Home Background Testimonials Student Programs Adult Programs Video Clips Recent Clients In The News On The Farm Contact Information	Matt and Andrea Lohr: Sowing Seeds For The Future It's hard not to smile when you met Matt and Andrea Lohr. They're the type of people who restore your faith in the future. The Lohrs reside at Valley Pike Farm near the Lacey Springs community in Rockingham County. They actively work the 250-acre farm; they have created a motivational-speaking business; and this year they received national recognition with American Farm Bureau's first-ever “Excellence in Agriculture” award. Matt, a Virginia Tech graduate, grew up on Valley Pike Farm, one of Virginia's designated “Century Farms” which have been worked by the same family for more than 100 years. Andrea is a University of Kentucky graduate and native of Fulton, Ky., where her parents were educators and operated a small farm on the Kentucky-Tennessee line. Both of the Lohrs have B.S. degrees in agricultural education, and Andrea is working toward a master's in school counseling. Matt and Andrea have long been actively involved in promoting agriculture and rural life. Matt served as state FFA president in 1990 and national FFA vice president in 1991. He currently serves on the Rockingham County School Board, is president of the Rockingham County Farm Bureau, and served three years on the Rockingham County Planning Commission before becoming a member of the school board. Andrea served as president of the Kentucky FFA in 1993, and has been appointed to a four-year term on the state board of agriculture by Gov. Mark Warner. Matt and Andrea are both actively involved in Harrisonburg Baptist Church. Matt and Andrea met at a Future Farmers of America national conference in Washington, D.C. when they were in high school. Their relationship began as friends and then they started a long-distance dating relationship in college. They became engaged in 1994 and got married in 1995. Matt and Andrea both taught after graduating from college. When the couple moved back to Matt's home farm in 1997, they began considering ways to continue using the speaking skills they had developed in their FFA work over the years and, at the same time, make some money to help support themselves. Sowing The Seeds for a Business “We decided to start our own motivational-speaking company, 'New Directions Communications,'” notes Matt. “We started out by working with local schools, FFA chapters and other types of agricultural or educational groups,” Matt adds. “The business has slowly expanded and grown. Our clientele is still about half educational groups and half agricultural groups.” The Lohrs' speaking engagements range from national convention keynote addresses to character-development training and leadership coaching. They have bookings literally all over the map. The first two weeks of June, for example, they had bookings at the Florida state FFA convention, the Virginia state 4-H Congress in Blacksburg, and the Indiana state FFA convention. In early July the Lohrs were booked for an engagement in Arizona. When their daughter, Caroline, was born in 2001, Matt and Andrea decided that they wanted to be able to better control their own schedules so that they could spend more time on the farm with Caroline. “We gave up teaching and went into the speaking business full-time,” notes Andrea. “Andrea became a stay-at-home mom,” adds Matt. “People thought we were crazy. We had a new child and we both quit our jobs to pursue something different.” Originally, Matt and Andrea almost always traveled together and did joint programs nationwide. When Caroline began getting older, however, they switched to doing more individual presentations. “Although we love speaking together, our top priority is what's best for our daughter,” notes Andrea. “That usually means one of us goes and speaks while the other stays at home.” Still, their daughter has accompanied them on many trips in the past. “She'd been in 32 states by the time she was two” Andrea says. “She's got her own frequent-flier account set up.” What is it like operating a full-time motivational-speaking company? “Full-time means we actually book engagements on average about 10 days a month,” notes Andrea, “and this can change seasonally.” “In the summer, when there's more to do on the farm, we can book fewer speaking engagements; and we can increase bookings in the colder months when there's not as much activity on the farm,” Matt explains. “The nicest thing about owning your own company is that you have much more flexibility in setting your own schedule,” Andrea adds. Much of the time not devoted to the motivational-speaking business is spent on the farm. “We earn about two-thirds of our family income from the speaking business and one-third from the farm; but we spend about two-thirds of the time working on the farm and a third working on the speaking engagements,” says Matt. Winners of “Excellence in Agriculture” Award As winners of the first-ever American Farm Bureau Federation Young Farmer and Rancher Excellence in Agriculture Award, the couple was honored Jan. 20 at the AFBF's 84th annual convention in Tampa, Fla. Their prize was a 2003 Dodge Ram Quad Cab 4X4 pickup truck. The Farm Bureau Excellence in Agriculture award is designed to recognize young producers who do not derive the majority of their income from an agricultural operation they own, but who actively contribute and grow through their involvement in Farm Bureau and agriculture. Participants were judged on their involvement in agriculture, their leadership ability, and participation in Farm Bureau and other organizations. The Lohrs won the Virginia Farm Bureau Federation Excellence in Agriculture Award in December 2002, having prepared an extensive profile of their speaking and farming operations and their other activities in their community. “We just started dreaming about how wonderful it would be to have a chance at this,” Matt said. As finalists in the Excellence in Agriculture program, the couple made a 15-minute presentation to a panel of judges. “It just feels good to get to this point,” Andrea adds. The Lohrs noted in their presentation that their speaking venture was not an immediate success and that they saw some lean years as they built their skills and contacts. “Matt and Andrea are among the brightest and best of Virginia's young farmers, and we are extremely proud of them,” said VFBF President Bruce L. Hiatt. “We're also grateful to them for all the time they have dedicated to encouraging youth, particularly those in farming communities.” Naturally, the award has been a boom to the Lohr's speaking-engagement business. “Since then, we've been invited to keynote the American Farm Bureau convention next year in Honolulu, the Farm Bureau's Young Farmer and Rancher convention in Salt Lake City and the Louisiana Farm Bureau convention,” notes Andrea. The Lohr's burgeoning motivational-speaking business is proof of the old adage, success breeds success. While the Lohrs may spend as many as 150 days a year traveling in their motivational-speaking business, their minds never stray too far from their rural roots and their home place, the farm back in the Shenandoah Valley. Matt and Andrea split their Valley Pike Farm responsibilities with Matt's parents, Gary and Ellen. The two-family operation produces about 600,000 broiler chickens annually, 300 head of feeder cattle, and corn, alfalfa and wheat crops. “This year, we're planning a self-pick pumpkin patch,” notes Matt. The Lohrs also do some direct sales of products such as straw, sweet corn and other items on a smaller scale. “We really couldn't do what we do if it weren't for my parents,” Matt notes. “They have enabled us to get the motivational-speaking business going, while staying involved in the farming operation.” Matt's thoughts on rural life and agriculture project beyond the day-to-day concerns of running a farm, or even beyond the scheduling of the family speaking business. “The two biggest challenges facing agriculture are preserving farmland and successful farm transition between generations,” Matt opines. “Seventy percent of the land in Virginia will change hands in the next 15 years. That's a sobering thought.” And realizing the challenges facing agriculture, Matt's ambitions are tailored to do what he can do to ensure the future of the business that's his family heritage. Asked what his goals are he says, “I want to get into state politics, either the House of Delegates or the State Senate, I would like to serve as the commissioner of agriculture, and I hope one day to serve as the Virginia state Farm Bureau president. These are three lifetime goals I've set for myself before I die.” Andrea says she'd like to stay at home until their children are all in school, then possibly work as a school counselor, in addition to the farm work and speaking-business chores she already has. Whatever the future may hold for the Lohrs, they anticipate it with the same enthusiastic excitement that they carry into the speaking engagements they do today. “We consider ourselves to be truly fortunate to be able to have a life on the family farm and a business helping other people,” notes Matt. “We are truly blessed.” For more information on Matt, Andrea, and New Directions Communications, visit their Web site at www.mattlohr.com . *Feature Story for Cooperative Living Magazine; July 2003