It’s the co-op’s vision to support and strengthen community connections with our local producers – so here are their stories! In this Meet Your Producer series, we’ll highlight our neighborhood farmers, ranchers, and producers so you can see and hear what they’re all about. Support local!
Mellowfields Farm
Kevin Prather & Jessi Asmussen
1551 N. 1550 Rd, Lawrence, KS 66046
mellowfields@gmail.com
About the Farm
We grow at least 50 crops. But our main crops are salad greens, roots, summer fruiting vegetables and some herbs.
We sell our seasonal produce March-December, currently available in the Merc produce department and other retail outlets, as well as through home deliveries and on-farm pickup sales. The public can order produce directly from us via our webstore for no-contact purchasing. We also participate in a multi-farm CSA: Common Harvest CSA, which runs May through October.
In recent years we have whittled down our product list to this crops that are popular AND profitable. Our crops mix comes from our history of relatively limited growing space, as we’ve balanced growing the most value in a small space with the need to grow what people want.
We love growing and selling: Carrots, Beets, Lettuce Mix, Peppers, Celery, Basil, Bulb Fennel and Tomatoes. These are crops that we have worked hard to find efficient seeding, maintenance and harvesting system for. When the work is predictable, the product is high quality, and the sales are successful, it feels like we are doing it right.
This work has been a gradual process, developing out of many years of slow growth and evolution. But our passion for this work comes from a desire for self-sufficiency, personal health, environmental stewardship, and building community resilience.
About the Farmers
Kevin didn’t come from an agricultural family, but he was drawn to the idea of self-sufficiency after college and had his first successful garden with Jessi after we both graduated from Southwestern University in Georgetown, TX. From there we moved to central South Dakota, where Jessi grew up with roots in conventional commodity crop agriculture and we both found it really satisfying to grow in the fertile, glaciated soils of central SD. Our farming beginnings started in 2005 when we moved to Lawrence. We both worked on local organic farms, part-time. Jessi also participated in the Growing Growers Training Program through K-State.
“Farming has been an evolution for us. We started out with a small CSA for friends and neighbors, with the pickup in our backyard in East Lawrence. As we outgrew that location, we started distributing our CSA at the neighborhood Cottin’s Hardware Store. Pretty soon we we were having a week-night farmer’s market there in the back parking lot of Cottin’s and eventually joined the downtown Lawrence Farmer’s Market. In 2015, we applied for Organic Certification and this designation brought a higher price for our product and made wholesaling a viable sales channel. At that point, we began selling to The Merc. and other wholesale accounts. We were part of the City’s Common Ground Program which allowed us access to more high quality acreage and a chance to increase our skills and build all of our sales channels. We are now on our own 4.5 acres just east of Lawrence.
About Farming
Small scale organic farming isn’t a career path with easy-to-navigate training and educational opportunities. When we moved to Kansas, we both worked with youth in completely different jobs. Kevin was a middle school teacher and Jessi worked with a social work agency serving foster care and at-risk youth. After working summer jobs for other farmers in the area, we slowly built an on-the-side market garden business and over the years it grew and became our full-time work. At first it was just the two of us. When we hired our first part-time employees in 2015, our responsibilities as business owners became larger and because of that the business became more productive and we became better farmers. We now employ 3 full-time people and 1 part-time person for 6-9 months/year.
Having employees that we care about has challenged us to be as organized and efficient as possible, this allows us to be good managers so we can grow as much consistently good food as possible. This allows us to provide fair pay, safe working conditions and responsive/communicative atmosphere. COVID has added to our desire to be responsible employers and we have worked to ensure that our employees have access to adequate sick/vacation pay.
To us, being a good farmer means not only growing healthy food, respecting the soil and biological diversity of the land, but also taking good care of our employees and using our business to contribute to the strength of our community. Currently we are working to address food security by providing food to Sunrise Project, Food Not Bombs and Just Food. Collaboration with other growers has been a big part of our growth and something we believe is necessary.
What has farming taught you?
JA You can’t give up just because the work is hard and you don’t succeed; where there is frustration, there is the opportunity and challenge to improve.
KP This job has been a constant learning process. The more I know, the more I realize I don’t know. Other farmers (either locally or in online forums) have taught me the bulk of what I know about this profession.
Find out more about Mellowfields by following them on social media, or visit their webstore for even more fresh produce!