This past weekend I had the honor to be part of the Storytelling session at the annual Practical Farmers of Iowa conference. I was joined in sharing true stories relating to food and farming by Christine Ross, Tom Frantzen and Meghan Filbert while Jill Beebout was, as always, a top-notch emcee! I thoroughly enjoyed each of these stories - even mine, believe it or not.
Today, I am going to share the written version of the story I presented this past Friday. Obviously, it won’t be exactly the same, but I think you might still enjoy it!
One of the running gags I use when I am asked to speak about food and farming is to list the “amazing” credentials Tammy and I brought with us when we started farming. And when I say “amazing,” I actually mean “practically non-existent.”
When we moved to the farmstead near Tripoli in 2004, we brought with us two Ph.D.’s - Tammy’s degree Social Work Education and mine in Computer Science and Adult Education. We also brought time employed in our respective fields as well as teaching experience. It’s impressive, I suppose, but those qualifications wouldn’t usually recommend us for farming.
Neither of us grew up on a farm, though I did spend a week at Aunt Floss and Uncle Brownie’s farm when I was a kid. That’s where I learned that a ten-year old is supposed to know how to drive a truck or a tractor. When it was discovered that I did not, I got a crash course on the subject (but not quite literally). Once the basics were covered, I was given the task of “knocking down the weeds” in an area around the farm.
I started the task and was getting on well enough when Brownie left. But, not long after, things took a bit of a turn as I took notice of an area where the weeds were unusually tall. My mission was to knock down the weeds and I was going to do it, so I head right for that wild area.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough experience to know that places like that on a farm probably should be avoided with a cutting deck - so I very efficiently and quite successfully wrapped the barbed wire hidden by the grasses around the cutting deck.
When I look back at the moment Brownie came to check on things I remember he seemed a little startled that I was finishing the project with a hand tool. Then he noticed where the tractor was.
Brownie’s face went through a few contortions that I wasn’t sure how to interpret at the time. Now that I’ve had a couple of decades of experience on our own farm, I can take a good educated guess as to what was going through his head. Let’s just say there was a great deal of self-editing going on at that moment.
I don’t recall learning any new words that particular day. But I have a better idea now that I’ve been the farmer looking at strange results achieved by young or inexperienced workers at my own farm.
In the end, I find that the words I self-edit out of my responses are directed at me – because I am the one with the knowledge and experience. I just didn’t provide effective instructions.
But, unlike Brownie, who grew up on the farm, I had to build up that farm experience on the job after I had trained myself to do very different things from farming.
Lives full of edges
After graduation from college, our life together was full of edges - moments where big changes and important circumstances seemed to crop up frequently. But that’s to be expected as we started our professional careers and negotiated how our partnership would work.
We did what many other couples have done. We took turns pursuing our respective dreams, first acquiring the degrees, then seeking that elusive place where we could both teach. During that process, we lived in nine different locations over fourteen years.
One thing stayed consistent throughout this time period. We always found a way to grow food. So, when we agreed to purchase the farmstead at our current location in 2004, the first thing we did was get permission to put in our gardens even before we took possession.
The plan was for Tammy to join the Wartburg College Social Work Department as a professor while I prepared to apply for Computer Science teaching jobs as they opened at various colleges in the area. It seemed like a reasonable strategy for future success so we took the leap.
But there was nothing immediately available for me. So, now we had to figure out how I would move forward in my career.
One obvious option was that I could offer myself up as an adjunct instructor in Computer Science - which I did. But that wasn’t going to be enough. So, we added something else to the mix. We decided - much to my parents’ everlasting surprise - that we would try our hand at growing good food for other people.
The Genuine Faux Farm emerges
Remember that garden we planted even before we signed the papers for our farm? Well, it was producing so well that we had to figure out what to do with it all, so we decided to try our hands at a farmer’s market. Two local markets had an option for new vendors to pay $5 each week for a spot until the total market fee was paid in the first year. So, we gave it a go!
Our first time out, we were able to attain the lofty heights of $6.25 in sales. One dollar and twenty-five cents in “pure” profit! All due to some fellow vendors who probably felt a little bad that not a single customer stopped and bought anything at our table.
Well, if you’re going to try something once, you might as well try it a second time. So, we made adjustments and tried again. And things did improve. They improved enough that we actually went through a program facilitated by Iowa State Extension to help us write a business plan that winter.
We opted for the Community Supported Agriculture model, where members prepay for a “subscription” of produce over a period of 20 weeks. Since we were hoping to build a business we could easily exit when I landed that elusive teaching job, we opted not to build infrastructure on the farm by taking out loans. We were thinking small and containable.
It might sound odd for me to say we thought we were as committed to succeed in growing at our farm as we were to being able to leave the business. But that’s actually saying something significant, because we have always poured ourselves into the things we commit to doing. We just should have known by then that we aren’t so good about ending those commitments.
With the temporary nature of this farm business in mind, we decided to start with a goal of ten CSA members and we would operate with our biggest pieces of equipment being a lawn tractor, a thirty-year old walk-behind tiller and our 12-year old truck.
Of course, things rarely go as planned. We had over 20 members sign up that first year (2005), our tiller blew out the engine in the first week of planting, and gas prices went through the roof - making our delivery to your door model a bad idea. Still, with no teaching spots opening in the area, we made adjustments and put a significant portion of ourselves into the farm for the next few years.
By 2008, we were up to sixty CSA members and we were setting up at four farmers’ markets per week. We had a flock of laying hens and we were raising broiler chickens and turkeys. We planted fruit trees. Additional labor was provided by some volunteers who got produce and eggs in return. We even invested in a tiller attachment for the lawn tractor along with a host of hand tools, harvest containers, and carts.
But, the biggest investment was good, old-fashioned “sweat equity.”
That’s first time we got a bit too close to “the edge.”
On the edge of becoming zombies
Of course, now that the farm was bigger than we had planned for it to be, Mother Nature decided to remind us that we were not in charge. The early rains made it difficult to plant - which made it difficult to fill our CSA shares early in the season. The two of us provided nearly all of the farm labor while I was still teaching classes in the Spring and Fall. And don’t forget, Tammy had that full-time job to consider. Once the school year started her time on the farm was extremely limited.
It was very evident that our sweat equity wasn’t realizing worthwhile returns with this set up - but that was evident to us at the time.
It was late in the Summer that we had our first significant wake-up call and it came - as they often do - from a direction we did not anticipate. One of the students who volunteered at the farm was bold enough to make an observation and followed it up with a question.
She said, “I watched the two of you at your market table and you were so friendly and engaging when you had customers at your table. It was amazing!”
I felt encouraged by where this was going at that point.
“But, then, when the customers left the table, I watched your faces. It was like someone turned off a switch. You both looked so tired and worn out. I admire what you are doing, but is it really worth it for the two of you to keep going?”
I’m sure I kept a brave face and provided some sort of answer at that point. But inside, I was rapidly deflating. She was right. It wasn’t a good idea to continue with the current model. Something big had to change.
And then we got a call.
Another CSA had announced they would no longer do distributions in Cedar Falls and the local business that hosted them wanted to know if we would fill that void.
So, we yanked ourselves back from that edge by doing something difficult. We drastically modified our business plan. We dropped two farmers markets entirely and changed the others so that they were primarily distribution sites for our CSA program. We doubled our available subscriptions to 120 and…
I dedicated myself to being a full-time farmer.
I put my dream of teaching away. I had worked towards that goal for years and now, I was putting it on hold - perhaps permanently.
On water’s edge
We made numerous adjustments to fit our new reality the following season, hiring Summer help and adding a walk-behind tractor to the arsenal. Since I wasn’t teaching in the Spring or the Fall, the additional time I spent on the farm was almost like we had hired another employee.
Removing a couple of farmers’ markets had a similar impact. For those of you who haven’t done market days, you need to consider the time spent packing, traveling, setting up, staffing the booth, tearing down, traveling and unloading. None of that time was spent doing farm labor like planting, harvesting, cultivating, equipment maintenance and animal care. It was like we had added yet another farm laborer into the mix each week!
It was still hard work. And, of course, being who we are, we expanded operations to over-fill the time. But now we were just very tired instead of dead tired. In all, 2009 was a pretty good year.
The next year started promising enough. We signed up for EQIP funding to help with our first truly major farm investment - a high tunnel. And since it was a new thing, PFI worked with us to develop a field day around the construction of that building for early July. We got our Spring crops in the ground and things were looking pretty good.
And then the rains came and decided to stay well past their welcome.
We watched as the soil went from damp to saturated. Pretty soon, most of the farm was one giant puddle. And it stayed that way for days - and then weeks. Many of the crops that had looked so good up to that point changed from green to light green to yellow and brown.
The “Grand Experiment” looked like it was a failure. Tammy and I were having serious conversations about how we needed to consider the exit plan. But, we had a commitment to our CSA members and we were going to honor it to the best of our abilities. So, we couldn’t quit during the season. It would have to wait until that 20th week of deliveries was completed.
And there was that high tunnel that was on its way. We said we would do it, so…
The day the high tunnel arrived, in all of its myriad pieces. It was (of course) raining. But that evening the rain slowed to a stop. I managed to look up during chores and saw a glorious sunset.
And in my mind, I felt the winds change.
The next few days were filled with sunshine and perfect temperatures. The high tunnel was successfully built. Things dried up and we pulled out the crops that had failed and we took a self-directed crash course in late season and over-wintered crops. We bought our first tractor (an old Ford 8n) and even managed to acquire a couple of implements for it.
And then, that Winter, during the PFI conference, we added the most important new feature to the Genuine Faux Farm - a peer support group!
From the edge of a high to the deepest of lows
And now, let me turn your attention to July 26, 2012. It had been a long day of work and I was doing the end of the day “farm walk” to take some notes and start my planning for the next day. The weather had been quite dry (a relief from my perspective) and warm. But the crops were in excellent shape.
The irrigation lines were working as they should. Fields were properly cultivated or mulched. The poultry were looking good and we felt good about what we were giving our CSA customers. We were even selling excess to a few outside accounts and donating to the food bank regularly.
And we weren’t completely exhausted. Very tired - as farmers in our position would naturally be - but not exhausted. There were good days and bad days. But, it was (mostly) a good tired - the kind that comes when you know you are doing honest and productive work with integrity.
It was that evening that I had a revelation: We had arrived! Eight seasons in and I finally felt like I wasn’t just an imposter who liked to pretend to farm from sun up to sun down. It was an amazing feeling and my optimism was running high.
The next day, at 6:50 PM, as I was doing some work with the hens in their pasture, a spray plane flew over our farm. I felt heavy droplets fall on me as it roared over my head. I watched as it came back for another pass and hit our pastures, our high tunnel and our most productive field on the next pass. When the plane finally disappeared over the horizon, we realized that the western third of our farm had just been taken out of production.
And that high I was feeling less than 24-hours before evaporated.
This edge was different than the others. In those cases, my desire to keep farming was still strong. Even when we considered quitting in 2010, there was regret that we might be forced to do so.
This time my interest, my motivation and my joy in growing died.
When we started, we knew we had signed up for the challenges of pests, weeds, marketing, financial challenges, steep learning curves and hard labor. We were prepared to be forced to make difficult decisions and to feel lost sometimes as we figured things out.
But this was beyond cruel. We had not accounted for other people finding a way to destroy a significant portion of that year’s crop while also threatening my health and the health of the animals on the farm.
But there I was. Devastated, lost and angry.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to do this anymore.
Back from the Edge - but always finding others
Obviously, the Genuine Faux Farm did not come to its close in after that spray event.
Once again, commitment won the day. As before, we were determined to fulfill our contract with our CSA members. But this time, we had a different tool in our tool box. That tool was the support of valued peer mentors in our farming group. Blue Gate Farm, Scattergood Friends School Farm and Grinnell Heritage Farm stepped up when we needed it and we weathered that storm.
We ran our CSA for seven more seasons, complete with Spring and Fall extensions. We added a second high tunnel, a new tractor and even solar panels to our farm.
Always more edges. Constantly more changes.
Then, in 2020, the year of the pandemic, we ended the CSA and moved to a limited direct sales model while I took a job with Pesticide Action and Agroecology Network. When I talked with my Dad about the possibility of taking that position, his response was “Well, you’ve been training for it.”
While I might not have wanted to hear it, he was probably right.
With the off-farm income, we have been able to scale back, but we still have sales every other week featuring eggs and whatever other farm products we have at the time. But perhaps, I am most proud of our efforts to move some of our focus to producing food for the food bank and food pantry - because we’ve been training for that too.
Recently, I was a guest speaker in a college class and a student asked me the standard question - “if you could go back, would you change anything?”
I thought about all of the edges and I considered the events that led to them and from them. Of course, I would rather not have had some of the most difficult moments in my life - that’s only truthful. But, to go back and remove them? No. Those hard times - those edges - brought me to who I am and where I am today.
There are people I would not have met that I value more than they probably know. There are things I have learned and learned well because of the struggle associated within my experience that I would not want to give up. And there is the strength of character and feelings of accomplishment that come with passing through difficult times. If I went back and changed things, I wouldn’t be the me I am now - and despite what I might say and think sometimes, I usually like that guy.
All of this brings me to the moment I was considering how I should tell this story to you. That’s when I remembered something I heard Jeff Moyer (from Rodale Institute) say at a PFI event years ago and it felt like it summed things up well.
He said, “Life is where the edges are.”
And I am inclined to agree with him.
At 68+, and feeling pretty reflective as we all quickly approach a turning point in 2025, I have pondered my own career and life choice 'edges'. Given it all to do over again, I am fairly content that I made the best choices I could given the information that I had at the moment. Sounds like you feel much the same, and THANK YOU for all the good that you and Tammy are doing in the world now - and have been doing!
MUCH appreciated, and thanks so much for this remarkable story at such a pivotal time.
Thanks for this story, Rob. The recap was informative, though Lisa and I have "been on the edge" of your journey for a long time, since the beginning, actually. Your summation says a lot; you're content with who/where you are now, and wouldn't have gotten here without all those experiences. Here's hoping 2025 adds to that pool of opportunities.