By Sherry Bunting, Farmshine,     Oct. 31, 2014 – farmshine.net

 WOMELSDORF, Pa. — Some stories just have to be told, and this is one of them.

For Jeremy Meck and Kacie Hershey, engaged to be married November 7^th, 2014, their chance meeting happened at a time of loss and uncertainty in the midst of one of the harshest winters southeast Pennsylvania has ever endured.

For Jeremy, it was a season of profound loss. Not only had he lost his brother to cancer in February, in Zach he had lost his best friend and business partner. Meck Brothers Dairy here in Berks County was the dream they had built up from scratch — a dream they had worked on together ever since grade school in Lancaster County when their late father Ronald, a poultry farmer, bought them a heifer calf for 4-H, igniting a passion for cattle that morphed from raising calves to milking cows, to buying and renovating their own dairy farm.

“It was a rough winter at the farm, with one thing after another, and it was hard to stay focused as Zach became more ill,” Jeremy related during a summer visit to the farm.

What he described was like a dark fog that threatened to settle-in around him. “I was praying for God’s guidance, for direction, for clarity… and I found myself praying for joy,” he recalls.

Goosebumps come with the next words from Kacie, as she confirmed her middle name is, you guessed it: Joy.

“God had a big part in us meeting,” she said about the chance meeting that was not so much by chance after all.

Kacie was facing her own need for clarity. She graduated with a teaching degree and was substituting here and there while working for her parents, Duane and Marilyn Hershey, at their Ar-Joy Farms near Cochranville, Chester County.

With Marilyn on the DMI board and Duane on the Land O’Lakes board, Kacie’s parents travel a lot. “I started picking up more responsibility at the farm and I needed to make some decisions,” she recalls. Seeking a teaching job, and feeling conflicted about the future, she, too, was praying for direction. What Kacie didn’t know was that her grandmother Anna Stoltzfus had started that week praying for God to bring someone into her granddaughter’s life.

Meanwhile, Kacie’s father, Duane, was one of several dairy farmers who kept intermittent contact with Jeremy during Zach’s illness and after his passing. Farmers in the community of Berks and Lebanon counties were especially helpful, reaching out in so many ways to mentor the brothers and to pitch in with fieldwork, and fundraisers, when the need arose.

From two neighboring counties in the same Land O’Lakes region, Duane and Zach had run against each other for the Land O’Lakes board seat a year earlier. The 3-way race had come down to a tie, and the differences could not have been more stark: Duane, a seasoned third generation dairyman whose father served as a representative in the Pennsylvania General Assembly versus Zach, the young, energetic, first-generation upstart dairyman always running full-tilt, wanting his generation to have a say.

The special tie-breaker election had occurred the previous January, with Duane winning the seat. The two continued their chiding camaraderie after the election, and Duane checked in from time to time to see how things were going on the farm after Zach’s cancer diagnosis the following September.

Newlywed to Suzanne Perdue, Zach’s illness came at a time when he was just settling into the future he thought lay before him. Being connected to a loss like this will test the strongest faith. Looking back on it, Jeremy says he learned a lot about commitment watching how Suzanne traveled that journey with Zach.

He recalls Zach’s advice to him: “Find a girl with quality values and a farming background, who understands what you are passionate about.”

But mostly, he recalls the example of how Suzanne was there for Zach every step of the way.

“I didn’t fully realize how bad it was until he passed away,” Jeremy reflects. “During his illness, I dug down deep and just kept focusing on doing everything around the farm, doing for two, wanting to keep it going for him, wanting to see our plans through, wanting to keep our dream alive, and hoping he could come back to the farm.”

With Zach gone, it was difficult for Jeremy to make that dream — their dream — his own.

The winter wore-on the way it does daily on a dairy farm. Sub-zero temperatures brought daily challenges from power outages and frozen pipes to difficulty starting equipment and the sheer effort of getting through the growing mountain of snow to tend cattle and feed calves and make a path for the milk truck to get up the hill.

Then the unexpected: The day-after-day snows and frigid temperatures took their toll at the Hershey family’s Ar-Joy Farms with the midnight collapse of the roof on their main barn housing over 500 milk cows. Thankfully, the milking employees were all at the parlor, not in the barn. Cattle were lost, but the majority of the herd survived.

The next 72 hours brought a whirlwind of moving cattle, cleaning up, and a community effort to come in with the builder to put up a new roof. A work day was organized by fellow farmers in that community and the word of it spread.

“I had so much happening here, I wasn’t going out or going anywhere,” Jeremy recalls. It was just two weeks after losing Zach when he heard from a neighbor about the Hersheys’ roof collapse. Duane had called to check in a few days before and so Jeremy returned the favor. He called to see if they needed help or equipment, but he never reached Duane by phone, so he headed to Cochranville figuring to lend a hand in the cleanup.

Had he reached Duane by phone, Duane would have emphatically told him to stay put, knowing Jeremy had enough on his plate at his own farm. But with no word from the wise to deter him Jeremy showed up and spent the day working on someone else’s problem instead of dwelling on his own.

“It felt good to be busy somewhere else,” he recalls. “Never did I imagine that day I’d meet the woman I’m going to marry.”

Jeremy and Kacie met as she brought water to her Dad and the crew. Kacie recalls thinking to herself: “Who is this guy, and why have I never seen him before?” Followed, of course, by making sure to procure another round of water for that crew.

Both were intrigued and struck up a friendship, after first looking each other up on Facebook (of course) and realizing they had friends in common. Jeremy’s best man is herd vet Nathan Kapp of Gap Vets, whose wife works with a friend of Kacie’s at Pioneer. A first date led to a second, and things took off from there.

“When I told my Dad we were dating, I just got this big smile and some comment about tractors,” Kacie laughs.

Spring came, and Kacie continued working at the home farm, then driving to Jeremy’s to help with whatever needed doing — from the cattle to the corn planting.

“What I fell in love with first is Jeremy’s faith,” Kacie recalls.

Windows of light open doors, through faith. Both Jeremy and Kacie were individually going through difficulties and seeking direction for their lives. They both had questions about their own futures, and God’s answer was an unexpected ‘chance’ meeting. “We would not have met any other way,” they agree.

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