Agriculture all day

Driving through the family farm near Ithaca, Michigan, Paige Tuggle points out the extensive system of fencing, gates, and chutes in the lots surrounding the barn and heading down a lane in the middle of the property.

“The way this facility is set up, one person can do everything that needs to be done,” Tuggle says of the property, northeast of Grand Rapids. “Dad has a full-time job. I have a full-time job off the farm. We run about a hundred head of mama cows. So that also requires a lot of time outside of working. We have to make this place doable for one person to sort cows and bring cows up.”

Having that kind of system allows Tuggle or her parents, Phil and Lisa, to be away from the farm without necessarily having to find other help. Her father travels around Michigan as a direct-ship fertilizer salesman, and Tuggle also does some traveling for her full-time job with Stine Seed Company and her part-time crop insurance business.

The Tuggles practice synch breeding using CIDR (Controlled Intravaginal Drug Release) devices. “We bring up 20 cows at a time, put CIDRs in, give them shots, then the next week we’ll pull the CIDRs, and then that coming week they’ll come into heat, and hopefully we’ll get them all bred,” she explains. “There’s a method to our madness; it’s kind of a well-oiled machine. We have a system, and the cows know our system.” They also raise 20 to 30 bulls per year, which they sell across the state in spring.

Father-daughter teamwork

Tuggle says she and her father are similar and work well together. “My dad and I have worked together since I could walk,” she says, “so I usually know what he’s thinking before he is done thinking it, and I can foresee what he needs and when he needs it and vice versa. It’s a lot of work outside of work, but cattle are our passion.”

The Tuggles grow their own feed, getting three to four cuttings of hay per year off 200 to 300 acres, and harvesting around 65 acres of corn. They chop half the corn for silage, and sell the rest at the elevator.

“We always end up producing more feed than we need, so that gives us another option for a cash flow at a different time of year,” Tuggle says. “With cows, you either cash-flow in the spring or cash-flow in the fall. So selling some hay here and there gives us another opportunity and helps with financials.”

Planning is key

Calving is scheduled from the third week in December to March 1, with heifers set to calve around Christmas, since everyone is home. 

“We calve in the wintertime because that’s when we’re available,” Tuggle explains. “Come springtime, Dad and I are both busy with our full-time jobs, so the cows have to go to pasture, because we aren’t around as much. Once they go to the summer pasture, we just need to check on them, and they’re pretty self-sufficient.” 

Although Michigan winters can be harsh, Tuggle says: “I would rather calve when it’s frozen out because the ground is hard, and you don’t have as much sickness. In the springtime you get muddy, you get wet, and you’re battling the mud.”

While this kind of planning takes a lot of work, Tuggle says it’s necessary with everything she and her father have going on. 

“It’s a lot of thinking ahead, but I need to plan 30 days in advance,” she says. “It’s important to lay out a game plan and have everything ready to go, so when that date comes, we can just do the job, because by that point, we’re already thinking several weeks ahead.”

Inspiration from Mom

As a successful crop insurance agent, Lisa Tuggle has inspired her daughter’s career path, or at least one of her multiple paths.

Lisa was working to establish her book of business throughout Michigan and Ohio when her daughters were young. “She was gone a lot,” Tuggle says. “Back then, we didn’t have computers, so if you wanted business, you went door to door and personally had to talk to people.”

Tuggle says it was unusual for a woman — especially a mother — to have a business like this 25 years ago. Not everyone in town thought it was a good idea, but Tuggle was inspired by her mom’s hard work and perseverance. “Somehow, working full-time and growing a business like that, Mom still made sure we were taken care of,” she says. “She worked things out with my dad, and we always had clean clothes, and food on the table, and she was there for as many of our events as she could be. She’s the ultimate mom.”

After Tuggle finished college, her goal was to make a full-time living from selling crop insurance, like her mother. But she realized early how difficult this career was going to be. “Starting your own book of business is very difficult, especially starting from nothing,” she says. “It’s commission based and you only get paid once a year, so I decided I needed another full-time job. Now, crop insurance is a third income for me.”

Starting with Stine

After a few full-time stints with different companies, Tuggle became a regional sales agronomist for Iowa-based Stine. She says her farm background is a definite asset in her career, managing 11 independent sales representatives across Michigan.

“The sales reps see what I’m bringing to the table, but I don’t ever want to come off like I know it all either,” she says. “I’m only 35 years old, so I have no business telling a guy that’s 65 years old and has been selling seed for 30 years how he should or shouldn’t run his business. I tell them I’m here to help, to figure out the answers to questions, and bring them information. I even help them move seed.”

Tuggle says she enjoys working for a company the size of Stine, which has about 400 full-time employees domestically. “I sit next to the general manager and the owner of the company at meetings, and I know that I can pick up the phone and call them at any time if I [need] to,” she says.

The path back to agriculture

Whether Tuggle is working for Stine, selling crop insurance, or on the farm, all her jobs are in the field of agriculture. But that wasn’t her original plan.

“Growing up, I thought, ‘Mom and Dad work so hard, we never have vacations, we don’t get to go on spring break like all the other kids do. We have to work.’ On Saturday mornings, I was up at 7 o’clock. I didn’t get to watch cartoons. I didn’t get to sleep in. And I thought, ‘Who wants to do that? You know, why can’t we just have fun?’ ”

Tuggle planned to become a doctor, but while studying pre-med at Michigan State University in large East Lansing, she says: “I got homesick, so I got a job at the beef barn there and started meeting friends from the agricultural industry. Then I’d go to class with other pre-med students that I couldn’t relate to at all. I found myself being pulled between these two worlds, and I couldn’t wait to get home and work on the farm on the weekends.”

She left Michigan State for a community college closer to home, earned a business management degree from Ferris State University north of Grand Rapids, then moved back to the farm, around the corner from her parents. 

Now, Tuggle works with both parents every day: with her mom on crop insurance, and her dad on the farm. “Every night we have a debriefing of the day and plan for what needs to happen the next day,” she says. 

Tuggle says she plans to farm and raise cattle indefinitely, and work alongside her parents for as long as possible. 

“There are a lot of people who can’t work with their family,” she concedes. “But I wouldn’t trade it for the world. And to think that almost didn’t happen because I thought I didn’t want it.”