From Leopold Student to Farm Owner

Meet Patty Grimmer, Owner - Wonka’s Harvest

By Jackie Cooper

How many times have we been asked - or asked the question of our children, “what do you want to do (or be) when you grow up?” Many kids will answer that they want to be a superhero, a sports star, or a princess - but not many say "farmer. This definitely wasn’t the career Patty Grimmer thought she would choose while attending Leopold Elementary, Cherokee Middle, and West High School.

What made you decide to become a farmer? Did you go to college to pursue farming? 

Patty Grimmer: When I started college, it was unclear what exactly I wanted to do with my career. I knew that I loved the outdoors, liked working with my body, advocating for what I believe in, and I recognized the widespread injustice that was happening with our nation's social and environmental policies and wanted to pursue something that would attempt to address it. At the time, I was studying geology at Arizona State University and I was bored of looking at rocks. But by an unexpected turn in a hydrology class, I started connecting larger dots to our food systems. I started paying more attention to our highly valuable water resources, especially in relation to our food production. The Sonoran Desert, which spans across Arizona and California, is where we grow the most lettuce in the United States. It’s a virtually inhabitable place, yet it’s where we choose to grow a vegetable that is virtually all water. That just stumped me. And what stumped me even more than that was the extreme food insecurity Phoenix faced. Why, in a state that can grow produce all year around, was such a vast population of the city food insecure? 

I started volunteering at a local community garden that grew food for mutual aid. I absolutely loved it. It was tangible, physical work - you could see directly what your energy and investment was doing. In my case, it was helping produce food for families that were struggling to feed their children with fresh produce and herbs. And working in those raised beds shifted my whole trajectory. I transferred to the University of Minnesota to study Environmental Science and Environmental Education on their agricultural campus. I worked for nutrition programs that focused on family food modeling to promote healthier food choices and preparation practices for families, helped develop programming to increase produce access to food insecure areas, and worked in many schools teaching students about the importance of food sovereignty. I worked with an organization that built hydroponic systems in elementary schools to encourage children to think about food systems. I watched students snack on kale and radishes with smiles on their faces because they spent weeks growing it. From that point on, I knew growing food was my future. 

Did your time attending Leopold/Cherokee/West provide you with any skills or experiences that have helped you as a farmer?

PG: Despite growing up in an exclusively white family that didn't often discuss cultural differences or socio-economic complexities, I attended schools that generally highlighted and celebrated students' differences. It wasn't uncommon for my classmates to be actively learning English as their second, or sometimes third language. My friends had different religious belief systems than I had. Blended families were common. I recognized at a young age that not everyone had housing and food stability and security like my brother and I. I knew a lot of my classmates needed to get to school early enough to make sure they got their breakfast at school, otherwise they would only be eating lunch all day. I didn't live that reality, but I did know it was there. I don't believe that all of my educators knew how to address and communicate that reality openly in a way that removed the heavily present shame or stigma around it, but there were a number of staff and spaces that leaned in on facilitating challenging or sensitive topics, promoting compassionate and thought provoking discussions on our socio-economic systems and their designs. And as a farmer today, I am very thankful for those experiences that largely shaped my worldviews today - one that I believe celebrates cultural differences, challenges narratives that isolate communities of people, and supports all of our neighbors. I grow food for people. I work alongside people with new ideas and optimism for our future. I laugh with my fellow farmers across language barriers. Customers give me new ideas on recipes or suggest I try growing a type of vegetable I am not accustomed to cooking with. I grow food, and in exchange I gain a sense of community. 

Your farm uses the method of "no till farming", can you explain what this is and why you chose this method? What types of benefits/challenges do you face as a farmer with the no till farming method? Would you recommend this method for someone who wants to grow vegetables in a backyard garden?

PG: I started Wonka's Harvest in 2020 with my partner. We are both first-generation farmers. We wanted to build a farm that would be replicable for others at smaller scales, which meant having low or no reliance on tractors and large implements for growing. We decided to commit to a no-till vegetable farm, which means we do not practice any tillage in our fields. Tilling a field, whether it is a scale of acres or just in your backyard, is the process of mechanized turning of soil. It breaks the crust of the soil and disrupts the layers of soil. Farmers and growers till for a number of reasons; it makes it easier to plant or seed into by aerating the soil which encourages germination and root development, it terminates an existing crop or crop residue, and it temporarily kills weeds on the soil crust. Though it is helpful for growers short term, It is incredibly detrimental to soil health long term. Because tillage turns up all of the soil layers, there is no structure to hold it in place (root structure, crop residue, mycelial networks) which accelerates soil erosion with wind and rain events. By turning soil layers, it also exposes sensitive soil bacteria and microbial life to conditions (temperatures, moisture, oxygen levels) that can kill it. And the microbial life in the soil is the building blocks to nutrient cycling and nutrient availability for the plants we are trying to grow. Furthermore, the practice of tilling breaks up and releases sequestered carbon in the soil. Another downside of tilling is that every time you till you are exposing a new weed seed bed. Many weed seeds can only germinate if they are in the first few inches of the soil, so when you mix everything up, you are bringing in all of the other weed seeds back up that would have otherwise been too deep in the soil to germinate. By committing to a no-till practice, we experience less soil erosion, better water retention, have a small reliance on nutrient fertilizers, less fossil fuel reliance because we do not need mechanized equipment, have less soil compaction, and far fewer weeds long term. No-till farming is great for small-scale, especially backyards! You can practice this by building a traditional raised bed system or tarping a section of your yard to terminate grasses and weeds. Compost, or a nutrient rich soil additive is a great start. Many backyard growers practicing no-till will even start their bed building directly on cardboard or newspapers. The cardboard will kill the grass and prevent weed seeds, slowly breakdown, and can be layered with your compost and mulch (straw, woodchips, etc) to build solid organic matter. 

What vegetables would you recommend growing for an at home gardener or someone who is new to gardening in our neighborhood?

PG: For someone starting out a garden, or even just wanting to grow a few things in containers on their porch, I would stick to some crops that you can transplant first. It is awfully hard to sow seeds into the ground and expect great germination unless you are timing it well with rain OR if you are irrigating daily (if you do go this route, easy crops that germinate well are loose leaf greens, radishes, beets, and some herbs like cilantro and dill). If you choose the transplant route, you can either buy transplants at your local nursery OR start the seeds on your own! Easy starter crops are culinary herbs (like rosemary, thyme, sage) and crops that don't require regular harvesting (like peppers or tomatoes). If choosing to start your own seeds, find a place in your home that is warm with good light. Plant the seeds just under the soil in a container that will drain well with some potting mix. Make sure your potting station stays warm and moist (can cover it with a damp paper towel, plastic covering, etc) until you see germination. Once emergence happens, make sure your seedlings are getting as much light as possible and staying moist! You can keep your seedlings in the vessel you seeded it in if it's deep and wide enough to ensure proper root development. When the transplant has several true leaves and good root development, you can transplant it outside in your garden or containers once it is warm enough. By "babying" the transplants in your home, you can ensure you are planting plants that are the strongest to environmental pressures (wind, temperature variations, and pest pressures). Most pressure that comes from insects and critters are at the earliest stages of the plants. The most tender and tasty leaves are always going to be the earliest maturity stages of a plant so by transplanting you are giving the plant the best chance for survival. PRO TIP: if you are buying transplants, try to check out your local farmers' markets in the early season. They will have the best transplants and will be growing varieties of crops that are suited for Wisconsin climates AND you can support your farmers! 

Tell me a little bit about Wonka's Harvest and your Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program - why are CSAs important to your farm?

PG: If you didn't inherit the green thumb but want to be better about supporting local farmers and eating fresher, more nutrient dense foods, I'd highly recommend finding a CSA that works for you. CSA, which stands for community supported agriculture, is a produce program model that allows people to become "members" of a farm for a season. Weekly or biweekly, members will receive a week's worth of produce from the farm for the course of their growing season. In other words, the community invests into the farm's success and in return gets fed with really fresh local produce all summer long. This helps farms cover upfront expenses in the winter and early season, and also guarantees avenues to distribute the food we grow throughout the season. It helps relieve our food systems of waste, reduces the environmental footprint of consumers because they are eating food grown locally, and keeps money local. Each farm's CSA model is slightly different, but Wonka's Harvest's CSA offers a lot of customizability for our members. To improve accessibility and promote community resiliency, our CSA is pay-what-you-can. Members can sign up either as a full upfront payment (full price of all CSA shares) OR as a weekly subscription (weekly charges that just reflect that week's CSA share) AND those payments can be anywhere between 50 - 150% of our suggested price. Our CSA is also structured to have 4 seasons throughout the year so people can sign up for one of the seasons instead of having to commit to the entire growing season. That helps customers with flexibility of travel, seasonal capacity to cook, and so they can try a CSA with a smaller time commitment to determine if it works for them! People can choose to pay for delivery right to their homes, or pick up their CSAs conveniently at any of our 8 communal pick up sites across the greater Madison area. To learn more and sign-up, head to wonkasharvest.com/csa!