From the Air Force to Full-Time Farming
Ryan Sullivan is no stranger to hard work. After spending over 25 years in the U.S. Air Force and South Dakota Air National Guard as an aircraft technician, he and his family were ready to set their sights on a new mission. Using the skills, determination, and discipline he learned in the military, Ryan and his family have established a thriving operation where every member of the Sullivan family has an important role to play.
Ryan grew up in Mitchell, South Dakota, and was stationed at Ellsworth Air Force base not far from Rapid City, South Dakota after completing basic training. As a technician, he worked on rebuilding military aircraft, larger transport, and small commercial aircraft. Throughout his career with the military, he completed six tours across Iraq, Afghanistan, and Jordan conducting technical aviation training.
It was 2010 when Ryan and his wife Jackie, who was expecting their first child, began to research eating healthier. “We started learning more about food, and we would joke about what we were going to feed this kid! We knew we had to get smarter about it,” Ryan remarked. A humble vegetable garden and a few egg-laying chickens later, Ryan and Jackie were ready to get even more involved with where their food was coming from.
Sullivan Family Farm is proudly veteran owned.
Forging their Future
In 2011, Ryan and Jackie attended a Farm Beginnings course in South Dakota while he was home from deployment. With their second child on the way, they knew they wanted to build a sustainable lifestyle for their growing family. The Farm Beginnings course taught them the basics of owning a farm-centric small business and gave them the confidence they needed to take the leap and start looking for property. With Jackie’s parents back home in Wisconsin, it seemed like the perfect place to plant their roots and raise their family. Ryan was deployed to Jordan at the time, so searching for the perfect property was a challenging venture but they didn’t give up on the vision they had for their future and their family.
It was late 2013 when Ryan and Jackie purchased their dream property on five acres. Not long after they packed up the life they knew in South Dakota and moved to Manitowoc, Wisconsin with their now three children. While there, Ryan worked for the Air National Guard as a part-time guardsman before retiring from the military in October of 2021.
“Everything we’d been doing over the years had been building towards being able to purse farming full time,” he explained. Ryan now works full-time on the farm with the help of his wife Jackie, who also works part time as a physical therapist.
The Importance of Farm Fresh Food
Sullivan Family Farm has a diverse range of offerings such as a wide variety of seasonal fruits and vegetables, free-range eggs, pasture-raised meat birds, and grass-fed lamb and beef. In addition, they offer weekly Farm Boxes which include a mixture of in-season fruits and vegetables. The farm’s products are all-natural and use organic practices as the Sullivan’s don’t use any pesticides or herbicides on their crops.
“We want to leave our little piece of Earth better than when we found it when we’re gone,” says Ryan. “Since the beginning, our focus has been on providing families in our community with natural, healthy foods.”
What started as a single refrigerator in the corner of their garage and a hand-painted sign advertising “eggs for sale” has transformed into a bustling self-service stand on the farm’s property. The Sullivan’s also serve as a rotating vendor for Seasonal Harvest, LLC, a local food co-op as well as a woman-owned pop-up market in the Green Bay area. But their true passion lies in providing farm fresh food to local schools, restaurants, and Grow it Forward, a nonprofit organization based in Manitowoc that partners with the Local Food Purchase Assistance (LFPA) program to provide access to healthy food to those in need.
“One of the biggest ‘pinch-me’ moments I’ve had since farming full time was when we were able to load a full pallet of food onto a 53-foot semi-truck that was headed to a local food bank,” said Ryan. “That was a huge accomplishment for us. It’s important to us that we are involved in these programs and can continue to provide fresh food to our local community.”
Sullivan Family Farm offers a wide variety of seasonal produce, as well as fresh from the farm products like their all-natural honey.
More Than a Financial Partner
The farm’s success didn’t come without quite a bit of learning, growing, and trial and error, however. Sullivan Family Farm became an established business in June of 2020, right in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. “That’s when we saw an explosion in the number of customers we were getting, and that also came with a new set of challenges on how we would produce a larger volume of food,” Ryan acknowledged.
That’s when GreenStone became a resource for Ryan. “Initially working with GreenStone gave us the capital we needed to step up to the next level of what we wanted to do,” he explained. “GreenStone has provided us more than just the capital we needed. They’ve heavily invested in us and our success. They were the exact thing that we needed as far as training and mentoring goes.”
As a recipient of GreenStone’s CultivateGrowth grant, Sullivan Family Farm was able to gain the knowledge needed to add more hoop houses for growing seasonal produce to their property and establish a 40-acre plot of land they rent for their beef cattle and sheep.
In addition, Ryan has attended GreenStone’s annual CultivateGrowth conference twice, and even spoke on the panel of young, beginning, and small farmer experts at the 2023 conference.
“The most remarkable thing about Ryan is his commitment to continuous learning and sharing the knowledge he’s gained over the years with others who are in the same position he used to be in”, says Joe Schlies, financial services officer at GreenStone. “It’s clear Ryan sees the importance in mentorship and learning from others and wants to share the passion he has for producing healthy foods with others who want to do the same.”
As for the future of Sullivan Family Farm? “Our hope is that we can grow sustainably. We want to get even better, and more efficient at what we’re doing now,” says Ryan. “I say to anyone and everyone, GreenStone has been an excellent connection for us, and they have always been invested in our success.”
Ryan Sullivan stands with Financial Services Officer Joe Schlies who has supported them in finding continued education and resources through GreenStone's CultivateGrowth program.
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