
Kent County, Michigan, is the kind of place where everyone seems to know everyone. It is also the place where Jim Kober grew up helping on the family pig farm. His grandparents established the family farm originally as an apple orchard in the early 1900s.
“I grew up there and I know all the neighbors. Many of them I'm related to one way or another,” shared Kober, current owner of Alpine Pork. “My wife and kids think it's weird that I can drive 10 or 15 miles away from the farm and say, oh, that's a distant cousin or a kid I grew up with.”
Kober left the small community he grew up in after high school when he went away to college. He spent a majority of his career as a swine veterinarian and eventually purchased the farm from his father and named it Alpine Pork. After almost 35 years working as a veterinarian, he sold his veterinary practice and made farming his full-time job.
“I have always done food animal medicine and was around livestock farms, and I got so I wanted to buy the farm and keep it in the family,” said Kober. “I just enjoy being outside. I like working with livestock, I like being my own boss, and I really like taking care of livestock.”
Alpine Pork has space for around 4,200 pigs and leases that space to a local producer. After buying the farm, Kober and his wife considered purchasing solar panels to help produce energy for the farm, but they were too expensive at that time.
“My wife and I have a sustainable mindset,” said Kober. “We've always recycled because we don't understand if you can reuse something why you would put it in the landfill. We feel kind of the same way about energy. Why should we be digging coal and bringing it by train loads to the coal plant when we could use solar and wind.”
Over time, solar panel prices dropped, and the cost made more sense for the business. After researching different programs available to help pay for solar on his farm, Kober eventually applied for a USDA Rural Development Rural Energy for America Program grant to help pay for a solar array to generate 70 percent of the farm’s energy.
“I wouldn't have been able to do that if I didn't get the REAP grant,” said Kober. “I would not have been able to pay for it in the five years that I have left at the farm.”
Kober plans to sell the farm in a few years when he retires and shared he wouldn’t be surprised if one of his cousins wanted to purchase the farm and keep it in the family. Until then, he can enjoy everything he loves about farming, including the benefits of his new solar panels.
The new solar array at Alpine Pork not only saves money on energy expenses, but Kober shared he believes the solar panels also help the environment and create a more energy secure future for the farm. He lives near a large coal power plant that creates dust that settles on his outside furniture.
“There're supposed to be closing the coal plant a little less than a year from now, and that's still their biggest plant in the state,” said Kober. “Nobody quite knows where that power's going to come from in the future.”
One thing for sure for Alpine Pork in the future, part of its energy will come from the Michigan sunshine.
To learn more about Rural Development grants and loans, visit the programs page.