LOUDONVILLE – Taking a page from the Mail Pouch playbook, the Wooster-based Certified Angus Beef brand has spent the better part of a year painting its logo on barns across the country to mark the organization’s 40th anniversary.
Barn painter Troy Freeman wrapped up his 40th and final “Brand The Barn” mural Thursday at Atterholt Farm between Loudonville and Jeromesville on County Road 175.
“It’s surreal,” said Freeman. “Like I feel like I should be getting on a plane tomorrow and going to the next location, but I guess I’m going home.”
Freeman began in January with a barn in Florida and has made stops in California, South Carolina, Georgia, Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, New York, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky and Oregon before finishing up with two barns in Ohio. He took about three days painting each barn.
Freeman was joined by Certified Angus Beef president John Stika, who helped with the final brush strokes and spoke about the significance of the occasion.
“This effort has become a lot more than just painting a logo on a barn and watching paint dry… It’s really become an effort less about Certified Angus Beef and more about the people who make up the brand,” Sticka told the crowd of brand employees and agricultural community members gathered for the event.
The brand was started in West Salem in 1978 as a “rancher-created, rancher-owned and rancher-run” organization to market premium beef raised by family farmers and ranchers. The idea, Sticka said, was to create more sustainable futures for farmers and ranchers who wanted to produce higher-quality products.
In the 40 years that followed, the brand has stayed rooted in Wayne County. Meanwhile, it has grown to sell over a billion pounds of product in 50 countries around the world, Sticka said.
Among the many visitors to Atterholt Farm Thursday was Ohio Department of Agriculture Director David Daniels.
“How fortunate we are here in the state of Ohio to have agriculture as its number one industry,” Daniels said. “It’s $124 billion of our economy and one out of every eight jobs.”
Mandy and Aaron Atterholt’s barn was chosen as the finale for the project because of its proximity to the brand’s headquarters in Wooster.
Aaron and Mandy are the fourth generation of Atterholts to farm the family’s land. Mandy works for Certified Angus Beef, and the couple often host groups from the brand on their farm to show chefs and marketers how their beef is produced.
“We get to tell our story here on the live end of things,” Mandy said. “We like to show that we care about the animals and that we’re just normal people.”
