Renewing the Countryside

Story Clearinghouse

Elmwood Stock Farm

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If Elmwood Stock Farm were a song, and each family member improvised on a different instrument, then the weekends would sound like the chorus. Cecil Bell raises beef and tobacco, his son John raises vegetables, his son-in-law Mac Stone works off the farm and raises organic livestock with Cecil’s daughter Ann, who additionally markets the […]

Circle G Farm

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A Place to Live and Work Paul and Ramona Garver’s farm lies on the South Dakota border, three miles from Hendricks, Minnesota. After years of leasing a ranch in Montana, the Garvers decided they wanted to own the land on which they live and work. In 1996, Paul and Ramona purchased the 80 acres of […]

Tillery Farm

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Home Pickins McKee, Kentucky Growing tobacco was insurance for Beth and Doug Tillery on their 300 acre, 120-head dairy farm in eastern Kentucky. In years when milk prices sunk below the cost of production, the tobacco check would come in and balance the books. Fragile, but it worked for nearly two decades. Then one year […]

Whole Farm Cooperative

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Birth of a Cooperative Nation Whole Farm Cooperative (WFC) arose in response to the large corporate-run conglomerates that threaten the small farm way of life. Comprised of about fifty family farms throughout Central Minnesota, the Co-op draws from a strong history of livestock, dairy, and vegetable farmers marketing goods cooperatively. Begun in a basement, which […]