Growing with Equipment & Harvesting Memories with Rader Family Farms
Where can you enjoy a good time with the family, teach your kids about agriculture, and wander through a corn maze, toting a pumpkin back to the car? Rader Family Farms serves the Bloomington-Normal, Illinois, and surrounding community with festive and educational fall experiences on their fourth-generation working farm.
Brothers Adam and Arin Rader sat down with Birkey’s to talk about their grain operations as well as the pumpkin farm, which is open to the public.
“As we’ve grown, we’ve grown equipment,” Arin Rader shares. “The planting window gets smaller every year, and we’re always looking for what will get us the yield advantage. Scaling up equipment has been key to getting better yields.”
Arin says service is also a major factor for running their farm—both on the grain operations side and the specialty crops featured at their family agritainment farm. “Birkey’s in Bloomington is close to us and they are always willing to get parts for us or techs out in a hurry, in case something goes wrong. They do everything they can to keep us up and running.” Even this planting season, a hydraulic pump went out on the first day of planting. “Birkey’s got it fixed quickly… getting the service fast is huge, because timing is huge in ag.”
“For a while, we saw the push toward big, bigger, bigger equipment; but now, we’re considering faster and smaller for our next purchase,” Adam Rader explains. “We could go to a 16-row planter for high-speed flexibility and plant at the same level or more, faster. We definitely see the potential, but we don’t have a set equipment schedule, like I know some farms do. We like to purchase equipment on an as-needed basis.”
On the pumpkin farm side, the Raders are focused on giving them 40 to 50 square feet to grow and creating a system where their equipment matches their planting style. “There’s a very small planting window for pumpkins, and it’s hard to manage weeds,” Arin says. “We do no-till with a cover crop for the pumpkin field, planting pumpkins into the cover crop.” Other specialty crops planted include zinnias, mums, and a field of sunflowers.
As farmers, the Raders realize how much people enjoy and appreciate an opportunity to experience the farm and country life. The agritainment business, Rader Family Farms, began in 2009 and it allows guests a unique opportunity to connect with and learn about agriculture.
Birkey’s has been a sponsor of Rader Family Farms for more than 8 years. “Birkey’s has worked with us to find generations of tractors for an exhibit showing kids and their parents the different workhorse tractors and horsepower required over the generations… we even display the original sticker prices, to see the change between Grandpa’s tractor and the grandson’s tractor, because the progression really shows the capital investment required and how fast equipment has evolved.”
Adam and Arin consider their Case IH Magnum 305 an extra special piece of equipment, because it was their first purchase on their own. “It was our purchase to get bought in to the family farm,” Adam says.
Adam and Arin’s father, Lynn Rader, and his six younger siblings were raised on the farm when it was a Guernsey dairy. Their parents, Glenn and Margaret Rader, moved onto the farm when they married in 1945. The family grew up milking cows and showing them in 4-H. In 1971 the cows were sold after Glenn’s death. Since then, Lynn and his wife Linda have been grain farmers, and Adam and Arin farm with them as well. “The generations of changing leadership are so important,” Adam elaborates. “Our legacy is built by relationships. We don’t own a ton of the land we farm—working with the landowners is so important. Relationships are everything to this business.”
The brothers both have their own strengths they focus on; for example, Adam does the marketing, while Arin maintains equipment and handles purchasing, in addition to the duties they share.
“It’s been fun,” Adam says. “You do what you can every year. We were taught by our parents not to overdo it and work within your means. Farming is unpredictable, so being prepared and saving for a rainy day is our mindset. Birkey’s has grown with us and they help keep us rolling. We harvest more than crops on our farm—we say we harvest memories.”
Rader Family Farms opens to the public for their fall season on September 11, 2021, and will be open Wednesday through Sundays as well as Columbus Day. The fun starts even sooner, though—catch their Sunflower Festival Days in late August and their Farmstead Fair in early September. Learn more on their website: https://raderfamilyfarms.com/
