If this article seems light on Darcy Lipskey’s achievements as a farmer, it’s because there are important stops and detours along her route that warrant attention. Winner of Michigan Farm Bureau’s 2024 Young Farmer Excellence Award, she’s a walking Swiss Army knife and a human masterclass in maximizing opportunities along one’s journey, even when it bypasses Plan A.
In Darcy’s case, Plan A was simply to return full-time to the family farm after college. Outside Minden City in northernmost Sanilac County, Lipskey Livestock won’t support more than her dad, grandpa and brother — not yet anyway — but it’s still very much her past, present and future.
She was picking stones at five and soon pulling lamb’s quarters from the dry bean field.
“That was my first little bit of independence,” she said. “Everything I learned growing up here, from my first breaths of life until now, impacted what I do and why I do it.”
She’s still very involved on the farm but it’s not her livelihood — that’s what the day job is for. As District Conservationist for neighboring Huron County, she’s in daily contact with farms and farmers, helping them maximize soil health and minimize erosion, runoff and other risks.
An active 4-H leader and FFA alumni member, she makes time to gives back to the youth organizations that helped launch her and stays tight with her local farm community.
“We have our own county corn growers’ association and bean commission. You stay involved with local ag clubs so you know what’s going on in the area. You always know what your neighbor’s doing.”
Darcy’s route into Farm Bureau is a textbook gambit worth playing on repeat:
“When I was a state FFA officer, the first Collegiate Farm Bureau club got started at Michigan State, so I got to be one of the pioneers,” she began. “All of a sudden I got this phone call from Blake Gordon: ‘Hey I heard you joined the Collegiate Farm Bureau club at MSU? And you’re planning to come home when you’re done with school? What do you think about being a Farm Bureau member?’
“I couldn’t tell Blake ‘no.’ That personal phone call? That’s what it took. Nobody’s always gonna respond to a Facebook post, but it’s really hard to tell somebody ‘no’ when you get that personal call.”
Gordon, a fellow Sanilac Young Farmer, directed her to the obvious entryway when she returned home after college.
“At my first Young Farmer meeting here at the county level, I was like, ‘Wow this is even more than what I knew or expected.’ I was pretty much hooked.”
She dove in, branched out and took every opportunity Sanilac County Farm Bureau offered. Now her resume includes four years as Sanilac County president and service representing the Thumb on the state Promotion & Education committee.
If the roles sound routine, her mindset about them is anything but. That’s because, by this point in an interview, many involved members would’ve already make a crack about being “dragged” or “voluntold.”
Not Darcy.
“I’ve been fortunate to be an active leader,” she said. “Farm Bureau has really helped shape me as a person. Any time there’s been a new committee I’ve always been interested to jump in and see what I can do.”
A gleaming example of the organization’s leadership programming finding its target and prospering there, Lipskey’s drive to jump in and contribute toward solutions flourishes well beyond agriculture.
“I’m part of the Lions Club here in Minden. We have 18 members and put on a homecoming event every summer. We do a lot of community service projects, including giving out fruit baskets to the elderly every Christmas.
“We do a ‘haunted hall’ in the town every October and a 5K race that’s very Halloween-oriented, so it’s kinda spooky.
“I help out with the township — attend board meetings and fire council meetings to help grow our township fire department, which is always looking for volunteers.”
Very little happens in Minden City or the township it anchors that Darcy isn’t aware of or has a hand in making happen.
“Some days I don’t know which hat I’m wearing to be honest. When you’re in a town that has 400 registered voters, that doesn’t give you a big pool of volunteers or a lot of people to interact with.”
The cozy dimensions of her community belie an inconvenient truth about her corner of rural Michigan, and countless others like it.
“When people are looking to put food markets in, they’re certainly not looking in an area that has way more cows than people. Sanilac County’s pretty much a food desert. There’s only two major grocery chains and one small grocer.”
It’s a sad irony that places that so generously contribute to the start of the food-production cycle don’t enjoy the full bounty of that cycle’s end. But in that gap, Lipskey saw a chance to flex her county Farm Bureau’s influence for the greater good.
“People don’t think about food insecurity in rural communities,” she said. “Farmers don’t really realize it because we have food pretty much at our back doors.”
Inspired to action, she devised Freeze Out Hunger, a two-pronged initiative to supply eight area food pantries with protein — and the vital freezer space to store it in — while supporting local agriculture by sourcing that protein from the county fair livestock auction.
And that, reader, is how you thoroughly master and expertly execute evolving from a childhood rock-picker to indispensable human multi-tool, woven snugly into your homeland as you chart your course back to Plan A.
As winner of MFB’s Young Farmer Excellence Award, Lipskey receives a three-month lease on a Michigan CAT skid-steer; a $1,000 AgroLiquid gift certificate; and an all-expense paid trip to the AFBF Annual Meeting to compete in the national competition.
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