By age eight, Jenny Rhodes knew that she wanted to be a farmer. She grew up on a grain farm, working and driving tractors since she was a young girl and she wanted these experiences to remain a part of her life into adulthood.  

Going at it alone

By her mid-thirties, Jenny had achieved her goal of becoming a farmer. She and her husband had been farming together for years when he decided to leave their marriage, but Jenny wasn’t going to let this truncate her dream. She set out to find financing for her farm herself. Her first stop, a commercial bank, wouldn’t make her a loan unless her parents co-signed with her. Jenny, having seven years of farming experience, decided to look elsewhere for a lender with whom she could maintain her independence. That’s when she found Farm Credit.

Farm Credit was there to help

Mid Atlantic Farm Credit has been, and continues to be, supportive of Jenny and her operation, Deerfield Farm located in Centreville, MD, since 1995. Jenny said, “There are always good times and bad in every farming operation and that’s what sets Farm Credit apart from other banks. Local banks are in the ag industry, but then when things get bad, they say, ‘oh nope, we don’t want to do that.’”

Farm diversity

Jenny also chose Farm Credit because of their support of all different types of farms. She said, “Farm Credit is not only about conventional farming, but also about really stretching to see what else is out there.” Funding a diversity of agriculture is important in Maryland because there are a great variety of farms across the state. Jenny said, “We don’t live in just a corn, wheat and soybean state like the Mid-West. I tell people we’re like the Mini-United States, we have the coast to the mountains and that’s a lot of different farming.”