Organically Grown

Duane and Vickie Errett
Harlan, Iowa

Important considerations, important decisions

In 1986, when Duane Errett and his wife Vickie had their second child, the decision was made: the family farm would now be chemical-free, “I just decided that I was going to start doing something about it because there was no sense in having [my daughters] exposed to it. I had chemicals on my clothes and was bringing them into the house. So I started thinking more seriously about it.”

Duane’s grandfather, Hallie Errett, purchased the family farm in 1936. Hallie moved into a Catholic German area, which could have been an issue because he was Danish. However, Duane was clear that Hallie “thought it was great. He got along with them fine and they traded help.”

Duane’s father, Raymond, eventually took over the farm as Hallie grew older; Hallie passed away in 1969. Raymond, now retired at 79 years old, had always used chemicals when he farmed the family’s land, “Dad hated weeds so he sprayed everything.”

Duane now tills the field to control weeds, but to the organic certifiers that check his land, weeds look good: “The certifiers go out and look at your soil and make sure they find some weeds so they know you’re not sneaking in some chemicals…If a field looked perfectly clean, I’m sure they would start looking deeper real quick.”

Ironically, Hallie farmed at a time when chemicals were not used to control weeds, so, in today’s terms, he was the first “organic” farmer in the family.

Duane married his wife Vickie in 1978, the same year that he began renting land from his father. Duane met Vickie through his sister, “I just happened to run into my sister at a concert one night and Vickie was along, so we met.”

Vickie’s family also farms; they live in Springfield, Nebraska, which is about 65 miles away from Harlan. Duane and Vickie’s two daughters, Jessica and Bonnie, both attend the University of Nebraska, Omaha. At this time Duane says that neither daughter has any interest in coming home to farm. The Erretts’ home is fairly unconventional for the area. In 1983, they moved into the house on the farm they had built, an underground home. The home was built for its energy efficiency, showing the Erretts’ overall concern for the environment.

A changing operation

In 1978, Duane began renting some land from his father in exchange for labor; this was also the year that Duane and Vickie were married. During that time, Duane began farming his portion organically, which his father supported, although they still had separate farming practices, “He let me do what I wanted on what I was renting there and what land he farmed, he kept doing his way until he retired.”

Once Duane’s father retired in 1990, his father retained ownership of one-third of the land, and one-third went into a trust and Duane and his two sisters own the rest. When Raymond retired, the farm began to change drastically; by 1992 Duane switched the entire operation over to chemical-free, “When he retired, he said that I was the boss, so it went from one extreme to another. I give him credit for letting me do it because the fields never looked perfect anymore because of some weed pressure.”

Duane continues the rotation that his father used, corn soybeans, and oats. He fertilizes the corn with turkey litter that he has brought onto the farm, and any supplements he uses to fertilize are chemical free, “I add lime…a little boron, a little sulfur…anything that is natural.”

In past years, Duane and his father raised hogs and cattle, but quit raising hogs when the bottom fell out of the market. Several years later he liquidated his cow herd, as they were old. Now, Duane rents pasture to a farmer that has cattle, and he admits that he simply does not have the time necessary to raise livestock, “If you do organic crops on a larger scale by yourself, you really don’t have time to do livestock. To find good help you have to pay a good wage and to keep good help, it would have to be a full time position. It would take a fair amount of animals just to pay his wage. I chose not to go down that path.”

If Duane ever needs more labor on the farm, he hires short-term employees, usually “kids from town.” If he ever needs custom work done, he has to make sure their equipment is properly cleaned so that his crops are not contaminated.

“I lived in the hippie generation”

Organic farming is not the standard farming practice around Harlan, Iowa. In fact, Duane and his neighbor, Ron Rosmann are the only organic farms in the neighborhood, which makes it difficult to stay organic because of spray drift and cross-pollination from neighboring farms. Duane uses buffer strips of corn to protect his crops; however it does not always work, as he has had some corn test GMO-positive once several years ago. “The neighbors are working with me now by planting non-GMO corn next to my corn, which I really appreciate, but pollen can drift for miles so nothing is fool-proof.”

Frustrations like this do not stop Duane’s dedication to farming organically, and when asked about his decision to go organic, he jokingly notes, “I don’t know. I lived in the hippie generation.”

Duane was one of the charter members of the first chapter of the Organic Crop Improvement Association (OCIA) in Iowa. He networks with other growers through the OCIA, as they have monthly and annual meetings. Duane has been buying all organic seed for the past few years.”

Duane says that there are a lot more organic farmers now, “But I have been doing it so long, my name is at the top of a lot of companies’ growers lists. So when they need stuff, I usually get calls. I’ve always given them a good product over the years.”

The popularity of buying organically grown products has increased, which has helped Duane, as companies call him regularly to buy his crops. Duane mainly sells his crops to Grain Millers out of Eden Prairie, Minnesota; at other times he has sold to Stonebridge LTD in Cedar Falls, Iowa and Clarkson Grain in Illinois, and he says that if he “wasn’t selling to these companies, there [are] plenty of other companies out there. They’re calling. They’re looking.”

Duane’s organic farming practices have not always been met with complete acceptance and support from other farmers in the area, “Oh, I used to get talked about a lot … [They would say] ‘What is that Errett doing now?’”

When Duane experimented one year by growing blue corn in his field, he was mystified when he walked into his field and noticed that “there weren’t any ears.”

Soon the mystery was over when Duane realized that people in town were coming and picking his corn, then taking it to town to show it to people. No one had seen blue corn before. Finally he caught somebody out there when he stopped…”As I walked into the field further, I found some corn, but anything that was in the radius of the gate was gone.”

However, no matter what Duane’s neighbors think, he is pleased with his decision to farm organically, and hopes that his legacy continues if someone else ever takes over the operation, “I’d like to see it stay an organic farm.”

North Central Regional Center for Rural Development
Iowa State University
107 Curtiss Hall
Ames, IA 50011-1050
(515) 294-8321, (515) 294-3180 fax

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Last updated November 17, 2006