Despite some technical glitches, Michigan Farm Bureau’s 2025 Growing Together Conference was a resounding success, bringing more than 400 members from across both peninsulas to Muskegon for three value-packed days of informative and motivating content for members active in the Young Farmer and Promotion & Education programs.
As the event’s primary photographer, I took zero notes the whole weekend but am happy to share the more memorable highlights.
Things got underway Friday afternoon with tours that delivered busloads of members to a slew of agricultural and other farm-leaning destinations across the western Michigan hinterland in and around Muskegon, including Robinette’s Apple Haus and Winery, Dairy Discovery and Critter Barn. My tour visited New Era’s popular Country Dairy, Fox Barn winery over by Silver Lake, and a long, deeply informative stop at the West Michigan Research Station north of Hart.
If you catch a little whiff of favoritism here I’m guilty as charged, because I could’ve hung out at that research station and listened to Farm Manager Ashley Flesher all day long. Not only was he a wealth of information about the tree fruit and vegetable experiments ongoing there, but he’s an outstanding communicator who explained some very complicated material in language even I could understand.
Another reason I could’ve lingered longer there is that this northernmost point of the tour route put us in some very familiar territory. I grew up nearby and everything about Oceana County’s rolling, sandy landscape looks and feels like home. As a younger man I drove these roads incessantly, feasting my eyes on the orderly orchards, neatly stacked wooden harvest bins and roadside asparagus stands. All Michigan farmland is beautiful to me, but there’s a warm spot in my heart for this piece of the state.
Back in Muskegon that evening, everyone scattered to a short list of nearby restaurants for dinner. Short on meal vouchers, I struck out solo and found myself in an unlisted place lacking any visible Farm Bureau contingent — until I felt a tap on my shoulder and spun around to see…
Former Ottawa County CAM Mistelle Serio and her husband Allen, who own and operate Wonderland Distilling down on the south shore of Muskegon Lake — a stop on one of the other tours, I learned. It was nice catching up with Mistelle (who’s still with Farm Bureau, now in health sales) and chatting with Allen about their day hosting curious members unfamiliar with their business (which I highly recommend.)
Saturday’s the long day, with general sessions at every meal function and dozens of breakout sessions packed between them. Without counting them and researching previous conferences, I can’t say there were more options than usual this year, but it sure seemed like it, and the diversity of topics on offer was impressive — literally something for everyone and far too much to recap here.
Returning to the outstanding-communicator theme, the lunch and dinner keynotes deserve individual praise:
At lunch, Purdue ag economist Dr. Trey Malone (above) did an outstanding job correlating data sets and line graphs into compelling — and impressively coherent — illustrations of some of the complex trends informing agriculture today. Normally I’m pretty dense when it comes to that sort of material, but Malone’s thorough mastery of it was crystal clear, and his engaging delivery style made for an eye-opening and effective presentation.
The evening speaker was Chris Koch (pictured below), a native of Alberta, where he still works on his family’s grain farm and cattle ranch — despite having been born without arms or legs. His “If I Can…” theme pretty much says it all: If he can lead a happy, successful life without fundamental advantages like hands and feet, the rest of us have little room to complain about hardships.
After dinner a live auction benefitted the Michigan Foundation for Agriculture to the tune of almost $13,000. It’s always entertaining to see Young Farmer factions vying for bragging rights in out-bidding each other. Competitive bunch, those Young Farmers.
The other auction-related subplot was the auctioneer himself, Caleb DeKorne from Kent City. MFB’s in-house bid-caller Ernie Birchmeier retired last year and we all miss him and his insightful, Farm Bureau-informed chanting. The good news is Mr. DeKorne not only looked a little like Ernie, he brought to the microphone a similar level of energy and fun.
Saturday ended with a packed game night: bingo, euchre, finger food, beverages and some kind of snack salad (?) competition I couldn’t make heads nor tails of. Normally I wouldn’t even mention this purely recreational component of the weekend, but it warrants pointing out that the game room was packed — the turnout and participation was off the charts, which is a huge credit to the volunteer leaders and staff who planned and manned the whole thing.
Sunday morning in the hotel lobby I ran into Copper Country’s Susan Mattila and Young Farmer Jeffrey Palik. They were about to hit the road back up to Houghton and Ontonagon (it’s a hike) but they let me take their temperature before embarking on their eight- or nine-hour journey home.
As county president, Susan’s involvement speaks for itself, but Jeff’s face was new to me so I asked him if he thought the event was worth their daylong trek from the North Pole. Turns out Jeff’s a man of few words, and maybe a little shy on top of that, but his head nodded in the affirmative and positive syllables of approval were uttered.
Maybe he was just being polite, but the premise behind the question is important: Was this Farm Bureau event worth attending? As one of your paid staffers, I can’t answer that question for you, and I won’t finish this article by putting words in your mouth.
What I will say is that the attendance was super, the speakers were excellent, the breakout smorgasbord was overflowing, and it’s been a long time since I’ve seen so many Farm Bureau members really engaged in each other’s company. So on the surface, anyway, it sure looked like a big win.
One last observation: Remember that Growing Together is what happens when the normally separate Young Farmer and P&E conferences get smooshed together every few years. I’ve been to them all for 20+ years, but I’ve never seen the two programs so enthusiastically interweaving like they did last weekend in Muskegon.
I witnessed several instances of more mature P&E veterans sparkling and scampering around like they were feeding off the youthful energy the Young Farmers always bring. It was a beautiful blend and indicative of the bigger unity Farm Bureau helps galvanize in strengthening Michigan agriculture.
And it only comes from members like you getting involved.
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