How we got here:

Growing up on a grain farm, my childhood was spent showing pigs, attending 4H and FFA events, and walking soybeans. My farmer dad and sign-painter-turned-teacher mom instilled in me the value of hard work, the importance of community, and love for the ag industry. Those core tenets serve me well in my role as an ag marketing communications professional - a career that couples my love of farming with my God-given talents.

My husband works as a product development engineer for a major ag equipment manufacturer. Our careers transplanted us about four hours from "home". With multiple siblings and not enough acres to go 'round, we'd accepted that taking over the family farm just wasn't in the cards for us. Still, our upbringing left us wanting more, so we began looking for real estate properties that offered us more than our starter home on a half-acre lot.

After years of searching, the perfect place hit the market in the middle of COVID-19. We viewed the home and put in an offer less than 48 hours after the property had been listed, becoming the proud owners of what originally was a Christmas tree farm since its inception in 1978. We've lovingly dubbed these 21 acres (one acre for the house and the remaining twenty dedicated to the farm) as the "Back 20". When we purchased this homestead in the summer of 2020, our original plan was to harvest the 200 remaining trees and build fence for a future, small cattle herd (within my comfort zone of conventional ag). Those plans changed after we posted trees for sale during the holiday season of 2020 and were overwhelmed by how special the Christmas tree business is: the families that tromped around searching for the perfect tree, the fantastic late fall weather, the year-after-year customers, and the excitement of the holidays - all tied to our farm. In the last three years, we've planted just over 1,000 Christmas trees of six different varieties. Because of the lengthy growing time from transplant to harvestable height, it will be about five more years before any of the trees we've planted are ready to sell. Besides the Christmas trees, the farm features a huge garden, an established asparagus patch, a beehive, and a pollinator habitat. Uniquely, our professional roles center on traditional, row crop production while our personal operation is 100% specialty agriculture.

The "Back 20" is nothing we'd ever planned, but somehow, it's beyond our wildest dreams.