Ex-Colts punter Hunter Smith is now a regenerative farmer: 'I feel so alive out here'

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ZIONSVILLE, Ind. — Hunter Smith stands in the barn that he built with his own hands, where 28-day-old chickens peck in one corner as two kittens chase each other's tails toward the other corner, where a makeshift store with a counter, cash register and chalkboards reveal the prices of raw milk, a dozen eggs, pork, turkey, beef and chicken.

Smith stands in blue jeans, a checkered shirt and boots, looking just like the farmer nobody knew -- not even him -- that he was always meant to be. Smith was raised on a ranch in Texas but as he played 10 years for the Indianapolis Colts, never once did he imagine he would one day be working the land.

Yet 15 years after winning a Super Bowl with Peyton Manning, Smith has taken a sharp career turn, spending his days toiling on more than 145 acres in Zionsville and trying to wrangle beasts that put an offensive lineman's size to shame.

"Woooooo. Sup. Sup. Sup," Smith calls out to the herd of cattle, a trick he learned from his father who would make that call and get his cattle to follow him all over the farm. It works for Smith, too. "If they're hungry and you associate that you are moving them to food with a sound, they'll just go."

It's fascinating. All of this is fascinating to Smith, who said even though he grew up on a ranch, he "knew very little." And he has learned a lot.

Smith is now a regenerative farmer, a man who feeds 4,000 of his Zionsville neighbors and many other customers who come from far and wide to his WonderTree Farm.

He is still not sure how he got here, to a full-fledged farm-to-table business. Ask him the date WonderTree farm officially launched and he says, in all seriousness, "I don't know. I really don't."

His farming business grew organically. Smith, 45, knows that's a popular catchphrase among entrepreneurs. "But when I say it was organic, I mean it," he says.

Smith bought 20 acres off of U.S. 421 eight years ago. He loved the tract of land for many reasons, but mainly because a 340-year-old tree towered on the property in majestic glory, a tree Smith affectionately named the "wonder tree."

He built a house across the way from that tree for his family, wife Jennifer and children Josiah, Samuel, Lydia and Beau. And Smith started singing, playing gigs, even making an album with his Hunter Smith Band.

But soon, Smith decided to build a barn designed after the one of his childhood. He had no architectural plan; he just started pounding nails into wood.

And then he decided he wanted to raise his kids in agriculture.

"It all revolves around my kids. You can raise wonderful kids all over the place. I, for one, was just looking around going, 'I don't know that I can raise kids in a neighborhood,'" he said. "I just don't know how to do that because that's not how I was raised."

So Smith built the barn and, when it was finished, he got 18 laying hens, 40 meat chickens and five cows to raise the family's food. "Just to experiment with that concept of making our own food," he said. "Just to see what happened."

What happened Smith never saw it coming in a million years. What happened was people started flocking to WonderTree for Saturday "farm days" with horse rides, animal feeding and food to buy -- and they fell in love.

And what started out as a hobby on 20 acres for Smith turned into a massive, sprawling plot of land big enough to fit 145 NFL fields, where pigs, cows, turkeys, bulls, chickens, donkeys, goats, horses, dogs and cats roam. What started out as a side gig turned into a career he loves.

"I feel like I was a football player as a means to do this," Smith said, as he drove his ATV across the field. "To have a place here in the community where I can promote this kind of life. I love it so much, I can't tell you how much I love it. It's my favorite thing in the world."

'A lot of science'

As Smith takes IndyStar on a tour of WonderTree, he explains the way he farms and why.

"Regenerative farming is really just traditional farming, what people did hundreds of years ago," he said. "Regenerative farming is using animals to build soil, sequester carbon and increase organic matter in the soil."

After a herd of cattle or a group of pigs or a coop of chickens eat the grass and fertilize a patch of land, they are moved to a new spot allowing the former area to regrow. They are literally providing their own food, Smith says as he stands next to his grass-fed cattle that include black Angus, red Devons and white-and-red Shorthorns.

"Its biomimicry. We are mimicking the patterns of nature," Smith said. "We are taking herbivores and moving them all over the place and it works. Look at the grass. This was corn and beans four years ago." Now it is plush greenery that stands 14 inches tall.

Regenerative agriculture "describes farming and grazing practices that, among other benefits, reverse climate change by rebuilding soil organic matter and restoring degraded soil biodiversity, resulting in both carbon drawdown and improving the water cycle," according to Regeneration International.

"It is a holistic land-management practice that uses the power of photosynthesis in plants to sequester carbon in the soil while improving soil health, crop yields, water resilience and nutrient density," says GreenAmerica.

"I know, there is a lot of science," Smith says. But in the end what it means is no chemicals, no hormones, just natural food. "It's a big deal. It's the future."

As Smith shakes down feed from a massive drum for his pigs, eight of them set to be taken in for processing, he says these animals are among his favorite on the farm.

“There is just an honesty about a pig," he says. "It's like, 'Look mister, I don't know what you want out of me but I want to eat and lay down.'"

But pigs are also smart, frustratingly smart, Smith says.

"The big ones over here will push the little ones into the electric fence to see if they squeal and, if they don't squeal, they'll jump over the fence," he said. "Get down and look at one of these pigs in the eyes and you'll see. They say cats look down at us, dogs look up at us and pigs look us in the eye."

Their intelligence has, at times, "made me want to lose my mind," Smith says. "They'll make you so mad. You're trying to get them into something and they won't get in. They're like, 'Look fella, the last four of us that you put into that trailer didn't come back so sorry if I'm not just raring to jump in.'"

Smith sometimes compares the animals on his farm and their personalities to people he knows. Yes, even former Colts teammates -- smart, stubborn, sweet, domineering, arrogant, kind. He isn't going to name names.

Being out alone, roaming all those acres, gives Smith a lot of time to think. And he thinks a lot about how amazing, how unexpected this journey to WonderTree was.

'I didn't realize how popular it would be'

Once the barn was built and the chickens were settled, Smith had so many eggs that people started offering to buy them. Instead, the Smiths invited people over and gave the eggs away. "You can't give them away," people started telling him. "You have to sell them. They're too good."

That turned into about 300 people coming to WonderTree every Saturday for "Farm Day," an outreach to the community. They could buy eggs, beef and Jennifer Smith started baking desserts.

"And it was not enough for everybody to have something," Smith said. "Once we got to a certain scale and I felt really solid that people were going to buy this food, I started asking myself, 'How do I grow? How do I grow to a responsible scale that's not stupid?'"

Smith started looking for eco conscious landowners who would lease to him. "It's much more lucrative to lease to these grain farmers, there is no question," he said. "But if it makes your place beautiful, there is value in that."

Smith found 125 acres two miles away from WonderTree and signed a lease to farm the land with an option after 10 years to buy it.

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WonderTree doesn't raise crops and it doesn't break soil. All of Smith's farm revolves around grass. "I didn't realize how popular it would be," he said.

So popular that thousands of customers within a 10-mile radius come to WonderTree to buy their food. And other people have ideas for Smith to take WonderTree big time.

"There are lots of things that have happened around here. People come in and offer all kinds of things," Smith said. "Crazy as it sounds, I have people in my life that have large, large quantities of cash who really believe in this and would like to scale it and see me be the figurehead of that and grow it."

The answer, he said, is "no."

"I do love the idea of having 600 acres. I also like the idea, and this is a big part of the overall philosophy, I want people to come here and believe they are seeing something that they can do," Smith said. "I want kids to leave and see something that they walk away and say, 'I think when I grow up I want to do that.'"

WonderTree has become more than a place to buy food. It is a destination for school classes to take field trips, to learn about agriculture, to take horse rides. Smith's horse, Sherman, has given more than 15,000 kids their first horse ride.

WonderTree, as Smith sees it, is a local, local business. And he wants to keep it that way.

'I feel so alive out here'

The scene on Smith's farm can't really be described without sounding like a made-up scene, something from a reality show or movie. Sugar, the grumpy male troll of a goat, walks by the turkeys.

"Don't they have the funniest faces?" Smith says of those turkeys. "They change colors, their heads and everything on their heads that is made out of tissue changes colors depending on their mood, blue, green, all kinds of weird colors." On this day their tissue is pink. That, Smith said, means the turkeys are happy and comfortable.

Sylvia, a black cat, lies next to a brood of pigs, young pigs making their own wallow of dirt and water that turns to mud.

Arnie, a tiny white Maltese who is the oldest animal at WonderTree, trots about as if he runs the farm. There is Bubba, an Australian Shepherd. Dusty and Daisy, the donkeys. Sonny and Sherman, the horses. Rocky, the goat son of Sugar, and his mother, Sparkle.

And then there is the chicken that somehow managed to become a pet, of sorts, not destined for the frying pan. "See that chicken?" Smith says smiling. "That chicken..."

Well, that chicken has quite a story. When Smith got his new pigs two months ago, the chicken emerged from the axle underneath the truck of the guy who delivered them.

"That chicken jumps out. It came from his farm and we ran around and chased it and chased it and finally he just said, 'It's your chicken,'" Smith said. "It drove 45 minutes all the way from Clayton, Indiana, on the axle. We let him stay."

The farm needs protectors, too. Gus and Dolly, two Great Pyrenees, fill that position. "These dogs are wicked at night," Smith said. "What they do to predators? It's sinister. They are amazing."

Besides all the animals at WonderTree are the people. While Smith is the only official employee, he has plenty of volunteers, including his wife Jennifer, who grew up on a cul-de-sac in Carmel, the daughter of a doctor.

"So this is way different for me," she said last week as she emerged from the barn with meat to cook for that evening's dinner. "Is this all the country you ever wanted and more? I love it. It's so different, but I love it."

Two other women are now responsible for baking the desserts at WonderTree -- pies, cookies, cakes, pumpkin rolls, all sorts of seasonal treats. Another volunteer inspects every egg, washes them by hand and puts them into used cartons that people donate. That helps keep the cost of his eggs down, Smith said.

Another volunteer helps run the store and another sets up the field trips at WonderTree. Smith sources local raw milk and honey to sell, too.

And his kids, Smith said, he could not do it without them.

"So my children and my wife, they are absolutely a huge part of this," he said, "They are not officially employed. We are just officially a family farm."

As Smith wraps up his tour of WonderTree, driving an ATV as Arnie stands with two paws on Smith's knee, he said it's really tough to explain how fulfilled he is as a farmer.

How do you explain, after all, going from an NFL great, a Super Bowl winner, to being a farmer living a simple, homegrown life?

"I'm alone a lot out here and it's not like you're out here singing John Denver songs and everything's OK all the time. There are plenty of days where you're swearing and everything is all out of sorts," Smith said. "But I'd rather be doing this than anything else.

"I feel so alive out here."

Follow IndyStar sports reporter Dana Benbow on Twitter: @DanaBenbow. Reach her via email: dbenbow@indystar.com.