Editor's note: This story is part of Southwest Michigan Second Wave's On the Ground Calhoun County series.
 
So, a pilot and a flight attendant started a farm.
 
That’s the punchline to a growing business venture that is no joke.
 
Chris Wolters, a pilot with SkyWest Airlines, and his wife, Tawney, a flight attendant with the same airline, bought a home in 2019 on about 25 acres in Bedford Township never intending to become farmers, but that’s exactly what happened. Four years and several chickens later, Fluffy Butt Farms, the name comes from Tawney’s nickname for her dog Addie, products are available at area farmer’s markets and through the Fluffy Butt and Market Wagon websites.
 
Chris relocated to Battle Creek from southern Illinois when his former spouse went to work for the Kellogg Co. and Tawney, originally from Chino Hills, California, followed him, by way of Chicago where she had lived for 15 years. They’re based at O’Hare for their day jobs.
 
Chris Wolters and Riley are out in some of the 27 acres of Fluffy Butt Farms.“In order to stay with him I had to pick him and Michigan or be single in Chicago which is where I was living,” Tawney says. “When we became engaged, Chris said he wanted to do the Michigan thing. I said, ‘We have all of this land, we could have chickens.' He said, ‘No, we’re crew members and we travel.”
 
Tawney says her interaction with animals up to this point had been through her grandfather during her childhood.
 
“When I was growing up, my grandpa had meat rabbits and he had a small hobby farm when my mom was a kid. I know they had something in Wisconsin, but I was way too young to remember that. He’s from Italy and goats were a thing and everybody had meat rabbits. My mom says, ‘I just feel my dad here’ when she visits us.”
 
Chris says he wanted to have land to pursue outdoor activities including four-wheeling and hunting with his two sons from his previous marriage, and with his father, who lives down the road.
 
Tawney Wolters holds one of the many cats that roam Fluffy Butt Farms.After getting married in February of 2020, the couple found themselves unexpectedly spending a lot more time at home in March because of the pandemic. They both took voluntary leave from their jobs when SkyWest reduced its number of flights.
 
“(Tawney) had been wanting chickens forever. She finally convinced me of the difference between farm-fresh and store-bought chicken and eggs,” Chris says. “We agreed on four and came home with eight. Then we thought we should get a rooster. We kept the little chicks in the basement.”
 
The chickens were soon joined by rabbits, pigs, goats, sheep, cows ducks.
 
Chickens at Fluffy Butt Farms“We have about 100 chickens. That includes our meat chickens, about 30 goats. Four breeding pigs and others that are grown for their meat, seven cows, cats and kittens, two Great Pyrenees dogs, a Miniature Australian Blue Heeler, and a Chow Lab,” Tawney says. “I’m still waiting to get bees.”
 
The meat from the farm animals is processed and sold — along with coffee she roasts and vegetables that are also grown at Fluffy Butt.

Goats on the Go
 
In addition, the Wolters rent their goats out to people looking for a more natural approach to ridding their property of weeds and invasive plants like poison ivy. Through “Goats On The Go,” a part of the farm operation, they fence off a client's property that the goats will be clearing and leave them there to munch away on the vegetation. This helps generate revenue while waiting for the goats to have babies or be butchered for their meat.
 
A goat and a calf roam around at Fluffy Butt Farms.Goats On the Go is a company based in Iowa and Fluffy Butt is one of their affiliates. The Wolters territory includes Barry, Branch, Calhoun, and Kalamazoo counties north of Rockford.
 
It takes between five and seven days for 25 or 30 goats to clear one acre, Tawney says.
 
Chris Wolters strokes the chin of a goat at Fluffy Butt Farms.“They earn their hay for the winter,” she says.
 
Self-educating via YouTube
 
With the addition of each animal, the couple inched ever closer to turning their home and land into a legitimate agricultural enterprise without knowing much of anything about farming. When not up in the air, they grounded themselves at their house where they watched countless YouTube videos about farming.
 
“We learned how to do this on YouTube,” Tawney says. “As we watched the videos we became pretty good at saying whether the people we were watching would fail. We could see what worked and what didn’t work.”
 
Pigs and chickens roam freely at Fluffy Butt Farms.Their online education was supplemented with visits to in-person conferences and hands-on learning events which focused on the well-being of the animals. What they learned would come in handy, especially when Tawney was unexpectedly called upon to pull out newborn goats as their mothers were giving birth or Chris was looking to grow the farm’s pig population.
 
Chris learned that he could buy a pig for 58 cents a pound and use it to make all kinds of pork-based products. One of his and Tawney’s earliest attempts at butchering resulted in homemade prosciutto, capicola, and bacon. After consuming what they made, they decided to go full-boar with their pork production purchasing four pigs and feeders for them. The pig breeds they sought were Mangalista and Red Wattle, both of which are in high demand and favored for their flavorful meat.
 
“They take twice as long to grow and don’t have as many piglets,” Chris says.
 
After six months, they had frozen meat from two whole pigs which was gone by June. Chris says the meat from those pigs was “fantastic.” Since they began selling this meat at farmer’s markets, he says regular customers frequently request what they call the “fatty bacon” and “fatty pigs” — the Mangalista and Red Wattle.
 
Fluffy Butt Farms employs electric fences to corral and protect its animals.Tawney says she spends a fair amount of time at the farmer’s market educating customers about the products they sell.
 
“I have spent a lot of time educating people about heirloom tomatoes and why they look the way they do with their shapes and color. I also have Dragon Green Beans which are purple and white. Some people were afraid to eat them,” she says. “I break them open and have them try them. People skills and knowing when to nod and smile is really important," skills she has honed through her work as a flight attendant.
 
The farmer’s market can be labor-intensive and time-consuming. During market season Chris sets up shop at the farmer’s market in Kalamazoo and Tawney heads to the Marshall and Richland farmer’s market. The time spent on this endeavor is in addition to the weekdays Chris spends flying for SkyWest. Tawney has transitioned to part-time and is required to work 80 hours per quarter to keep that status.
 
The hardest part, she says, is “not spending as much time together as we used to. Now, I see him every four days. When Chris was home it was fantastic. It’s taken a lot of adjusting and I finally have a routine down now that I’m part-time.”
 
Tawney Wolters of Fluffy Butt FarmsThe daily operation and management of Fluffy Butt falls to her which has been a challenge because of back issues that prevent her from doing much of the heavy lifting required. Before he leaves for his day job, Chris loads feed and hay for the animals and ensures that an automatic sprinkler system is up and running.
 
“Balancing the farm with my day job is always a challenge,” Chris says. “I set everything up so there’s minimum labor for her.”
 
His father, who has a home in Tennessee, also helps out a lot, especially during the summer which is when he spends a lot of time at his own farm nearby and assists Chris with building projects and expansion efforts which are likely to include a kitchen and a store.
 
But, Fluffy Butt won’t be the final adventure for the Wolters who have a yen to see the world from a sailboat. Before marrying, they had taken sailing classes and spent a week of their honeymoon on a sailboat in Thailand in addition to the Intercoastal in Florida.
 
A stand near the entrance to Fluffy Butt Farms.“Our whole goal is to raise the kids, sell everything, buy a sailboat, and sail around the world. We’d also like to get an RV and travel around Europe. There’s so much to see,” Tawney says.
 
Until that time comes, the beach girl turned city girl turned farm girl and her husband will content themselves with their animals and their farm.
 
Chris says he’s still wondering how he came to own a farm.
 
“I have no idea how this happened,” he says. “I married a city girl and she turned me into a farmer.”