What is Generation Acres Farm?

So what is Generation Acres? And what does it mean?

Hello everyone,

My name is Ben Nelson and I'm the owner of Generation Acres Farm along with my wife Brittney and our little boy Marshall. It was 1&1/2 years ago when the idea of Generation Acres was formed, although the name wasn't thought up until much later. My wife and I had been married for just a few months and I had a job that required us to travel all over the country. We had been all the way from Arizona and California up to Wyoming, Montana, and Wisconsin. We enjoyed traveling and getting to see all types of land but it was amazing how much we just wanted to be home. We were very thankful that the Lord had provided me with a job that was meeting all our needs but we both knew that traveling the amount of time we were (about 3 weeks out of the month) would be no way to raise our children. We were praying that God would show us a different occupation that we could pursue that would give us the family life we wanted to be able to raise our children up for Him.




One day we were in Colorado and had a day off so we decided to go for a hike in the Rockies, as we were already in Colorado Springs. We had been passing beautiful farm after farm this whole trip and on our way up to the hike we saw farm vistas that would take your breath away. We had Brittney's old CD of Lean Rymes "Blue" (the only scratched up CD that managed to make it in the floorboard of the car for that trip for some reason) playing in the car and the song "Cattle Call" came on. I had always had a dream of being a cattle rancher and Brittney had always wanted to live on a farm. For some reason looking at all those beautiful farms with that somewhat corny song playing in my ears, the idea of us having our own farm didn't seam like a distant fantasy. It was as if the Lord was showing us what our hearts desire was and telling us that we could accomplish it with his help! It was then and there, on that rocky mountain hillside, that we decided that we were going to be farmers and start working towards that goal.

At the time we didn't know exactly what type of farming/ranching we were going to do. We had both grown up in health conscience families so we knew we didn't want to grow the normal run of industry food. I had always wanted to have livestock and although we both liked gardening to an extent we didn't think that produce would be the main way we would make a living farming.

Our friends had a book called "Family Friendly Farming" by Joel Salatin which looked like it was right up our ally. They allowed us to borrow it and while reading it my eyes were opened to the sustainable farming movement! We knew that we did not want to have a traditional, continual grazed, factory, fecal contamination farm and that we wanted to develop a sustainable, God honoring, Biblically based farming enterprise that we could take pride in.

Thus we were hooked!

The more we have studied sustainable farming the more we have seen how it lines up with the principals of the Bible and how that it follows God's example for how animals should live in nature. We still have a lot to learn and can't wait to see how applying God's word to our farm will be a blessing.

The name Generation Acres was just applied to our farm within the past few months. We wanted a name that would embody what we wanted our farm to be about and the reason that we started farming in the first place. We want our farm to be a training ground for us to raise the next generation to be mighty warriors for God. And what better way to train children than to have them see God's wisdom in how he created his world to function. Our hope for the future of God's kingdom is in the generations to come and our hope for a prosperous and healthy environment is in applying farming techniques that are in line with the way God designed this world and will leave the earth that God has entrusted to us in better shape for the next generation. Therefore we have resolved to learn God's ways in every area of life and not hide them from our children, but teach them to them diligently. This is embodied in our theme verse for our farm: Psalms 78:4 We will not hide them from their children, shewing to the generation to come the praises of the LORD, and his strength, and his wonderful works that he hath done. May God help us to carry out this verse throughout our lives.

We are still in the start up stages of our farm but are very optimistic as to the future of the enterprise. The spring pastured poultry chicken raising season is coming upon us and we are starting to get a few orders. We plan on adding multiple species of livestock to our operation as God allows but are content to see our little cluckers on pasture until then.

God has been so good to allow us to get this far and we pray that we will always do his will in our farming practices.