Joe Lambert
happy critters farm
the Berry Field
good memories
I grew up on a hobby farm (which was the remainder of my father’s farm after he retired) and started working on a neighbor’s farm when I was around nine years old. By the time I was 12, I’d bought my first milk cow. From there, I worked on two or three different dairy farms. Back then—30 or 40 years ago—there were still quite a few small dairies around. I used to wake up at 4:00 in the morning, watch Bullwinkle, then go milk cows at the neighbor’s place. I'd milk my own cow too, then head off to school. After school, I’d do it all over again. I just really loved it. Even now, even though I’m not a dairy farmer, I’ve got nothing but good memories. It was hard work, but I really enjoyed dairy farming.
These days, you've got operations running 20,000 to 40,000 cows and using robots to do the milking. It’s impossible for small farms to compete with that. The younger generation is incapable of buying out the older generation as the land prices are no longer set by farm production capacity. Add in equipment, cattle, and general operating costs going up substantially in the past few decades and milk prices not following, the next generation cannot make the payments and feed their families. Even the kids who do want to take over the family farm often end up switching to something else, like beekeeping or vegetable farming. It's a huge commitment, and the economics just don’t make sense anymore—at least not unless you go into direct marketing. But that’s a full-time job in itself, and there are tons of regulations if you want to sell raw milk, for example.
grass-fed beef and pastured pork
After I got out of high school, I couldn’t afford to buy a farm, so I went to southern Minnesota to work and see how “real farmers” farmed—big operations. But I didn’t like it. It was all chemical farming, thousands of acres per farmer. That wasn’t for me.
Eventually, I moved back home. It took nearly a decade of owning and operating a trucking business before I could afford to buy any land of my own. And then we had this crazy idea—we wanted to raise grass-finished beef and pastured meats and sell directly to the community. That became our model: grass-fed beef, pastured pork, pastured poultry, all sold directly to local customers.
I didn’t want to ship meat. If you couldn’t drive to our farm to pick it up, then my thinking was there’s probably another farmer near you doing something similar—go support them.
Food should be raised where it’s eaten. Or, if you love a place enough to live there, you should be able to raise food there too. That philosophy shaped our whole approach. We built the farm around pastured proteins and local, direct sales.
We could never scale up enough to make it a full-time income. We did it for nearly a decade before we bought the strawberry farm. But proteins are tough—there’s a reason you see a lot of vegetable farms and not many meat farms. Protein is expensive to raise, and there are a lot of costs involved.
it’s the growing that I love
Well, Steve—the previous owner—dropped the idea on us pretty casually. He and his wife stopped by our place one day to borrow a car seat or something like that. While he was there, he mentioned that it was going to be his last year strawberry farming, and that he wasn’t sure what he was going to do with the place. He kind of floated the idea, hoping I might ask if he was planning to sell it. We talked for a few minutes, nothing serious. Just kind of tossing the idea around. After they left, I went into the house and said to Amanda, “If I said we’re buying a strawberry farm, what would you say?”
It was a slow process after that. Honestly, at first I didn’t want anything to do with gardening or strawberry farming. The thought of hand-weeding didn’t exactly excite me. But this farm—this place—I’ve been connected to it basically my whole life. Almost since I was born. So that was part of it. There was something really meaningful about the idea of carrying that on. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. I love growing things. It’s like with sales: if you’re a good salesman, it doesn’t matter what you’re selling—you just love the process. For me, it’s like that with farming. I don’t necessarily care what I’m growing—strawberries, cattle, potatoes—it’s the growing that I love.
to focus on biological health
A big part of the draw to purchase the strawberry field had to do with my desire to deeply engage with soil health. With cattle and pigs, you can do some cool stuff with rotational grazing, and that’s great for the land. But some of the cover crop methods—the stuff that row crop guys get to do—I couldn’t really apply on my cattle farm. The strawberry farm gives me that opportunity. I can play around with multiple cover crops—nine different ones in a single seeding. I get to focus on biological health, improving the soil. That’s super fun for me. That was a big draw. But the biggest hurdle was the career shift. I realized I couldn’t work full-time and run this farm. I could do cattle and pigs and keep my job, but strawberries are a different game. So quitting a full-time career to go full-time into farming—that was a huge decision.
why we farm the way we do
Our goal with all of our farming is to have a very educated customer base. I want people to really understand what we do—not just at the surface level, but deeper. For example, I want them to understand that soil health truly matters. And when we say we don't use chemicals, that's not just a marketing line—it's a lifestyle choice. There are real benefits behind it, and it takes a lot of work to do it right.
That education component extends beyond our customers. It includes the young people who come to work here. I want them to know why we’re hand-weeding, why we’re targeting certain weeds, why we're planting cover crops, or aligning runners. It’s not just about clocking in and getting a paycheck. It’s about understanding how and why we farm the way we do.
And this matters especially because we’re a U-pick strawberry farm. It’s crucial that our visitors care about the space. When people walk on the strawberry plants, they kill them—that plant’s done. If they don’t pick thoroughly, it creates issues down the line: overripe fruit rots, it spreads to good fruit, it attracts pests.
But when customers are engaged and educated, everything changes. They’re careful not to walk on the plants. They teach their kids how to behave in the field. They pick all the ripe berries—even the small ones—so the field stays clean, healthy, and productive.
That kind of customer base is incredibly valuable. They’re not just here to pick berries and hand over money—they’re here to participate in something meaningful. And that makes all the difference.
Profiles in Creativity has been funded in part through an Art Project Grant for Individuals FY25 awarded to Glenn Swanson by the Arrowhead Regional Arts Council.
Local Hands photography project/exhibition will highlight the lives and craftsmanship of 20 local artisans of diverse artistic and crafting disciplines, showcasing their skills, traditions, and the cultural significance of their hands at work.
