For 14 years, Steve Pincus grew organic vegetables on 21 acres he rented on the edge of Madison, Wisconsin. A few years ago, an adjacent piece of land sold for $40,000 an acre, for use as an industrial park. With land selling at such steep prices for development, Steve and his wife Beth Kazmar realized they would soon be asked to give up their farm, and that is exactly what happened.

A sad story of farmers losing to developers? Yes, but don’t feel too sorry for Steve and Beth. They aren’t feeling sorry for themselves; in fact, they are delighted at the turn their farming business has taken since their eviction from the rented land.
Steve and Beth, whose business is called Tipi Produce, bought a 76-acre farm about a 35-minute drive from Madison. The farm has a big farmhouse, a big dairy barn, and several other usable outbuildings. Most important, it has 45 acres of flat crop land immediately behind the house. They bought the farm and, after persuading the owners of their rented land to give them one more year, were able to get a season of cover cropping on the new place as well as make improvements to the house.

When moving day finally came this year, they were as ready as anyone could possibly be to relocate not just a household, but a thriving farming business. They decided at the start of the season that they would attempt to do everything on the new land just as they had done it the year before on their old farm. And as the season was drawing to a close this fall, they were feeling pretty good about the success of the transition.

“We came here with momentum, a working business, a crew, equipment, a family…and it has worked out,” Steve said as he walked past row after row of beautiful broccoli, cauliflower, kale and Brussels sprouts awaiting harvest.

Not that it wasn’t stressful. Beth said, “It took us 14 years to develop the infrastructure at our old farm, but we tried to reproduce it here in a few months. That meant we were typically completing projects two weeks after we needed them done.

“Think of all the things you need to run a vegetable farm: several coolers, irrigation, electrical service to the buildings, a loading dock, organized wash stations, storage for boxes and tools, greenhouses, room for the employees’ belongings, heated indoor space for washing stored vegetables in winter, good drainage around the buildings, lights outside for loading the truck before dawn, functional equipment, some control over raccoons, woodchucks, rabbits, mice and birds that want to live in the buildings, etc.”

In addition to all that, their first season also coincided with the birth of their second child, so Beth worked on the farm much less than usual. Fortunately, Steve and Beth have several employees who have been with them as long as five years, and who helped keep the business humming.

This wasn’t the first move for Steve. He began farming in 1976 on a hilly piece of land in western Wisconsin. (He lived in a tipi, hence the name of the business.) He moved to Madison in 1988 to study horticulture at the University of Wisconsin. But he also continued farming on a small scale, and was soon convinced he could succeed as an organic farmer. In a statistics class, he met Beth, who has a master’s degree in plant pathology, and was equally interested in the farming life.
“Once I got here to Madison, and got on really good land…it was an eye-opener,” Steve said. “Madison is a great place to be an organic farmer.”

Markets
Madison is home to the largest farmers’ market in the United States, the Dane County Farmers’ Market. Every Saturday morning, the stalls of 200 vendors line the sidewalks of the entire eight blocks surrounding the state capitol building. Customers throng the sidewalks until the crowd is so thick that people can move only in one direction.

Tipi Produce is a popular vendor at the market. On a recent Saturday, customers flocked around the stand, chatting with Steve, who knows a lot of people after selling there for 26 years. Right-hand woman Maggie Schley kept things running, getting lots of attention with the wreath of tiny peppers and tomatoes she wore in her hair. The atmosphere was positive and energized.

For all its good vibes, the Dane County market is only about 20% of Tipi Produce’s business. “We really don’t emphasize farmers’ markets anymore,” Steve said.

Instead, almost three-fourths of their business is to natural foods stores in Madison and Milwaukee. As the city has grown and the interest in natural foods has increased, so has the demand for locally grown organic produce. Tipi Produce sells to seven stores, both local coops and big chains. “We’ve helped our customers build their businesses and they’ve repaid us with loyalty,” Steve said.

Steve and Beth also sell through Homegrown Wisconsin, a coop they helped found. Now in its sixth season, Homegrown Wisconsin markets for 25 farms, delivering twice a week to Chicago and Milwaukee.

Until this year, the delivery point for the farmers was Steve and Beth’s farm. This year, the coop rented building space with a loading dock and installed a cooler. It already owned a delivery truck. It also has a manager. Once a week, growers let the manager know what they have available, and they set their own prices. The manager increases those prices by about 50%, to pay for the coop’s overhead and transportation to the city. He faxes a price list to restaurants, about 20 this summer. Chefs fax back their orders, and growers then deliver to the cooler on the day before the truck goes out on its delivery route.

Despite their involvement, Homegrown Wisconsin accounts for only 6% of their sales. “We do not focus on high-end restaurants,” Steve said. “For a four or five acre farm, baby carrots work great. There are so many good farmers around here growing crops like salad mix and garlic. We want to sell all the mainstream things that people want to eat like watermelon and carrots and broccoli and onions. It’s because I like being expansive, using machinery.”

As an indication of how much machinery he has, Steve estimates that the farm has 100 tires. “There’s almost always something going flat,” he jokes.

Most of the farm is laid out in 50-foot-wide blocks of eight beds, six feet on center, with one, two or three rows per bed. Most fields are 650 feet long, “which sometimes feels daunting to a crew,” Steve said, but it makes it easy to work on the tractor. He has six of them, including a 25 hp cultivating tractor that he likes to keep running as much as possible for weed control.

Tipi Produce grows a huge number of varieties. It’s easier to name the crops that aren’t grown: sweet corn, potatoes, herbs, green beans, salad mix, winter squash and garlic. The biggest crops they do grow are lettuce, carrots, tomatoes, pepper, brassicas, summer squash, melons, leeks and onions. Most are started in a greenhouse on the farm and transplanted, rather than direct seeded, to provide better weed control.

The fields are organized into sections of similar vegetables that require the same handling. “When you grow peppers, it doesn’t matter if you’re growing bells or hot peppers,” Steve said. “The more different crops we have the more a store is likely to order.”

Succession planting is important, but difficult in the unpredictable Wisconsin weather. Steve does 10 plantings of lettuce, four or five plantings of fall broccoli and cauliflower, three plantings of tomatoes. He can put out his last planting of brassicas on Aug. 10 for harvest through mid-November most years. Late fall crops can be profitable most years. They have few insect, weed or disease problems, and are usually high quality and easy to sell.

“We extend the season with storage crops rather than growing early or late in a hoophouse,” Steve said.

Employees
Storage crops bridge the three-month gap between the end of the growing season and the start of greenhouse work. That allows Steve and Beth to keep two people employed year-round. During the height of the season, they have nine full-time equivalent employees.

The people who work for them tend to be in their early 20s and interested in sustainable agriculture. “We’ve been very successful in getting people back year to year,” Beth said. “They like the work, being outside. They enjoy working with each other, and make good friendships. We’ve been able to get good people because they don’t have to uproot their lives; we work 9 to 5 Monday through Friday.”

The best crews, Steve said, had one or two people who were social, charismatic, and fun. “If the farm maintains a positive mood, they’ll come,” he said. “We provide a cooked lunch twice a week. It helps tie it all together, it’s one little perk we can offer.”

Certified organic
Tipi Produce is certified organic by Midwest Organic Services Association. Because of the timing of the farm purchase, Steve and Beth were able to have 9 acres certified this year when they started out, and they will have an additional 17 acres certified by June next year.

Steve has been a supporter of the federal organic law. “I wanted it because I didn’t want California growing at different standards than what we had to follow,” he said. “It’s essential for us to be certified, with all the store sales.”

With the new federal law in effect, Steve and Beth can be assured that their organic produce will continue to get the respect it deserves in the marketplace. They are feeling very confident that they can make a decent livelihood entirely on the farm; in fact, neither has worked off the farm for nearly four years.

And with a new farm, good soil, loyal employees, and two beautiful young children, all the pieces are in place for them to reap the benefits of decades of hard work and idealism. The future is looking bright for these organic farmers.