Episode 84: Cycle Farm

In August, Jeremy and Trish bought a three acre piece of land just outside of Spearfish, South Dakota. What was historically a truck farm providing veggies to the mining communities in the Black Hills, it probably hasn’t had vegetables on it for the last twenty years. Trish is currently working in New Mexico and Jeremy is learning to build utility bikes in Oregon, but they will both be moving to South Dakota in January to get things going, building bee hives, planning crops, and working out business specifics. They plan to sell from an on-site farmstand, through the Spearfish Farmers Market, and eventually through a CSA. They are also both enthusiastic about bicycles and are planning to develop and use human-powered farm equipment on site in addition to building cargo bikes in the winter to diversify income. Neither of them come from a farming background, but they started gardening in a friend’s front yard three years ago and have been getting more and more wrapped up in the food system since, especially the thought of using food to build community and land health. They are excited to get Cycle Farm off the ground and say they picked the farm’s name because it’s short, replete with double meanings, and will be easy to come up with some sort of bicycle-vegetable logo. This episode is sponsored by Hearst Ranch.