Farming Saves Roanoke Man, Offers Needed Relief
Published: Friday, December 5, 2025
John Mihalec III always knew he wanted to farm, but he didn't realize that it would one day save his life.
Mihalec grew up on a diversified farm in Roanoke, a rural town just 16 miles southwest of Fort Wayne.
"It was amazing," Mihalec said, reflecting on his early life on the farm. "I didn't know anything different until I got to the city. I enjoyed it. I loved all of it."
At an early age, he decided that he was going to one day step into his grandfather's shoes and run the farm. But when the time came for his grandparents to retire, Mihalec was still too young to take on the major responsibilities of farm business. So, Charolais cattle, Dorsett sheep and their herd of hogs were sold, and the land was rented out to a neighboring farmer for a time.
"Then Sept. 11 happened," Mihalec said. "The patriotic side of me kicked in."
Shortly after, Mihalec joined the U.S. National Guard. He was activated to Afghanistan in 2004, shortly after his grandfather passed away.
He served in Kabul until he was injured during the Afghani elections of 2005, where he sustained injuries to his back, neck and head. After treatment and rehabilitation, he was medically discharged in 2006.
"I was pumped full of a lot of narcotics to deal with the pain, and then that ended up turning into an addiction, which once they cut the pain meds off, then alcohol was used," he said. "So, I battled with that."
Mihalec also struggled with the loss of his grandfather and fellow servicemen.
Then his grandmother invited him back to the farm.
"Through gardening with her, I was able to ground myself and start to find a way to heal myself through food," he said.
He found that much of his residual pain from his injuries was triggered by inflammation caused by the ingredients in some of the food he had been eating. He would alleviate the pain through alcohol and drug use but knew he could not continue in this way.
"Once I finally was able to get a clear head and break away from it, I was able to progress. It's now been 14-plus years that I've been sober and that I've not had to take any medications. I take no meds, I don't drink alcohol. I don't even smoke cigarettes anymore," he said.
He attributes this to organic food.
"Being able to give back to the farm, to find a mission that is completely honorable –producing food that heals instead of harms is a big deal to me," he said.
Mihalec began transitioning his farm toward organic practices eight years ago after researching the effects processed foods have on body inflammation and on learning more about the pesticides used on crops. In his research, he found that some agricultural chemicals originated as adaptations of chemicals of war.
The final straw that caused him to go organic came when he was preparing to take his children fishing and they could not find any in their fields, which had previously been abundant with night crawlers in Mihalec's youth.
That's when he turned to vegetable production and was introduced to regenerative agriculture.
Mihalec partnered with two of his neighbors to get his farm going, rotating between one neighbor's beef for grazing and the other neighbor's cash crops and his own organic cover crops. This continued for seven years, rejuvenating and restoring the life within the soil.
After seven years, Mihalec decided to raise his first organic vegetable crop. He lined up grocers and restaurants as buyers, but not long after he planted, a nearby conventional farm was sprayed with Dicamba, which rode the wind over to Mihalec's crop.
Unable to market his crop as organic, Mihalec let it grow up until the settlement went through, then bought some goats to manage the overgrown area. This sparked a new aspect of his farm, which included rotational grazing and margin management.
"We regained grounds with the goats," he said. "We also harvested the meat from the goats and restored health to the (surrounding) hardwoods."
To boost soil health, he began grazing the goats in his fields, then followed with hogs and, finally, chickens. He found this seems to rebuild soil nutrients faster than compost.
Today, Mihalec rents out his goats for weed management and land recovery.
In 2018, Mihalec began selling produce at farmers markets. He moved his vegetable fields to another area on his property to protect them from carryover chemicals from nearby farms. Instead of pesticides, Mihalec uses plasticulture for weed management.
He then built a grow room and a farm stand. Currently, he raises vegetables, hogs, goats and chickens with his wife, Angela, and five of his six children, Madison and Marissa, 21, Maximus, 18, Luciana, 9, and Emilia, 3. His oldest daughter, Onyx, is married with two children.
This year had some challenges after the spring storms, which took some of his hog barns, and the dry summer, which limited his vegetable production, but Mihalec said his goat grazing business really picked up the slack.
In the future, he plans to build an on-farm store and get more active in the Fort Wayne farmers market. He also wants to plant trees as a wind barrier around his farm.
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