(upbeat music) - Welcome to "A Shot of Ag."

I'm your host, Rob Sharkey.

I'm a fifth generation farmer from just outside of Bradford, Illinois.

I started a podcast which led into an XM Show, which led into a national television show, which led to me being right here today.

But today, today is not about me, today is about Aly Gibbs.

How you doing Aly?

- I'm good, how are you?

- Good, your name has three letters in it.

There's something about that, right?

Never trust a person who has three letters in their first name.

- Oh, well, good thing my first name actually has six.

It's Alison but they call me Aly.

- Kind of untrustworthy that you... (both laughing) Now, where are you from?

- So originally, I'm from Bloomington.

I met a farmer and I married into the farm, and moved to Benson.

- [Rob] Where's Benson?

- Middle of nowhere.

- [Rob] Used to be a show in the eighties, you ever watch that?

- I wasn't alive in the eighties.

(Aly laughs) I was born in '92.

- Benson he was a, I think a butler or something.

- Really?

- You should look it up.

- Huh?

- Maybe it was Webster, I don't know.

(Aly laughs) - Okay, I don't know.

- You ever seen the "Brady Bunch" - Yeah, I did see the "Brady Bunch."

- Yeah, we got something.

All right, so you're from Benson.

- Yep.

So it is smacked up in the middle of the state of Illinois.

Closest town is Roanoke to where we live, but.

- Okay.

Is it very big?

- Benson's 600 people.

- All right, do you have a dollar store?

- Roanoke has a Dollar General.

Benson has two bars and three churches.

- Oh, that's a not a bad ratio.

Yeah.

- Yeah.

We don't have a dollar store in my hometown of Bradford.

- Really?

- [Rob] No.

- Wow, do you have a Casey's?

- Yeah, but it's the old ones.

If you talk about Casey's, it's like bars is the one where you turn right to go to the bathroom.

Everybody knows that those are the old ones.

- Oh, we turn left but that's in Roanoke.

- Well, la-di-dah!

(both laughs) You probably still have a functioning kitchen.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, must be nice.

Okay.

- Yeah.

- [Rob] So you not a farm girl.

- I didn't grow up on the farm, no, I did not.

Most experience I had on a farm was my dad grew up on a farm and so we'd go visit my grandpa and I would ride buddy seat.

I was buddy seat captain for my grandpa in the combine.

- Not everybody knows it that, like the newer, newer!

Like anything with a 20 years old combines and a lot of the tractors all have a buddy seat.

- Yeah, it's really small though.

Like, it's really small.

- I had to write on a fender, so I don't wanna be hearing any complaints about a small seat.

- The new ones have coolers.

Have you seen those?

They have coolers, yeah.

- I Know, they are so nice.

Yeah, but then it costs $1100 to fix that cooler when it stops working.

- Really?

Oh my God.!

- Yes.

Don't ask me how I know.

(both laughing) And it wasn't worth it.

(both laughing) They used to call it the banker seat.

- Really?

- Yeah, 'cause it cost so much money they had to have the banker there sitting with it.

- Yeah.

- [Rob] That's a joke.

- Yeah, big machine.

(Aly laughs) - Apparently not a very funny one.

- Ha ha.

- All right where did you meet your farmer husband?

- Yep, we met on a blind date.

So I was working at a swimming pool in Bloomington and a mutual friend of ours, so a girl from Roanoke was working at the pool with me and she said, "I want you to meet this farmer from about 40 minutes away."

And I originally said, no.

Don't tell Nathan that.

But I originally said, no.

- It's a chance he might watch us.

- Maybe, - He doesn't know you said no?

- We don't have cable.

(Aly laughs) - It's PBS.

- We we don't have like TV.

(Aly laughs) - Okay.

- Yeah.

- Everybody on earth has PBS.

- I Know we don't.

- That's the home of Bob Ross and stuff.

You don't know who that is either, do you?

- Is it happy trees, is that?

Happy clouds?

- Oh, good night Irene.

How old are you?

- 29.

(Rob sighs) - Okay.

What were we talking?

Oh yeah, your husband, yes.

- Yeah, my husband, yes.

So we met on a blind date and I, yeah the rest is history.

- Was it love at first sight?

- Yeah, I would say so.

- [Rob] Really, is he dreamy?

- He's pretty dreamy.

(both laughing) He's a farmer.

- At some point when you're dating him, you're thinking, "All right, this is serious."

Right?

"And if I marry this guy, I'm gonna have to live on a farm."

- Yeah.

- [Rob] Were you concerned about that?

- I was not concerned.

The second I stepped foot on the farm, and his family welcomed me with open arms.

And they got me right into a swing of things.

So, he actually gave me three lambs for Valentine's day.

And I was won over from there.

- That's the key to a girl's heart nowadays.

- We still have them, yeah.

- I thought you supposed to eat 'em.

- No, we breed them.

So we keep some of them (indistinct) - Do you like cut their wool and make sweaters and stuff?

- So the wool we sell back to the shearer to pay for the shearing, so.

- Okay, you don't do that, right?

Where you?

- Oh, no.

- That's an art isn't it?

- Yeah, there's like a whole system to it.

- And those guys are like grown.

- And they're fast.

- Yeah, does he use clippers or the old scissors?

- They're like clippers, yeah.

And it's super fast.

- It's impressive to watch 'em do it.

And you have 'em come out just for the three.

- Oh no, we have, well last year we had about 40 ewes, and we cut back down to about 20.

Last year we had a really rough lambing season last year so.

- They're a dumb animal.

- The sheep?

Oh, I love our sheep.

- Yes.

(Aly laughs) - I didn't say you couldn't love them.

- No, I think ours are smart.

- When it's raining, they tend to look up and drown.

I mean, they're a dumb animal.

- Really?

Oh.

(laughs) - Okay, you should maybe, you ever thought about raising cows?

- I wanna raise cows.

I wanna raise cows for beef.

I think it'd be really fun to have around a beef cow.

- Well, and they aren't as dumb as sheep.

- Really?

- Yeah.

I mean, honestly this cup is smarter than sheep.

- We do have one named Party and she can be a little dumb.

- Party?

- Party, like birthday party.

- Like a rock star?

- Yeah, she's a hoot.

(Aly laughs) - Okay.

(both laughing) I don't know what we were talking about.

All right, so, all right.

You're now on a farm family, right?

- Yeah.

- A lot of times a spouse, a non-farming spouse will come to a farm and they aren't quite sure what their role is.

- Yep.

- Did you ever struggle with that?

- So I did.

I struggled at first with the role on the farm, but I ended up finding my place on the farm with my father-in-law.

He and I became best friends.

So he had a stroke back in 2015 and it was debilitating.

So he could no longer row crop the traditional way.

And so my husband and his siblings took over the row crop operation.

And my father-in-law was kind of trying to find his place on the farm too.

And I said, "Well teach me how to grow something."

We gotta do something here.

And so we started growing four tomato plants and a couple of pepper plants.

And it was this tiny little garden.

- You said four?

- Yeah.

Four.

- Okay.

And how'd that go?

- Well, it went really well.

We started actually selling, I don't know how many people actually know this.

We started selling in my parents' front yard in Bloomington.

- Is that legal?

- Well, I contacted the mayor and I said, "Can you please let me sell eggs?"

Cause we have chickens, sell eggs and then sell a little bit of produce in our front yard.

So from the backyard we would wheel this big cast iron patio table to the front yard, and we put the little umbrella up and we had one customer and it was this little old man and he'd come every single Saturday.

- You only had four plants.

How many could you sell?

- I Know.

- Well, I had a hundred chickens, so I was really trying to sell eggs.

- Oh, you were selling the eggs.

- Yeah, and this little old man, he was the only customer, he'd come and he'd grab my hands and he'd say, "You're gonna do so great."

And then he'd buy a tomato and off he'd go.

- You should sell to- - He didn't even buy eggs.

- The teenage kids.

They like to.

(Rob clicks) - Throw 'em at things.

Yeah.

- Yeah.

- I should have done that, yeah, No, people didn't really come a ton to the front yard market.

It started to pick up a little bit of pace.

- Well, honestly, if I'm looking to buy eggs, I probably wouldn't go to a front lawn in Bloomington, yeah.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Okay.

Tell me about the two acres that you started growing.

- Yep, so eventually we started going to other farmer's markets.

We ended up in Eureka, then we ended up in Metamora, and those markets just kept getting bigger and bigger for us.

So we expanded our garden and pretty soon four tomato plants turned into 20 that eventually turned into 150 and we're now growing.

I'm estimating this summer we'll grow about 200 to 300 tomato plants.

- How many tomatoes do you get off a plant?

- Yep, so a plant per week or just like total?

- I didn't know there was a difference.

I don't grow tomatoes.

- They keep coming back, so.

- Do they?

- Oh yeah, it will grow all the way through until it freezes.

So we get about 800 pounds of tomatoes a week in the summer.

- Wow, it's a lot.

- Yeah, on the home garden.

- Do you know the seeds of a tomato don't digest?

- Really?

- I've got a buddy that gets the poo from Chicago, right?

They pour, they gotta do something with 'em right?

So they take it out and they spread it on his fields.

And then later that year a tomato start growing because.

- Oh, because.

- Yeah, 'cause if you eat it and the seed is not.

- They're doing this with human poop?

- [Rob] What else are they gonna do with it?

(Aly laughs) Yeah.

- I don't know.

- And then his dad eats the tomato and he's like, "Dad don't eat that tomato because it's been through."

- Oh my goodness.

Well, when we till, so like when we go through and we brought a till after fall, after summer's done.

The next spring, tomato plants just pop up randomly throughout the whole garden area so, I mean, I believe it, yeah.

- Well, it's the whole seed thing?

- Yeah.

- You should have learned that with your first four plants.

(both laughing) - That didn't happen.

- Okay, so has this become more than a hobby?

Is this a business?

- Yes, so now we actually, we took our produce and we started canning.

So can we started canning right around our wedding actually.

And we made this strawberry jam for our wedding.

My sister-in-law, she helped me make 300 jars for favors for our wedding.

Yep, and by the end of it, everybody was fighting over our jam.

So eventually we went to a co-packer.

So now we have them.

- What's a co-packer?

- Yeah, so they take our recipes and then they professionally bottle and produce it for us so we can bypass health department laws that are local Level here.

- Got you.

So these are your recipes, but done by somebody else?

- Yep.

- Is it?

- Yeah.

(bottle pops) Oh, snap!

- Oh, did you hear that?

- That's the best sound.

- I hope the mic has picked it up.

- It's the best sound when it seals too.

That's when you know you did a good job.

- You want yeah, because if you open it and it doesn't pop that's not good.

- Dennis, taught me that, yeah.

- That's your father-in-law.

- My father-in-law, yep.

- [Rob] So what are these?

- These are dilly beans.

- These are what?

- Dilly beans, they're a pickled green bean.

So they taste like a pickle, but they're a green beans.

So it's a healthy way for parents to get green beans into their kids.

(Aly laughs) (Rob crunching) They're pretty good.

(Rob crunching) What do you think?

- Well, I'm not done yet.

(Aly laughs) - You can drink the juice too.

Some people put 'em in their Bloody Marys.

(Rob crunching) (Aly laughs) Do you like them?

(Aly laughs) Yeah, the whole jar - It's really good.

- 70 calories, you can have the whole jar.

- You could eat the whole jar for 70?

- 70 Calories.

- You wanna try one?

You're not brave, come on!

(Aly laughs) You want one?

Yeah.

- Yeah.

(Aly laughs) - There's only 70 calories for the whole jar.

- And it taste like a pickle.

- I think maybe some Union rules.

I don't know, I don't know what they, maybe they can't eat something.

- They're crunchy.

- It's a great show.

(Aly laughs) (rob crunching) - Yeah.

(Aly crunching) We switched to the co-packer (laughs) because the green beans are a pain in the tail to pick, like you gotta pick a lot of green beans- - Did you grow these though?

- No.

- [Rob] Okay, so this is just your recipe?

- Yep, they grow them for us now.

And we do grow green beans, but it takes a really long time to pick 'em.

- How did you get the recipe for that?

'Cause that's good.

- Well, when I was a little kid, my grandpa started bringing back, we called them hot beans.

They were the super spicy version.

They were our favorite snack as little kids, my brother and I, and he started bringing them back from Arizona.

Well, eventually we loved them so much.

He couldn't get them locally so he started to his own pickled products in his kitchen and we call my grandpa, we call him Ping Ping.

And so he was calling- - [Rob] On purpose.

- Yes, so I couldn't say grampy as a little kid, it came out Ping Ping.

So we started calling them Ping's pickles and they were pickled products in his kitchen.

And so we joked that this is my a contribution to the farm because I brought the pickled green bean idea to the farm.

- But you also, I mean, this was your recipe too.

- So that was actually Nathan's grandparents.

(jar pops) Yeah, that's the best.

- That sounds good, don't it?

- You can eat that with a spoon or just lick it.

(Aly laughs) No, that's okay, COVID, no, I'm kidding.

(Aly laughs) You have to take a spoon.

Nathan likes to like when it's hot, when we're actually cooking jam at our house, he'll put it on ice cream.

- [Rob] Oh yeah, it does taste good.

- Hmm hmm, yeah.

(Aly laughs) (jar lead clutters) - Well this is what you gave away at your wedding.

- Yeah, we did 300 jars.

- I would be thrilled to get that.

- Yeah, people were diving over the tables and.

- Oh, were they fighting?

- Yeah, they were fighting over 'em, they were shoving 'em in their pockets.

And that was kind of how we decided we needed to sell jam.

- Let's switch gears a little bit.

Your, well, you say your day job, what do you do?

- Yeah, so I'm the assistant to the chief public defender in Woodford County, Illinois.

So I work in criminal court.

- [Rob] Do you get to shackle people?

- I get to, I mean, the holding cells is right across from my office.

My office is the old holding cell.

It actually used to have like bars on the windows.

Yeah.

- Oh really?

Do you throw stuff at 'em.

- At the inmates, oh no.

My job is to see them as people.

- Oh, okay.

So what's cool though.

So like if you get a kid that's been up to no good or something, and they're like, "You gotta do community service."

They can go work at your farm.

- Yes, and the reason why is because we have partnered with Feeding Illinois, which is the state affiliate of Feeding America, which is the second largest charitable organization in the United States.

So they are specializing in hunger relief and food insecurity solutions.

- What is that?

Food insecurity.

- Food insecurity?

It's when people don't have access to healthy food.

- Isn't it crazy?

I mean, does it surprise you that there are, I mean, it's not a small number either.

- Right, right.

It is a lot.

And the fact, the thing that surprised me the most when we started this partnership with Feeding Illinois and Feeding America was that, most of these people that are food insecure are from rural communities, which is my community, which typically you would assume that they have a garden and that they know how to grow their own food, but they lack transportation to get other resources from the grocery store.

- So, I mean, we joked about it earlier, but I mean, a lot of times the people in the rural community they're getting what is ever at Casey's or is ever at Dollar General, which is generally not, I mean, it's highly processed food and generally not the most healthy.

- Right, and so Steve Erickson, the executive director of Feeding Illinois likes to say that he never thought he'd be thanking God for Casey's and the Dollar General.

(both laughing) But that is in the rural communities.

That is where people turn to to get their food when they lack the transportation.

- So, okay, how are you affiliated with that charity?

- Yep, so we are piloting their statewide program called the Farm to Food Bank Program.

And because we started doing co-packing with our jams and our pickle products and our sauces and dressings, we took the space that we were using for those products to grow the vegetables.

And we turned it into space to grow produce for Feeding Illinois for the food banks.

- Okay, so is that, I mean, I don't know, is it like altruistic I mean, does that make you feel good to do that?

- It does, it makes me feel really good.

I see day in and day out at my job, people that are just struggling to do basic, something I would consider basic, which is putting food on the table.

And so it's exciting for me to be able to provide an opportunity for them to come and learn how their food is grown and give them food in return to when they come to complete community service hours.

- Yeah, is this like a well known because, well, we had you on the XM Show.

But honestly, I didn't know about this until we talked to you.

- Yep, so Feeding America is pretty well known.

We joke that you'll see it everywhere now, CVS, Hy-Vee, have partnered with them.

The Joe Burrow, the quarterback from the Bengals, he partners with Feeding America.

- [Rob] Oh really?

- Yes, so that was a big platform of his was helping with the food banks so.

- Oh, I bet.

- We were rooting for him in the Super Bowl.

We were a little disappointed when they lost, yeah.

- When they lost.

Yeah, wasn't even really close.

- No.

(both laughing) But we still root for him.

- Sorry if you're a Bengals fan - We root for him, we root for Feeding America so.

- So your garden, you said you were gonna, I mean, you're increasing the tomato plants.

Is it getting bigger with everything?

- Yes, So we took two acres out of row crop production for the garden space.

- [Rob] Which is about two football fields, roughly.

- Yeah, it's quite a bit of space.

We ended up purchasing a transplanter and a mulch layer to go on the back of our 4020 tractor.

So Nathan will drive it and it'll plant or it'll make a trench and it'll actually lay the fabric for us and then we go back over it with a transplanter where it has like a wheel and it pokes the hole, puts the appropriate amount of water in it for the plant and we just- - Oh, water is in too.

- Yeah, well we have an irrigation system that lays underneath, but then the water is for the plant.

So it makes the soil moist enough so that it'll plant the plant.

- So have you used it yet or will this.

- No, this is our first year with it, so Nathan is- - Are you excited?

- We're really excited.

We're a little bit nervous.

I've never done anything like it before.

I've been my own human tractor for a while so.

(both laughing) - Do you have a problem with the tomato plants?

Where I live, I mean, it's where the windmills are.

They really windy and the wind will break 'em.

You see people like putting like the milk containers or what over, over 'em.

- Yeah, so where our garden is located, it's east of our grain bins.

And so the grain bins provide a good wind break, but we've been using a cage system where we have cages.

This year we're using a completely different system with string and were gonna weave the tomato plants up this string just because we have so many plants.

- That's a lot of work.

- Yeah, so we're gonna be having 4-H, FFA, local churches are volunteering to come out and help us with the project.

- So is any of it a business or is it all the charity?

- A hundred percent of the Feeding Illinois project is charitable.

So we don't have- - Okay, so this is just you being nice people?

- Yep, so we do have a state grant that does reimburse us for labor, but it's basically just to meet our time that we have to take away from our jobs to help with it so.

- There's probably some people watching that goes, "That's great that you can do the community service out there, but I'm not sure I want people on our farm that are doing community service."

Is that a worry?

- So the people that are going to be coming out doing community service through the public defender's office, they are low level offenders.

So driving offenses, driving without a license or driving with a license that's suspended, they're low level offenders.

So we will go through a process.

- Looking back for where you started, right?

No farm background, no experience with it, to what you're doing now.

It's probably, this is as new to your farm as it is to you.

- Yes, so this was, I am definitely a shock to my in-laws.

They're still getting used to the whole, all eyes on us kind of situation.

It's created a lot of stir in the media.

- [Rob] Are you getting a lot of attention for it?

- Yes, a lot of it.

People have been wanting to do newspaper articles and my father-in-law comes from a very humbled background.

So he likes to give, but do it outside of the spotlight.

And so it's been great to be able to share the project and try to get other farmers involved in the project and maybe start a garden on their farm.

And so that's why I've been really excited about talking to the media, but it's definitely been a shift for my farm family back at the farm.

They're all like, "Oh my goodness, this is never, I never in a million years expected this."

I mean, even the canned goods, never in a million years expected them to go as well as they did.

- It is a thing about farmers.

I mean, I grew up where it was like a, I don't know, a think people would say, "Well, if you were in a magazine, then you were gonna go bankrupt."

So people didn't like, so farmers didn't like the attention, right?

I don't how it started, I don't know.

But I think that's kind of changed.

I mean, social media, all you do is see farmers on there now.

Yeah.

- Yeah, lots of them.

- Are you doing this on social media?

- I'm terrible at social media.

I need to go get somebody to run it for me.

(Aly laughs) I need to be better at social media, but we do have our Facebook page and then our Instagram, so.

- What are they?

- Yep, so our Facebook page is Gibbs Farms and then our Instagram is Gibbsfamilyfarms.

- Gibbs has two Bs.

- Two Bs one S. - Yes, one G. - One G one I.

- Tell me about the bibs.

- Yes, the bibs.

So those are a nod to my father-in-law, Dennis.

He is known around Woodford County for his bib overalls.

We actually had a fundraiser for our Feeding Illinois project a couple of weeks ago.

We raised $30,000 in one night for the project in Woodford County.

So we were very, just humbled and proud to be from there.

He went and bought a new pair of bibs for the event.

He was so excited about them, His bibs, they're a thing.

And so the icon of the bib overalls is a nod to him and his ability to overcome adversity from the stroke and just the everything we do on our farm is inspired by him.

- Yeah, I think it's very nice nod, and I loved on the radio show, and the way you talk about your father-in-law, the closeness of the family.

I mean, that's what rural America is about.

That's what's farming's about.

And so once again, the websites and the social media.

- Yeah, so our website is Gibbsfamilyfarms.com.

Our Facebook is Gibbs Farms.

And then our Instagram is Gibbsfamilyfarms.

- Okay, bibs are comfortable.

- They are.

Yeah.

- Yeah.

And they're functional too 'cause you can put- - He loves them, yeah we- - If you have something to put in a pocket, you can.

- Right, he puts his glasses there, Werther's caramels, like he sneaks them to us in church.

That's his thing.

- Your father-in-law is a stereotype.

- Yeah, he sneaks 'em to us in church and we love him, but, yeah.

- Okay.

(Aly laughs) - He's the best.

(both laughing) - Aly Gibbs, thank you for coming on the show.

Thanks for letting me open the jars.

(both laughing) And thanks for what you do because you're making the world a better place.

So Aly, thank you very much.

- Thank you so much.

- And everybody else, we hope you catch us next time.