Love has come indoors for the cold season at Isham Family Farm. Six-foot-tall wooden letters spelling out “LOVE,” which grace a small hillside in warmer weather, currently sit in the Williston farm’s largest barn, near Mike Isham’s 1999 BMW Z3. During a recent conversation at the farm, Mike called the sporty convertible his “creemee car,” because he and his wife, Helen Weston, use it to zip away for creemees whenever they can.
Summers at the diversified 108-acre farm are busy, between pick-your-own berries, the corn maze and hosting events. But Mike sees more creemee trips in his future. The wiry, mustachioed 63-year-old, known to all as Farmer Mike, is ready to step back from running the farm that his family has owned since 1871.
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In the nearly two decades since he took over the local landmark from his parents, Ginger and David Isham, he’s been “a working fool,” Mike said. On his watch, the former dairy farm became an agritourism operation welcoming visitors year-round for sugaring, weddings with the LOVE backdrop, pumpkin patch wagon rides and cut-your-own Christmas trees.
It’s been “a good living and a good time,” Mike said, but also “hard work, lots of hours.” Showing visitors around the renovated barn, he walked gingerly to protect his bad back and acknowledged that “I’ve slowed down.”
Mike is the eldest of six who grew up milking cows in that barn. Between them, the siblings have 13 offspring, some with kids of their own.
When the extended Isham family learned in February that Mike had signed a contract to sell the farm, his pending retirement was no surprise. What shocked them was the name of the buyer: not one of two interested nephews — one of whom Mike had publicly announced as his successor about a year ago — but Dana Kamencik, the 33-year-old son of Weston, whom Mike married in 2019.
To some of Mike’s relatives, the revelation that an Isham will no longer run the fifth-generation family farm “feels like a punch in the gut,” Mike’s brother Doug told Seven Days. “Especially because there were multiple family members willing to step up and take on the legacy.”
The news spread quickly on social media, and Doug, 60, shared his dismay in a short WCAX-TV segment on February 21.
Anyone who has watched the machinations of the fictional Roys on “Succession” knows that family business transitions can be sticky. Real-life examples tend to play out behind closed doors. While the public airing of private business makes the case of Isham Family Farm unusual, it also exposes how delicate these transitions can be for the endangered category of generation-spanning Vermont farms, which are often community landmarks.
Sam Smith has worked on many family transitions over his decade as a farm business planner for the Intervale Center in Burlington. He believes that the succession of long-standing agricultural enterprises carries more baggage than other types of family business transfers.
“When you wrap it up in generations of land stewardship, connection to the land and family dynamics, it becomes really emotional,” Smith said. Over the years, he’s learned that “all families are functional and dysfunctional in their own ways.”
The LOVE letters, crafted by Jericho artist Chris Cleary, have been on Isham Family Farm since 2019, when they figured in the 60th anniversary celebration of Ginger and David, now 83 and 89, respectively.
The couple’s enduring commitment to each other and to the family’s 150-year history on the farm were celebrated in a 2021 Netflix docuseries, “My Love: Six Stories of True Love.” The Ishams represented the U.S. in an hourlong episode that followed them through 2019, painting a romantic picture of pastoral life and family gatherings on the farm.
The show didn’t shy away from the realities of aging. In one poignant moment, the couple walk through the farm’s sugar bush and David says, “This is where I want my ashes.”
A few scenes make it clear that David was starting to experience memory loss; Mike said he now needs full-time care in the couple’s farmhouse apartment. Ginger also has health issues, and Seven Days could not speak with her about the pending sale of the farm. Doug averred that his mother is “heartbroken that it’s not staying in the family.”
Done Deal
Both Doug and Mike Larson — who is married to Margie, the fourth-born Isham sibling — noted one similarity between Mike Isham’s approach to the transition and the way his parents passed the farm to him.
In 2005, Mike bought the farm after 20 years of working as a second-shift technician at the former IBM. There were no family meetings, no communication with the other siblings about the plan.
“Nobody spoke to us about it being sold or that my parents were even considering it,” Doug recalled. “They were like, ‘Well, Mike’s the oldest; we’re gonna approach him,’ and then they had a deal done. We read about it in the Williston Observer.”
Mike received a good deal, which is not unusual in intergenerational transfers, according to Smith of the Intervale Center. Larson said the arrangement was complex, but, “in the overall picture, [Mike] got the farm at about half its value.”
Mike declined to share details of the purchase. But in one scene of “My Love,” Ginger explains to an insurance agent that the couple can stay in their farm apartment rent-free because Mike “realizes that he got a deal when we sold it to him, being our oldest child … We wanted him to be successful.”
And Mike has been successful.
Although Smith of the Intervale Center has not worked with the Ishams on succession planning, in 2013 he counseled Mike on business strategy.
“He poured his heart and soul into that property,” Smith said. “He renovated the whole barn and created all these different enterprises and made it this community gathering spot. He had a really profound vision and has just worked amazingly hard.”
Despite their sorrow at losing the bloodline connection to the family farm, Doug and Larson both gave Mike credit for building a thriving enterprise and agreed that he deserves a secure retirement. They said they would not expect Mike to pass on the bargain he received when he bought the then-struggling former dairy farm, which his parents had started to diversify.
But the two men believe the deal Ginger and David gave their eldest son came with an expectation that he would prioritize passing on the farm to an Isham.
“The problem with farm families is, they are built on a legacy of trust,” Larson said, “but there’s nothing in writing.”
Jake Isham, 33 and the eldest of Doug’s four sons, told Seven Days that he and all of his cousins grew up “going over to the farm and having Ginger push us on the tire swing, playing on hay bales in the barn, doing sugar on snow and all the family holidays there.”
They had every expectation that one of them would be the next Farmer Isham, Jake said.
The extended family was looking forward to more farm reunions after learning early last year that one of Jake’s first cousins was poised to become the new owner: Jordan Isham, a 2018 West Point graduate and successful entrepreneur currently living in Tennessee.
No one would share on the record what happened to derail that plan, which had been announced in the Williston Observer in February 2023. But sources mentioned a change in price and terms. A subsequent conversation between Mike and another nephew, who declined to be named, went nowhere.
Jake said it hurts him not to be able to share the farm with his two daughters in the same way he grew up with it. “We’re just sad and heartbroken,” he said. “The farm was the spiritual center of our family.”
At the farm on March 19, Mike said the deal with Jordan — one of three offspring of his youngest brother, Tom — was scuttled by “mutual decision.” Jordan declined to speak with Seven Days.
Mike defended his decision to sell instead to his wife’s son, a Bristol native. He said he considers Kamencik “part of the family” and believes that, as cofounder of a successful local construction company, he’s well equipped to carry the farm forward.
The farmer rattled off the number of varieties of blueberries (four), raspberries (eight) and Christmas trees (seven) he’s planted over the years. “I always believe in diversity,” he said. Similarly, Mike added, a diversified farm requires a diverse management skill set, something he believes Kamencik possesses.
“The farm’s a living, breathing organism. It needs to change, evolve, grow,” Mike said. “It’s hard for these new farms to make ends meet,” he continued. “The future’s gonna require a lot of money.”
The pair would not disclose the sale price, but Kamencik said in an email that Mike approached him about buying the farm last fall and he “agreed to the asking price.”
They expect to close the deal this summer.
Crunching the Numbers
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The market value of farms can be hard to nail down, Smith said. The current Williston municipal tax rolls list the Isham farmland and buildings at $807,360. But Smith said town appraisals don’t always correspond to actual value, especially when the farm has been conserved, as the Isham farm was in 2001.
At the time of conservation, the landowner receives the difference between the lower agricultural value of their land and the higher development value. From then on, the land cannot be subdivided or sold for commercial activity other than farming, effectively reducing its resale value.
A full assessment of a farm business would likely include other assets, such as animals and equipment, and projected revenue. Factors such as sweat equity are also often involved in family farm transfers, Smith said.
Take the example of a family with four children, one of whom spends decades working alongside their parents. From the perspective of labor invested, “it may be fair for the parents to give that farm to that kid or sell it at a bargain,” Smith said. But other offspring who would stand to inherit money if that farmland sold out of the family might see it differently.
“What’s fair is not always what’s equitable,” Smith said.
Further considerations might include the older generation’s financial reserves, the tax implications of farmland transfer and the retiring farmers’ eligibility for long-term care.
Establishing a price is just one part of the transition process, which Smith said generally takes from a year to several years. He always works with the younger farmers on their strategy for supporting two generations, if needed, or diversifying, as many smaller dairy operations now do to survive.
If the next generation cannot complete a comprehensive plan, Smith said, “that’s usually a good indication that they’re not going to be successful.” But he has also seen cases where “you have kids who are very competent and have wonderful ideas that may not align with their parents’ vision for the farm.”
What’s in a Name?
During a recent tour of Isham Family Farm, Mike and Kamencik seemed to have an easy rapport. When Mike brought up the sad state of the farm’s original 19th-century sugarhouse, Kamencik said, “We can get that taken care of this summer.”
Mike said the two are in touch almost daily. “He’s always hanging around,” he joked. “I can’t get rid of him.”
Kamencik and his girlfriend plan to move into the main part of the farmhouse later this year. It boasts a beautiful open kitchen that Kamencik’s company renovated in 2019, following his mother’s design. She and Mike live in one of three apartments on the other side of the rambling building.
“Dana always wanted to own a farm,” Mike said, reiterating what Kamencik told Seven Days in his written responses. Kamencik noted that both sides of his family had farming backgrounds and his first job was picking blackberries.
“We’ll have fun working together. I get to spend somebody else’s money,” Mike said with a grin.
The fact that the new owner will not be an Isham “doesn’t bother me at all,” Mike said, after Kamencik had driven off in his Vermont Construction pickup truck. “The farm legacy is more important than the name legacy,” he said, pointing out that his parents called the property Maple Grove Farm. It was he who registered it as Isham Family Farm in 2005.
When asked whether he would continue using the Isham Family Farm name, Kamencik wrote in part: “My first priority is what’s good for the farm.”
Though it pains him, Doug Isham recognizes that Mike has the right to sell to whomever he chooses. “What really bothers us is that he wants to use the family name,” Doug said of Kamencik.
Thanks to the Netflix show, Doug continued, “The place is now internationally known as the Isham Family Farm, and to have it run by a non-Isham is, in our book, trying to commercialize and capitalize on our name.”
A name such as Farmer Mike’s Farm or even Mike Isham Farm would offend Doug less, he said. But, he emphasized, “The name of the farm is Isham Family,” which “indicates me, my sisters, my other brother, the nephews and nieces, the cousins.”
To see Isham Family Farm continue without an Isham at its helm, Doug lamented, “is a really painful time for us.”
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This post was last modified on November 29, 2024 7:10 am