Lovefood is run by a trio of semi-tame humans. David, Abby, and Soleia work together to create amazing food while maintaining a theoretically balanced, but always exciting life together.
Way back in the pre-Lovefood era (PLE), right at the beginning of our (Abby and David’s) relationship, I grew a cherry tomato plant in a 5 gallon bucket on the fire escape of a college apartment. The tomatoes were magical and delicious and the experience ignited a love of growing (and eating!) the best of produce.
We were living on the eastside of Madison and had a community garden plot. We found out that Abby was pregnant and were over the moon with excitement. Very quickly, we realized that growing an entire human being within one’s body is not the easiest thing to do! Abby was going through tons of nausea and acid reflux and as we were trying to figure out how to help, we realized that the best thing was home-cooked food from the garden (besides the random gefilte fish craving, that is). One day, Abby was feeling terrible and I cooked her some food that was particularly satisfying. Abby said, “Uhhhhhh, this is just what I needed - food cooked with LOVE - LOVEFOOD!” We delighted in the concept of intention impacting how food tastes and how the body processes food and life went on… now with a small bright shiny human with us, Soleia.
Fast forward anotherfive years….
I had ripped up the entire front yard of our house on the east side of Madison and filled it with dozens of crops and flowers. Abby, being the ever perceptive human that she is, offered the insight of “you seem to be really happy doing this, maybe you should be a farmer?!” And shortly thereafter, the farm was on its way to being born and we realized that we had the name all along — Lovefood Farm. A place where we aim to grow food with intention and send it throughout our community, so people can prepare it for themselves and their humans with love.
In 2015, we rented an acre in Sun Prairie and launched the farm with a small CSA, Saturday farmers market and a neighborhood farmstand. In 2016, we moved to the Farley Center Farm Incubator and stayed there for 3 years. The experience was extraordinary. The incubator helped us to start strong by offering equipment, facilities and knowledge to help get our operation off the ground. The other farmers at the incubator were so generous with their experience and farming wisdom and this gave us a great start.
In 2018, we were SO lucky to find and buy 30 acres of land in Stoughton, WI. The land had been pasture and was eligible to be certified organic our very first year. It had an excellent well and electricity to the well but no other infrastructure at all.
It was a delightful ‘blank slate’ experience and also very daunting to prepare and build the farm we envisioned.
We started by renting a tractor and buying a greenhouse from a company that would build it themselves in a single day (aaaaaamazing) and working our patooties down to the patoot. Now, a few years later, we’re really seeing the farm come into its own.
This land is also home to turkeys, deer, racoons, cranes, wild cats, coyotes, foxes and a periodic neighbor’s dog. We are near the Yahara River and Lake Kegonsa and get tons of flyover traffic, including all the geese you can imagine and a pelican now and again. The birds are hilarious and are my version of a daily telenovela with the drama of the comings and goings throughout the season.
The land itself is lovely with a light roll to the landscape. It has this thing called fertile soil which we take for granted in the Midwest but is not so common elsewhere. We’re spoiled with soil! We aim to keep taking care of this land by rotating crops and using cover crops to continue building up the soil here. We take soil samples yearly to understand what is happening here as we farm and figure out any adjustments that need to be made. We see our relationship with the land as a partnership that MUST be mutuall
