FarmHer Embraces Field-to-Table Mission
FarmHers are strong women — and Emily Zweber and her mother-in-law Lisa Zweber are FarmHers through and through. They are half of the equation that makes up Zweber Farms in Elko, Minn., a family dairy.
After college, Jon and Lisa Zweber came home to his parents’ dairy. A few short years later, Jon’s parents passed away, leaving the young couple to run the dairy while raising four kids. Those long days turned into years, and their family and dairy farm grew. Their oldest son, Tim, met his future wife, Emily, in 4-H, and following college they got married and came home to the farm to carry on the tradition.
It was then the Zweber family decided to make what they practiced official. They converted to an organic dairy so they could support two generations working full time on the farm and eventually started to sell grass-fed beef, all-natural pork, pasture chicken and free-range eggs directly to customers.
Emily spent a career in marketing and PR, heading up the AgChat organization before making the decision to farm full-time. Today the family shares meals, work and nearly every aspect of their lives. Jon and Lisa are responsible for the morning milking, then the family stops and eats breakfast together. They continue farm duties throughout the day from feeding and caring for animals to communicating with customers, marketing their product and keeping up with social media and their website.
Emily’s work is usually done with her three kids in tow. The kids handle chicken chores, help prep for milking, pitch in during milking, check the beef cattle and pigs. It is truly a diversified family operation, and everyone has a role. Before the evening milking you will find the family back together for dinner before Tim and Emily finish their jobs at the dairy.
Day in and day out they run a farm together as a family during the highs and lows. To make it work, everyone chips in to pave a path for the fifth generation of Zwebers to have the opportunity to come back home to the farm.
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