Hello world!

Hello World! I want to take this space to tell you a little about myself (Ryan) and what we do at the farm. My Name is Ryan McKibben and I am a Tallahassee native. I was born here and have spent the majority of my life here. I had a brief 6 year stint in the United State Army as a radio technician, a radar repairer, and finally, a career counselor. I like to say that I enjoyed every minute of my military career, but there are some times I am not so fond of. Buy me a beer and I will tell you all about it. The majority of my time in the military was spent with the 3rd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division stationed at Ft. Benning, GA. I was deployed to Iraq twice and not a day goes by that my deployments don’t affect my life and what happens here on the farm.

As you can see in the picture above, our farm is a wide-open space with some of the most beautiful sunsets you’ve ever seen. I have been farming this land since 2018, but we only incorporated in 2022. Before that, I had been a gardener and raised some chickens at our home. I also completed a veterans to agriculture program in 2019 before becoming an official farmer. In that time I have seen and practiced several styles of agriculture and in many senses, I am still honing what we practice at our farm. I am also married to a beautiful farm girl who spent the summers of her youth on her grandparent’s farm in Tennille, AL. Through visiting them and getting to help with chores like harvesting honey and picking blackberries, I fell in love with the idea that I could have a life where I didn’t have to depend on a global supply chain to feed me. I also didn’t like the idea that businesses that owned farms were willing to use whatever method they could for larger harvest. That type of money-first approach is what has led to harmful chemicals making their way into almost everything we eat. 

That’s why at Sunshine & Sledgehammer Farm, we use as few chemicals as possible. That means pulling weeds by hand instead of spraying them, attracting predatory wasps and other insects to control pests, and never spraying anything on our products that will be ingested. I would rather pick every single caterpillar off of the plants than spray something that might end up in the mouth of one of my children. And that, folks, is our whole philosophy to food – if I wouldn’t feed it to my babies, I shouldn’t sell it to you. 

I’m not alone in this ideology either. Many small to medium local farms feel the same way. As a member of various farming organizations, I can tell you that almost all family-owned farms have a desire to make America’s food system the best in the world without harming anyone.