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Preserving Portage County
Farmer turned singersongwriter
…and thousands of miles of waterways
By Sara Welch
sara@farmanddairy.com
Jeff Corle’s latest album talks high and lows of being a dairy farmer By Liz Partsch
Jeff Corle singing at Briar Brook Barn’s Autumn Splendor on Oct. 14. Corle performed covers and original songs from his latest album ‘Farm Animal.’
NEW CASTLE, Pa. — It’s pouring down rain behind the barn doors at Briar Brook Barn’s Autumn Splendor as the sound of raindrops on the tin roof mixes with the folksy strumming of Jeff Corle’s guitar. As interested customers roam through vendor booths, Corle belts out “I can get used to not working every day, and I can get used to not needing to bail hay. And I can get used to a job off the farm, but I will never get used to this empty barn.” For Corle, pursuing music wasn’t so much a challenge as was leaving behind his family’s generations-long dairy farm he desperately loved. Now, as a traveling musician, his latest album speaks of the experiences, lessons learned and heartbreak that came with being a dairy farmer. Fourth generation. Corle grew up on a dairy farm outside of Windber, Pennsylvania in Somerset County. Growing up, he played the guitar and wrote songs which led him to pursue songwriting professionally in Nashville, Tennessee after graduating high school. However, several years later in 2008, Corle felt homesick and moved back to the farm. “I learned how to write songs in Nashville, but the farm gave me something to write about,” Corle said.
(Liz Partsch photo)
epartsch@farmanddairy.com
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Corle and his father ran the farm together for nearly a decade until his father died in 2018. He inherited the farm and became the fourth-generation dairy farmer in his family. After taking over operations, Corle decided to start bottling and selling his own milk. In order to do so, he reduced his cows from a herd of 40 to 12. For two years, operations went well. He was processing, selling and delivering his milk to 14 local stores in his area. However, in 2020 things started to change when costs and inflation skyrocketed. Alongside high costs, Corle couldn’t compete with big dairy farm prices and was no longer able to finance a full-time employee. In March 2022, he made the tough decision to close down his farm and sell his cows. “You feel like you’re letting everybody down, your family, your ancestors,” Corle said. “There’s a line in ‘Empty Barn’ that says ‘I wish I didn’t have to be the one.’ That means I wish I didn’t have to be the one to close it down and bring it to an end.”
GARRETTSVILLE, Ohio — Sitting on his Kubota lawn tractor looking out over 325 acres of rolling meadows and forests with stretches of Eagle Creek and Silver Creek weaving through the landscape, Stan Carlisle debated what to say next. “I still enjoy it. It’s a refuge to get away from it all. This has been home for 69 years for me,” he said. On a sunny afternoon, early in October, Carlisle shared the story of his family farm. The farm’s history stretches back to 1913 when his grandfather bought and combined three farms. It continues through his father’s dedicated dairy farming days, pushes past the difficult decision to stop milking and ends up at Eagle Creek Greenway Preserve. “Looking back we should have had more of a conversation about
In its third year, Trail Lake Park’s meadow restoration project is just starting to hit its peak with a variety of hardier perennials blooming. (Sara Welch photo)
what we wanted to do about it instead of saying ‘I don’t want to milk cows anymore’ but, again, that’s the decision that was made at that time. We’re living with it. We’re moving on,” Carlisle said. The Portage Park District purchased Hillbrook Farm from Carlisle and his siblings in 2021, giving them an opportunity to preserve their family’s farmland in what is now Eagle Creek Greenway Preserve. At the time, the farm spanned about 400 acres, the land was being used to grow crops and it was returning a little bit of oil revenue. Carlisle and his sister, Jane Hill, had originally discussed selling off the back 50 acres of land. However, Christine Craycroft, the executive director of the Portage Park District, wanted to preserve the entire property. Eagle Creek Greenway Preserve. Since she started at the
Portage Park District as one of only two employees in 1996, Craycroft has become somewhat of a master at finding and preserving high-value properties, connecting communities and conserving natural resources in Portage County and beyond. (Continued on Page A11)
I learned how to write songs in Nashville, but the farm gave me something to write about
(Continued on Page A5)
Volume 110 - No. 06 | Four Sections ©LYLE Ptg. & Pub. Co.
All About Grazing..........................A6 Antique Collector.........................B13 Around the Table.........................A19 Auction Calendar...........................B1 A Wrangler’s Reckless Writings....C4 Classified.......................................C6 Comfortably Dumb......................B11
Commodities.................................A6 Crossword/Sudoku.....................A16 Dairy Excel...................................A12 Dirt on Conservation.....................A3 Eliza Blue.......................................A7 Equine Calendar............................C3 Farm and Food File.......................A4
FFA News....................................A18 Hazard A Guess...........................B14 Judith Sutherland..........................A4 Kids Page.....................................B43 Kovels..........................................B13 Kymberly Foster Seabolt..............B1 Markets........................................A13
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People..........................................A10 Religion........................................A17 Scholarships..................................B3 Tami Gingrich................................C3 Truck & Tractor Pulls.....................C3 Vacation With Us.........................B32 Word Search..................................C4