Three Springs Farm: Small-scale Farming Rooted in Organic Principles
By Clare Boland, Communications & Outreach Fellow, and OFRF staff
Three Springs Farm is a certified organic farm located in eastern Oklahoma in the Ozark Hills. Farmers Mike Appel and Emily Oakley cultivate over forty different crops and more than 150 individual varieties on three acres of land. Their goal is to maintain a family operation that demonstrates the economic viability of small-scale farming.
Originally, Three Springs sold the majority of their produce at farmers’ markets, but since the pandemic, they’ve transitioned into being majority Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). Instead of giving customers a pre-packed box like a traditional CSA, they offer a free choice model, allowing customers to pick what veggies they want to receive at their weekly pick-up in Tulsa. CSA members also receive a newsletter containing recipes, photos, and stories from the farm. “It’s non-traditional, but we still have that community support,” says Mike. In addition to their CSA, they also sell wholesale to a restaurant and a Food is Medicine Program.
For Mike and Emily, farming organically was their intention from the start. Both studied agriculture in college, and afterward gained experience working at organic farms like Full Belly Farm in California. After Emily finished her graduate degree at the University of California-Davis, they relocated to Oklahoma, where Emily was raised, to start a farm of their own.
But finding a permanent home for their farm took a bit longer than they had hoped. They looked at more than 100 properties over the course of three years. During this time, they farmed on leased land, but were unable to become certified because of soil amendments used on the land prior to their lease. Eventually, they found land in Eastern Oklahoma, about an hour east of Tulsa, where they have been farming for the past 22 years.
“Oklahoma is really difficult because there’s not a lot of good soil,” Mike explains. “The best land tends to be river valleys, but they’re prone to flooding. Or, there might be really great land but no water. The best land we saw was south of Tulsa, but it was too expensive for us. We were at the eleventh hour when we just kind of stumbled upon our place.”
Why Organic
The land they purchased hadn’t been farmed before, so they didn’t have to go through the three-year organic transition period to obtain organic certification. “It’s why we do what we do,” Michael said when asked about the decision to be certified organic. “There was never a question of doing anything other than that… We actually don’t need it for marketing purposes.”
Despite that, Mike says their CSA customers are still interested in the organic label – what it means and the integrity behind it. He also thinks the bashing of big organics doesn’t do a lot to support the label overall. “When you’re doing that consistently, the consumer doesn’t understand and is going to equate organics as something that is fraudulent. That’s a worry. It has to be a lot more delicate and balanced. There are a lot of us out there doing it right. There’s a lot of concern, and I think we’re riding a very fine line of losing consumer support if we don’t make integrity and strict standards the priority.”
In addition to being USDA-certified organic, Three Springs Farm is also certified through the Real Organic Project. Emily served on the National Organic Standards Board from 2016-2021 and advocated against the inclusion of hydroponic vegetables under the USDA label. The USDA’s decision to include hydroponics was what led to the founding of the Real Organic Project, where Emily currently serves on the standards board. The Real Organic Project label goes beyond the USDA organic label, differentiating organic food produced in concert with healthy soils and pasture, and offering customers greater transparency.
Mike’s top reasons why people should choose organic whenever possible start with the obvious. “You don’t want poisons in your food. That to me is fundamental. We don’t want to eat food grown with chemicals and we don’t want other people to either.
“Also, farmworkers shouldn’t be working in fields that have nasty chemicals. We have a long way to go to ensure people have good working conditions, but at least we can ensure people aren’t being exposed to bad chemicals when they’re growing our food.”
Then there are the larger environmental impacts. “Living near a creek and seeing the life that’s there is incredible. While it is resilient, it’s also very vulnerable to our influences. It’s important to make sure your food choices don’t impair that. When we buy organic, we think beyond ourselves. Our choices have huge impacts in other parts of the world. Just try to make the best choices you can with what you have in front of you.”
Cover Cropping for Scale and Climate Extremes
Although Mike and Emily own around 100 acres, they only keep three to four acres in production since it’s just the two of them and their daughter. The majority of their land is in conservation for wildlife habitat and native ecosystem restoration. Determining the right schedule for their cover cropping has helped not only to build biomass, but also to manage their farm with minimal staff.
”Anything that was spring crops gets turned into a summer cover crop. And then any land that isn’t gonna be utilized at all that year is also in summer cover crop. We end our season on Labor Day to get our winter cover crop planted. So we spend most of September, and a little bit of October, cleaning up fields and just selling to the restaurant and the Food is Medicine program.” The goal, Mike says, is to get the entire farm into cover crop by mid-fall. “Over time, we’ve figured out how to sustain the farm as two people; not growing year-round is one way to do that.”
Though, climate irregularities have caused them to adapt their plans season to season. “ Our falls have been a lot drier, so we’re not able to plant until we get a rain, and those rains haven’t been coming until October. So we’ve modified our winter cover crop a little bit because of that, adding more winter-hardy [varieties].”
In addition to fall droughts, they’ve also been experiencing heavy rains in the spring. This past year was “the wettest spring we’ve ever had, which is saying a lot for this region because we have pretty wet springs. We get pretty severe storms. It’s usually a deluge. And this spring was the worst in our 20 years of farming. We just could not get back into the field. And there were a lot of disease problems in our potatoes and onions because of it.”
Along with the changes they’ve made to their cover crop mix, Mike and Emily are also experimenting with reduced tillage to combat climate extremes. This year, instead of rototilling their summer crop prior to winter planting, they tried discing it in instead. “We’re really happy the way that turned out. The soil is a lot less abused when we don’t rototill.” In the coming year, they are hoping to experiment with interseeding, planting cover crops alongside cash crops, to combat soil erosion and build resilience for rain events.
Learning Through On-Farm Research
Mike and Emily have also developed a good relationship with Oklahoma State University. “We’ve done some varietal trials with them, which helped us figure out what works,” says Mike. “What’s been interesting is to see the extension agents become more interested in cover cropping. They’re still very conventional, but they’ve become more interested after seeing what cover crops have done for us—the fact that we’re organic, our plants are healthy, and our yields are good—without having to put down chemical fertilizers.”
“We’re a bit far away from the university, so it makes it harder to collaborate, but we’ve told them to call us whenever they do variety trials. We have lots of ideas and have trialed a bunch of different crops.”
His best advice for new farmers? Perseverance.
“There are times I’ve definitely wanted to just throw in the towel. But in the end, things work out. You talk to people, figure out the problems. Each year it gets better, but you’ll still have setbacks, like the weather for us this year. Know that while nothing is static, each year you’ll be able to build on your experience.”
Lessons from the Plains on the Transition to Organic
A Farmer Panel recap from the Transitioning to Organic Farming Conference at the Eastern Nebraska Research, Extension, and Education Center in Ithaca, NE
By Brian Geier, OFRF Communications Manager.
“I used to write checks to chemical companies. Now I write them to my kids,” explains Tom Schwarz, a 5th-generation farmer from southern Nebraska, while discussing the advantages of organic production. The Schwarz Family Farm has been farming organically since transitioning the farm in 1988. Along with his wife and two kids, Tom raises corn, soybeans, wheat, field peas, alfalfa, oats, and numerous cover crops. He was speaking at the Transition to Organic Farming Conference hosted by the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, alongside two other organic farmers.
As may be the case for many farmers in rural Nebraska, farming is not new to any of the organic farmers on this particular panel. Each spoke with a familiarity and vocabulary that comes with decades of experience. All three of them are from families who are farming hundreds or thousands of acres, some owned, many rented, in various stages of leases. And all of them had, at some point in the past few decades, switched a portion of their farming enterprises to certified organic production. For these farmers, who carry on family legacies of farming that survived the farm crises of the 1970s and 80s, organic is, among other things, a way to survive. It is also a path toward passing a farm operation onto the next generation that is better, safer, and more profitable than when they started.
No-till, organic corn at Young Family Farm in Nebraska. Photo credit: Barry Young, farmer-presenter on the “Organic Production: Nebraska Growers’ Perspectives” panel.
Like most farming, organic is not all easy. Tom presented what he sees as the disadvantages of organic: it is management-intensive (more machinery passes per season), requires extra recordkeeping, and WEEDS (emphasis via capitalization added from Tom’s presentation). “It’s just plain harder,” he explained, citing the need to be able to adapt on the fly and to creatively problem solve.
Matt Adams, who started farming with his dad in 2016 and operates about 600 acres in Seward, Nebraska, also spoke on the panel. He agreed that there can be difficulties with the transition to organic, particularly with having machinery settings or setups needed for larger-scale grain production. “Get everything ready way before,” he warns, “so the day you need to be out there, you’re ready.”
Matt transitioned non-irrigated land that was previously in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) to organic hay and row crops. Since the fields were in CRP, there had been no prohibited substances applied to them, and they were ready to certify, meaning he did not have to steward them through the three-year transition period to organic. But since the land had not been fertilized or cultivated, Matt is finding that yields have been low and weed pressure high, putting extra strain on the need for timely, effective cultivation setups.
When addressing challenges, the number one source of information for organic farmers is other farmers. And Nebraska’s organic farmers on this panel are no exception.
“I do have some original thoughts. But I always throw them to the wolves first,” explains Barry Young, the third panelist who operates Young Family Farm in southeast Nebraska. “I should call it ‘Young Community Farm’”, he chuckles, giving credit to past mentors that first taught him about polyculture planting, and acknowledging fellow farmers and family members that he discusses ideas with before trying them. Barry finds that sourcing inputs is one of his biggest challenges. Despite living in farm country, “No one around me was doing what I’m doing,” he said. Still, by persistently asking questions of fellow organic and regenerative farmers, who he finds are more apt to share knowledge than many conventional growers, he has learned to meet main challenges like developing inter-species planting mixes for weed control.
Organic farmer Barry Young explains his polyculture planting mix for organic wheat, which includes a custom mix of 120 pounds of wheat with 2 pounds of radish and 3 pounds of flax. The flax, a legume, helps enhance the soil microbiome while the radish helps break compaction especially following alfalfa. Both winterkill and the wheat matures as a pure stand for harvest the next season.
Earthworms and good soil structure in a November cover crop at Young Family Farm.
A high biomass (10-ton per acre) pea/oat cover crop following no-till corn planting at Young Family Farm
Corn grows with a soil-building mix in wheat stubble at Young Family Farm.
Secondary roots on organic, no-till corn at six weeks post-emergence at Young Family Farm.
“This is the way we’re intended to farm.”
-Nebraska organic farmer
All three of the farmers spoke about several advantages of organic production, too. One described lying down in a field, observing the increase in bug and bird life following the switch away from pesticides, and thinking, “This is the way we’re intended to farm.”
Other advantages cited include organic’s market stability, and the regional control and accountability within the market chains. With organic grain production, many farmers are selling niche crops to regional processors who are then selling food back to the community. This creates a market and economy that farmers form long-term relationships with, and it stands in contrast to the volatility and lack of accountability from larger, conventional commodity crop markets where crops are shipped out of state or country for processing. It is “consumer-based as opposed to commodity-based,” Tom points out.
But ultimately, for Tom and others on the panel, it is about their farms’ future, and that is about the quality of life of the next generation. Today, there are challenges with organic, for sure, but farming has been a difficult profession for generations of Nebraskans. With organic production as at least a part of the farm, Tom feels he is creating something that will be passed on to the next generation and be better than what he inherited. Aside from now being a paid part of the organic operation, Tom notes that “The kids will not be exposed to chemicals like I was,” adding, matter-of-factly, “that’s the biggest reason I do it.”
For Plains farmers interested in learning more about the USDA’s National Organic Program, we encourage you to explore resources and upcoming events hosted by the region’s Transition to Organic Partnership Program (TOPP). You may also want to explore OFRF’s step-by-step guides, printable tools, and farmer experiences to help you access USDA programs and funding, such as the NRCS’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and the RMA’s Whole-Farm Revenue Protection (WFRP) program.
Crop-Livestock Integration Panel with Organic Farmers
Are you an organic farmer that is interested in using your livestock in your crop rotation? Are you wondering how others have overcome some of the complexities of integrating your farm system? Would you like to hear directly from farmers who have experience in this topic? If so, then this webinar is for you.
This Seeds of Success farmer-to-farmer networking session was an engaging opportunity where farmers came together to ask questions and share their lived experience in integrating crops and livestock in their production systems.
This session features three farmers that have built resilience and a dynamic organic system:
- Ben Coerper, Wild Harmony Farm
- Tomia MacQueen, Wildflower Farm
- Raymond Hain, recently retired from Grain Place Foundation
OFRF has partnered with the Organic Farmers Association (OFA) and National Organic Coalition (NOC) to lead a series of virtual farmer-to-farmer networking sessions. These facilitated events will be engaging opportunities for farmers to share their challenges and successes, and will be accompanied with relevant resources you can use.
Funding for this series is provided by a cooperative agreement between OFRF and USDA- NIFA to highlight research investments made through both OREI and ORG grant programs.
Infrastructure and Crop-Livestock Integration
In OFRF’s 2022 National Organic Research Agenda (NORA), organic farmers and ranchers across North America shared a common concern about the lack of technical assistance and educational resources available for Integrated Crop-Livestock Systems (ICLS). Integrating crops and livestock results in numerous benefits, however the process can also lead to increased complexity, especially for farmers who must adhere to National Organic Program rules and regulations.
This series of resources focused on Crop-Livestock Integration is informed by interviews with four highly-experienced organic producers that shared their challenges, successes, and advice for others interested in integrating livestock and crops on their organic farms.
Infrastructure for integrating animal and crop systems includes animal housing, watering systems, and fencing. Learn how farmers develop infrastructure that match the type and age of animal, are highly movable, and are adapted to soil and climate conditions.
Dr. Erin Silva
Director of the Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Dr. Erin Silva is an Associate Professor and State Extension Specialist in Organic and Sustainable Cropping Systems in the Department of Plant Pathology, as well as the Director for the Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at UW-Madison. After completion of a PhD in Horticulture at Washington State University, Dr. Silva obtained a faculty position at New Mexico State University. During her tenure at NMSU, Dr. Silva taught courses on organic vegetable production, an experiential learning course integrating the working student organic Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm on campus. Dr. Silva initiated several organic research projects at NMSU, including work on cover crop-based reduced tillage for organic vegetable crops and breeding vegetables for organic production systems.
Donna Holmes
Managing Director, Investor Relations, Iroquois Valley Farmland REIT
Donna Holmes is the Managing Director of Investor Relations at Iroquois Valley Farmland REIT. There, she shares the company’s vision and investment strategy with investors and prospects. She is responsible for expanding their investor base by building a community of like-minded investors. Donna is passionate about creating an opportunity for all people to reap the health benefits of nutritional food, grown in a sustainable and socially just society. Using her knowledge of finance and investing, Donna structures investment vehicles to address investors’ different needs and goals. She believes in Iroquois Valley’s triple bottom line principles, actively securing social, environmental, and financial returns for our investors.
Prior to joining Iroquois Valley, Donna served in business development and investor relations roles at three alternative asset management firms. Before working in finance, she practiced law, specializing in tax and ERISA matters.
Something to be Grateful For: Northeastern State Secretaries of Agriculture Send Letter to Secretary Rollins about OREI
Written by Vinnie Trometter and Gordon Merrick of OFRF’s Policy Team
Before we all rushed to our dinner tables for Thanksgiving, we at the Organic Farming Research Foundation (OFRF), organic agriculture researchers, and organic farmers were thankful for actions taken by several state capitols across the country. On November 20th, the state secretaries of agriculture from Connecticut, Delaware, and New Jersey joined Pennsylvania Secretary Redding to submit a letter to the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, requesting unreleased FY2025 funding for the Organic Agriculture Research Extension Initiative (OREI) be included on top of new fiscal year funds for the program in FY2026.
OFRF’s policy team spurred this effort because we wanted to make sure that state departments of agriculture were aware that their land-grant universities did not have an opportunity to apply for the largest organic research program under USDA despite it being a permanent and mandatory program under the Farm Bill. OREI represents $50 million out of the $72.5 million which USDA dedicates to answering organic farmer’s questions each year. However, USDA did not release an RFA for the program for FY25, resulting in zero awards being given out. Consequently, researchers have endured disruptions in the continuation of their work and in the delayed study of organic topics that focus on many new and emerging issues facing organic farmers.
OREI recipients are overwhelmingly agriculture researchers at land-grant universities who develop projects in partnership with working certified-organic farms. These projects are critical steps towards finding ways to unlock organic producers’ ability to be more productive and better market their goods. The need for programs that study organic productivity and supply chains is becoming increasingly important because the U.S. has a spiraling organic trade deficit and has lost more than 16% of its certified acreage since 2021. Yet at the same time, domestic demand for organically produced goods grew 5.2% last year, more than double the rate of the overall marketplace.
Shortly after the release of this letter, OFRF received word from USDA that FY2026 OREI funding will include all of FY2025’s monies, which is an outcome we are very thankful for. State-level advocacy is an important and effective strategy that OFRF uses to inform federal officials about the localized impacts of federal policy.
We encourage organic farmers, researchers, and stakeholders to engage with their state representatives, senators, and departments of agriculture to amplify their challenges and successes as it comes to deployment of federal funds targeting organic agriculture research topics.
If you want to read more blogs like this, sign up for our newsletter here; if you want to take a next step in engaging with the policy process at a local, state, or federal level, sign up for our free, email-based Communicating with Legislators course!
Eat well and breathe deep,
Vinnie and Gordon
Farmer-Led Trials Program Spotlight: Oxbow Farm and Conservation Center
Investigating Seeding Rate of Cover Crops for Biomass and Nutrient Content
Written by Mary Hathaway, OFRF’s Research & Education Program Manager, and Anthony Reyes, FLT Program participant
Anthony Reyes, FLT Program Participant. Photo credit Washington Soil Health Initiative, https://washingtonsoilhealthinitiative.com/2025/02/soil-health-ambassador-anthony-reyes-cover-crops/
Oxbow Farm & Conservation Center is a nonprofit farm in the floodplains of Snoqualmie Valley, WA. Anthony Reyes, the Agricultural Program Manager, manages 81 acres of certified organic land by experimenting and trialing climate adaptive and resilient agricultural practices. Along with his team, he works to reconcile our expanding human needs and the health of our ecosystem through sustainable agriculture, thoughtful management of our forests, ecological restoration, and education.
Oxbow Farm cultivates a variety of different crops well suited to the Snoqualmie Valley floodplain, and maintains a crop rotation to allow the soil to recover and regenerate. Anthony strategically removes fields from production each year and leaves them fallowed in cover crop to help protect the watershed, build up nutrients, and manage weeds, pests, and diseases.
Finding a Cover Crop that Works
Anthony was interested in understanding how to find a cover crop that would meet the needs of the farm – managing climatic challenges, erosion, and weed pressure. Ideally, anything that would be planted would help add biomass and could withstand drought conditions. Manipulating the seeding rate of the cover crops had been one way that the farm had considered better coverage of the soil, and Anthony was curious if the recommended seeding rate was the right density for their soil.
Farm Trial Plan
A portion of the cover cropped trial field.
With technical support from OFRF, Anthony is investigating the impact of seeding rate on biomass and nutrient content for German Foxtail, Pearl Millet, and Sudex cover crops. He will plant single varieties at two different seeding rates: the recommended rate and 25% above the recommended drilling rate.
The trial was arranged in a randomized complete block design, with 24 rows, each 100’ x 10’ wide, with 1’ pathways and borders on outside rows. Each of the 4 replications contained 6 plots (3 varieties at 2 different seeding rates), for a total of 24 plots.
Measurements were taken from a random 3×3’ quadrat from each plot, including a biomass and leaf tissue sample. These samples were sent to Ward Lab for analysis of biomass, nutrient content, dry matter, and C:N ratio of the crop matter.
Trial updates
The quadrat samples were taken in September and lab results were returned in late October. The OFRF team reviewed the data with Anthony, read a full report on how the trial went and findings from the data below.
Trial fields at Oxbow Farm and Conservation Center
“I have long been interested in conducting and furthering our on-farm research, having worked on and set up many trials throughout my career. The Farmer-Led Trial Program goes beyond and centers the experience and voice of farmers by identifying us as the content experts and by playing a highly supportive and facilitative role in creating sound research from our identified goals. I have greatly valued the time and care given by OFRF staff and am so appreciative of this program.”
– Anthony Reyes, Oxbow Farm and Conservation Center
An overhead drone shot of Oxbow Farm and Conservation Center
Research Results
For this Famer-Led Trial project, Anthony wanted to find a cover crop that would meet the needs of the farm – managing climatic challenges, erosion, and weed pressure. Ideally, anything that would be planted would help add biomass and could withstand drought conditions. In addition to testing a few new cover crops, Anthony was interested in manipulating the seeding rate of the cover crops to achieve better soil cover, and was curious to know if the recommended seeding rate was adequate for their soil and growing conditions.
Key Findings
- German Foxtail Millet and Sudex were identified as high yielding cover crops in this trial. There was an early season drought, which likely affected the cover crops, especially Pearl Millet.
- Sudex demonstrated the most vigor and produced more tillers, while the German Foxtail Millet was shorter and more upright, and did not form a closed canopy.
- Under these conditions, higher seeding rates were unnecessary, as the 125% rate offered no yield benefit and diluted nitrogen concentration, making the standard 100% rate more cost-effective.
Anthony is interested in trialing these crop varieties again, in a more fertile field and ideally under typical rainfall conditions.
For full details on the study’s methodology and results, read the final report.
This is part of a series of blogs highlighting farmers who are participating in OFRF’s Farmer-Led Trials program. Farmers receive technical support to address their production challenges through structured on-farm trials. To learn more about OFRF’s Farmer-Led Trials Program, visit our website page at https://ofrf.org/research/farmer-led-research-trials/
To learn more about Oxbow Farm and Conservation Center, visit their website at https://www.oxbow.org/
Organic Agriculture Research Programs at the USDA
The USDA agencies and programs outlined below are the primary drivers of organic research and extension activities.
Agricultural Research Service (ARS) – Research into organic agriculture topics
USDA’s in-house research agency, ARS operates labs and field stations nationwide. Organic research has included projects on cover crop integration in vegetable systems in CA, organic dairy herd health in WI, and long-term crop trials in MD.
National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) – Competitive Grant Programs
While ARS conducts research for the USDA, NIFA’s mission is to provide grants to research institutions, including ARS and the Land-Grant Universities.
- Organic Research and Extension Initiative (OREI) – The flagship NIFA competitive grant program is dedicated to organic agricultural research. It supports research, education, and extension programs that enhance the ability of organic producers and processors to grow and market high-quality products.
- Organic Transitions Program (ORG) – Awards grants for production and competitive-based agricultural issues, especially for farmers transitioning to organic production systems.
- Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (SARE) – USDA’s longest-running sustainable agriculture grants program. While not exclusively organic, SARE has funded thousands of farmer-driven projects, including many led by organic and transitioning producers.
- Specialty Crop Research Initiative (SCRI) – SCRI is a NIFA competitive grant program that provides resources for research and extension projects for the specialty crop industry. Organic’s share of SCRI-funded projects is highly variable — as low as 3% in 2023, but as high as 13% in 2021 — depending on applicant pool and USDA priorities.
- Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) – AFRI is a research, education, and extension competitive grant program that covers a wide range of topics, from improving rural economies, increasing food production, ensuring food safety and security, enhancing human nutrition, and training the next generation of the agricultural workforce. A range of 2-5% of AFRI funds are awarded to organic topics on an annual basis.
The best way to get these updates from OFRF is to join the OFRF newsletter.
OFRF’s newsletter provides regular updates to organic agriculture research programs at the USDA, including timeline updates, announcements of USDA’s calls for proposals, and advocacy updates via Gordon’s Policy Corner. We also provide details on how farmers, researchers, and advocates can work with us to protect and bolster federal support for organic farmers and researchers in the US.