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‘You would have never thought ….’

High school April didn’t necessarily have atypical aspirations. The graduate of George T. Wilkins Elementary in Justic and member of Amos Alonzo Stagg High School class of 2007 dreamt of becoming affluent and living in a big city. She ran cross country, and played basketball.

“She was ambitious, and outgoing,” Rachel told Patch, and though her decision to run cross country shocked her family, the older sister’s athleticism showed from a young age, Rachel said.

As the sisters grew, April’s role as older sister greatly influenced her career aspirations of joining the social work industry. Their father would die when Rachel was 19 and April, 21, and her “protective older sister mode” spilled over into how she saw herself caring for others in the world.

April attended Eastern Illinois University, where she would meet her future husband, Brent Glays. The two moved to southern Illinois for his graduate school program, and fell in love with their community. April found a job as a social worker, and the two started their family with their first son, William. She became a stay-at-home mom, and then began exploring the idea of a hobby farm. They started with just 10 chickens, and an acre of land.

“They really started to get to know the community down there, the farming community,” Rachel said. “When they found out how expensive it is to keep a hobby farm, they plunged in and decided to make it their livelihood.”

Ten chickens grew into a menagerie of sheep, cows and pigs living happily on 67 acres in Anna, Illinois. The family cultivated farm fresh eggs, raised and processed grass-fed livestock, and hung a shingle for The Flock Farm. Their biggest sellers were the meat from pasture-raised lambs, goats and poultry. They sold products at farmers markets all over the area, and soon everyone knew their names.

“They are just so well-loved by their community,” Rachel remarked. “It really is what you picture small town USA to be.”

The whole family embraced the slower, old-fashioned lifestyle. When two more sons came, the eldest stood behind the farm’s booth at markets. They milked cows, rotated sheep in pastures, collected eggs, even loaded chickens for processing. They play a part in every aspect of farm life, Rachel said.

“You name it, they’re committed to the farming lifestyle as well,” she said. “My sister and brother-in-law always taught them the value of the family business, working the family business.”

April and Brent stressed to their sons and their customers the importance of having respect for the source of their nourishment.

“We love our animals and treating them ethically is our greatest priority,” they wrote on their website. “We name them; we pet them; we hand-feed them cantaloupe. They have never been given any type of hormones, steroids, or antibiotics, and their pastures have never been sprayed, planted, or treated. They have a valley of woods to bed down in, and their water comes from our well.”

It was impressive, Rachel said, to see her sister embrace such an unexpected lifestyle.

“Her passion was just organic farming, pasture-raised animals, getting back to living an old-fashioned lifestyle,” she said, “appreciating the small moments in life, the connections you make with people.”

Both April and Brent lacked any deep knowledge of farming, but that didn’t stop them.

“They built a farm from the ground up,” she said, “Even though neither one of them came from farming families.

“If you had met April in high school, you would have never thought she’d be a farmer,” Rachel said, chuckling.

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She credits Brent with changing her sister’s way of seeing the world.

“Brent brought out her adventurous side,” Rachel said. “She’d say, ‘It’s never going to feel right or good, but if you just jump in, a lot of good things can happen.’

“That’s how you got a suburban, rebellious girl who moved down to southern Illinois and made a name for herself.

“It was incredible to see them live out this dream that they didn’t always have, really incredible to be able to witness what they were able to accomplish.”

A long, hard year

In July 2022, April was pregnant with their fourth son, when she started experiencing pain and hemorrhaging. A doctor’s visit revealed the worst possible outcome: stage four colon cancer.

With focus turned to saving the baby and protecting April, labor was induced at 35 weeks, and Jonathan was born. A week after his birth, doctors started aggressive treatments for April—several rounds of chemo—with initially positive results. The tumor wasn’t growing, and the cancer had been kept from spreading, Rachel recalled.

In February 2023, the tumor started growing again, and additional tests shown it had spread to her liver. The gravity of the news hit the family hard, but at the center all along, April stayed grounded.

Throughout her treatment, she showed the same diligence and dedication she’d shown building her family’s farm. The farm’s social media tells of how chickens came to be part of their operations.

“Like everything she did, she read and thought a lot about it: heritage breeds, no confinement, on pasture within a day or two of life,” Marine veteran and meat inspector Brent recounted after her death. “She worked with poultry nutritionists to develop a custom feed for what we were doing at the time—our constantly evolving systems—and solved so many different problems along the way. It was how and why our business came to life.

“We had no idea what we were doing. But, ‘there’s never going to be a perfect time,’ she would say.”

Brent earlier wrote of her fight throughout her illness.

“She never complained, or lost faith, or cast blame,” he shared. “She researched every decision thoroughly, maintained her positive perspective, and fought as hard as any person could possibly fight. She set goals, and accomplished them all.”

Rachel spoke of admiration for her sister’s courage throughout, and her reluctance to say April “lost her battle.”

“I really don’t think that’s fair to say,” Rachel said, “because my sister truly said ‘Yes’ to every treatment option, everything that was thrown at her. ‘Yes’ to every hospital stay. My sister absolutely was truly a warrior.

“While we realize that cancer did ultimately take her, it’s really unfair to say she lost her battle, because she really was a warrior. Working on the farm still while she was sick, caring for four boys—she was beyond incredible.”

April died at home on their farm July 12, 2023—just one week short of the one-year mark following her diagnosis.

“… A long, hard year for her, her husband, for all of us,” Rachel said. “It’s been a whirlwind, to say the least.”

‘Good can come from bad’

As the family navigates their loss, they’re faced with finding a way to honor April’s legacy. First and foremost, they’ve started a GoFundMe in hopes of raising funds to help Brent sustain the farm. April so loved giving her sons that way of life, Rachel said. The closeness of their family and strength of their faith came into tight focus in her final days.

“April had told her husband shortly before she died, she said ‘I want the boys to understand that there’s good that comes out of really bad situations,'” Rachel said. “A lot of that was the time we got to spend together as a family, the outpouring of support from strangers, community, family and friends. Our faith in God, our trust that there really is an afterlife, and we really will become whole again, we will be a family. It helps us while she faced quite literally the unimaginable.”

Brent’s hope—and the aim of the fundraiser—is to “keep April’s dream going of what she wanted the farm to be.”

The family is also seeking out opportunities to carry on her legacy, specifically thinking of planning blood drives in her name. They’d like to focus on women who are pregnant in need of blood—April had more than 20 transfusions while she was pregnant with Jonathan—for women like April. The transfusions, Rachel said, saved her nephew’s life, and there are other women in similar positions, also in desperate need of blood.

They’d deeply like to honor April’s wishes that her sons grow up without her the way they had with her alongside them.

“Work hard, play hard,” Rachel said, “She was about teaching them the benefit of that slower, old-fashioned lifestyle.”

They’ve already received support from so many, she said, and they’re humbled by it.

“My sister really did just put an incredible fight, and we are so incredibly proud of her,” she said. “If we can reach out to the community while they transition to what life’s going to be like without April …

“It meant so much to April to have this dream for her boys.”

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