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

My name is Rob Sharkey.

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

But today we've got some incredible guests.

We've got Erica and Donna Miller, Donnie Miller.

How you guys doing?

- Good.

- Good.

- You're from Lostant, Illinois?

- Yep.

- Where's that?

- About an hour north of here.

- Of Peoria?

- Yeah.

- I've never heard of it.

Is it big?

- No.

- No.

- Like, it's just you guys?

- Pretty much.

- Pretty close.

- And your kids?

That's four people.

- Basically like Starved Rock area.

- Yeah.

- Okay.

- We're about 10 miles south of Starved Rock.

- Does it have a post office?

- We do have a post office.

- Does it have a dollar store?

- No, we have a post office, a bar, and a church.

- Okay, because Illinois law, if you're gonna have one bar, you're gonna have one church.

- For sure.

- Yes.

- That's the law.

I think you can have a church without a bar?

- But you can't have a bar without a church.

- No, you can't have a bar without a church.

Yeah.

Now is that where you guys are from originally?

- Yeah.

Where we live about two miles from my family farm or where I grew up.

- Okay, so you grew up on a farm.

What kind of farm?

- We do some row crop, but mostly cattle and hogs.

- Okay.

And where'd you grow up?

- I grew up in Seneca, so I moved from one side of the county to the other.

And I did not grow up on a farm.

I actually grew up right on the outskirts of town.

- Well, how, how'd you guys meet?

- We met at the 4-H Fair.

We were 19?

- Yeah.

- And 20.

- [Donnie] Through mutual friends.

- Yeah, we met through mutual friends at the 4-H Fair.

- So you guys were a little older in 4-H?

- Yeah, Donnie's brother was still showing, so he would go and help and I was there.

We were watching a tractor pull.

That's how we met.

- That's romantic.

- Yeah.

- A tractor pull.

- Yeah.

- Do you know that's where my wife and I met, too?

- No.

- We met at a 4-H dance when we were 16.

Yeah.

I asked her to dance and then I did the old pickup line.

Hey, do you wanna go see my show pigs?

(Erica chuckles) Then I put my hands to greater service.

(Donnie and Erica chuckle) - That's pretty close to yours.

- That's a 4-H joke.

Hands to greater service.

I don't even remember it all.

All my head to... - Clearer thinking.

- Thinking, my heart to America.

I don't remember it all, but that's, yeah.

All right, so you guys, were you guys in 4-H or just at the tractor pull?

- I was not.

And he was not at that time, but he grew up in 4-H. - [Donnie] Yeah, I grew up showing hogs.

- [Rob] Was it love at first sight?

- No.

(Rob and Donnie laughing) (Erica chuckles) - At least she's honest.

- Did you have to pester her?

- Pretty much.

- She wore you down, basically?

- Yeah.

- Okay.

How long you been married?

- It'll be five years in November.

- Okay.

So you guys, you have a farm that we're gonna talk about, but you also have off-farm jobs too, - Yeah.

- Correct?

So Donnie, what do you do?

- So I actually work for ADM in our ARTco division.

So basically like that- - [Rob] The what division?

- ARTco.

- [Rob] I dunno what that is.

- It's like tugboats fleeting services.

- You what, you get to drive those?

- No, I do maintenance on 'em.

- That's still pretty cool.

Those things are huge.

- Yeah.

- Do you ever get to ride one?

- I get to ride 'em, I don't get to drive them.

- Okay.

Do they have like, a semi horn?

- Kind of.

- Yeah?

- Similar, yeah.

- Okay, that's really cool.

- Yeah.

- I gotta imagine though, like, the engines and everything on those have to be like, huge.

- Like, 1200 horsepower.

- So cool.

(group chuckling) Do they break down a lot?

- Not if we're doing our job right.

- Oh, come on.

(Donnie and Rob chuckle) Because they're rolling all the way from Chicago down to the gulf, right?

- I work on a lot of like, local stuff that pretty well stays in the area and assist larger boats.

- Okay.

Were you a mechanic?

How'd you get into this?

- That's a good question.

I actually have a business degree in school and I took an internship doing maintenance.

I worked on basically grain facilities for probably six or seven years.

Then I got into a role where I was traveling and helping assist to like, finding problems with breakdowns to more preventative stuff, keep them from reoccurring.

And then this role came available and I went for it.

- Okay.

Did you ever watch that professional wrestling?

- It's been a while.

- They used to have that guy named Tugboat.

- Yeah?

- He used to wear the red and white.

- Yeah.

- I don't know why I brought it up.

(group chuckling) Now Erica, what do you do?

- I'm a sales rep for Schaeffer Manufacturing, so.

- [Rob] Okay, so what do they make?

- We ake lubricants, primarily lubricants and I work in a sales position, so I serve a territory from close to the quad cities to the southwest suburbs.

- So you like selling to like, industrial?

Or are you like, Walmart?

- Anybody that'll buy it.

- Really?

- Yeah.

- So is it like grease or oil or?

- Yeah, farmers, truckers, and construction are my three biggest industries.

- It's basically just like Crisco, but you guys put like, food dye in it and then that works as a lubricant.

That's what I heard.

- No, no, it's a little more than that but.

- That Crisco's good stuff though.

I mean you could put that on anything and it... (Rob quick whistles) - Maybe.

- I understand you don't want to throw your company under the bus, but you know, every once in a while.

If you're in a pinch and you need a lubricant, think Crisco.

(Rob chuckling) Okay, you guys meet and you're falling in love and at some point, do you realize, hey, if I marry this guy, probably agriculture or farming's gonna be in my life?

- Yeah.

- And were you okay with that?

- Yeah, I was actually studying ag business at the time, so I was already kind of making a move into the ag industry through education and then this just kind of fell together.

- So, what gave you a passion for agriculture?

Why did you wanna get into it?

- I was in FFA in high school and that's what- - [Rob] What high school?

- Seneca.

(bell dings) (group chuckle) - The bell, it confuses people, so, and yeah.

I was never a fan of Seneca High School and I'll tell you why, because when I was in FFA we had the parliamentary procedure contest.

You know that, did you ever do that?

- No.

- No.

I won the whole region.

Now the judges felt some person from Seneca won it, the judges were wrong, and I ended up getting second place and that's always bothered me.

So where do we go from here?

Seneca.

What's a Seneca, what is their mascot?

- The Fighting Irish.

- See, is this always aggressive?

- Yep.

(Rob chuckles) - All right, so you're in FFA.

How did that kind of get you wanting to be more involved in ag?

- Just kind of piqued my interest and from there, I ended up going to JJC and doing two years.

- [Rob] To what?

- Joliet Junior College.

- [Rob] Oh, yeah, okay.

- And then on to ISU from there.

- [Rob] Iowa or Illinois?

- Illinois State.

- Okay.

All right.

Donnie, did you go to school?

- Yeah, I did two years at Illinois Central College and then went to ISU.

- Oh, the harvest on the hill.

- You bet.

- Well that worked out because you guys would've been close together.

So were you together when you were in college?

You would've been, right?

- At ISU, yeah.

- Okay, well that makes college more fun, right?

- Yeah.

- You don't have to worry about dating.

- Yeah.

- It's miserable.

(group laughs) I don't know.

I haven't been on a date since I was 16.

So and here, here we are.

So you guys get married, then the farm that you're living on now, is that a family farm?

- No, it's one that we bought on our own.

And it was a family friend.

She was a single lady and she wanted to move to town and downsize.

And we were looking so we just kind of said, hey, if you're thinking about downsizing, let us know.

And she called us two weeks later and said, hey, I found a house.

- [Rob] Really?

- [Donnie] Yeah.

- So did you wanna move that quickly?

- No.

(Rob laughing) - We started looking at houses and I happened to run into this woman and she said that, yeah, she was thinking about downsizing and moving to town.

And everything just kind of happened, worked out.

- So this comes with a house, this farm?

Well that's nice.

- Yeah.

- Right?

Now, okay, so you buy this place and is it like, what now, what do we do?

- Pretty much, we bought a house in a shed and then, yeah.

- Was there like, many tillable acres with it, too?

- No.

- No, we just got two acres.

- Two acres?

Now that creates an interesting problem because what do you do with two acres and be profitable and all this stuff?

How did Milla Market come to be?

- Well, we thought that chickens would be a fun way to get our kids involved with some animals.

- [Rob] Oh, it's a good- - At a young age.

- Horrible idea.

- Yeah, chicken math.

- Chickens are a gateway.

- Chicken math.

- Yeah, what's chicken math?

- Well.

- If you buy one chicken you have to get like, four.

I mean, that's chicken math.

- If you think you need four, you buy 40.

(Erica chuckles) - You know, oddly that makes sense.

- It's chicken math.

- It should not make sense, but if I completely get it.

So whose idea was it to venture into chickens?

- We were walking through a Rural King one day and the cheeping, and you know, they just kind of draw you in.

- They do that on purpose.

- I know.

- Mm-hm.

- So if you haven't been to Rural King Farm and Fleet on all that, you walk down the aisle and then they've got like these huge water tanks, and they've got the infrared lights.

And all you hear is this, cheep, cheep, cheep, cheep, cheep.

And in other words, it's a way, and you're walking along with your wife in hand and then all of a sudden, like, the hands going that way.

It's because y'all are drawn towards the cheeps.

- We started in the spring of, that've been '22?

- [Donnie] Mm-hm.

- 'Cause the kids had just turned one and we started with 20.

- [Rob] 20 chicks?

- Yeah.

- Okay, were these just random chicks or are they specific meat chickens, or?

- No, these were just, you know, your normal laying bird assortment.

- Okay.

- We have 70 now.

(Erica chuckling) - Okay.

(Rob chuckling) Was it because you bought more or you just, you let 'em lay on the eggs?

- We've acquired more.

Some people thought that they were a good idea and decided that they weren't anymore, so they came in.

- Oh, you've become a sanctuary.

- Yeah.

- A chicken sanctuary.

- Essentially, yeah.

- Okay, now are you, are these pets or are they potential dinners?

- No, laying birds don't really taste very good, so they- - [Rob] Do you put 'em in a soup?

- You can, ours aren't old enough that that really hasn't become a pressing issue yet.

- [Rob] They're still laying.

- Yeah.

So the oldest birds we have are only what, a year and a half?

- Yeah, but you've done meat birds, as well.

- Yeah, but that's kind of a whole different animal.

- They grow super fast, don't they?

- Mm-hm.

- Yeah.

Six to eight week turnaround.

- Yeah, we got some when we were first married too 'cause I didn't know any better.

And then we grow 'em, they grow up stupid fast and then all of a sudden my neighbor stops by and says, what are you gonna do with those chickens?

I'm like, well we're going to eat 'em.

He says, you can't eat those now 'cause their feathers are white.

They're gonna be too tough.

I said, whatever, you know, go pounce sand.

I'm gonna, we're gonna, yeah, he was right.

They were so tough, I mean, I might as well be eating this table.

- I'm surprised they made it that long.

- What do you mean?

- They usually don't make it that long.

- Like, they die?

- Yes.

- These things lived forever and they became so, they was like Jabba the Hutt.

They would just sit around.

They literally were, they got too lazy to go to the food.

They were like, bring the food to me.

Yours don't make it?

- We don't keep them quite that long.

- Well, we didn't know.

(Erica and Donnie chuckle) That's how we learn.

(Rob chuckles) Well, what's Milla?

Milla Market?

- So the name Milla comes from the original railroad town that was located about a mile from our house along the railroad.

- [Rob] Ah, they probably got a Dollar General.

- No.

All they got left is a couple green bins that's owned by a farmer now, and that's it.

- Okay.

So we got the chickens.

How did it evolve from there?

- So.

- We've kind of always done a garden.

So we kind of, I'd say when COVID kind of came around and it was getting harder to purchase stuff, we expanded our garden and.

- Yeah, we expanded the garden and then during COVID, the Avian flu happened.

- [Rob] Oh, yeah.

- And it was really difficult to purchase chicken.

And I got real irritated 'cause I'd go to the store, try to buy chicken, and they didn't have any.

So one day I came home and said, if I can't buy it, I'm gonna raise it.

- [Rob] Makes sense.

- So we ended up doing a batch of 50 that year.

That would've been last summer.

And then, you know, I thought we'd sell what we didn't need.

And everybody, like, bought everything we had right away.

So really we did another batch of a hundred right before fall and that just, again, took off.

And so now we've kind of grown a little clientele of people who want farm fresh chicken and.

- That's nice.

Now do you, do you process 'em?

Butcher them?

- We take them.

We take them to a facility that does it in their USDA inspected.

- That's a good idea, because that's a stupid amount of work just for a chicken.

I don't know how that Chick-fil-A does it.

- It's kind of nice to just drop 'em off.

- Butchering doesn't really bother me.

The chickens?

I dunno.

It's a lot of feathers.

- The feathers, yeah.

- And yeah, a lot of everything.

So, but this was no problem selling?

Now, we went through this thing where eggs and chickens were hard to get.

It's kind of switched, right?

Now there's a surplus of 'em and everything's down.

Are you still finding that you have customers?

- Yeah.

Egg sales have slowed down a little bit now that the store was under a dollar for a little while.

But, I mean, there's still people that, you know, see the quality in farm fresh.

- They taste, I like 'em better.

It's like they have more yolk.

I don't know, is that fair to say?

- The yolks are more yellow, they're more rich on the farm fresh eggs.

And then as far as the farm fresh chickens go, I mean, they're a lot more tender.

They keep their moisture, they don't dry out.

- [Rob] Really?

- Yeah.

- Okay.

Okay, so it's chickens.

And you do have a produce, too?

- Yeah.

- Mm-hm.

- What do you growing there?

- A little bit of everything.

We've got cucumbers, squash, zucchini.

- Tomatoes.

- Tomatoes.

And we've got green beans, peas, cabbage, Brussels sprouts.

- [Donnie] Peppers, pretty well- - Peppers.

- Is there anything you don't grow?

- Onions.

- No okra.

- We didn't do okra this year.

- What's it, you're okra haters?

- I wasn't a fan.

- Yeah.

(Donnie and Rob laughing) - Just didn't love it.

And with the drought, our carrots didn't turn out this year, so we don't have carrots this year.

- Yeah.

Anything you gotta pull out of the ground it seems a little excessive.

It's a lot of work.

- It is.

- Yeah.

So what do you finding there with customers?

People enjoying the fresh grown stuff?

- Yeah, and we got certified in the last year under the Cottage Food Act to do canned goods, as well.

So like, I'll use a lot of the garden items to make sauce and salsa, and jams and jellies.

And we sell a lot of those products also.

- That's kind of a lost art, the canning.

I mean, did learn that as a kid or did you pick it up on YouTube?

- Just kind of picked it up.

My grandma, she is here during the summertime and, you know, she grew up doing all that.

So we do some of it together and, yeah, it's nice.

I enjoy it.

- Do you force Donnie to help?

- Not so much on the canning.

- I'll pick vegetables.

- Yeah, he helps with the garden though.

- You're so lucky.

- Yeah.

(Rob chuckles) - Do you enjoy being part of it?

- Yeah, I mean, it's nice to get our kids involved in something that's outside more than anything.

- Do you guys have twins?

- Yes.

- Ooh, surprise?

- Mm-hm.

- Yes.

- Did twins run in either of your family?

- My grandpa's a twin.

- Oh, okay.

So I mean, it wasn't like- - It's still a surprise.

- Was it, really?

- It's still a surprise.

- And how old?

- They're two and a half.

- Oh my gosh.

Do you know having one two-and-a-half year old is busy enough, having them in tandem in stereo, I don't know.

How do you handle that?

- Now they kind of entertain each other though, too.

- I never thought about that.

They kind of probably pick on each other, right?

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

A built-in best friend.

(Rob chuckles) - Now, they probably aren't old enough to get out and help at all?

- Oh, yeah, they do.

- It's probably their favorite time when we.

- Yeah.

- [Rob] Really?

- When I get home and we take 'em outside, yeah.

- Yeah, they do really well.

They'll collect eggs, they'll collect tomatoes, green beans.

She likes it more than he does.

He'd rather go sit on the tractor.

- [Rob] So it's a boy and a girl?

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Gotcha, okay.

So you say you're a farm to fork, and you were find, you said kind of word of mouth, social media.

Now are these people that are local that are buying your stuff?

- For the most part, it's friends and family.

And having kids the age that we do, we tried to keep it kind of small and a more controlled audience just so we didn't have a bunch of strangers rolling up to our house.

But now it's kind of expanded to a lot of friends of friends and, you know, some locals that have heard of us through word of mouth.

And, yeah, that's... - There was a, they did have one review.

"Could be better," is all the review said.

Becky Nielsen, Putnam County.

(Erica chuckles) I dunno what you did to her, but apparently she thought it could be better.

- You must've made her help.

- Yeah.

She must have got put to work.

(group chuckling) - Former guest of the show, but also one of your friends?

- Yeah.

- Mm-hm.

- Okay, how'd you meet her?

- I went to high school with Becky, actually.

- [Rob] So what high school?

- Putnam County.

- Oh, okay.

All right, yeah, I guess you would be in that district wouldn't you?

- Yep.

- All right.

It's amazing you two met.

Seneca and Putnam County, don't they not like each other?

- Well, they just- - Just for basketball.

- They just got in the same sports conference in the last what, three years, four years?

- Probably, yeah.

- So we weren't playing each other in sports then.

(Erica and Rob chuckle) - So what's the goal?

Do you guys want to get bigger?

What are you guys thinking?

- Yeah, we've got some different things that we're working on right now.

We're trying turkeys, right now.

So I've got about 35 turkeys and the brooder.

- You've got 35 turkeys?

- I do, yeah.

- Okay, well are they gonna be ready by Thanksgiving?

- Two days before.

Fresh, never frozen.

- Is that guaranteed?

- Yeah.

- Really?

- Yeah.

The thing about birds is you make the date before you have the animal.

- [Rob] Okay.

- Which is kind of backwards from hogs and cattle, but you gotta have your process date before you have the animal.

- Huh.

Well, I've raised hogs a majority of my life and you know, you get 'em in and they're like, we're gonna have 'em till this day.

And then you get like, a hundred degree weather or whatever and they slow down or they speed up or whatever.

But you think two days exactly before Thanksgiving you're gonna nail these turkeys.

- Yep.

- That's when they're getting processed.

- That's when they're going.

- It doesn't matter.

- That's when they're going.

- All right, now how big are they now?

- I don't know, I'd say maybe a pound each.

They're not real big.

- Like that?

- Like, I can't hold 'em with one hand, but yeah.

- They can't do the the gobble thing yet, right?

- No, there's no gobble yet.

- That's gonna be really annoying.

65 of 'em?

- No, I got 35 right now.

- 35?

Well they'd double.

- No.

- If you get 'em wet after, and if you feed 'em after midnight or if you get 'em wet, I think they double into two of 'em.

- I hope not, I don't have enough room.

- You know what's sad is they don't even get that reference, the "Gremlins"?

You never watch that movie?

No, 'cause they weren't even, (Rob inhales, exhales) weren't even born yet.

I'll let that sink in.

(Rob chuckles) So Turkeys, anything else you want to expand into?

- We are doubling our apple orchard this year.

So I think we've got somewhere around, we've got 20 trees.

We've got like, 16 21 trees, I think it is.

16 apple trees, four cherry trees and a pear tree.

(Rob chuckling) - [Rob] Oh my gosh.

- We have 14 more apple trees coming in the spring.

- What is the apple of choice now?

Used to be the honey crisp.

- That's my apple of choice, that's what I ordered.

- [Rob] That is the best apple out there.

- Yeah.

- Okay, that sounds like a lot of work.

And you're selling those too?

- Not yet.

I got two apples this year.

And ironically, I have two kids.

And they could both reach the apples.

So one pulled an apple off the tree and the other got jealous and pulled the other one off the tree- - [Rob] And that was it.

- That was it.

- I wouldn't bother with the apples myself.

I would make apple jack with them and sell that.

That's how you get the markup.

- That's thinking.

- Yeah, that's how you do it.

Are you guys on social media or have a website where people can find you?

- Yeah, we are on Facebook as Milla Market.

- [Rob] So that is M-I-L-L-A?

- Yep.

- [Donnie] Mm-hm.

- Milla Market.

And, TikTok, you on the TikTok yet?

- We are on TikTok.

- And Milla Market?

- Yep.

- [Rob] Okay.

Are you guys dancing, you doing the trends?

- No, no.

- Some videos of the kids, I guess, doing funny stuff.

- You gotta do the trends.

You gotta dance around if you're gonna become popular on there.

- Yeah.

- Do you wanna practice now?

- No.

- I think I'm good.

(Donnie chuckling) - Probably, there's more people watching your TikToks than this show.

(Donnie laughing) - Donnie's not a very good dancer, so.

- No, not at all.

- Sometimes it just takes practice.

(Donnie and Erica laugh) I love what you guys are doing.

Yeah, you guys have your full-time jobs, but I love how you are taking advantage of the two acres that you have and making it work.

And I see nothing but success for you two.

So thank you for taking the time to come here today.

Really appreciate it.

- Thank you for having us.

- Thanks for having us.

- All right.

And everybody else, hope you catch us next time.

(upbeat music)