Noah, Carter, and Ian Zimmerman are keeping a family tradition alive at the 108th edition of the Pennsylvania Farm Show.
The three brothers are the fourth generation of their mother’s side of the family to show animals at the annual event. Father Jared, mother Heidi and the three brothers live in the 300 block of Distillery Road in Newmanstown.
“Agriculture runs deep and it’s in your blood,” said Heidi. “And so I think that’s a testimony to, it’s a family thing and it’s fun to see that legacy passed down through the generations. We appreciate being able to support agriculture, to showcase agriculture, to give the public a glimpse of where their food comes from and how hard farmers work to make that happen.
“So yeah, the farm show runs deep in our blood.”
After bringing their crossbred market hogs to the complex on Friday and arriving home in the wee hours of Saturday morning, the brothers, along with their mother and father, were back in Harrisburg by early Saturday afternoon to prepare their animals to show on Sunday.
Shortly after arriving at the show after driving through a snowstorm, each brother – along with a neighborhood friend, John Stauffer, who also has a hog at the show – brought their individual animal to the wash bay to remove the grime and put a shine on their animal’s coats.
Carter, 13, said he only has a hog at the show but has an interest in raising dairy beef cows in the future.
“We’ve been doing this at the county fair and here at the Farm Show,” Carter said. “I just like working with animals and how it gives me more responsibility.”
The oldest Zimmerman son, Noah, 15, said he didn’t have a roadmap when he was the first Zimmerman brother to enter the showring, but he’s shared what he’s learned with his brothers.
“One of the things that I didn’t do my first couple years is spend a lot of time with my pigs,” said Noah. “If you do that, they will listen to you more. They usually listen a lot better just because they’re more comfortable with you being around them more often.”
Ian, 11, is a man of few words but says he gets excited and not nervous when he’s showing his animal before a crowd – with the audience at the Farm Show being larger than those at the Lebanon Area Fair, the two primary places where the Zimmermans show their animals.
Bringing their hogs to the agricultural extravaganza to show and then sell is the culmination of a short-lived but productive relationship with their animals. The brothers obtained their piglets in October weighing about 70 pounds and in a few short months raised them to weigh around 270 to 280 pounds, meaning their animals gain about 2 pounds per day while they are in their care.
“We work with some local pig breeders that have really helped us learn feeding programs and how to grow them so that they look their best and present their best,” says Jared. “So we buy good genetics, which helps, and then you learn how to feed them right. We’ve learned a lot about that through the years.”
The 16-year-old Stauffer, who lives about 10 minutes from the Zimmerman family home, said while a friendly camaraderie exists, there is more to showing than being better than your friends. Stauffer is good friends with the family and attends the same home-school program as the Zimmerman brothers.
“It is a friendly competition if you end up with the ring with these guys, but I think it’s more of trying to beat your own score, trying to do better than you did last year,” said Stauffer.
The friendly competition only comes into play if they were to place first or second and their animals would happen to be in the same weight class in later judging rounds. The official weigh-in that would determine the weight class their animals are to compete in was set to happen later in the day on Saturday.
The showing tradition is important to Heidi and family with representation at the annual event for about half of its existence. She believes the family started showing at the farm show in the 1970s.
Just as important to their parents is the appreciation the boys are getting by learning to care for animals and working at their grandfather Calvin Zimmerman’s farm several days a week.
“Jared’s dad still has about 175, 200 acres right behind us and they are running a dairy operation’” said Heidi. “My kids are over there four mornings a week milking cows before school. My husband’s oldest brother runs a crop and custom farming operation, so my oldest son has an opportunity there to be running equipment and working for him.”
While their career paths are still further down the road, Jared and Heidi are content knowing their sons are building a possible future in agriculture via the experiences they obtain on the farm and through 4-H, which Heidi says is a valuable training tool.
“I think for me it just helps them learn responsibility and ownership of their own project,” said Jared about the value of the county’s 4-H program. “They can see the success of it, manage costs and really at the end of it, see if there’s a profit. I think that helps to prepare them for real life or as they manage a job, work for somebody or own their own business in the future.
“I think 4-H helps prepare them for that.”
“I don’t know what the future holds for them, but they all seem to have an interest in agriculture,” said Heidi. “We’re just grateful that they have an opportunity to be able to explore that and possibly step into it when they get older.”
For now, however, the ZImmermans are content for the opportunity to enter the ring and keep a time-honored family tradition alive at the Pennsylvania Farm Show.
“It’s about friendships, making new friends and connections,” said Heidi. “I think it’s fun to see our kids creating memories and stepping into some of the same things that we got to experience growing up which we just appreciated and helped launch us into who we are today. I think it’s awesome that our kids have that opportunity too.”
If you go: The 2024 Pennsylvania Farm Show runs from Saturday, Jan. 6 through Saturday, Jan. 13 at the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex and Expo Center in Harrisburg. Admission is free. Parking is $15 per vehicle.
Hours, a daily schedule of events, maps, and much more information to help visitors enjoy the show can be found at farmshow.pa.gov under 2024 Farm Show.
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