Episode #215
Liz Graznak: Surprise! 25% Of Your Market Is Gone

Real Organic Farmer Liz Graznak shares the evolution of Happy Hollow Farm in Missouri since its humble beginnings in 2010. She discusses the expansion of her operation, the challenges of finding farm labor, and her transition to hiring H-2A workers, which has tripled production. Liz also highlights the impact of federal funding cuts on small farms, revealing that she stands to lose a quarter of her sales due to frozen grant programs. Despite these challenges, she remains committed to real organic farming, advocating for the integrity of soil-grown food and the need for stronger recognition of the Real Organic Project. “The veggies and flowers almost sell themselves—if I have them,” she says, emphasizing both the demand for her produce and the struggle to meet it in an uncertain farm economy.

Our Liz Graznak interview has been edited and condensed for clarity:

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Linley Dixon interviews Liz Graznak, March 2025

Linley Dixon 0:00
Welcome to The Real Organic Podcast, Liz. It’s so great to have you here.

Liz Graznak 0:04
Thanks, Linley.

Linley Dixon 0:08
You’re already famous in the organic community, but for those people who don’t know you yet… you and I actually started our farm the same year, in 2010 – somewhere around there. You’ve been around for a while, and it was hard for me to admit that I’m no longer a young farmer anymore.

Linley Dixon 0:26
But in a way, it’s like your origin story is out there, and we really want to hear what’s going on with your farm now, the changes that have been happening with the new administration, and just a way for the community to get to hear from you again and get to know how far your farm has progressed since you were on… I guess Chris Blanchard is when I first heard about you.

Liz Graznak 0:49
Yeah, years ago. I started, like so many other beginning, young, bright-eyed farmers back in 2010, really small scale – less than an acre when I first started. It was just me, and I had interns and part-time employees for the first few years. I would say the year right before COVID, and then the year of COVID, and the two years after COVID, the farm took off in expansion – a little bit growing, more acres, more product, selling so much more product. Also, like many, many farms, I was doing CSA, and I was selling at farmers’ markets.

Liz Graznak 0:54
I started off with veggies but added flowers pretty quickly to try to make my life even more complicated. I love growing things, and it just seemed like a super good fit when I added flowers. We grow a lot of flowers and a lot of veggies now.

Liz Graznak 2:06
In the last six to seven years, I would say, sort of right post-COVID, the two years after COVID, it seemed like the pool of interested, younger folks that were looking for jobs on organic vegetable farms started to disappear. The people applying for jobs and internships were not around. But that also, I think, coincided with the really big jump in local nonprofit farms.

Liz Graznak 2:48
A lot of those folks that were working for me in the first 10 years of my farming weren’t as interested in living in the country anymore; they were finding opportunities that were in town doing what they wanted to do, but it was in town. That pool of potential employees was really drying up.

Liz Graznak 3:11
I was forced with deciding either to significantly scale back, stop farming, or make the jump to hiring H-2A workers. I made the jump to hiring H-2A workers. Not only did that jump explode the potential growth of my farm, but I’ve met and I’m now working with some amazing, fabulous humans. I’ve learned Spanish, and I have a whole new sort of farm family of employees that I have the joy and pleasure of working with…

Linley Dixon 3:59
There was a pause there. So, we’ll just edit this part out. You were saying, “That I have the joy and the pleasure of working with…”

Liz Graznak 4:09
I have the joy and pleasure of working with some amazing folks that are from Mexico. Many of them are in their fifth year working for me, and my farm has expanded exponentially. Over the last three years, I would say, we have tripled our production. That’s great because the demand is there; it’s just that before I didn’t have the labor to meet the demand. Now I’ve got the labor, and I can meet the demand.

Linley Dixon 4:49
I remember last time we were talking you were like, “I have a hard time saying no to really any market opportunities.” There have been a lot of market opportunities. How many acres are you farming on now? What are your main crops? How many H-2A employees or other employees make it all work year-round, or what…?

Liz Graznak 4:49
Right now, going into this season, we will probably have 23 acres in vegetables – obviously, not at any one time. Some cover crops, some veggies, some flowers, but we’ll have 23 acres in production. How about I say that? I have 15 high tunnels/caterpillar tunnels; we’ve got two more that we’re working on putting up right now.

Linley Dixon 5:46
You’re always putting up a high tunnel.

Liz Graznak 5:48
I know. Because growing in Missouri – I’m sure very similar to Colorado – the weather is insane here, and I want to be harvesting something 365 days a year, and I cannot do that with outdoor production.

Linley Dixon 6:04
Are they like different levels of heat, not heat, or are they all just kind of…?

Liz Graznak 6:10
All different levels. I still have some old school, the original caterpillar tunnels that I built years and years ago out of two-inch PVC pipe.

Linley Dixon 6:22
Those are the ones in front of your house that were all lined up?

Liz Graznak 6:26
Yes, exactly. It’s those, but we’ve moved them. The ones in front of my house now are metal – wider, longer. Some of them are 300 feet long. They’re big.

Linley Dixon 6:42
Are they all automated, like the roll-down sides do go automatically, stuff like that?

Liz Graznak 6:46
Yep. Then also, big high tunnels – 200-foot-long high tunnels. The big high tunnels – the beefier, stronger metal, 200 feet long, 36 feet wide – those tunnels are all automated and have heat in them.

Linley Dixon 7:04
What kind are you using for those? Do you have a…?

Liz Graznak 7:08
There’s Zimmerman’s High Tunnels. They’re from a local producer, just 45 minutes, and they’re so good.

Linley Dixon 7:16
They’ll even put them up for you. Have you ever used them, or you just know what you’re doing maybe?

Liz Graznak 7:20
I know what I’m doing. The very first tunnels, back 15 years ago, Norman, the owner of the company that I bought them from, came here, and his son one time came, and it helped me put up my very first two tunnels.

Linley Dixon 7:34
Yeah, they’re amazing.

Liz Graznak 7:36
I was down there at Morgan County Seeds on Monday this week, buying the parts for a new tunnel that I’m getting ready to put up.

Liz Graznak 7:45
Do you have any floor climate control?

Liz Graznak 7:48
No.

Linley Dixon 7:49
Okay. Like no pad and fan where you’re ac tually [inaudible 0:07:52
] cooling? You’ve got to figure out – all the sides got to either go up or down?

Liz Graznak 7:58
Yeah, but that’s easily controlled with thermostatically controlled vents and automated sides up and down. Also, I live here on the farm, and my employees live here on the farm. That’s one of the things when you have H-2A workers – you usually provide them with on-farm housing. So, it’s not a big deal. Everything is on iMonnit control temperature systems, and we can easily monitor the temperatures – go out roll some sides down; in the afternoon, go out, roll the sides up. No big deal.

Linley Dixon 8:30
How many people are you housing right now on your farm? I don’t remember there being housing there, is that new too?

Liz Graznak 8:37
The housing isn’t new. It was there. It’s in loft space above the pack shed that I built. Since you were here, that barn was doubled in size – I added on to it. I added on and made a new, much more real concrete floors – drains in the floors, big, huge walking coolers. I built onto the barn and added a real pack shed.

Liz Graznak 9:16
Above the entire barn is living space. I have two full apartments. One has five apartment bedrooms, and one has four apartment bedrooms. Two complete kitchens, two complete living rooms, two complete laundry rooms, and all of that is above the working space of the barn and the pack shed. It’s a big, huge building with really nice housing.

Linley Dixon 9:44
I remember you were like figuring out how to do everything on your own. Did you help build all that housing? Is it just in your bag of tricks now?

Liz Graznak 9:55
Yeah, I helped. They’ve moved, but there was a really great Amish community that lived 40-ish minutes from here, and they helped me build pretty much that building.

Linley Dixon 10:14
That’s year-round?

Liz Graznak 10:15
That’s year-round.

Linley Dixon 10:17
H-2A workers are pretty much, year-round, living with you now. Then do you have additional hires for the summer?

Linley Dixon 10:25
Yep. Let me just clarify this. H-2A workers are on different work visas. We’re doing very different work in the winter compared to what we’re doing during the summer months, so those job descriptions are pretty different. They’re on different visas, and they’re different people.

Linley Dixon 10:42
I have a crew that’s here for the winter doing wash, pack, sorting, and grading work in the pack shed for the winter months. Then, for those spring, summer, fall months that we’re doing mostly outdoor growing – production stuff – it’s a different visa. Just to be clear. So, it’s different people. But yes, it takes year-round employees to run a year-round vegetable farm.

Linley Dixon 11:11
You’re doing training? I guess I don’t even fully understand. Do you have to retrain each time there’s a new contract or when the people come back?

Linley Dixon 11:19
No. Because the same two guys that started with me five falls ago are here now, and have been here every year. It’s just that they go home for a period of time, and then they come back. My winter crew is the same. They’re here for five months for the main winter mostly indoor work season, and then they go home. Then, they come back next winter, and then they go home, and they come back next winter.

Linley Dixon 11:54
So, this winter is the third winter that I’ve had those employees for the winter months. It’s the fourth full summer growing season that I’ve had outside production crews, folks. So, no more retraining. They’re telling me, literally, “Liz, the plants in the greenhouse are too big. We either need to move them or it’s ready to get them in the ground.”

Linley Dixon 12:22
They know what they’re doing. All this is like what you necessarily envision, but it’s just to meet market demand?

Liz Graznak 12:28
It is what I saw as meeting the market demand. The veggies and the flowers can almost sell themselves if I have them. If I have them, I can sell them.

Linley Dixon 12:41
Talk about those marketing channels and how various programs and stuff that have increased the demand.

Liz Graznak 12:52
My local farmers market in Colombia…oh my gosh. How many years ago was this?

Linley Dixon 13:03
Columbia is like 45 minutes. So, something…

Liz Graznak 13:06
Columbia is 45 minutes from here. It’s not crazy, terrible far. It’s not a terrible drive. It’s bad that I can’t tell you the exact year. I should know that. But the Colombia city council finally got on board, and we have a permanent pavilion now. I was part of the effort for many, many years, serving on boards and serving on nonprofits and trying to make that thing happen. Then, as it started to happen – I think it was like five, six years ago – that’s when my farm was getting really busy, so I stepped off the boards. Now, I’m back on the Farmers Market board as of just two years ago.

Liz Graznak 13:51
But having a permanent pavilion that offers the ability to sell year-round, has made a tremendous difference in the growth of my farm and in the growth of the market in general. The number of customers coming – we could have 7,000 customers on a Saturday in the middle of the summer. Whereas before, it was like we were lucky if we got 3,000 customers on a Saturday. Of course, I’m selling more product. We have a year-round farmers market; we sell 50 weeks a year – we take the two weeks off. One after Christmas, and one after New Year’s. That’s in Colombia.

Liz Graznak 14:33
I sell to some local restaurants and to a small, locally owned co-op-style grocery store in Columbia. As of two years ago, started moving a lot of wholesale produce to two different organizations that were grant funded – LFPA and LFS. I think I got the acronym right.

Linley Dixon 15:00
Local Foods Promotions Assistance. We also use that as well. Then what was the other one?

Liz Graznak 15:11
LFPA. I could look it up, and I’m sorry. We always hear LFPA. These two nonprofits – one was in Springfield, Missouri, and one is in Kansas City – received a bunch of that grant funding to act as the distributor to the local school systems in all the counties surrounding and then also to the food banks and to all the other nonprofits that were distributing food to lower-income folks. I was able to provide a lot of wholesale sales to those two entities.

Linley Dixon 15:54
I see. There are two local entities. We have…

Liz Graznak 15:58
They are the ones that received the grant money.

Liz Graznak 16:01
…it’s called The Good Food Collective, and its Local Food Promotion Assistance money that they have. I know that Colorado had five and a half million, that has now been frozen. They sent out an email saying, “We’re not going to…” I think our farm had about $30,000 worth of sales in the last three years with that program. They put out an email right before I went to Washington, DC last week with the Organic Farmers Association saying, “So sorry, we’re not going to be able to…” We have a two-acre farm, so I have no idea what percentage, but for us, that was a significant percentage of our farm’s income.

Liz Graznak 16:41
I did $240,000 in sales to those two entities last year. That’s a quarter of my annual sales. It’s a very open and honest deal.

Linley Dixon 16:53
It’s massive, Liz.

Liz Graznak 16:54
It’s massive, and I have barely even had time because literally, I found out on Sunday night, I think, in amongst all the other things…

Linley Dixon 17:08
You just found out this week, like…?

Liz Graznak 17:09
Just found out. I have barely even had time to process it because it’s going to significantly affect the number of employees that I have who’s going to have to be laid off. I cannot make up that amount of sales anywhere – maybe over a few years of working to try to come up with new sales avenues and new sales channels. But there’s literally no way that I could come up with that.

Linley Dixon 17:45
It’s the middle of March…

Liz Graznak 17:47
It’s the middle of March. My greenhouse is full of transplants ready to go on the ground.

Linley Dixon 17:59
Is that the same thing…? Well, I know it’s different. Farm to school, do you have that as well?

Linley Dixon 18:06
We do have that here. It’s run through the Missouri Department of Ag. The money comes through the Missouri…

Linley Dixon 18:12
It’s just like state funding?

Liz Graznak 18:13
It is state-funded. It’s a very, very small amount of money. I have tried to get into that program a few different times over the years, and really the hang-up is not that the funding isn’t there. Actually, the director of the program has contacted me numerous times saying, “Liz, you really need to take advantage of this.” I have always said, “I would love to.” All of the schools that I have contacted – that are in my vicinity – none of them have the ability to take my produce. None of them have kitchens, employees, or the ability to participate in these programs.

Linley Dixon 19:04
The only thing that I’ve really been able to sell is salad bar stuff. So, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, things that…it’s inevitably much smaller than if you get Roma tomatoes into a soup or something, that would be such greater volume than what the kids eat at the salad bar. But they announce when it’s our tomatoes, because that day the kids are going to eat them. That’s like a night-and-day difference in the quality. It’s just such a great program for getting really delicious vegetables, fresh into the kids mouths – they notice it.

Liz Graznak 19:39
They do. Because on my sticker – on my label for bags of greens, carrots or whatever – my contact information is on there, I have gotten emails from people that are… nobody that I know, but they’re someone who received food at a food bank, or food from one of the food boxes, they just have said, “Oh my gosh. These carrots are so amazing. My kids only eat these carrots.” Or the sassy salad mix that, “I’ve never eaten these greens before; it is so amazing.” They’re just so appreciative. The effort somebody would have to go to to be able to figure out contacting me, from a box that they got down in Sikeston, Missouri – which is like four hours from here – it’s just amazing.

Linley Dixon 20:36
I remember when you were working with Natural Grocers? I would love to know if you still are, but they would do a taste test comparison of your kale versus the kale that they were getting regularly. They made everybody buy kale.

Liz Graznak 20:48
Made everybody want to buy kale. I am no longer selling to Natural Grocers. They, like all big retail entities, have lots of turnover in employees. Since the few years that I was working with them, they had a produce department manager that was really committed to working with me; they have yet to have a produce manager like that, and they just are not interested in buying in my local store in Colombia.

Linley Dixon 21:23
That’s coming with the produce manager turning over. That position used to be a career for whatever reason, and now I think it’s so low-paying that you get people that aren’t interested, and they just do it for a short time, and they’re like every year, “What’s your name?” “Here’s who I am…”

Liz Graznak 21:37
They move on again. I stopped even going into the store a few years back. It was just like, not worth it.

Linley Dixon 21:44
I think the price point is now set by the headquarters. They used to be able to talk with me about… I was selling cherry tomatoes to them usually, and it’s like, “Here’s the price that I need.” Usually, it was lower than I need, but I can make it work for the high volume that they’ll go through. Now it’s just like, “This is our price point.” It almost just pushes me out the door because it’s like, “I can’t make that work anymore.” So it seems like even that negotiating power is gone for what works, in spite of the fact that they would sell them. They would completely sell them, and it would get people into their store. That’s where I see all my farmers market customers shopping in there.

Linley Dixon 22:24
Somehow they’re missing the opportunity here to be affiliated with what they trust the most. Their community is their local farmer during the times… because our farmers market only runs May to October. We have a year-round greenhouse, so it’s like, “Where can they find that stuff?” It’s the local co-op now. It’s not Natural Grocers. Let’s just talk to them and just say, “You’re missing an opportunity here…”

Liz Graznak 22:50
I had this conversation with the store manager last year because they don’t sell flowers at my local Natural Grocers. I was like, “I could provide you with beautiful bouquets on a weekly basis that I maintain, take care of, and restock when needed.” They were like, “Nope, we just can’t manage another thing.” I was like, “You guys are missing the boat here.”

Linley Dixon 23:18
I think the hard part is their prices tend to be lower than the locally owned co-op’s produce. People are still going in there. You often see a lot of local co-ops go out of business because of a Natural Grocers. Then, the local farmers have no place to retail outlet into a grocery store.

Liz Graznak 23:41
That’s right.

Linley Dixon 23:44
What are you going to do right now? I guess it’s a few days after finding out this news, but losing a quarter of your markets, do you feel like you can find other markets? Is that going to be your goal, or are you going to let some folks go and put some production…?

Liz Graznak 24:01
I’m going to talk to my financial consultant – farm advisor – that I have, and I have that meeting set up for next week. But unless something drastically changes, we’re going to scale back a lot. We’re going to really shrink and scale back a lot. Yeah, it will mean that I do not have as many employees this year.

Linley Dixon 24:35
When were they coming? Is it really last minute to let folks know?

Liz Graznak 24:38
Yeah, I already have their visas. They’ve already been approved. I’ve already paid for all the applications. They would have been here in a month and a half.

Linley Dixon 24:49
That specific program, the whole intent was really to get your good, organic food into low-income… I think mine goes to hospitals and food banks.

Liz Graznak 25:02
Food banks, churches – they would contact in a local community, 2,000, 3,000, 4,000, or 5,000 people. They would contact a local business; they would advertise that they were going to be coming. They were going to be bringing X number, 300 prepared boxes of produce – maybe eggs, some cheese, or protein. They would say, “Hey, we’re going to be there in three weeks. This is the window of time we’re going to be there. We’re going to be passing out these boxes.” Let everyone know. That was the coordinating effort of the two entities that were doing the distribution of the food. I wasn’t doing that, thank God.

Linley Dixon 25:53
[inaudible 0:25:5] they’re letting folks go as well.

Liz Graznak 25:56
Oh, yeah. How could they not?

Linley Dixon 25:58
What about SNAP and other Farm Bill nutrition programs that, through the farmers market, people are able to use those dollars in order to buy your farmers market produce?

Liz Graznak 26:15
I don’t know what is happening with those programs. There’s a local WIC office in a county neighboring here, and I’ve been working with that local WIC office. It’s not just the WIC office, but it’s the health department in the community who distributes WIC and SNAP funds. I started working with that health department office last year to pack boxes similar to sort of a CSA-style box, but the dollar amount per box was a little less. It was a little bit less volume of product.

Liz Graznak 27:02
But I was packing boxes and delivering those to the health department. Then, the health department was distributing those to their WIC recipients. Because they don’t have good local farmers markets, and if somebody was going to use that WIC dollar allotment, they have to drive an hour to go find a local farmers market. The health department was like, “This is crazy. We can work with you, and you just bring us the boxes.” How fabulous is that? I hope that that money is still going to be there.

Linley Dixon 27:37
It’s unknown. I was just in DC. They have $230 billion out of the Farm Bill, and 70% of the Farm Bill is nutrition, and that’s where SNAP lives and stuff. So, it’s not looking good for programs like that to continue. Of course, they might continue this summer because the Farm Bill has been extended, so it’s still in debate. They’re still trying to figure out what they’re going to cut. I imagine there’s maybe, unless those funds are frozen. I don’t know. But there’s a lot of uncertainty right now.

Liz Graznak 28:15
How could they do that? One particular thing that I was doing with this one local health department, that’s just a fraction of the WIC and SNAP benefits that I get, because our farmers market has a massive program for working with WIC and SNAP recipients and doubling the money that they…

Liz Graznak 28:42
Our farmers market has its own – we are a nonprofit – fundraising arm to offer doubling of WIC and SNAP benefits. So, when someone comes and swipes their card for $25, they get $50 back in tokens. Then those tokens, they can take and spend with farmers at the market. I sell tons of produce being purchased with those tokens.

Linley Dixon 29:11
We call it funny money. Because we all don’t take credit cards at our circuit, so they have to go turn in market bucks when they use our credit card. We have these different types of funny money that we then [inaudible 0:29:21] get a percentage of what we’re selling.

Linley Dixon 29:31
It’s pretty insane. Do you know of other frozen monies right now that…like The Milkhouse is a farm in Maine that had a contract, put up a solar panel array, and they need to pay that money back, and that’s frozen right now.

Linley Dixon 29:50
Is that REAP grant money? Because I know that REAP grant money is frozen. I have started on my REAP grant process project because I also have a REAP grant that was approved…2024, I think. I don’t remember the exact date of it, but I didn’t start the project yet. I haven’t started putting up my solar panels, thank God. But I heard that that money had been frozen like a while back.

Linley Dixon 30:23
We got our solar panels up through REAP several years ago – maybe four or five years. There’s no way we would have done that project without that program.

Liz Graznak 30:31
I don’t have that kind of money. There’s no way I could have afforded to do that without that grant. I should say, I received a REAP grant to put up some solar panels seven years ago now. Then I applied for another one two years ago. That second application was approved, but I haven’t started on that project.

Liz Graznak 30:31
There’s literally no way I will do that project without the grant. Every farm that is in my close friend’s farming network was selling produce to some version of an entity that was distributing food using the LFPA and LFSA moneys. So, it is many, many, many small-scale to mid-scale farms.

Linley Dixon 31:30
There’s so much uncertainty in farming. It’s like the last thing we want to think about is whether or not a contract that we’ve signed is actually going to come through or not. That uncertainty.

Liz Graznak 31:43
One of my dear friends – Stacey from Red Door Family Farm – just two days ago…she was actually making the same point. What we’re doing – the way that we farm, and the produce that we raise, and the mass uncertainty in everything that we do day-to-day – is enough stress. But when you have contracts to do projects on your farm that are government-funded contracts, and when they renege on those contracts, it makes you not ever want to trust a government entity ever again. Because if any entity should be trusted, it should be our government. That’s what she was saying, and I totally agree.

Linley Dixon 32:42
We didn’t even talk about cost share, which is also another part of getting some funds to still be part of the certified organic label. For folks that don’t understand, that covers up to $750 per scope, so you have to get a different certification for livestock and crops or for processing. You could get up to $750 for each of those entities. Certification is well beyond that. So, still putting in if that money comes back to you at the end of the season, which is hard, you have to upfront that money. It’s another barrier for small farms.

Linley Dixon 33:16
But knowing that money is coming back, it’s allowed me to do it, it’s allowed a lot of small farmers to stay involved in certified organic. We don’t yet know really how that’s going to impact the number of certified organic farms in the program. When I last heard you talking on Chris Blanchard’s Farmer to Farmer, you were saying that certified organic wasn’t that important for your customers, but it was important to you…

Liz Graznak 33:45
It is. I would say it has changed just a little bit as my farm has grown and as I have moved more into the wholesale and also much more into a retail farmers market space. I didn’t mention that I started last year selling at another Saturday farmers market – a much larger farmers market in Overland Park, Kansas. That market has like 10,000 customers on a Saturday.

Linley Dixon 34:13
How far is that far from…?

Liz Graznak 34:14
It’s a two-and-a-half-hour drive.

Linley Dixon 34:17
You’re now loading up two trucks to go to market on Saturday?

Liz Graznak 34:20
We have two trucks and two trailers going in opposite directions.

Linley Dixon 34:23
Thank you for talking to me on a Friday. You’re busy.

Liz Graznak 34:27
Again, my crew is absolutely amazing. The Overland Park market hasn’t started yet. Tomorrow we’re just going to Columbia. We will start going to Kansas City – we’ll start headed that direction – on the 19th of April. In just a few weeks. Where was I going?

Linley Dixon 34:49
Certified organic is important to you…

Liz Graznak 34:54
Selling in a retail space with so many customers that don’t know you, the seal matters, and the recognition and trust in the USDA label, it matters to people. It sets me apart from everyone else that’s out there. In a retail market space, I think it’s much more important now. When you were on my farm, I was doing a little bit of retail and a lot of CSAs. My CSA doesn’t care; they still don’t care. Not really. They know me; they know the farm. They’ve been here on the farm.

Liz Graznak 35:38
I want the Real Organic Project to have and get to the same recognition level of the USDA Organic seal. It’s even more important, I think, that people recognize and know what the Real Organic Project means and stands for, what our mission is, and why we exist. I want us to have that same level of recognition.

Linley Dixon 36:04
Liz, you were part of the pilot. How did you see it way back then? What was important to you at the beginning to join Real Organic Project?

Liz Graznak 36:12
Well, it was mostly the pre-approval of hydroponics. I don’t know how to sound intelligent, Linley, and put it into words. Soil-grown food in real healthy dirt has so much more nutrition and so much better flavor. The efforts that we farmers are putting into the work that we are doing to grow the food that we are growing is not just throwing some fertilizer at it and throwing some insecticides at it. For hopefully our customers to have a better understanding of all that goes into growing the food that we are growing, and the really significant difference in my head of lettuce compared to the hydroponic head of lettuce that they’re buying at the grocery store, it is apples and oranges.

Liz Graznak 36:16
That’s why it’s important to me. That’s why I really want the label to have the recognition and the respect that it deserves. Because my farm, your farm, and all of the farms that are growing the way that we are growing food, it is not the same at all.

Linley Dixon 37:57
You do such a good job at putting that label up at market and then posting every week. I always see it there, and I’m so grateful for it. But it is hard to launch something off the ground that really has some recognition, and it takes time. We forget that organic is like a hundred-year-old movement, and we’re kind of starting from scratch again.

Liz Graznak 37:57
All of us, and even those that aren’t yet Real Organic Project certified, we all need to be doing this work and be doing the work to get that sticker on our packaging and do the promotion as much as we can do it, to get the word out there and to talk about it with our customers. I’ve got these flyers that I put up at my booth every Saturday that talk about my farm and talk about the Real Organic Project.

Liz Graznak 38:19
It’s hard to have a conversation at the farmers market when you’re so busy, but if you can put a flyer in somebody’s hand and then they email you later, or they talk to you next week because they read the information on the flyer, it’s word of mouth and it takes one conversation at a time. But it’s going to take time.

Linley Dixon 39:16
Tell us a little bit about your experience on the National Organic Standards Board. Most people that get on that board have a full-time job that’s paying their way to be there. Because it is so much time there, it’s so hard to get a real farmer on that board and have it work for them.

Liz Graznak 39:36
That’s why I had to step down because I was not living up to my expectations for what I felt I needed to be doing to be a productive and contributing member of the NOSB. I was not willing to just do it half-assed. I was doing it even less than half-assed because it was just no way that I could give the amount of time needed to the board to do the work that they required of me and be a full-time farmer that depended on me and the $4 heads of lettuce that I was selling.

Liz Graznak 40:16
I barely made it a year. I felt bad having gone through the whole effort to contact all the people that I needed to contact, to write letters on my behalf in support of me to be nominated to the board and and then OFUN…

Linley Dixon 40:39
NOC, National Organic Coalition. We supported you but, I remember thinking, “This might keep Liz from getting on the board.”

Liz Graznak 40:49
They both wrote letters in support of me, and I was so grateful. I felt really bad saying, “I can’t do this. I’ve got to step down and not be doing this.” But I had to for the sake of my life, my family, my farm, and my business. There was no way; I couldn’t do it.

Linley Dixon 41:12
What we are arguing for is for it to be a paid position. It really has made it so that the corporate voice is the only thing… [inaudible 0:41:24]

Linley Dixon 41:52
It’s really unfortunate.

Linley Dixon 41:33
We’ve started fighting that hydroponic battle back in 2017, but now we’re a whole farm. We’ve got higher standards for livestock and animal welfare and all of that stuff. How does that strategy feel? We’ve got about a thousand farms. You’re on the executive board now. What are your hopes? Realistically, do you feel like we can have an impact, and over how long?

Liz Graznak 41:57
I, of course, feel like we can have an impact. All things that are the most effective, and…all movements are grassroots, to begin with, so we just have to keep the momentum going. There’s way more than a thousand small-scale certified organic farms out there. All of them should be signed up and be members of the Real Organic Project. We just have to find them and get them signed up. Get them on board, get them rooting for us, and get them inspired. Then get them talking to their customers, and then it’ll just go out from there.

Liz Graznak 42:43
I love it that we’re a whole farm. Farms are such huge entities. Even if they’re really tiny there, there’s so much more than just the hundred row feet of lettuce that they’re growing. I have chickens on my farm that we sell eggs. When I very first started, I was raising pigs. I’ve got an orchard on my farm. I’m doing more than just growing vegetables or flowers. I think that it’s great that we’re a whole farm focused now.

Liz Graznak 43:23
Hopefully, there are some farms that are doing some value-added things. I don’t know the extent of what all of the farms are that are members. We need every single farm that’s like us, Linley, to be members of ROP.

Linley Dixon 43:46
I worry that the USDA bottleneck is going to get harder and harder as cost share goes away. Farms aren’t able to grow because the marketing isn’t there. The consolidation in the industry makes it so that you have to direct market, which means that you don’t need that certification because we’re not on the star shelves. [inaudible 0:44:10] aware of what’s going on.

Liz Graznak 44:12
There are a lot of small-scale farms in my very Columbia-centered world that sell at my market that would not even consider becoming certified organic for all number host of reasons: they don’t want the government in their business, pay the fee, and keep such detailed records. The reasons why they don’t want to certify are…there’s lots of reasons.

Liz Graznak 44:40
Some of them are following some of the organic standard’s rules, and those same farms that are following some rules aren’t following other rules. At my market in Columbia, there are only two certified organic farms out of the 98 vendors that sell at our market. In Kansas, when I started selling there last year, I was also the second certified…

Liz Graznak 45:36
There were three, but one of the farms was phasing out because they were getting older and they were going to retire, and so when they left, that then meant that there were two. So, out of all of the vendors that sell out that huge market, only three of us are certified organic.

Linley Dixon 45:58
The record-keeping was a barrier for me at the beginning. One of the best pieces of advice I got is…you know those huge calendars that people used to put on their desks back [inaudible 0:46:09]? I was just like, have one of those in the wash station and just write down what you did that day in those boxes. That was the first, like, “Oh, I can do that.” Do you have little tips and stuff for people that just like that? It is overwhelming to think of how much you have to record.

Liz Graznak 46:25
Can you see this clipboard?

Linley Dixon 46:26
I do.

Liz Graznak 46:27
I have like 50 clipboards. I have a wall in my pack shed with screws in it. There’s two different walls, and each clipboard has a purpose. There’s harvest clipboards, wash pack clipboards, seeding clipboards, inventory clipboards, fertilizer application clipboards, and a spraying clipboard. There’s a clipboard for everything that happens.

Liz Graznak 47:05
Anytime anybody does one of those things, it gets written down on the clipboard. My clipboard just rolls over, and it’s annual. The pages are just for the year. I would love there to be an app that I could easily transfer…maybe I could even start using the app instead of the clipboards, but right now, we do it on clipboards, and it’s super…

Linley Dixon 47:36
…in the little day that I had, the accounts are a little more complex, but it’s a great way to get started. Just start writing things down.

Liz Graznak 47:47
I always felt like, when I started having to keep track of those records, it made me so much of a better farmer when I had to start keeping track of all that stuff, from year to year, and just for remembering because there’s no way you can remember all the things. No way.

Linley Dixon 48:10
Here it started producing a little late. I would rather it get to produce earlier…

Liz Graznak 48:15
I should have that in the ground two weeks earlier. I need to seed that two weeks earlier. It really helped me become better at what I am doing. Then, it made it so much easier for me to start training employees and for them to start understanding why we have this schedule. Then, also for them to say, “Those onions that we planted, it was too late. We need to do that weeks earlier.”

Linley Dixon 48:48
They weren’t as big this year.

Linley Dixon 48:49
Yeah. The whole functioning of the farm and everybody working together, that system of everybody being able to use the same system, it just makes us so much more organized and efficient.

Linley Dixon 49:07
It is madness. I feel like the system is definitely designed for the monoculture farm, and it’s craziness for us. But I agree with you; the record-keeping is lovely once you can figure it out to have for the future. But I understand the huge hurdle and feeling like… and the best is when the certifiers really… they’re like, “I see you are capable of doing this…” Like my first year, they were like, “I see you’re capable of the paperwork trail. Get better here.” They worked with me. I know they’re technically not allowed to do that, but that first year, I think it’s really important to be…

Linley Dixon 49:15
…here’s what you’re missing. They made me turn it in more throughout that season. But just like, “Let us hold your hand a little bit more.” I think we’re needing that more in the organic community. Maybe that’s where Real Organic Project or other entities can come in. It’s like, “Here’s what you do to get through that first year.”

Liz Graznak 50:13
I need to contact the Missouri Organic Association, actually. Our Missouri Organic Association, in collaboration with Marvel Seed and some other nonprofits in other states, received a huge grant. It was also through CCOF money… transition to organic.

Linley Dixon 50:38
That money is gone. It’s frozen. It was helping farmers to transition to organic.

Liz Graznak 50:46
I was brought in as a consultant to help some other smaller farms transition.

Linley Dixon 50:59
That’s awesome, because that’s something that the certifiers are not supposed to do. [inaudible 0:51:06] business information to help us. It’s insane, but that’s the way the program is set up.

Liz Graznak 51:08
That’s the way we set up. Somebody got to help the new farms learn all the things that they need to be doing and help them get good at those things.

Linley Dixon 51:18
Such a great program. I guess we’ll follow this story maybe as it unfolds. Some things are frozen and might come back. But we really want to create an opportunity to hear from farmers that are experiencing this. Thank you for taking the time to tell us what’s going on. To end on an upbeat note, what are your favorite crops? What’s really working for you right now? What are you excited to be growing and selling successfully this year?

Liz Graznak 51:50
The season’s just starting. We are still harvesting hard, hot, and heavy from fall-planted tunnels. We are still harvesting beautiful kales, Swiss chard, lettuces, spinach, and cut greens. We’re almost through all of our root storage crops. I’ve been doing this long enough now that other than maybe one new variety of a head lettuce, or something like…I’m not growing very many different things, because I’m already growing an insane amount of different vegetables. I’m more hesitant to try a new variety because I know the ones that I like and that work, and I’m already growing 20 different varieties of lettuce. Do I really need a 21? Probably not.

Linley Dixon 51:50
Take us through your spinach. Because that was so impressive to me, when you told me…take us through your spinach crop – what you are earning in square footage tunnel space in the winter with spinach. It was beautiful. So I want to get some tips for how you’re doing.

Liz Graznak 51:52
Well, I plant a lot of different varieties – I don’t throw my hat in the ring on just one variety. I plant about three to four times what I would need, let’s say, during the spring season. If I was going to plant a 300-foot-long bed, three rows to a bed, three beds in a tunnel – because it’s an entire tunnel – if I was going to plant an entire tunnel of spinach in the spring and think that that was going to be enough, I need three times that amount placed in the fall because it barely is growing in the fall. But I’m selling just as much, if not more, during the fall and winter months. I’ve got to have so much more.

Liz Graznak 53:53
It tastes so good and there’s less available, so people are [inaudible 0:53:58]. Did you have Reemay, inner layers, or how’s it going?

Liz Graznak 54:02
I don’t use any hoops or anything. We just throw the row cover right over the top of the beds. One layer, two layers, maybe three layers. We got really cold this winter – much colder than we have in many years. We were doing three layers and row cover some nights when it was dropping down into negative temperatures.

Linley Dixon 54:22
It’s okay just laying right on the…?

Liz Graznak 54:25
Right flat on top. Spinach is so tough.

Linley Dixon 54:30
Do you use the Reemay to help germinate? Are they secrets for germination?

Liz Graznak 54:35
Sprinklers, no drip tape. Sprinklers watering the whole bed and watering every other day until it’s up. Lots and lots and lots of water to get them to germinate fast – to get it up. The same day I direct seed, I direct seed five, six, seven flats of the same varieties in my greenhouse so that I have transplants to fill in the holes. Because there’s going to be holes…

Linley Dixon 55:03
High-value tunnel space. You don’t want holes.

Liz Graznak 55:05
…and I want to fill them in.

Linley Dixon 55:07
What about slugs?

Liz Graznak 55:07
Luckily, I don’t have a bad slug problem. Once the spinach is up, it can handle dry soil-ish… I don’t want it to be wet in there, ever. If you can keep it wet and free of debris, no trash, no weeds…we don’t have bad slug problems. There’s slugs here, but we do not have slugs. In my spinach, no.

Linley Dixon 55:34
Are you hand weeding down a tunnel?

Liz Graznak 55:41
Stirrup hoe weeding, hand weeding. Absolutely, you bet.

Linley Dixon 55:45
Then individual leaf harvest?

Liz Graznak 55:47
No. Grab that whole head, and cut it off with a knife. Just above the growing point and then it regrows. People are so concerned about getting a leaf that’s like a smaller leaf, fig leaf, or a cut leaf – I don’t give a shit. No way. Get over it. The spinach tastes great; it’s delicious, and I am not taking the time to hand-pick spinach leaves – not in a million years.

Linley Dixon 56:14
You’re not worried about too long of a stem or whatever. Customers just are so…

Liz Graznak 56:18
In the winter, the sweetest part of the entire thing is the stem. It’s that beautiful stem. That’s where the sugars are. Eat the stem. Oh, my gosh. You can harvest a lot of spinach in a short amount of time, cutting it off with a knife, and you can’t make that money up.

Linley Dixon 56:39
Throw it in the bin. Do you have a cooler?

Liz Graznak 56:40
Yeah, throw it in bins. It goes through a walking cooler. We’ve got a bubbler sink that we bubble it in and then…

Linley Dixon 56:45
Is it a triple wash, single, or double? Is it pretty clean?

Liz Graznak 56:48
Single wash. Single wash with some [inaudible 0:56:51] in the water, and that’s it.

Liz Graznak 56:51
Do you dip your spinach…?

Linley Dixon 56:54
Big plastic basket, dip it into the tub, throw it into the dryer, put it on high speed, throw that water off of it. Take the bin or crate, set it on the table, and then you’re packing your… This just happened last summer; I’m packing all loose cut greens into big corrugated and also with a little bit of holes in the bottom clamshell containers instead of in plastic bags now.

Linley Dixon 57:27
The life of the green – it doesn’t matter what the green is – is so much better for so much longer in these clamshells that I am spending an arm and a leg for because I’m buying ones that are compostable. I’m not buying just straight plastic clamshells. But in a composting facility, they are compostable. I am hearing from the customers that the quality of the product in the clamshell is so much better. They love it. I’m going away from plastic bags.

Linley Dixon 58:12
Do you have different-sized containers?

Liz Graznak 58:14
I’ve got different sizes. I’ve got an eight-ounce size and a four-ounce size. Four ounce is for arugula. But the eight-ounce is for bigger leafy greens.

Linley Dixon 58:27
I would want to do this with every single one of your crops. But this one I wanted to hear because, like your…is it your highest value per square foot in the winter high tunnel?

Liz Graznak 58:38
A hundred percent. I sell it for $14 a pound, Linley.

Linley Dixon 58:41
Oh, wow. Direct?

Liz Graznak 58:43
Direct, yeah.

Linley Dixon 58:45
That’s the trick.

Liz Graznak 58:46
It is. I don’t even know how much spinach I have out there. I’ve got the equivalent of 300-foot-long caterpillar tunnels planted in spinach right now that we’ve been harvesting off through this winter, and we’re planting more for spring right now. We sell a lot of spinach.

Linley Dixon 59:13
How many harvests can you get before it’s like, “Ah, I gotta..” Maybe it depends on the time of year?

Liz Graznak 59:17
It depends on the time of the year. Through the winter, I would say three times. We might, in the spring, be able to get four harvests off of one crop. At the fourth harvest, there’s not as many leaves; it’s thinner. Probably it’s not worth it to get that fourth harvest. But if we have a nice, longer, cool spring, then it works. But three solid, really good harvests off of one planting. It’s good.

Linley Dixon 59:52
Thanks for sharing your tricks of the trade. I’ll give it a try.

Liz Graznak 59:56
For sure. Again, lots of different varieties. There was a red-stemmed variety that I grew for many years called Red Kitten, and that one’s gone away. But now there’s Red Tabby. It’s delicious, and it’s so beautiful.

Linley Dixon 1:00:13
You just mix those two together, or you have…?

Liz Graznak 1:00:15
No. I keep them separate – green with green, red stem with red stem. Even restaurants, they either want green or they want red.

Linley Dixon 1:00:22
You’re marketing too?

Liz Graznak 1:00:22
Yeah, I market too. I put red in a clamshell and green in a clamshell.

Linley Dixon 1:00:26
They’ll buy both.

Liz Graznak 1:00:28
They buy both, yeah.

Linley Dixon 1:00:28
Thank you so much. Liz. I want to encourage [inaudible 1:00:35] back and listen to your Farmer to Farmer podcasts. You even interview Chris, he interviews you twice. The stories are amazing there. You wrote an incredible story for the Greenhorns way back. So people don’t know your story. Maybe it’s time for us to do one of those podcasts again just to retell it. But it’s an incredible story. I’m so happy to hear how successful you’ve been. Let’s follow up on whether any of these things are unfrozen or what ends up happening with your farm [inaudible 1:01:02] here about the impact that it’s happening this week.

Liz Graznak 1:00:36
It’s really incredible. The thing is, it’s not just me. There are so many farms out there that are having, maybe scale-wise, a little bit different than me, but the same significant loss in sales because of the acts on these two programs.

Linley Dixon 1:01:27
Well, I think the percentage of the farm, even though…these programs were meant for small farms.

Linley Dixon 1:01:34
They were. The entire programs were geared towards helping small farms be able to grow and increase their production.

Linley Dixon 1:01:51
Toot on my horn here, we really do produce better-tasting food, delicious food, into the hands of people that can’t afford it otherwise.

Liz Graznak 1:01:58
And into the schools where…oh, my gosh. It’s crazy. Thanks for doing the podcast, Linley. It’s greatly, greatly appreciated.

Liz Graznak 1:02:09
Yeah, we’ll speed it up and get the word out.

Liz Graznak 1:02:12
Great.

Linley Dixon 1:02:13
Thanks, Liz.