Egg farm comes to Tiffin

Tiffin residents could soon have access to more local, free-range organic eggs. Local man, John Bolte wears a lot of hats and is soon to add more to the stack. Right now, he is a husband, a father of two, with another on the way, a co-owner of wedding venue, Arlington Acres, with a full-time corporate job by day and a farmer by night and is now working towards bringing a large-scale free-range egg farm to Tiffin with the help of an undisclosed egg distributor. Bolte, a numbers man, has been interested in building a barn since approximately 2018 but has always been concerned by the financial input and output of it. If he invested in a barn, what would the financial return be? "Having a full-time job, if I'm going to do it, I've got to make sure the cash flows," Bolte said later saying that with economic or environmental pressures, it was hard for young farmers to not only get started in the industry but also be competitive. After not being impressed with the projected earnings for a while, he later said that because of a recent bird flu epidemic that has put strain on current egg producers, he found his opening. Earlier this year, he was approached by an egg distributor who was looking to help Bolte finance the project, a mutually beneficial agreement allowing the egg company to sell more eggs and Bolte to have access to fertilizer for his crops. "Like anybody else in agriculture, we're always looking for ways to diversify our revenue streams," Bolte said. But he also has hopes that his efforts would keep his children in the area and possibly give them an opportunity to stay in the county. "...I am constantly looking at ways that, as my children grow up, hopefully, I can keep them in Seneca County and have them come back to the farm." While Bolte says his business partner is his wife, Sarah, he also said he was approached by a "brand that you can buy in grocery stores in Tiffin or Findlay today that is the brand behind it… I can't borrow the money to build this building or build this barn or put the birds in the barn without a contract on the backside," Bolte said. When a large egg producer gets involved, the public gets excited and that's not always a good thing. With recent concerns about factory farming, Bolte maintains that will not be the case here. Though the project is still in the semi-early stages, he believes there is plenty of incentive to be certain the chickens are well cared for. In total, the project will bring in approximately 124,000 birds total which will be split between two separate barns that will be built approximately five miles south of Tiffin on 40 acres of land. About 90% of this land will be pasture. Bolte plans to follow all federal USDA and state guidelines for CAFF facilities to ensure the eggs are certified organic and free-range. When asked about practices being put in place to ensure the birds were cared for, Bolte also said there is an incentive to treat the chickens well because "we get paid based on how many eggs these birds lay," he said. He also believes the barn will not create a smell for landowners surrounding the property with built-in ventilation that provides proper airflow. The manure produced by the chickens will also not be in the barn for more than 24 hours and will be shunted off to a second barn that will also have ventilation. "I'm building this on my property. I don't want an eyesore of a smell either," he said. He later said he picked a sparsely populated area of the county for a reason. If all goes to plan, Bolte hopes to have birds on the property by early autumn of next year during the prime of their egg-laying cycle. The birds will come to him at approximately 10 weeks old and will stay for about a year and a half when their egg production starts to dwindle. After that, he said he has not asked the question of what happens to the chickens after they are no longer producing eggs. "I think we can all use our imagination," he said, going on to say that with a career in the animal feed industry, he is amazed that there is no waste. Everything has a purpose. Bolte said that his family has always had ties to agriculture, but he didn't appreciate it as a career path until he was nearing the end of his time in high school. He believes he may not have had the agricultural opportunities without his generational ties to the practice. "The opportunities that I have in agriculture are due to the hard work of my grandparents, aunts, uncles and parents," Bolte said. He started out his time in college studying mechanical engineering but quickly pivoted to agriculture after spending a summer in a factory. He earned an agricultural business degree from OSU, which is where he met his wife. Despite being so busy already with a family, a full-time job, a farmer and a soon-to-be chicken farmer, Bolte said that at some point he would also like to open a winery, but doesn't have any definite plans in place yet. But his career and life haven't strayed very far from agriculture and he doesn't think he ever will. Farming is in his blood. "There's some days I wish I didn't do it," he said. "But there's something that keeps me going back to it."