Nick comes from a family of farmers — he’s third-generation — but is now the only remaining family member who is a farmer. Together, he and his wife share responsibility for their 3,500-acre Wisconsin potato and vegetable farm, 400 of the potato acres are Healthy Grown certified.
A member of Healthy Grown from its inception, Nick can appreciate how far the sustainable growing program has come. “It was a long process. Once we had decided that we wanted to do things differently — sustainably — we had to find others who could help us. We started by speaking with University of Wisconsin researchers and circumstances brought us together with the World Wildlife Fund,” he states. “It was important to us that we had definitive sustainable standards that growers had to meet on an annual basis, so the process took longer than we expected — 18 months. But it was worth it.”
“We’ve accepted a challenge — to be sustainable. And we can do it. We’ve been doing it for more than 10 years. Ultimately, what we do is better for the environment. At the end of the day, and all our hard work, I get to go out into nature and see the wildlife around me. For those of us that grew up on the land, I feel like I have a responsibility to keep it in a natural state,” he concludes.
