Mark Baker announced in December he was selling his farm. But now he says he has a new plan: he wants to help other military veterans take up farming.
A lot of people came to know Baker around 2012, when he was in a legal dispute with the state of Michigan over what kind of pigs he could have on his farm. He posted a video on YouTube that was viewed more than 100,000 times. His lawsuit was dismissed in 2014, and Baker kept his pigs.
In December,food inspectors showed up with police. They were concerned about a cured ham Baker sold to a restaurant in Traverse City. (A spokeswoman at the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development says that investigation is still ongoing.)
After the inspection, Baker announced on YouTube he was selling his farm and moving on to something else.
But a few weeks later, there is no for sale sign up at Bakers Green Acres. Mark Baker is giving a demonstration on butchering hogs. He culls them out of his herd with a rifle shot between the eyes. Then he demonstrates how to bleed them and gut them.
There are three people here to learn about butchering hogs. One is a chef, another a teacher, and a third is a veteran who served five years in the U.S. Army and fought in Iraq.
Rob Freeman is an electrician but has started a small farm business on the side. Freeman says raising animals is the only work he has found satisfying since the war. He can’t say exactly why.
“I don’t even know the word,” he says. “The relationship I guess you have with the ground and the animals. Being outside, I’ve always kind of been an outside person.”
Freeman says farming is good work for soldiers transitioning back into civilian life, even if they don’t make a career out of it. He thinks veterans miss the routine of active duty.
“They miss the structure of the military,” he says. “And with farming, you do a little bit different work every day but you still have to get up every morning and feed the chickens and go feed the cows.”
When Mark Baker announced he was selling his farm, it upset veterans like Rob Freeman. Freeman says his mom—who only knew Baker through his YouTube channel—cried.
That kind of reaction gave Baker a new idea. Now he plans to turn his farm into a training center for veterans. He had a 20-year career in the U.S. Air Force and was a sergeant.
“Guys need their sergeants,” he says. “We discharge guys from the military and they’re left alone with no leadership at all and they’re on their own. That’s one of the biggest problems that I see.”
Mark Baker does not have a detailed plan yet for how this will work. But he refers to it as his new "mission." He says he’s excited to work with people coming out of the military because the bonds they have are strong.
“We took care of each other and that’s one of the things I see in the civilian world is that they don’t take care of each other,” he says.
There is a growing movement nationwide to help veterans take up farming. The most recent farm bill is the first one to recognize veterans as a distinct group of new farmers.
There’s a group in California, Farmer Veteran Coalition, that certifies farms run by veterans to sell food with a sticker that says “Homegrown by Heroes.” The coalition estimates the 400 farms in the program did more than $25 million of business last year.
