Fresh From the Fields
Organic farmers have amazing stories to tell. OFRF has been interviewing farmers to get a birds’ eye view of life on the farm.
Gray Organic Farms
January 19, 2021 – Stephen Gray and his family are the third generation to farm their land in Ashkum, Illinois, which they are transitioning to organic using practices such as cover crops and minimal tillage to build the soil and reduce disruption to soil life.
A-Frame Farm
August 6, 2020 - Luke and Ali Peterson farm 500 certified organic acres employing practices such as cover cropping, minimal tillage, and crop livestock rotation toward the goal of becoming self-sustaining and truly regenerative.
Barr Farms
June 3, 2020 - Barr Farms is a seventh-generation family farm in Rhodelia, Kentucky. Adam and Rae Strobel Barr raise organic vegetables, pastured chicken and pork, and grass-fed beef. They farm with the intention of taking care of the land by growing healthy soil, healthy plants, healthy animals, and healthy people.
Wild Hope Farm
Wild Hope Farm is a certified organic farm owned by the Belk family and located in Chester, South Carolina. The practices they use are simultaneously decreasing off-farm inputs (e.g., pesticides, fertilizers) and increasing the health of their ecosystem.
Crager Hager Farm
October 23, 2019 – Crager Hager Farm is located in Northern Carroll County, Georgia, a community on the periphery of metro Atlanta. Bryan and his wife Wendy grow over 100 different varieties of fruits and vegetables on the 123-year old farm that Wendy originally purchased as a rural retreat in the [...]
Beyercrest, LLC
June 19, 2019 – Rory Beyer was raised on the dairy farm his parents have owned since 1973. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin-River Falls with a degree in Animal Science, he returned to the farm and several years later, made the transition to organic production. Today, the Beyers farm 385 acres, raising dairy, beef, corn, and small [...]
April Joy Farm
January 2, 2019 – April Joy Farm is located near Ridgefield, Washington on 24 acres above the Columbia River Slough. The farm was purchased on contract from Annie Peterson in 2003. Coming “home” to this farm was the realization of a dream for April Thatcher née Jones, who spent many happy childhood days helping the previous owners with farm [...]
Elmwood Stock Farm
October 31, 2018 – Elmwood Stock Farm is a 6th-generation family farm in Lexington, Kentucky that began as a producer of Black Angus breeding-stock cattle. The cattle are still an important part of the farm ecosystem and farm business, though over the past decade the family has branched out to produce a variety [...]
Three Springs Farm
August 30, 2018 – Three Springs Farm is a certified organic farm located in eastern Oklahoma in the Ozark Hills. Farmers Mike Appel and Emily Oakley cultivate over thirty different crops and more than 100 individual varieties on three acres of land. Their goal is to maintain a family operation that demonstrates [...]
Common Wealth Seed Growers
August 28, 2018 – In 2018, OFRF awarded a grant to Edmund Frost of Common Wealth Seed Growers in Virginia to assess resistance to both Bacterial Wilt and Cucurbit Downy Mildew among selected cucumber and muskmelon seed stocks, and to continue with the development of a pickling cucumber that is resistant to both diseases.
Simple Gifts Farm
May 15, 2018 – We recently had the opportunity to talk with OFRF Board President Jeremy Barker Plotkin of Simple Gifts Farm in Amherst, Massachusetts. Jeremy and his team are stewards of the North Amherst Community Farm (NACF), community-owned land preserved in perpetuity for farming. They are working to ensure the land remains an organic community farm, a wildlife corridor, and [...]
Soper Farms
February 15, 2018 – OFRF board member Harn Soper is part of a four-generation Iowa farming family based in Emmetsburg, Iowa. Soper Farms is a century farm, having been in the family for more than 100 years. The Soper family voted to transition the farms, which comprise about 800 acres, to organic, starting in 2010. When I was eleven [...]
