A farmer who did not grow up on a farm and a wife raised in the Tennessee coal mining country, along with their son and family, are this year's Elkhart County Agricultural Society's Farm Family of the Year. Ray and Kathy Eash and James and Beth Eash are the 2016 honorees.
Ray met Kathy through friends. As they were sitting around a table, Ray mentioned he had season tickets to Notre Dame football games. Kathy immediately said she loved Notre Dame football and wanted to see a game. Ray took Kathy to the game and they have been together ever since. They were married in January of 1967 and will be celebrating their 15th wedding anniversary this coming year.
Ray Eash knew from the time he was a little boy that he wanted to be a farmer. He grew up working with his father in the family chicken processing business. In the '60s, he served in the military. Upon his return home, he worked at other jobs until he began at Jayco in Middlebury in 1970.
While working full time at Jayco, he went to school on the GI bill to become an electronic systems analyst on IBM computers. Unfortunately, all of the jobs in that field meant a move out of state, which he was unwilling to do.
When the opportunity came to buy his family's farm in 1972, Ray jumped at the chance. At the time, he was a production manager at Jayco. For several years, Ray worked at Jayco and farmed on the side. He would get a load of heifer calves from Wisconsin and raise them until they were close to calving. He sold them back to farmers in Wisconsin. The bottom dropped out of the market in 1974 and he decided to start milking.
Ray's family had always had a milk cow, so he had some knowledge of dairying but grain farming was another story.
"I would go out to plow when it was too wet and I would get stuck in the field. The neighbors had a good laugh over my mistakes," said Ray.
However, his neighbors were always willing to answer his farming questions and Ray learned from his missteps.
In 1977, Eash decided to milk full-time and quit his job. He wanted to concentrate on his registered herd of Holstein cattle. By then, two little girls, Sharon and Teresa, had come into their lives. Their son, James, was born in 1980. All three children were 10-year 4-H members. The Eash daughters showed lambs and beef steers until Ray got kicked in the back of his leg by one of the steers at the fair. He said he could barely walk the rest of fair week.
When it was time for James to join 4-H, Ray told him he couldn't have a beef steer of his own until he could lead it around by himself. James began to show 4-H dairy and dairy feeder calves at the Elkhart County Fair and lost interest in showing beef cattle.
Ray credits Mike Lee and Dave Blough for getting the feeder calf club off the ground. The Eashes were close with the Blough family and Dave encouraged James to enroll in the 4-H dairy feeder calf club during the year it formed.
Even after his children were out of 4-H, Ray has continued to volunteer his time at the fair and he has served on the Dairy Club advisory board since 1990. He was elected president of the advisory board twice. The Eashes are also Farm Bureau and Holstein Assn. members.
About a year ago, Ray Eash and his son, James, came to a crossroad. After milking a 50-cow herd since 1974, the Eashes had to decide to either go big or get out. They got out.
The deciding voice came from James. At the time, he and his wife, Beth, had a 6-month-old daughter, Hazel. Beth works off the farm at Child and Parent Services and Hazel went to a sitter during the day.
"There were days where I didn't see her awake. She would be in bed before I got home from chores and was gone to the sitter when I was done milking in the morning. And Dad was getting burned out," said James. "It was getting really hard to get help too."
However, selling off the dairy herd did not mean that the Eashes were ready to quit farming. They decided to continue grain farming the roughly 250 acres they rent and own. They also cared for about 30 of Dave and Michelle Blough's bred heifers.
Ray had been raising broiler chickens in batches of 27,500 birds for Pine Manor since 1997. In 2011, Ray converted the chicken barn over to rearing pullet chickens on contract for Dutch Country. When the decision was made to sell the dairy herd, an opportunity came along for James to be involved in the chicken business.
Even though James had graduated from Purdue with a degree in animal science, he had taken only one class in poultry. James threw himself into preparing to work with chickens full-time. James and Ray committed to building a laying house and enclosing pasture for the hens to graze on a rotating basis. The Eashes will be handling about 30,000 laying hens for the same company.
The laying house is based on a European model that allows for natural chicken behavior. Chickens have a choice of various heights to perch or lay eggs in semi-enclosed nesting boxes.
"They will be able to dust bathe and go outside if they want. Our hope is that the air flow, lighting and temperature will be enough to their liking they will stay inside the barn," said James.
Everything is designed and mechanized so one man can handle the labor in the chicken house. There may be as many as 27,000 eggs laid in a day. James will be on duty in the laying house and Ray will continue to look after the pullet barn and pasture.
James and Beth recently added a son, Corbin Derek, to their family. Hazel and Corbin are now the seventh generation on the farm descended from Ray's mother's side of the family. Kathy and Ray are grandparents to six more grandchildren and even have a few great-grandchildren.
Ray's wife, Kathy, had her own little "farm," as she called it, to the west of the house. Health problems forced her to give it up and she said they mow the garden now. Ray and Kathy were brought together by their love of Notre Dame football and still attend games together. They have been season ticket holders for the last 51 years.
Now that the Eashes are no longer milking, there is time in their lives to enjoy football, their grandchildren and other activities. Ray even took a weekend to go fishing recently. As Kathy explained, "it kept him out of her hair for a few days."
The Eash family will be honored during the Ag Society's annual meeting at 6:30 p.m. on Aug. 23 at the Elkhart County Community Center in Goshen.