Farm Beginnings Profiles

These profiles feature the stories of graduates of the Land Stewardship Project’s Farm Beginnings and Journeyperson courses. In these stories, the graduates talk about the challenges of launching a farm business, how these courses got them started on their agrarian path, and what their future goals are.

The Belly of Belief

Riverbed Lamb’s Renewed Relationship With the Land & Community

2026-2027 Farm Beginnings Class LSP is now accepting applications for its 2026-2027 Farm Beginnings class session. The application deadline is Sept. 1. For details, click here. ♦ ♦ ♦ It was the winter of 2024-2025, and Frances Kelliher wasn’t exactly in the mood to sit in a room with a lot of idealistic agrarians. She…  Read More

The Enemy of Good

Farming’s Reality Challenges Jane Marynik’s Pursuit of Perfection

2026-2027 Farm Beginnings Class LSP is now accepting applications for its 2026-2027 Farm Beginnings class session. The application deadline is Sept. 1. For details, click here. ♦ ♦ ♦ The phrase “Perfect is the enemy of good” is often attributed to the French Enlightenment writer and historian Voltaire. His actual quote is, “The best is…  Read More

The Throughline

Crowded Table’s Commitment to Community

2026-2027 Farm Beginnings Class LSP is now accepting applications for its 2026-2027 Farm Beginnings class session. The application deadline is Sept. 1. For details, click here. ♦ ♦ ♦ Sometimes a shot of reality can inject a sense of urgency into an educational experience. Roughly half-way through their participation in the 2024-2025 winter session of…  Read More

Farm Transition Profile: Full Circle

One LSP Course Helped Launch Melissa Driscoll & Jay Hambidge's Ag Career — Years Later, Another Helped Wrap It Up

Note: LSP’s next Farm Transition Planning Course will begin meeting Jan. 27, 2026. For details and information on how to enroll, click here. Sometimes a successful farm transition requires a shoulder season — a period when the current owners are still present, still have their hands in the soil, so to speak, but the newbies…  Read More

California Dreaming

A Farm Beginnings Grad Makes a Go of it in an Urban Setting

2026-2027 Farm Beginnings Class LSP is now accepting applications for its 2026-2027 Farm Beginnings class session. For details, click here. ♦ ♦ ♦   By the time Elyssa Eull moved back to Minnesota a few years ago, she already had several years of experience working on vegetable farms. But she felt that in order to…  Read More

The Other 80%

From Disney World to the Real World

2025-2026 Farm Beginnings Class LSP is now accepting applications for its 2025-2026 Farm Beginnings class session. For details, click here. Before jumping into agriculture, Kevin Keene worked as a data science consultant for 11 years. So it makes sense that he describes farming success in terms of a mathematical calculation. “The way I think about…  Read More

Staring Down Doubts

How Valerie Hsu Saw Livestock as Part of Her Farm Dream

2025-2026 Farm Beginnings Class LSP is now accepting applications for its 2025-2026 Farm Beginnings class session. For details, click here. ♦ ♦ ♦ This is a story about how traffic jams aren’t all bad, the powerful draw of regenerative agriculture, an MBA project, and how one woman living in the suburbs got over imposter’s syndrome,…  Read More

A Beginning Farmer Legacy

Returning to the Classroom a Quarter Century Later

2025-2026 Farm Beginnings Class LSP is now accepting applications for its 2025-2026 Farm Beginnings class session. For details, click here. ♦ ♦ ♦ In a sense, when the brothers Andy and Ben Klein enrolled in the Land Stewardship Project’s Farm Beginnings course in 2023, it was a return engagement for at least one of them.…  Read More

Youth Movement

From Tilling an Old Soccer Field to Helping Teens Kick-off Better Communities

When it comes to youth programs centered around gardening and farming, a common mantra is, “We’re teaching kids about where their food comes from.” Sounds laudable, but to Marcos Giossi, such a feel-good goal is too limiting when it comes to exposing young people to the realities of the farm and food system that dominates.…  Read More

The Fifth R

A 'Generational Urban Farmer' Looks to Build Community Resilience

On a warm, overcast day in early fall, a low line of shrubby trees blocks the view of a seemingly empty lot on Penn Avenue, a busy thoroughfare in the Willard-Hay Neighborhood of North Minneapolis. A television with a cracked screen lays in some weeds at the edge of the lot, a reminder that if…  Read More