The Story of an Athlete-Turned-Farmer

Jacquelyne Leffler loves telling the story of agriculture. The first time she shared her experience farming with others, she was the one who had several aha moments.

While on the track and field team at Kansas State University, Jacquelyne invited several of her teammates to visit her family’s farm in Americus near Emporia. As they drove past the cattle, her teammates asked Jacquelyne if she named them. She realized they thought of them as pets. Later while touring the barn, she showed them the cornfields. They asked how long it took to pick the corn.

“At first I didn’t understand what they meant,” she said. “Then I realized they thought we handpicked all of our crops. It was fascinating to me that people who had driven by crops on the interstate didn’t know how they were grown. For me, that was really eye-opening.”

She loves sharing that part of her life, but her sights weren’t always set on farming. Although she was always involved on her family’s farm growing up, she loved sports and got a scholarship to throw shot put, discus and hammer on an NCAA Division I track and field team in college.

“Even though I was at one of the biggest agricultural colleges in the United States, I never thought of agriculture as something that I wanted to pursue. I wanted to coach,” she said. “But all of the connections I made at K-State were somehow connected to agriculture.”

Jacquelyne felt like God placed those connections in her life. About three years after she graduated, her grandfather broke his hip. The family needed help on the farm and she was there. It seemed natural to her to move into that role.

“The next thing I knew I was on our family farm and working next to my dad,” she said. “I can’t really say I could have planned it out any better with the timing.”

The Lefflers have a backgrounding lot, meaning they feed grown cattle.  They typically have anywhere from 1,000 to 1,500 head of cattle weighing 550 to 950 pounds. They have oversized pens to give their cattle plenty of space to roam.

They also grow corn, soybeans and wheat. They sell most of their corn, but sometimes it goes to silage, meaning the whole plant is chopped up and used as feed for their cattle. Their soybeans are processed into oil and their wheat goes to a commercial food manufacturer. Where crops and cattle end up is another part of the agriculture story Jacquelyne likes to tell.

“People see crops and think ‘food’ and don’t realize all the different by-products that come from them. It’s the same with cattle,” she said. “That education is important because agriculture touches everything.”

Agriculture has also provided Jacquelyne with some amazing friendships, most notably through Kansas Farm Bureau’s Leadership KFB program.

“I walked into a room with five strangers and a year later left with lifelong friends,” she said.

Other connections — like dating — have been a little bit trickier.

“It’s tough. You try to date somebody in agriculture and they’re just as busy as you on their farm,” she said. “Or you date somebody outside of agriculture and they think they know what hard work is and long hours are until you place them in your world. 

“It’s not the easiest thing. That’s ok. I’m super content with where I am.”

Despite some of the challenges, Jacquelyne would recommend getting into agriculture in a heartbeat.

“There’s so much opportunity in agriculture right now,” she said. “Being a millennial, my generation was the first to grow up with a cell phone and literally have the world in the palm of our hand. I think that’s what agriculture is moving toward.”

There are opportunities in technology and sustainability. There’s also a social aspect to rural life that appeals to Jacquelyne.

“I grew up in a community that’s very family-oriented. A lot of people I grew up with also farmed. We’re one big family,” she said. “You know everybody when you drive down Main Street. I think there’s something to be said for that, and the legacy, too, to know the generations that have come before me.”

There’s also something to be said for writing your own story. Jacquelyne has combined her love of farming with her passion for coaching through her business Leffler Prime Performance, which includes hand-raised beef sold direct to consumers as well as one-on-one sports coaching. What comes next remains to be seen, but Jacquelyne seems happy in her current chapter.