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Farm Beginnings Profile: Josh & Sally Reinitz

In the Land of Green Giants

By Brian DeVore
January 10, 2011

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When you grow up on a farm in the shadow of the Jolly Green Giant, you can’t help but think that size matters when it comes to success in agriculture. Josh Reinitz’s family’s land sits between Minneapolis and Mankato, just a few miles from where a wooden likeness of the Green One and his apprentice Sprout emerges from the trees, welcoming startled visitors to “The Valley”—the place where for over a century farmers have raised canning crops in rich Minnesota River bottom soil for the Green Giant vegetable label.

In recent decades, the fertile farmland here along U.S. Highway 169 has come to be dominated by large grain farms and hog facilities. So when Reinitz decided to become a farmer, he could be excused for thinking the 40 acres of family farmland remaining in the area wasn’t going to be big enough to be economically viable.

“This area of the state is pretty much dominated by big corn and pork—40 acres, what am I going to do with that?” Josh, 32, asks while sitting next to his wife Sally, 31, in their home. Their two boys, Henry, 5, and Miles, 2, are tracking March mud through the house as an early spring sun begins the spring thaw outside. “Even a few years ago I still wasn’t sure I could make a living farming, because to me it had to be 2,000 acres or a feedlot.”

Sally and Josh Reinitz, with their children, Henry and Miles.

Sally grew up in South Minneapolis, and admits to a romanticized view of farming, mostly from time spent as a girl playing on relatives’ farms in the Mankato area.

But Josh had no such illusions: his family got out of farming when he was 10, mostly because his father Paul felt his only choice to stay in business was to expand and that path wasn’t for him. Josh needed convincing the land that has been in his family for four generations near the community of Henderson could still generate a viable income for his family.

Gearing up
But both Sally and Josh like working outside on the land: he has a degree in ecology and she in landscape horticulture. And through connections at LSP and in the community, they became exposed to farms that were making it on just a couple of acres via specialty enterprises such as Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), which consists of selling “shares” in a farm before the growing season begins.

“The gears were beginning to turn,” he recalls.

Those gears got a bit of grease when Josh’s family sold them part of the original operation. In 2006, the couple took an 1860s-era log cabin that had been serving as a hunting shack, and, like some sort of modern homesteaders, transported it log-by-log to their new farm, erecting the cabin on a former hayfield. But Josh knew enough about farming to realize that having land and a place to live wasn’t enough to make a go of it in the long term.

“We were ready to start something, but didn’t know what,” recalls Josh. “I couldn’t take the normal route of being trained into farming.”

So in 2008-2009 they took the Land Stewardship Project’s Farm Beginnings class. That fall and winter the couple drove twice a month to the community of Goodhue for sessions taught by established farmers and other agriculture professionals from the community. For 14 years, the Farm Beginnings program has been training beginning farmers who are interested in innovative management systems. The course emphasizes goal setting, financial planning, business plan creation, alternative marketing and innovative production techniques. The classes are taught by established farmers and other ag professionals representing a range of enterprises: from grass-based livestock production and organic cropping to vegetables and specialty products. Farm Beginnings participants also have the opportunity to attend on-farm events where they see firsthand the use of innovative management techniques.

The first thing Josh and Sally learned was the class wasn’t about how to drive a tractor. “We thought that Farm Beginnings was going to be more of a how-to-farm class and we got half way through it and realized it was more of how to run a business,” recalls Sally.

“I can learn how to operate farm machinery from my father,” says Josh. “But developing a sustainable, viable business model that provides a fulltime living is the key to what makes Farm Beginnings helpful.”

The couple also learned how to take a look at what resources they had on hand, and make the best use of them in launching and running a business.

Josh and Sally have a farm with rich soil in close proximity to two good markets: the Twin Cities and St. Peter. So they lighted on operating a CSA vegetable farm, a model that they felt would allow them to grow into fulltime careers in agriculture without a huge investment in capital up front.

What not to do
Their CSA, East Henderson Farm (www.easthendersonfarm.com), is now in its third season. Sally is only half joking when she says 2010 was the year of “what not to do” farming. They had started out with 16 members in 2009 and more than doubled to 43 last year, creating some growing pains as far as vegetable storage and packing issues.

This year they have 60 members, and feel they’ve dealt with the logistics of post-harvest veggie handling with the addition of more cooling and storage space. Their long-term plans are to have 100-120 members, a size the Reinitzes feel will provide a fulltime income while being sustainable from a workload point of view (Josh has been working part-time off the farm in construction and carpentry).

Scaling up on a CSA farm can be difficult—how does one match the number of vegetable acres with the number of farm subscribers, and vice-versa? But the couple has gotten the hang of “CSA math”—which is a combination of looking at spreadsheets, talking to other CSA farmers in the area, and gauging how many extra vegetables end up in the compost.

They supplement their CSA market by selling to a local food co-op and a restaurant. They also sell eggs produced by their 100 layers, as well as beef from a couple of steers they pasture.

The Reinitzes have used Josh’s background in construction and carpentry to their advantage. Besides the log cabin house, they have reclaimed other buildings and moved them onto the farm. In 2010 they received a grant from the USDA’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program to build a 24×96 hoop house for extending the vegetable season. Since they used salvaged lumber and erected the hoop house themselves, the Reinitzes were able to build the structure for around $5,000, and 90 percent of that cost was covered by the EQIP grant.

The maximum size of East Henderson Farm CSA will eventually be determined by the amount of land the family has to raise vegetables on. Only five acres is tillable—the rest is in either woods or pasture. Most of their vegetable acres were certified organic in 2009, with an additional 1.5 acres in transition until 2012.

But Josh and Sally haven’t forgotten an important lesson gleaned from Farm Beginnings: consider all the resources available on a farm. “I’m looking to the woods,” Josh says, pointing to a mixed stand of maple, red oak, pin oak, burr oak and basswood growing on a hillside that slants down to the Minnesota River a half-a-mile away. “The future of this land is in perennials.”

Indeed, this spring they tapped 40 maple trees and there are plans to establish beehives (Josh’s great-grandfather was a beekeeper) and a fruit orchard.

They also find themselves still referring to the business training they received in Farm Beginnings. Whether applying for the EQIP grant or a Farm Services Agency loan to build a vegetable packing shed, business planning skills have played an integral part in the operation of East Henderson Farm.

“One surprise is how much of a businessman I’ve become,” says Josh. “I’m an accountant. I’m a salesman. I’m a negotiator. I probably put 200 to 300 hours a year on Excel spreadsheets.”

Part of the community
But it’s not all hard-nosed business. Even in the midst of planning expansions and keeping a close eye on finances, the couple is particularly focused on making the farm part of the community. “Henderson is my hometown,” says Josh. “It’s important for me to be engaged.”

They are especially proud that around 20 of their CSA members are within five miles of the farm.

Sally says there are a lot of older farmers in the area that are excellent sources of information on everything from where to buy hay to local soil conditions. Josh’s father also lives just a few hundred yards from them in the farm’s original house, and has been a font of knowledge.

“I think there’s a lot of oral history —an oral tradition that’s been lost. They have so much information to offer about farming,” Sally says.

Perhaps the surest sign that East Henderson is being recognized as part of the farming community is the fact that the request for information is now flowing both ways.

“When you first get started and say you’re going to have an organic vegetable CSA, people say, ‘What’s that?’ ” Josh says as he heads to the woods to collect sap and Sally prepares to load eggs into the car for a town delivery. “Now three years into it corn and soybean farmers are asking us about crop rotations. We’ve kind of proven ourselves to the skeptics here that this is a viable farm. It might only be 40 acres, but if we’re making a living, isn’t that a farm?”

Category: Farm Beginnings Profiles
Tags: beginning farmers • Farm Beginnings • vegetable farming

Give it a Listen

In LSP Ear to the Ground episode 97, Josh and Sally Reinitz talk about working to prove their CSA is a viable business in the community.

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October 2025

Tuesday October 7

6:30 pm – 8:00 pm
Book Event: We Can Do Better: Collected Writings on Land, Conservation, and Public Policy
Tuesday October 7
6:30 pm – 8:00 pm
Book Event: We Can Do Better: Collected Writings on Land, Conservation, and Public Policy
The Landing Market, 211 College Dr, Decorah, IA 52101, USA

The Johnson Center for Land Stewardship Policy is excited to share that one of our its primary pillars of work — a published collection of Paul Johnson’s writings —  is set for release on Oct. 2.  The book features a brief biography and a discussion of Paul’s ideas within the historical and future contexts of private lands conservation. Details on the event are available here.

For details on We Can Do Better: Collected Writings on Land, Conservation, and Public Policy click here.

 

Friday October 10

8:30 am – 3:00 pm
Weaving a Wider Community: Seeing & Countering Racism in Our Backyard
Friday October 10
8:30 am – 3:00 pm
Weaving a Wider Community: Seeing & Countering Racism in Our Backyard
111 N 1st St, Montevideo, MN 56265, USA

Join LSP and CURE for a community event at the Land Stewardship Project office in Montevideo (111 N. First St.), from 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., on Friday, Oct. 10. This event includes lunch catered by El Mana; please register by Oct. 3 to be included in the food count.

You can RSVP here.

The Racial Equity Conference, organized by the Greater Minnesota Partnership of the Facilitating Racial Equity Collaborative, has been specifically designed to bring engaging content to local communities through a unique pairing of online speakers and in-person local sessions. The morning’s online content will include a conversation focused on seeing and countering racism in rural communities, moderated by Eryn Gee Killough, paired with two outstanding keynote speakers, Jenna Grey Eagle and Ron Ferguson, who have experience working in rural communities. 

This online content will be exclusively available to local community gatherings. Each gathering will gear their in-person activity to their specific community with the goal of extending the impact of the conference to others throughout the following year. Join LSP and CURE for this western Minnesota gathering, or if a different location works better for you, check out all the local gatherings on the FREC site,

If you have any questions, do not hesitate to reach out. LSP’s Nick Olson can be reached via e-mail at nicko@landstewardshipproject.org.

9:00 am – 3:00 pm
Intensive Small-Scale Market Gardening Bus Tour
Friday October 10
9:00 am – 3:00 pm
Intensive Small-Scale Market Gardening Bus Tour
Leatherdale Equine Center, 1801 Dudley Ave, St Paul, MN 55108, USA

Explore profitable small-scale farming (1–5 acres) and soil care. Visit a cooperative incubator farm and a thriving suburban market garden. Learn about cover crops, reduced tillage, high tunnel soil health, and support for growers.

This is the second tour in a three-part soil health bus tour series. Participants can sign up for just one, two, or all three tours. Register at https://z.umn.edu/vegetablebustours. The cost is $15 (flat fee, covers 1, 2, or 3 tours). There are more details in the attached flyer.

Saturday October 11

11:00 am – 2:00 pm
LSP-COPAL Visita a la Granja | Farm Tour
Saturday October 11
11:00 am – 2:00 pm
LSP-COPAL Visita a la Granja | Farm Tour
36919 County 57 Blvd, Dennison, MN 55018, USA

Building off the success of last year’s farm event with COPAL in Austin, Minn., this year Land Stewardship Project and COPAL members and supporters will gather at the Young-Walser Family Farm in Dennison, Minn. for a festive and delicious farm tour on Saturday, Oct. 11, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. We invite you to come and meet new folks, learn new skills, and try new food! 
 
This year’s COPAL-LSP farm event offers a little something for everyone: 
 
🍯 Honey sampling and the opportunity to purchase from Homestead Honey Farm. 
 
🍎 Apple cider pressing and tasting. (BTW, we’re still looking for an apple press if you or a farmer friend have one nearby we could borrow for this event!) 
 
🌽 Nixtamalization workshop and fresh, homemade tortillas, made with corn grown by LSP and COPAL members at the Young-Walser Family Farm! 
 
🍅 Salsa making and cricket-eating competitions! Yes, you heard that right —we’ll have the opportunity to sample crickets, a delectable crispy and savory snack commonly enjoyed throughout Mexico and Central America. Stay tuned for details on how to enter either competition. 
 
🥾 A tour of the Young-Walser farm, nestled in the beautiful Sogn Valley not far from Cannon Falls, Minn. Enjoy a tromp through the corn and squash fields and hike in the nearby woods. 
 
🌮 A shared meal and opportunity to hear from LSP and COPAL organizers about our participation in the Immigrant Defense Network. 

Let us know you can make it to ensure we order enough food and supplies! Carpools from Minneapolis and Rochester will be available to all attendees. 

________________________________________________

¡Únete a LSP + COPAL para nuestro recorrido anual comunitario en la granja!
Un espacio divertido para tod@s donde exploraremos la agricultura, aprenderemos sobre el campo y participaremos en actividades prácticas. ¡Uno de los momentos más especiales será hacer tortillas frescas junt@s!

Compartiremos un delicioso almuerzo comunitario, preparando tacos en estilo potluck (tipo convivio). Te invitamos a traer un platillo o acompañamiento para compartir.

También estás invitado@ a llegar temprano (desde las 9 AM) para ayudar a cosechar calabazas que sembramos. Puedes llevarte algunas a casa, y el resto se donará a un banco de alimentos local.

El Land Stewardship Project (LSP) es una organización aliada de COPAL que trabaja por sistemas alimentarios y agrícolas más sostenibles y justos. LSP y COPAL están unidas en su lucha por instituciones democráticas sólidas, comunidades saludables y acogedoras, y una ética de cuidado hacia la tierra y las personas que nos alimentan.

Tuesday October 14

11:00 am – 12:00 pm
Birds as Pest Control Allies on the Farm
Tuesday October 14
11:00 am – 12:00 pm
Birds as Pest Control Allies on the Farm
Online

This 10-lesson Wild Farm Alliance virtual course teaches agricultural professionals and farmers how to support beneficial birds and manage pest birds on farms. By learning how to assess the farm’s avian needs and opportunities, farms can be designed to provide for a diversity of beneficial birds. 

If pest birds are a problem, they can be discouraged with specific practices during the shorter periods when they cause damage. The sessions cover the latest research, tools and resources, and are given by experts in avian pest control, entomology, ornithology and conservation. While many topics and species are specific to the Midwest, most of the principles discussed are applicable across regions. 

Continuing Education Credits have been requested and are expected to be approved from American Society of Agronomy.

For details and to register, click here. 

The Course Schedule:

LESSON 1

Why Birds Belong on the Farm: Biodiversity, Pest Control & A Thriving Landscape

Tuesday, September 23, 2 p.m. CT


LESSON 2

Birds as Pest Control Allies on the Farm

Tuesday, October 14, 11 a.m. CT


LESSON 3

Birds in the Balance: Pest Control Services Across Crop Types

Tuesday, November 4, 11 a.m. CT


LESSON 4

Integrating Habitat into Croplands: Prairie Strips and Bird Conservation

Tuesday, December 2, 11 a.m. CT


LESSON 5

Birds on the Farm: Balancing Biodiversity and Food Safety

Tuesday, January 13, 11 a.m. CT


LESSON 6

Beyond the Crop: Birds, Biodiversity, and the Power of Edge Habitat

Tuesday, February 3, 11 a.m. CT


LESSON 7

Bridging Forestry, Farming, and Habitat

Tuesday, February 24, 11 a.m. CT


LESSON 8

Perennial Pathways: Agroforestry for Birds and Biodiversity on Farms

Tuesday, March 17, 11 a.m. CT


LESSON 9

Birds on the Range: How Grazing Practices Shape Habitat for Grassland Species

Tuesday, April 7, 11 a.m. CT


LESSON 10

Birds at Risk: How Pesticides Shape Safety on Agricultural Lands

Tuesday, April 28, 11 a.m. CT

View Full Calendar

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