WE ARE
Growers
Of Fine Organic Produce, Beef and Pork
Harmony Valley Farm reaps the benefits of over 45 years of growing experience from Richard de Wilde, farm founder and co-owner. Richard started farming organic vegetables in Eagan, Minnesota at a time when the University and Extension Services told him it couldn’t be done. He went on to prove them very wrong and today we grow over 150 certified organic vegetable varieties on 100-120 acres! Our farm is located in an isolated, spring-fed valley in the the Driftless region of beautiful southwest Wisconsin just outside the small town of Viroqua. Our produce is distributed throughout our region through our CSA membership as well as through grocery stores and Food co-ops. We are dedicated to growing the highest quality certified organic produce possible with experience as our guarantee. Richard has gone above and beyond organics, placing great value on soil fertility and on an integrated, healthy, natural growing environment. We utilize a complex system of cover cropping and applications of compost and minerals to promote healthy, mineral balanced soils which results in vegetables with exceptional flavor, color and nutrition. We plant and maintain year round habitat that provides a place for songbirds, bats, bees and beneficial insects to take up residence and become our allies in pest control.
As an integral part of the community, Harmony Valley Farm has been working with restaurants, food co-ops and our CSA membership for years to promote a local, seasonal diet that extends through our winter months, long before the word “Locavore” was ever used. We are well known for supplying a variety of root crops well into the winter including parsnips, turnips, beets, rutabagas, celeriac, sunchokes, burdock, and winter radishes. During the summer months we are best known for our salad greens, arugula, cilantro, parsley, dandelion and baby bok choi.
It takes many hands to do the work we do. We have worked to build an ethical business on fair trade standards. We offer our employees heath insurance and retirement plan options. Our employees receive a living wage, well above local market wages. We all enjoy the benefits of a stable, experienced, skilled, professional crew that is here year after year. Richard is rightfully proud of Harmony Valley Farm and his desire is for the farm to continue to produce certified organic produce well into the future. By restructuring the farm as an LLC, it will allow the transfer of ownership to key employees over the next 10-15 years so the vision, purpose and operation of the farm may continue when Richard retires….if that ever happens!
Richard deWilde
Richard grew up making hay and milking cows on a farm on the
plains of South Dakota. His father had a herd of 100 Black Angus beef, and for
a few years they had some pigs and sheep as well. Before his feet could
reach the pedals on the one-ton Chevy truck they used to haul oats, Richard was
helping his father farm. He would also help his grandparents’ garden, and loved
to spend time in the kitchen with his mother making banana bread.
When he went off to college at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology,
Richard thought “I want to work with my head, not my hands.” He had an
advisor who suggested he go into hard rock mining due to his love of nature. The
advisor told Richard he could have a “good, professional, high paying job and
still be out in nature.” After graduation, he got a job at Fort Snelling
with the Corps of Mining Engineers, but not even a year had gone by before his
thoughts began to wander. He would sit at his desk, his mind drawn to memories
of beautiful fields of blue flax blossoms swaying in the wind. It didn’t take
long for the thought “I want to farm” to form in Richard’s mind, so he left the
mining engineers, rented half an acre of land south of the Twin Cities and got
back to doing what he loved.
Once the farm was rented, Richard took the time to get to know his neighbors, one of which was a school for special needs children. Richard has a soft spot for well-behaved children, so when he wasn’t farming, he would volunteer at the school. As he got to know the children better, he realized he had found a second calling. Richard began studying and earned a master’s degree in special education with a focus on autism from Mankato State. Upon
graduation, he worked in special education in the St Paul public school system.
Later, he found meaningful work in being a foster parent for teenage boys who
needed extra care and attention by running a specially licensed therapeutic
foster home on the farm.
Being an organic farmer was never a question for Richard. His Grandpa Nick was
a dedicated organic farmer and had helped shape Richard’s opinions on the
matter. When agro-chemicals came out after World War II, Grandpa Nick
refused to use them and suffered being called old fashioned and unwilling to
change with the times because of it. Richard always had a love for nature and
all things wild, and Grandpa Nick’s success without using chemicals as well as
Rachel Carlson’s book A Silent Spring cemented Richard’s desire to not use them
himself. “When I read about agro-chemicals, I decided I didn’t want anything to
do with them.”
Richard was one of the pioneers of organic farming. He was a
trail blazer for integrating cover crops, making compost, and attracting
beneficial insects, birds, and bats well before there were any large-scale
conversations happening about such things. There was no such thing as organic
certification when he started his farm, he just wanted to do what was right for
the soil and nature. So, he experimented, learned what worked and what didn’t,
and taught what he had learned to other farmers. Richard sold his
vegetables to the new co-ops in the Twin Cities where people went to buy
healthy, organic vegetables.
In his early days, Richard had a chance to meet the Dakota County extension
agent who told him “You can have an organic garden, but if you are talking
about making a living farming, you can’t do it organically.” The conversation spurred Richard to prove him wrong; he was going to do the right thing, and he was going to make a living doing it. (Fast-forward 20 years, that same County extension agent had changed his tune and met up with Richard again at a MOSES conference to say “You’ve been right all along: it turns out you can make a living farming organically!”)
By the mid-1980’s, suburbia was encroaching on Richard’s farm south of the Twin
Cities to the point where it was time to move on. When he left the fields,
he’d been farming for 12 years, he knew where he wanted to go: the Driftless
Region. Richard had been there several times before, and he loved the
rolling hills and valleys, the waterways, and overall natural beauty the area
had to offer. The soil was rich and healthy, and the hills made a beautiful
backdrop for the fields he worked. After all, seeing a well-cared for field
thriving in a natural surrounding is one of Richard’s favorite things about
being a farmer.
Richard spent the first few years at Harmony Valley Farm
building up soil health, structures, and business relationships. He was still
selling his produce in the Twin Cities and found a new market in Madison at the
Dane County Farmers’ Market. In 1989, Richard’s son, Ari, was born and soon
became part of the daily farming operation. Ari and his stepbrother, Adrian,
grew melons and sold them at the Farmers’ Market, becoming known as the “Melon
Boys.” As business grew, Richard began expanding the farm by leasing more
nearby land and converting it to organic status.
When Richard and then partner Linda Halley added Community Supported
Agriculture (CSA) to their farming model in 1993, they did so out of a desire
to have a direct connection with more people than they could reach at the
Farmers’ Market. CSA birthed on farm events like Strawberry Day, which
allowed Richard to meet the families he was growing food for face to
face. Being able to watch the children from those first CSA families grow
into smart, healthy adults makes farming worthwhile for him. Many of those
children are now graduating from college, starting their own families and
joining CSA’s of their own!
Nowadays, Richard sees himself as a support for the great crew he has to help
with the farm. He gives information and direction when needed to a crew
who want to do the best job they can. Harmony Valley Farm is a mature farm,
with all the systems and infrastructure in place, no longer looking to expand. With
growth a thing of the past, Richard is now focused on making the farm
better. “I believe if you aren’t making improvements, you are going
downhill,” Richard said. “We aren’t looking for more, but better; always
better.” He is also selecting and training the next generation of Harmony
Valley Farm farmers.
“There is a great deal of joy in seeing things work, when
things go smoothly,” Richard said about his farm and crew. He gets great
satisfaction out of a job well done. “How many people, for their life’s work,
get to have a job where you are outside in nature, watching things grow, you
grow a lot of healthy food for a huge amount of appreciative people, and
everything works? Yes—I’ve worked too hard for most of my life, but I feel
fortunate to be where we are today.”
So who is Richard de Wilde? He is a man of perseverance and innovation. He
is a visionary who is not afraid to take on challenges to bring his dreams to
fruition. In his own words, he is a hippie rebel with an “I’ll show you”
attitude.
Andrea Yoder
I came to Harmony Valley Farm back in 2007. I had signed on to be the seasonal farm chef from April through November and my primary job was to prepare lunch for the farm crew and dinner for farm residents Monday-Friday. I was also asked to write articles and recipes for the newsletter and serve as a resource for CSA members. I was a recent graduate of The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York (CIA). When I decided to go to the CIA, I was labeled as a “Career Changer Student.” I was in my mid 20’s and had been working as a registered dietitian at the University of Virginia Health System. I was a clinical dietitian and worked with nutrition support (tube feedings and IV nutrition) and saw patients in an outpatient GI (gastrointestinal) clinic. While I had a great career going and enjoyed my work, I always felt like there was something missing and really couldn’t see myself continuing on that trajectory the rest of my career. So, I started looking around and stumbled across the CIA website. I had never even considered going to cooking school, but after I went for a visit, I knew that was the next step on my journey.
I never imagined culinary school would lead me to being a farm chef, but on the other hand, I really couldn’t see myself as a restaurant chef either. Honestly, I didn’t know what being a farm chef was when I got here. I also didn’t really know what it meant to be “certified organic.” I was mostly just intrigued by all the unusual things Richard was growing here! My vegetable repertoire was pretty limited when I started, but I quickly figured out how to tackle new vegetables. Eat it raw, eat it cooked, overcook it so I know what it means to be cooked just perfectly, do a little research and then start experimenting. I learned to get creative with the vegetables we had available and how to prepare lunch for 35 crew members in a cost-effective way. At the end of my contract, I was asked to stay and help manage some other parts of the farm.
Now I have a lot of different responsibilities on the farm. I manage greenhouse transplant production as well as the packing shed. I schedule trucks, manage our food safety practices, do employee training, manage wholesale sales, troubleshoot refrigeration and electrical problems, schedule drain cleaning, take care of goat babies born in the middle of the winter, and basically anything else that may need to be done. Another important, and really fun part of my life here, is to be a culinary resource for our CSA members. When I write in the newsletter or on the blog, I try to imagine that I’m talking to you as if I were talking to you face to face!
So what else? Simply put, I love food! I love experiencing flavors, smells, textures and watching food change and develop as I cook. I love the life and energy we get from food, and I LOVE the beauty of vegetable fields! I like to eat soup, leftovers, and salad for breakfast. I think eggs are an amazing gift from nature and eat them nearly every day. I think everyone should be able to eat good food, and I cringe at how many boxes of cereal I ate to sustain me during my college days. I’m jealous of CSA kids—I wish I were one. At least I had the opportunity to be a farm kid and have fond memories of gardening with my mom, picking and preserving vegetables for winter storage and accidentally pulling all the parsley out of my mom’s garden in an effort to “help her with the weeding” (oops—sorry mom). I love cookbooks, especially ones with beautiful photos, nice binding and interesting stories and commentaries. I most often don’t follow the recipes but use them for inspiration and to generate ideas. I like to eat out in restaurants. However, I’m often disappointed because, honestly, the food we prepare at home is always so much better!
I’m intrigued by soil and plant health and am amazed at how nature works. I more fully understand now why eating organic food is so important for the health of our environment, but also our bodies. If we choose food that is alive and healthy itself, it can help us live our best lives and feel good. Food can be our medicine, but it can also bring us pleasure, joy and connection with people and places. Food can open our eyes, minds, and hearts and can be the common denominator in a world of differences. It allows us to travel and experience a little piece of another part of the world without even leaving home.
I believe that anyone can cook, and no one should ever be intimidated by a vegetable. Life is research and if a recipe doesn’t quite turn out as you thought it might, that’s ok. It might actually be better than what it was supposed to be! Lastly, I believe CSA is a good thing—for farmers, for the land, for our kids, our families and our future.
Rafael Morales Peralta
Rafael from a small community in Mexico called San Miguel de Allende which is located in the state of Guanajato. He was born and raised in this community, and this is where his family still lives. He comes from a very loving, tightly knit family. There are 8 children, four boys and four girls. Rafael is the youngest of the boys. His brothers, Manuel, Alvaro, and Alejandro also work at HVF and it is clear that they were raised by very good parents! Rafael has a strong respect for his parents, who struggled to overcome it during very challenging economic times while he was growing up. While they may not have had an abundance of financial resources to buy them “things,” they always pushed their children to do the right thing and continue to strive to be good people and have a better future. From his humble beginnings, Rafael was taught the value of working hard from an early age. His grandfather had 1 hectare (2.2 acres) of land that he grew corn, beans and squash on. Rafael and his brothers remember helping his grandfather work the land and care for the crops. Most of the food they grew went to their large extended family, but the squash was a cash crop. Actually, he didn’t sell the squash but rather the seeds. Rafael remembers having to scrape the squash seeds out of the squash. He also remembers how sore his fingers were after doing this all day! Once the seeds were extracted his grandfather would lay them out to dry before putting them in big bags to take them to town and sell them. On the days Rafael and his brothers helped him he would send a little extra food home with them. Even before they could bring home a paycheck, this was their way of contributing to their family’s needs.
Rafael and his brothers went to school, but Alvaro and Alejandro were the only ones who completed high school. Manuel, the oldest son, left school after the third grade so he could work with his father to provide for the family. His father was a hard worker, but the problem was that things were not good in Mexico at that time and people worked hard but received very little pay in return. With eight mouths to feed, it was hard to make ends meet. As Rafael got older and began to understand his family’s situation more clearly, he really wanted to help his parents. He made the decision to quit school after his second year of high school so he could work. While Rafael doesn’t regret leaving school to help his family, he always had a desire to continue learning. He worked for a while on a large broccoli farm and later had the opportunity to come to the United States on a H2A visa to work with racehorses in Kentucky. He did this work for about three years and then the opportunity fell through due to some unfortunate circumstances. While the pay was better, working with horses was not something he really enjoyed, especially after one bit him on the arm!
In 2004 Rafael married his beautiful wife, Adriana. It is very clear that Rafael and Adriana have a very strong relationship. Rafael describes his wife as “a great woman.” She is a strong woman who has always stood by his side as they have created goals and dreams together for their family. They function as a team, and she has committed to working just as hard as Rafael to create a better future for their family. They both understand this means making sacrifices sometimes. For many years their family was divided, with Rafael gone for many months every year working in the United States but dreaming of the day when they could all live together in the same place. After many years of patience and determination, Rafael was able to become a permanent resident and later Adriana and their three children were able to become permanent residents as well. Today they enjoy living and working together as a complete family at Harmony Valley Farm. All three children have learned English and excel in school. Jimena, their daughter, recently started college. Adrian, their oldest son, is interested in becoming a mechanic after he graduates from high school. Their youngest child, Mateo is totally different from their two older children! He is very outgoing and isn’t afraid to talk to anyone. He keeps everyone entertained and laughing!
Rafael’s brother, Manuel, came to work at HVF in 2009. After his first year, Rafael asked him if there might be an opportunity for him to work here as well. At that time, Rafael and Adriana were looking for an opportunity that would move them closer towards their dreams for a better life. They worked very hard seven days a week. Rafael was working construction Monday through Friday and on Saturday and Sunday he would work with Adriana at their own little business. They rented a grill and sold taquitos from their own little food cart. Rafael describes the opportunity to come and work at HVF as the first step on his journey to achieving his dreams. He didn’t know it at the time, but the opportunities would continue to stack up over time and the fact that he was present and willing to take risks and step outside of his comfort zone put him in a good position for a better life. Rafael remembers calling Richard on the radio on only his second day of work! He didn’t even know how to speak English, but he heard how others were talking on the radio. He was working with Manuel doing irrigation and they had a problem with a hose and needed Richard’s help. He called Richard using the limited words he had, and the end result. “It worked! He understood me and showed up in the field to help us!” Little by little over time, Rafael’s confidence was built.
Over time Rafael continued to seek out more “missions” and willingly accepted more responsibilities. He continued to align himself with opportunities to learn more from Richard and other experienced crew members. He reached out to Vicente who spoke very good English. Vicente became his teacher helping him learn more English so he could better communicate with us independently. Now, Rafael recognizes how his hard work and perseverance are paying off. As Rafael continues to build his career here, he realizes how much his work has become a big part of his life. He knew very little about organic agriculture when he first came here, but over time he’s come to value this method of farming and the benefits it has for the people growing and eating the food as well as the environment. And as a lifetime learner, Rafael continues to demonstrate innovation, determination, enthusiasm and a drive to continually improve.
Our Dedicated Crew
We are grateful for our skilled and dedicated crew members who work very hard to make this all happen. Your support of our farm allows us to pay a fair and living wage as well as offer benefits including health insurance and a retirement plan.
