Meet the Farmers
Red Tail Farm’s mission is to employ sustainable business practices, as well as, sustainable organic agriculture that enriches our soils, feeds and teaches our children and our neighborhood and provides us the knowing pleasure that 
we are future-minded, responsible stewards of the land. We will grow high quality produce, flowers and poultry for our local customers and ourselves. We will strive to educate our customers about the advantages of locally raised, organic food as well as the many benefits of supporting local, family farms.
These days, if you ask us what we are doing with ourselves we would most likely answer, “We have a young son named Edward and he is just the most incredible thing on earth.” Then we would tell you about our small farm.
We took the Stateline Farm Beginnings course in the winter of 2005. Farm Beginnings was a priceless resource for us. It kept us thinking about our farming passions and goals even on the coldest Chicago evenings. Farm Beginnings also kept us close to other farmers who had the same passions and goals and who also wanted to know more about the business of farming.
Chris worked for Matt & Peg Sheaffer on their very successful organic vegetable and cut flower farm, Sandhill Organics. At Sandhill, he learned bed prep and seeding, weed and insect management, cover cropping and harvest techniques and a lot more under the mentorship of the Sheaffers.
Tania grew up watching her mom grow flowers. She had her own section of the garden that she loved to plant other flowers that her mom grew, which were mostly sunflowers, bachelor buttons and marigolds. She attended the School for Cut Flower Growers at the University of Madison this winter and has visited many flower grower’s gardens. Not only does Tania do work outdoors but she also has been honing her record keeping, finance managing and marketing skills by taking in any and all information she can find.
We rent just over 5 acres of organic land from the Prairie Crossing Farmer Incubator Program. Red Tail is one of four farms currently on Incubator land. Vegetables will be grown on about 2 of those acres and the remainder will be left as pasture. Red clover and ladino clover will be frost seeded into the existing pasture that currently contains alfalfa and orchard grass to give our chickens and turkeys some of their favorite and most nutritious greens. Our fertility program includes an annual spreading of well-composted horse and steer manure as well as green manures (cover crops) and a crop rotation plan that, we assume, will be a work in progress for many seasons to come. Take a look at the produce, flower & poultry pages for a sampling of the wide variety of products we have to offer.