M&N Suits Farms Honored with Hoosier Homestead Award for Preservation and Perseverance
In partnership with: Indiana State Department of Agriculture
In the summer of 2023, when Larry Suits invited his extended family to the Hoosier Homestead Centennial Award ceremony honoring M&N Suits Farms, he expected a few relatives to attend. In matching T-shirts with a photo of the farm’s founders, Albert and Nancy Suits, 52 family members showed up – the most the Indiana State Department of Agriculture had ever seen at the Indiana State Fair event.
“I was really surprised because I had no one turn me down,” says Suits, who co-owns the farm with his nieces and nephews. “Everybody wanted to go.”
To be named an ISDA Hoosier Homestead, farms must be owned by the same family for more than 100 consecutive years and meet other criteria.
“The program was established in 1976 to recognize the contributions these farming families have made to the economic, cultural and
social advancements of Indiana,” says Regan Herr, ISDA communications director.
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All in the Family
The oldest of 10 children, who would eventually have 10 of his own, Suits’ grandfather Albert purchased 80 acres about 10 miles from his Indiana birthplace in 1923. For seven more years, he continued to work as a tenant farmer in Illinois to pay down the farm before moving there in 1930, soon after the Great Depression hit.
Raising corn, soybeans and wheat, along with cattle and chickens, Albert relied on horses to plow his fields.
“He never owned a tractor or mechanical equipment,” Suits says, “He always said it was too expensive, and he could use the money he would spend on that to pay for the land.”
Over the years, the farm grew to 500 acres. When Albert passed away in 1961, Suits’ dad, Maurice, bought the business and, in 1977, formed M&N Suits Farms, a family corporation named for Maurice and his wife, Neva, in order to keep the property intact.
Suits grew up on the farm, milking 50 cows a day. After college, he became a schoolteacher and helped out in the evenings and during summers. He is now retired, and his nephew, Tom Ayres, runs the farm along with his wife, Tracey, and their son, Michael.
Before Suits’ sister, Wanita Ayres, passed away in 2021, the siblings were already planning something special for the farm’s 100th anniversary.
“We wanted everyone to be invited to the award program – anybody who’d ever worked on that farm that my grandfather had started,” Suits says.
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An Enduring Legacy
Suits emphasizes the Hoosier Homestead award means even more to the family because of adversity and perseverance, especially through some very tough years in the 1950s.
“Commodity prices were terrible, and we really struggled to make the land payments and keep the farm together,” Suits says. “There were many times when selling the land would’ve been easier than continuing on, but we figured out a way to make it.”
The trials and tribulations of the past make this award even more meaningful to the Suits family.
“When you go through difficult times, the fact that you stuck it out says a lot,” Suits says. “And the fact that my dad accumulated other farms along the way, after that, was just a testament to their fortitude and endurance.”
M&N Suits is one of the 6,300 Hoosier Homestead families that exemplify American agriculture, perseverance and determination. Through hundreds of years, their family farms have withstood droughts, storms, wars, economic downturns and so much more. Keeping a farm operational for 100 years or more is no simple task. Each passing generation has certainly had to adapt and evolve their farming practices and techniques to ensure their farms’ continued success.
“Families, like Larry’s and the M&N Suits Farms, are an undeniable asset to our Hoosier heritage,” Herr says. “We are thankful for their ancestors and family for remaining so committed to agriculture and to feeding the world.”
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