Dearing veteran advocate, farmer

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. — Resiliency? Check. Overcoming adversity? Check. Grit? Check.

Brad Dearing checks all the life-lesson boxes from his experiences in military service, decades as a teacher and owning a farm.

Dearing was raised on a farm near Petersburg in central Illinois, joined the Army after graduating from high school and witnessed history being made in real time.

“I didn’t want to leave Illinois. When I first enlisted, I was infantry. I was at Fort Campbell in Kentucky. It’s real close to home. I thought, that’s where I want to be,” he said.

“In the middle of basic training, they came around with duty assignments and I ended up going to Germany. It’s the furthest I could go from home, but I loved it.

“It was an interesting time to be there. The Berlin Wall had just fallen. I was able to see the communist east side, the west side and the whole dichotomy of how that all transgressed. It was really, really fascinating.”

Dearing would later share those experiences and give a real-world perspective to his students. His goal was to go to college and then have a military career as an officer.

After his two years in the Army, mostly in Germany, he enrolled at Western Illinois University and the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps.

“While in college and ROTC I met my future wife, Jackie, and as we progressed through our relationship and I was in the middle of college, my priority shifted and changed. I was in the National Guard at the time. I did three years in the Army National Guard,” he said. “I was proud to have served, and it was a really good feeling for me to have been in Europe.”

Dearing later transferred to Illinois State University, where he earned his degree, married Jackie and took his first teaching job at St. Charles, a far western suburb of Chicago.

After two years at St. Charles, he was hired to teach at University High School in Normal and earned a master’s degree at ISU in the Center for Mathematics, Science and Technology in construction and energy management.

After arriving at U High, Dearing received his ag education endorsement and was instrumental in forming the FFA chapter at the school.

He retired from teaching this past spring after 28 years at U High and two years at St. Charles. He still plans to do some adjunct teaching at ISU and perhaps Heartland Community College.

Farm Home

Of course, you can’t take the farm out of the farm boy, so the Dearings started looking for some rural property. They found 30 acres of land just west of Bloomington and built their dream home in 2003 while he taught and she worked at Country Financial.

“We bought it originally just kind of as recreation property,” he said, noting their dual income, no kids. “We were DINKs, so we bought this property. It was a cornfield with a creek along the edge and a few bigger trees, but other than that it was literally just production land.

“I had the vision that we wanted a big house, we wanted to entertain. I liked to shoot guns, have four-wheelers and all that stuff.”

The Dearings hand-planted 5,000 native trees and shrubs through a U.S. Department of Agriculture grant program as part of a conservation wind break, prairie restoration, riparian buffer along the creek and reforestation project on the highly erodible land that was previously corn and soybeans. That was the beginning of Dearing Country Farms.

Heartbreak Part One

After designing and building their dream home, Jackie became pregnant with twin boys. Unfortunately, due to pre-term labor, they lost them in November 2004.

“After the loss, we very much wanted to start a family and in 2006 Lauren was born. At that time, we decided Jackie was going to stop working at Country Financial and dedicate her time to being a full-time mother, but we still needed a source of income,” Dearing said.

“So, we were trying to think, how could she be a stay-at-home mom? We still want to have a family. She worked a Country Financial at the time and we said, what can we do? Well, let’s get some chickens. We’ll start selling some eggs. We talked to some friends who were in agriculture.”

They wanted to grow things naturally, so they turned to the USDA Organic Program and Certified Naturally Grown process to use as guides for their farming practices.

“We got 300 hens in the spring of 2006. We started raising those from chicks and started selling eggs at the farmers market with the plan that it was going to help her be a stay-at-home mom as we started,” Dearing said.

They designed and built a brooder house and a layer house. Growing them cage-free and on pasture, feeding them organic and non-GMO feed, they started selling eggs at the Downtown Bloomington Farmers’ Market.

“Soon demand swelled and we expanded to another layer house and began selling at local stores and to restaurants. Customers began asking us for more products and we obliged,” Dearing said.

“First expanding to no-chemical produce and then to meat chickens and turkeys, then to beef cattle and finally goats and sheep. We planted fruit trees, berries and a variety of shrubs to later harvest for additional products and a two-acre vegetable garden, all with no herbicides, pesticides or synthetic fertilizers.”

During that time frame, their son, Ethan, was born in 2008, and son, Peyton, was born in 2017.

Heartbreak Part Two

The family experienced another tragedy in September 2018 when their dream home was destroyed by fire.

“It was a total loss and we had to start all over again. We were able to use the same foundation, certified and everything to do that. We rebuilt it and are still process of finishing. I have the front porch yet had to do and some other things,” Dearing said.

“In the meantime, the farm kept going. It’s just the priority was getting the family back into a house.”

More Diversification

Raising a broad range of food from meat to fruit provided income diversity, but the Dearings hope to expand their on-farm offerings and step-up the sustainability piece of the operation with the creation of the Pioneer and Sustainability AgriLearning Center.

“One of the big plans we have for the farm is we just got a grant, and I’m not quite sure how much I can talk about it yet. The plan is to refurbish our machine shed into a food hub,” he said. “It’s a pretty significant grant with a certified kitchen hopefully that we’ll be putting in.

“Aside from the food side and the food hub, I’ve also started AgriLearning. With my teaching experience, my ag experience, my military experience, combining all those together to make an AgriLearning farm, if you will, and offer classes.

“I hope in the future to be hiring some veterans. Also, the elderly is one of my outreach focuses with this big culture piece that I want to put in here.

“While producing eggs, being a food hub, I want to start doing more of the classes and the teaching out here. That’s kind of the future where we’re headed.”

They will continue to have a stand at the farmers market.

Classes offered at the AgriLearning Center included primitive and pioneer food preservation, cooking and heating; intro to ag; livestock, orchard, berries, jams and jellies; composting; woodworking; and ecology and biodiversity; among others.

“We started that just in the last couple of years. I’ve done a few classes, just kind of piloting it and pushing it out there a little bit, but with my retirement, there’s been a lot on my plate. So, I pulled back until I get the machine shed in place and then I’ll have a better venue to be doing some of those things along with the purpose of having a food hub,” Dearing said.

“My plan is to be able to support other regenerative, sustainable or organic farms or just people. It doesn’t even have to be an established farm, but a place where I can purchase some of their products as long as they were grown along those manners and then incorporate those into value-added product, be able to get that shipped out to food deserts or other food areas where it’s needed.

“That’s kind of my goal of all that and the other side of that is the AgriLearning that will just kind of follow.

“I am looking more for grants for that on the side, too, in the future once this is done this next year. After that, maybe trying to expand that AgriLearning and do summer camps. I just don’t really know where it’s going to land.”

Veterans Outreach

Dearing continues to support his fellow veterans through opportunities on his farm and with organizations.

He helped establish the Farmer Veteran Coalition’s Illinois Chapter and was active in establishing the Illinois Homegrown by Heroes Illinois Products program.

The specialized Homegrown by Heroes logo and label denote farm products grown and raised by military veterans or active-duty service members. The packaging lets consumers know they are supporting farmers and veterans.

For his efforts, Dearing was named the 2022 Homegrown by Heroes Farmer Veteran of the Year at the Illinois State Fair.

“I was working with the Farmer Veteran Coalition early on, and I kind of pulled back from it a little bit as I got super busy the last couple years. Now that I’m retired, I plan to do more with them, as well as outreach here with the AgriLearning Center and trying to have meet-ups and do different things with the local veterans,” he said.

“Also, It’d like to especially talk to even new veterans that are coming out of the service. Ag is an awesome way to use some of the skills and the mindset that you had in the military.

“There’s that whole concept of grit, adversity and being outside in the elements. Veterans are great and they’ve experienced a lot of those things and are pretty resilient.

“So, showing them that ag is a possibility is a neat thing. I hope to do more with that in the organization, as well as other organizations, American Legion, AMVETS, any of those.

“With that AgriLearning Center, if we can start getting some of those things established and set, I think then more people will see the value in it and it’ll grow. It’ll continue to grow. That’s my goal.

“These ideas I have in my head is just a matter of money and time to get it all together.”