By ANN ALLEN
Indiana Correspondent

ROANN, Ind. — Pigs don’t fly at Riverbend Farms, where they are the nucleus of Mark and Chris York’s farming operation – they do something better.

In fact, they do so many things better that the couple hosted an Indiana Pork Producers Assoc. Building Strong Communities open house/picnic two weeks ago to showcase modern pork production.

Mark explained that Indiana, the fifth largest pork producer in the U.S., annually raises seven million pigs – enough pork to feed 25 million people – while providing more than 13,000 full-time jobs, adding $3 billion per year to the state’s economy and $465 million per year to local, rural economies. His mother confided a bit of family background to some of the guests.

It seems that Mark, a Purdue graduate working as a hog buyer but longing for a hog farm of his own, said he would marry only when pigs flew. Then he met Chris, a graduate of Central Michigan University pursuing a career in banking – who said the only way she would marry a hog farmer would be if pigs could fly.

When they announced their engagement, friends claimed they ran to the windows to watch for flying pigs.

Pigs didn’t fly then and they don’t now, but they do keep the Yorks busy in ways neither anticipated when they purchased their 139-acre Wabash County farm in 1997 and built their first barn the following year.

Today, Chris is farm manager of the couple’s 12,000-head contract wean-to-finish pork operation, which includes another farm in Wabash County and one in nearby Miami County. Mark works full-time as a salesperson for Hog Slat, Inc., a North Carolina-based contractor and manufacturer of hog equipment, and is responsible for Riverbend Farms’ grain operation and other aspects of the business.

Together, they have choreographed a schedule that works.
Chris rises early every morning to care for the hogs while Mark helps their sons, Parker and Liam, start their day.
When Chris returns from the barns, Mark goes to work in his home office, enabling Chris to call herself a stay-at-home mom with another job on the side.

It wasn’t always that simple.

Chris spent long hours in the barns learning how to determine their hogs’ needs. “I didn’t know anything about hogs,” she said, “so I worked hard at honing my skills.”

Her homework paid off so well, she described her role as fairly easy. “I just make certain everything is operating as it should and that the pigs are healthy.”

Their work, according to Mark, is made easier by being contract operators.

“We don’t have to worry about sows, genetics or breeding,” he said. “We get in 12-pound pigs and finish them to 280 pounds as efficiently as possible and send them off to market.”

The barns are turned over three times a year. “That means a lot of manure,” he said, “much more than our farm could handle. We want to be good neighbors so instead of spreading it here, we transfer it to area farms that can utilize its fertilizer value.”

Jim Erickson of TDM Farms, another large finishing operation, agreed that not everyone understands hog farms.

“We’re not hog factories,” he said. “We are producers of a valuable product and an equally valuable byproduct for a rapidly changing world, one whose population increases by three every second while losing one-half an acre of land to development every minute.”
“Environmental stewardship is important to Riverbend Farms,” Mark said. “The more our neighbors know about us, the less they are intimidated by what we are doing.”

Part of that “getting to know us” comes via tours such as this one, in which participants were ferried over the farm in a York-designed “people mover” – a farm wagon with sides and seats. The couple also hosts picnics for special needs children and other civic projects.
By combining hard work with Chris’s banking and financial planning skills and Mark’s farming know-how, the couple has built a business that has succeeded well enough to enable Mark to announce that the farms would be paid off within four months.

“That’s our bottom line,” he said. “We’re proud of what we’ve accomplished.

“Best of all, we provide a healthy, wholesome product consumers can safely serve their families. We provide protein for the planet.”