New Family Farm

02/05/2026

A sign that spring is coming!!

06/28/2025

Remember those baby chicks a few months ago? They're nearly adults, living their best lives. Eggs, anyone?

06/14/2025

06/03/2025

Chickens had a guest tonight. Small deer off in the background.

06/18/2024

Chickens are grazing alongside the triticale… seems they like it! The edge of the field is knocked over where they are eating the almost-ready-to-harvest grain. If only I could have something ready for them to eat year-round without harvesting and handling…

10/07/2023

Supporters of family farms talk a lot about the negative impacts of consolidation in the broader ag world - how 4 companies control 85% of the cattle market, etc. What we do not take much about is the consolidation of the farms themselves, or at least the farm families that do the farming. Articles (like this https://agupdate.com/iowafarmertoday/news/livestock/opportunity-pops-up-to-expand-family-operation/article_8c84234e-6389-11ee-8c38-57618747b12d.html?utm_source=agupdate.com&utm_campaign=%2Fnewsletter-templates%2Fdaily-headlines&utm_medium=PostUp&lctg=2684010&tn_email_eh1=402dd4350fb6ebfc959afbc8597a209270dfc334) promote the expansion of enterprises on a family farm to support more members of that family, but never consider how that negatively affects others' ability to farm. To be very direct: there are around 22 million cropped acres in Iowa. If every farm operation were to farm 5000 acres, there could only be 4400 farms in the state. In the entire STATE. And this is where we are headed - prices require that scale; equipment is designed for that scale; stories are celebrated at the scale.

To be fair, the 4400 number would probably be doubled to include the small "niche" farms that are under 20 (or even 40 acres). But there is less and less "ag in the middle" -- those farm operations that are farming 80 to 800.

For perspective - in 1923, there were 214,000 farm operations according to the 1923 Ag Survey. For context: Iowa's population in 1920 was 2.4 million; in 2022 it was 3.2 million.

It's something I think about a lot when I see articles celebrating "farm expansion" like this, and I hope others think about it, too.

LAKE CITY, Iowa — It's definitely a family affair for Mark Schleisman and his farming operation.

09/17/2023

Why we do what we do:

By Keith Schneider BERNE, Minn. – It was a hot afternoon in mid-July and 60-year-old Brian Bennerotte was making a pilgrimage of sorts, navigating a shotgun-straight, gravel road south of Minneapolis on a journey through a landscape stitched with crop and livestock farms as far as the eye can see....

08/05/2023

Pretty happy with how this late-season sweet corn is looking! Hoping it’s ready to eat in early or mid-September. Rain would really be helpful!

07/21/2023

Small grains harvest!

07/19/2023

Growing fast!

07/04/2023

There’s always 1. And a sidekick.

06/03/2023

This year’s experiment: chickens were parked in one spot of the field over winter for about five months. At the same time I parked them there last fall, I seeded rye around them. Nothing grew where they were parked - too hot. This weekend I mowed the rye down around the circle and started raking it into the hot spot to add carbon.

Now to see if the rye mellows it out enough to grow in this fall and/or next spring, or if I need to treat it more like a compost pile and spread it out more…