Graduate Profiles

Central Illinois Farm Beginnings (CIFB) has graduated 70 students since 2005, nearly 80% of which are now farming. Check out our CIFB Connections Map  to see who these graduates are and how each one is contributing to a new, sustainable food system in Illinois and beyond.

Each CIFB graduate farmer has a unique story to tell as demonstrated in the following profiles.

Amy and Greg Brucker - Appleton Hollow Family Garden Foods

Fresh fruits and vegetables. Available through the Good Earth Food Alliance.

As Amy Brucker takes us on a tour of their small farm near Galesburg, with its donkey, chickens, fruits, and vegetables, she says “Really, we’re city kids, Greg and I, but we’ve found that farming and good food is our true passion.”

Amy and her husband and their three children were able to act on this passion after taking Central Illinois Farm Beginnings in 2006–07. “Being engineers, we would have studied for 10 years before doing anything. But Farm Beginnings gave us the knowledge and support system we needed to just dive in.”

The motivation to grow their own food came when Greg got cancer. “We thought: What are we exposing our kids to?” Amy recalls. “And now more and more people are scrutinizing what they put in their kids’ and their own bodies.”

The Bruckers began planting a fruit tree orchard, brambles and other berries, and vegetables as soon as they completed the winter seminars of Central Illinois Farm Beginnings. After their summer mentorship with organic fruit grower Teresa Santiago, they realized that they were not large enough, nor did they have enough time, to be effective as a solo business. With Greg working at Caterpillar each day, and Amy home-schooling their children, they realized that they needed to get together with other local growers and cooperatively market their produce.

After many winter meetings with neighboring producers around the Brucker kitchen table, this effort came to fruition in 2009 with the Good Earth Food Alliance, a collaborative group of 10 farmers. The individual farms, and the Alliance itself, plan to remain small “because this keeps us sustainable and ensures our ability to make frequent contact with our soit, its bounty, and the surrounding habitats.”

Amy has been in charge of the Alliance’s website and the communication between the farmers and the buyers, coordinating everything from seed ordering to final deliveries. She is also committed to educating the public and seeking creative ways “to pass along our passions about food and our planet.”

“The consumer needs to have an understanding of what REAL food is,” she says, “What part of a plant are you eating when you eat broccoli?”

“Even more important,” she says, is conveying to people that “we have the richest soil in the world. Somehow we got into the habit of using to for other than feeding people. It’s ironic. And tragic. This land could be used for fabulous nutrition for people. We could be the food hub of the U.S.”

The Bruckers may just be the beginning of making that vision a reality, as they grow great food for their community and pass on the legacy, teaching their kids how to grow their own food.

Fred Jones - Sunset Trail Ranch

Goat, Beef, and Farm Services. Available directly from Fred Jones or through Pembroke Farming Families.

Fred Jones always knew he wanted to be a farmer. But it took him over 50 years to get there.

He grew up in Alabama, eating mostly home-grown foods, and loving horses. But the necessity of making a living intervened and he spent 30 years working for the City of Chicago. During that time he bought his first parcel of land in historic African American Pembroke township, about an hour south of Chicago, and named it “Sunset Ranch.”

In preparation for his retirement, he started buying horses, beautiful American Paint horses with splashes of deep chestnut and white. But when he got up to 20 horses, his wife began to protest, showing him their dwindling bank account. Fred knew there was a problem, but figured there must be some way he could turn the horse operation into a sustainable farm business.

The need to have an economically viable farm business led the Joneses to take Central Illinois Farm Beginnings. During the winter business planning seminars, Fred slowly realized that he would need to sell most of the horses and start a different farming operation. He briefly considered vegetables, but knew that his true passion and skills were with livestock.

From his work in Chicago, Fred knew that goat meat was much desired by many ethnicities and was hard to find. So in the summer of 2007, Fred worked with his mentor, a local goat farmer, and bought his first Boer goats. That fall he sold some of the kids directly to Hispanic customers, and his new business was born.

But the goats were only the first phase of the 5-year business plan that Fred had devised. “I am a farmer and a Service Provider,” Fred says, putting special emphasis on both “Service” and “Provider.”

To explain what he means, he pulls out a hand-written thank you letter from his portfolio of photos and information about Sunset Ranch. “This elderly couple were so appreciative that someone would deliver a few bales of hay, and put it exactly where they needed it, that they wrote this letter and mailed it to me.”

Fred’s main service is buying good hay in bulk, often from a long distance, transporting it to his farm, and storing it there until people call him needing some delivered locally. But he is also available for other services, from mowing to machinery repair.

The third phase of Fred’s business plan is to incorporate beef cattle into his operation. He motions to a large pasture that backs up against the Nature Conservancy’s Kankakee Sands oak savannah. “My neighbor moved away and said I can use this land, so I’ll be getting some bred Angus heifers soon.”

“People say, ‘Freddie, what are you going to do next.’ And I say, ‘I’m going to be an astronaut.’ They look at me like I’m crazy, so I say, ‘Well, now that I’ve become a farmer, I can do anything!’”

Fred is now down to two gorgeous American Paint horses, which you can tell from the way he looks at them are still his first love, and which his wife says is still one too many—but Sunset Ranch is now sustainable, as Fred provides healthy goat and beef to his community and beyond.

And sunset Trail is sustainable in another way: Fred, his friends, and his family value his farm as a gathering place—where people can relax and talk and share and interact—a slow, quiet human place away from the loud, often angry, fast world outside.

Kathy Corso - Crow Creek Farm

Fresh vegetables and herbs,fresh hand-made pasta, breads, salsas and pestos. Available at the Peoria River Front Market, Peoria Heights Market, and through the Good Earth Food Alliance.

 Although Kathy and her family had a backyard vegetable garden in Peoria for over 25 years, it was not until the confluence of three things, over a long period of time, that their farming career began. Those three things were Kathy’s cancer diagnosis, her daughters’ time working on organic farms in Tuscany, and the availability of a farmer training course, Central Illinois Farm Beginnings.

Kathy’s longtime interest in nutrition and health went into high gear after her cancer diagnosis. She sees an analogy between cancer treatments and chemical agriculture in that both attack symptoms of an underlying problem, a problem that might not have happened in the first place had the environment (the body or the soil) been respected and properly taken care of.

When Kathy and her daughter Angela heard about Central Illinois Farm Beginnings in the summer of 2005, they knew that this was what they had been waiting for. But they were worried because, living in Peoria, they had no farmland. Soon after signing up for Farm Beginnings, however, Angela and Kathy found certified organic land owned by the Sun Foundation and farmed by Larry Wettstein, a neighbor of Land Connection founder Terra Brockman. Larry helped the Corsos choose the best acre of the 300 to rent for their vegetable farm, and tilled it for them in the fall of 2005.

At the same time their farmland was being tilled, Kathy and Angela were tilling their minds as well, preparing to plant the seeds of their new entrepreneurial farming endeavor. As they moved through the goal-setting seminars of Central Illinois Farm Beginnings, Kathy and Angela realized that their goal was not only to raise and sell delicious, nutritious organic vegetables, but also to help educate the community regarding the importance of a good chemical-free, close-to-the-source diet.

“We want to be part of a movement that educates the general public about the benefits of fresh, local, chemical free food,” Kathy said.

Although their farming career over the past five years has undergone shifts, Kathy and Angela have done just that—growing the best food possible and selling it to local families, chefs, and caterers.

Robert and Julie Haugland - Frog Pond Farm

Fresh produce. Available at Frog Pond Farm and through the Local Growers Network at Vintages Wine Shop.

Robert and Julie grew up in urban and suburban environments, but had always been avid gardeners and always wanted to be in business for themselves. When Julie’s parents retired in central Illinois near Galesburg, Robert and Julie bought a small fixer-upper farmhouse on 22 acres of land “atop the windiest ridge” in the region. Even before the house was renovated, their barn was teeming with hogs, goats, cats, and chickens. They now have 1 dog, 1 duck, 1 alpaca, 2 roosters, 3 goats, 3 Holsteins, 7 hens, 4 baby ducks, 10 baby chicks, and 20 cats. But their primary farm business is vegetables. With both Robert and Julie holding down full time jobs, they realized they needed to work with other farmers, and started the Local Growers Network. Now in its second year, the network offers delicious and nutritious, locally grown, farm-fresh produce weekly to customers.

From mid-May through October, customers can choose when and what they want to purchase. The Local Growers' Network sends out a Weekly eHarvest Update that features a list of locally grown, pesticide-free, fresh produce and locally produced value-added products that they can select from. Orders can be placed via email or fax and picked up conveniently at Julie’s wine store, Vintages, in downtown Galesburg.

The Local Growers' Network also provides fresh produce for restaurants and food service operations. They provided Walt at Q's Cafe with fresh tomatoes throughout the 2008 season and plan to provide Knox College with a wide assortment of vegetables in the fall semester of 2009.

“We are also gearing up to work with interested students from Knox College to create an on-farm apprentice program, which we are quite enthusiastic about,” says Julie.

The Local Growers' Network stand can be found every Saturday morning from 9 AM to 2 PM in the parking lot at the Oak Run Food Mart.

The principles that the Local Growers' Network are founded on play a vital role in reinvigorating the family farm, supporting stewardship, and revitalizing rural communities. Julie says, “The Local Growers' Network is committed to consumer education, product quality, and supporting Knox County by selling produce grown locally by family farms.”