Our Farming Legacy: The Story of Sawmill Creek Farms
I'd like to share our story for all of our new followers. This will be kind of lengthy but informative. I (Sarah) grew up on a dairy farm about 18 miles southeast of Cadillac, this is why the area code on the store phone is 231, in 2009 my family unfortunately had to sell our cows due to the market crashing. This was heart breaking to me as this was my future and had cattle genes dating back to my grandpas cattle when he bought the family farm in the 1950s.
Farming is literally in my blood, I’m a 5th generation farmer. From 2009-2012 I busted my butt and worked 3 jobs, all on dairy farms, one of which I’m buying my bottle calves from today. 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 (we’re grateful for that). 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 and where the store is the same year. In 2015 I missed the cattle life so we bought a few calves to raise to keep me sane, our first son was born this same year. In 2016, we sold our first side of beef. And it has taken off from there. In 2017, we had our second son, we also started selling beef by the pound in 0ne freezer in our basement, grew out of that so we moved to the garage and had 4 freezers, when we realized how big we were getting we added pigs, turkeys, chicken and eggs to raise.
Then the winter of 2018-2019 we decided to remodel our store and moved out there February 2019. This is when we also got our retail food license, we are one of the first and original farms to get this and sell meat by the pound in our area. We are also one of the largest farms in michigan to produce and sell our own meat by the pound. We have been growing ever since. We also have a flock of chickens and ducks for eggs. We raise and sell 100% of the meat that gets sold in our store. The animals are all on the same property as our store.
I’ve heard some people say there is no way we have that many animals since you don’t see them; 90% of our animals can not be seen from the road. I have a herd of 70 beef cattle (you see these from the road sometimes) that we calve out every year. To keep up with demand, we also buy and raise dairy calves for beef as well. In the winter of 2023, we outgrew the space in the store so we expanded. In the fall we got invited to compete in a beef competition out in Wyoming and ended up winning best beef in America, got an article written about us in The American Beef Producers Magazine, and earned a tribute from the state of Michigan.
In 2024, we had our 3rd son. Over the years we have built on or built barns to accommodate our growth. Today, we still run and operate the farm up the road where our Sawmill and bins are, and farm about 2100 acres along with our livestock operation and meat store. That is a quick summary of our farming background and how we created a farming legacy together.