforce some aspect of the structure was to pull at a thread that could unravel the whole thing. That barn took a swing at every challenge we threw at it with pigs, calves, chickens, and enough hay to collapse the loft. As we would say, shaking our heads: "there isn't a square corner in the whole barn". 

We loved that barn, it allowed two people who were newly married and starting all over again to build a farm together.  And while our new farm is strong, with brand new buildings and even square corners, the Tilted Barn is what made it all possible.