Jon Peterson’s day starts at 5 a.m. He milks the 55 organic dairy cows at his farm near (aptly named) Peterson, Minn., while his son collects the eggs from their 2,300 organic hens. Both the milk and the eggs will be picked up by the Organic Valley Co-op and transported from their farm, which is tucked amongst rolling green hills along the Root River. It’s hard to imagine subdivisions, or a thousand-head livestock farm, or a frac-sand mine leering up through the morning mist of the surrounding landscape. But these enterprises are a potential part of this region’s changing landscape and, in the early 1990s, Peterson was feeling these pressures on his farm as well as his father’s neighboring farm to an alarming degree.

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Craig Murphy, 58, brushes the dust off an aerial photo of his farm from the late 1980s. He sets it on his kitchen table in the home that five generations of Murphys have grown up in near the west-central Minnesota community of Morris and uses his finger to draw a map on it. He points to different structures and fields to explain what has changed and what has remained. He draws imaginary borders outside of the frame to create a picture of how the community and his neighbors’ farms have changed since he got started as one of the first certified organic farmers in the area. As he talks about potentially transitioning his land to non-family for the first time in its history, his words draw a broad, borderless image where anything seems possible.

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Caleb and Lauren Langworthy approached their farm dream like racecar drivers. They assembled a pit crew of people that could help them get moving and who were invested in seeing them succeed. They spent years honing their farming skills and months developing the financial chops and networks that resulted in them owning their own land. The process was multifaceted and, at times, almost haltingly difficult, but Blue Ox Organics now has two experienced, ambitious and able-bodied farmers at the wheel.

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