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Lindsey Morris Carpenter is the owner-operator of Grassroots Farm, a certified-organic, 40-acre farm in Wisconsin. “It’s important to me to use sustainable methods because it’s the only ethically sound way to produce food that is safe, healthy, logistically practical, and most beneficial to our local, communal economy,” she says.
After dropping out of a Philadelphia college in 2004, Carpenter worked on a vegetable farm in Wisconsin and then apprenticed at a bigger farm in Illinois. In 2007, she and her mother bought land in Green County, WI, which they leased while Carpenter worked on an urban farm in Chicago, teaching previously incarcerated people about growing food. In 2009, Grassroots Farm went into vegetable production. Today, her farm grows 75 varieties of fruits, vegetables, hops, and herbs.
Grassroots Farm uses a closed-loop system in which farm wastes are recycled and fed back into the system to produce high-value agricultural products. The soil is fertilized by chicken and turkey manure. The cattle, lamb, and pigs are grass-fed and raised without antibiotics. Apart from vegetables, Carpenter also sells organic, free-range chicken eggs, a variety of meats, and pesticide-free cut flowers.
Carpenter sells her produce at farmers’ markets and through her CSA program. Her other clients include a small group of local groceries and restaurants. She also offers work-share opportunities on her farm. “I do want there to be options so people can afford to eat this way,” she says. Carpenter feels strongly that organic produce should be accessible to people of all income brackets, but she struggles to balance making the food affordable and covering the costs of running a business. She does most of the farmwork herself. Paying laborers is simply too expensive.
LaVon Griffieon’s four children – now adults and with degrees in agriculture – were the fifth generation to live in the house where her husband, Craig, was raised, and the sixth generation to live on the land north of Ankeny, Iowa.
In an arrangement signaling the husband’s and wife’s differing views on farming, Craig runs the conventional cow/calf herd and beef-feeder operation while LaVon raises and direct-markets antibiotic-free and growth hormone-free beef, pork, poultry, and eggs. Her livestock eats non-GMO grain and corn. Griffieon Family Farm also raises soybeans, corn, oats, apples, and alfalfa.
Raised on an 80-acre subsistence farm near the city of Spirit Lake in northwest Iowa, Griffieon has long been a vocal advocate of preserving prairieland from the threat of urban sprawl. “As I looked out my window I could see the northward march,” she says of the development growth in the 1990s. Subdivisions have since encroached on three sides of the family’s 1,120-acre spread.
