From Family Roots to a Growing Farm Legacy | Sawmill Creek Farms

I'd like to share our story for all of our new followers, this will be repetitive for our regular customers. This will be kind of lengthy but very informative. I (Sarah) was born and raised on a 50 cow dairy farm in Northern Michigan, just southwest of Cadillac in a little town called Marion. I graduated from Evart in 2005, so farming has been in my blood my whole life, I’m a 5th generation farmer. Unfortunately in 2009 my family had to sell our cows due to the market crashing. This was heart breaking to me as this was my future and was in the process of taking the farm over from my dad. From 2009-2012 I busted my butt and worked 3 jobs, all on dairy farms.

My husband (Nick) grew up in Armada, he grew up helping his uncle on his crop farm. His uncle retired from farming around 2005 and sold his farm. In 2009 my husband decided he wanted to start crop farming so in 2009-2010 my husband's uncle helped him get started crop farming, he and my husband had the bins built down the road so my husband had a place to store his crop. Fast forward to 2012, nick and I met so by this time he was already running and operating the farm down the road from our store. In 2013 we married and my husband and I bought our farm where we live, its also where the store is the same year. I missed the cattle life so we bought a few calves to raise as a hobby for me in 2015, our oldest son was born the same year. In 2016 we sold our first side of beef. And it has taken off from there.

We started selling beef by the pound in our basement out of 1 freezer in 2017, also the same year our middle son was born. We grew out of the basement so we moved to the garage, and upped it to 4 freezers. When we realized how big we were getting we added pigs to raise, then winter of 2018-2019 decided to remodel our store and moved out there February 2019. Then added turkeys, chicken and eggs. We have been growing ever since. In early 2023 we expanded our store, then in the fall we won best beef in america, earned a tribute from the state of michigan, and had an article written about us in the american beef producers magazine, yes, 2023 was a huge year for us. And in october of 2024 we welcomed our youngest son. This year we have 180 beef, 180 pigs, 4600 meat chickens, and 130 turkeys scheduled for processing to keep up with the demand for our products, we also have egg laying chickens and egg laying ducks. What started as a hobby for me has grew into a succesful business.

The animals are all fed a non-GMO grain and grass diet and are fed the crops that we grow ourselves. They are all on the same property as our store. And we still run and operate the farm down the road where our Sawmill and grain bins are, 13 years later (I know there is always confusion because of the sign there on who actually owns the equipment, and operates the farm down there, that would be my husband nick it has been this way since the day it was built). We farm about 2100 acres total.

We are also MAEAP Certified, we are a no-till farm (this cuts down emissions from the tractors running and the release of carbons in the air from the soil), we plant cover crops (this helps loosen the soil naturally and put nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium back in the soil, they also aid in controlling weeds as well) and we spread the manure from our livestock on the field as fertilizer. We try to use regenerative farming practices to better the environment.

We are not a commercial farm as some may think, just because were big does not mean we are a commercial farm. We dont do all of it by ourselves, we have family and hired hands that help, and we owe a huge thanks to them because without them, none of it would be possible. That is a quick summary of our farming back ground and how we created a farming legacy together. We only hope that some day our boys will continue our legacy and love for farming.