J & A Sunrise Farms, LLC

05/21/2026

I have so much to say about this, but for now I just ask that you read this! Farms are disappearing, at drastic numbers. Make sure your local farmers aren’t one of them.
We appreciate each and every other one of you that do support us.

People say they want cheap food.
•Cheap burgers
•Cheap steak
•Cheap milk
•Cheap eggs

Cheap always comes with a cost, and that cost has been the drastic loss of the American farmer.

For decades, farmers have been squeezed from every direction.
•Fuel costs rise.
•Feed costs rise.
•Fertilizer costs rise.
•Equipment costs rise.
•Land prices rise.
•Insurance rises.
•Taxes rise.

Meanwhile, in most cases, the farmer is expected to sell everything at wholesale while buying almost everything at retail.

Think about that last sentence for a second. Don’t skip over it, let that sink in.

A new cattle farmer may spend years building infrastructure:
•Building fences
•Buying feed
•Building handling facilities
• Improving pasture
• And countless other improvements

…….all before even seeing a paycheck for all the work put in. This here is why the farms we have lost will not be replaced. It’s simply too expensive to start for young farmers.

Meanwhile a large part of other farmers are aging out.

I personally don’t see how the cattle industry can improve itself. We are at the smallest herd size since the 50’s in the US. We have extremely high beef demand but not the cattle to meet that demand.

People see the final beef price and think the farmer is getting rich. Most small farms are simply trying to survive and try to grow a little in the process. Surviving and growth both take extremely high input costs. As well as countless man hours.

Industrial food systems trained Americans to expect food to be cheap at any price. Right now we are paying that price for undervaluing the American farmer.

Each year, more small farms disappear because
the math no longer works.

You cannot demand:
•Local food
•American-raised beef
•Higher animal welfare
• Healthier food
•Sustainable farming

…….while also demanding the absolute cheapest price possible.

Cheap food has never really been cheap. The true costs was just pushed onto the people producing it.

I will end with this. I was watching an interview a couple days ago. The person being interviewed was predicting $10 pound ground beef by the 3rd quarter of 2026. He believed this price would not level out till sometime in 2027.

This is a problem that has been decades in the making. It’s not going to fix itself quickly….if a fix is even possible.

Elvin Bradford
Homestead Hollow Farm

04/29/2026

With all of our babies arriving last month we are able to offer more milk shares. If you have been interested in becoming a share member, please reach out. Also, exciting news, starting in June we will have a drop off in downtown Fremont! If you are from the northern region and Bailey is too far, let me know and we can go over details! Feel free to share, milk shares fill up quickly so don't wait! (picture for attention only, this is one of our now milk cows that our kids took to show at fair a few years back)

04/24/2026

Come out TOMORROW, April 25th and watch these talented kids perform!
They truly are doing amazing work. You will be blown away!
2 show times, 2pm and 6pm.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18MttWNoDm/

04/10/2026

It's not often we have herd share openings, today we do! Comment below or PM me to find out more details! Picture for attention only.... an oldie but a goodie!

04/10/2026

This right here! I have so much I want to say but really I just ask you to read this. And then go support local, and not just farmers but all your local businesses! Thanks for showing up ❤️

My grandfather never locked the barn.

He said there was no point. Everyone who passed that road knew whose farm it was. Knew our name. Knew that if they needed a dozen eggs or a bag of sweet corn, they could leave a dollar in the coffee can on the fence post and help themselves.

That was trust. That was community. That was the world he built with his hands.

We buried him last spring.

And three months later, the letters started coming.

Not from neighbors. Not from anyone who had ever stood in our fields or eaten our tomatoes still warm from the vine. The letters came from attorneys. From development groups with names that sound like airports. From people who have never once felt what it is to press a seed into cold earth and wait.

They want the land.

All 240 acres of it.

They have already cleared the farm two miles east of us. What stood there for four generations is now a grid of identical houses with lawns the size of postage stamps. The old peach orchard is a retention pond.

I drive past it some mornings and I have to look away.

My grandfather spent sixty years learning that soil. Learning which low fields flood in April. Which hillside catches the morning sun long enough to ripen the earliest tomatoes. Learning the land the way you learn a person. Slowly. With patience. With love earned over time.

You cannot buy that knowledge at a closing table.

You cannot deed it to a developer.

It lives in the people who worked the ground. And when they are gone, and the ground is paved, it is gone with them.

That is what no one tells you about farmland loss. It is not just the acreage. It is the accumulated wisdom of every person who ever worked it. Every hard season that taught something. Every good harvest that made it worth coming back.

Gone. Quietly. With no memorial.

My family is still deciding what to do.

There are loans to think about. Property taxes that have tripled since my grandfather was alive. A market that rewards scale and punishes the small farm that still does things the slow, right way. The math is brutal even before a developer writes a number on a piece of paper.

And that number is not small.

I understand why families sell. I do. I have sat at that kitchen table. I have looked at those figures. I have felt the weight of it pressing down on people I love.

But I have also walked those fields at first light, when the fog sits low between the rows and the world is perfectly still, and I have felt something I cannot name except to say it is worth fighting for.

Not every farm can be saved. That truth is hard and I will not pretend otherwise.

But some of them can.

Not by sentiment alone. Sentiment does not pay the tax bill. Sentiment does not keep a dairy herd fed through February.

What keeps farms alive is people who decide, quietly and consistently, to show up for them.

Buy the local eggs even when they cost more. Find the small dairy before it closes. Stop at the roadside stand on the way home. Sign up for the farm share and actually pick it up. Bring your kids once, just once, to see where food actually comes from.

Not as a field trip. As a commitment.

A vote for the kind of world you want to live in.

Because here is what I know standing in my grandfather's fields, watching the houses climb closer every year on every horizon.

The barn is still unlocked.

The coffee can is still on the fence post.

We are still here.

But the window is not open forever. Farmland does not come back once it is gone. The peach orchard does not grow back through the concrete. The knowledge my grandfather carried does not transfer to a deed.

What is lost is lost.

So while there is still time. While the fields are still fields and the barns are still standing and the families who tend this land are still holding on.

Show up for them.

That is all. Just show up.

04/05/2026

03/25/2026

Haven’t posted much lately but everybody loves a cute baby calf! Martha was finally born today, her momma, Mary, was a couple days overdue so we were not so patiently waiting!!

01/09/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/1A9vvweqcH/

Send a message to learn more

12/29/2025

Attn: Share members (especially if you’ve purchased items with a self serve slip in 2025). Check you email for invoices that I’m resending today for past due invoices. We need them paid up by the end of the year please!!

12/27/2025

Oh look, it must be end of the year and, as always, I realize I should be fired from my bookkeeping job as farm wife 🤦🏻‍♀️