Our Story

Why? Not enough hired hands to pick it.
Result? Acres of onions left to rot under the sun.

(If you’ve never smelled that much onion in one place on a hot day… well, count yourself lucky.)

By the 1980s, with electricity prices climbing sky high, all farming came to a screeching halt. The land was divided up and sold in parcels. And for decades, it sat quiet.

Until 2019.

That’s when a couple of Wisconsin transplants, Andy and Katie, wandered in, took one look at the wide open fields, and felt their boots sink deep into possibility. The place was overgrown and quiet, but the bones of a great farm were still here.

We started sketching out hay production plans in 2020 and promptly learned just how much Arizona likes to throw curveballs.

First up? A massive 180-foot arroyo carving right through the north end of the property, just south of our irrigation well. A real beauty of a wash. Pretty to look at. Terrible to farm across.

Solution? Custom-build a pivot section to span the wash and engineer a setup so unique it involved dangling our son, voluntarily we should note, over the wash to unhook crane chains lifting irrigation pipes. (Sometimes farm solutions require a little creativity… and a willing teenager.)

Next came the irrigation pipe: twelve inches wide, buried four feet deep, stretching along the perimeter of every field. That job took the many weekends of help from Robert and David, plus some loaner equipment from our friend Mark.

And then there was the machinery hunt. Andy crisscrossed the Southwest collecting gear like a kid at a county fair. Tractor from Roswell, New Mexico. Wheel lines from Idaho. Baler from New Mexico. Rake and disc from Colorado. By the end, we’d logged thousands of miles and learned the best gas station coffee between here and the Rockies and that if you get stuck in Shiprock, New Mexico with a blown transfer case - Mark will come save you.

Finally, in August 2025, we dropped seed in the ground. Five years of planning, digging, building, sweating, and learning—all for that first crop.

Today, as the wheel lines spin and the fields green up again, we like to think this land is smiling. After decades of silence, it’s back to work, just like it was meant to be.

And this time, we promise not to let the onions rot.