Local farm Humble Hands Harvest offers unique community events

Humble Hands Harvest farm is tucked in the pastoral folds of northeast Iowa, about ten miles outside of Decorah, along Hidden Falls Road. The farm started in 2017 and is a worker-owned co-operative farm, growing over two acres of organic vegetables and raising grass-finished sheep and pastured pork. The farm sells vegetables and meat at the Winneshiek Farmers Market and through a community supported agriculture (CSA) program.

The farm is operated by two young women, Hannah Breckbill and Emily Fagan, who are passionate about growing organic produce for their neighbors. They're also passionate about using food and agriculture as a tool for personal and communal growth. During the summer, every third Thursday of the month, Hannah and Emily host a potluck and weeding party on their farm. Friends and customers drive out to the farm mid-afternoon Thursday, weed for a few hours, and then share a potluck.

On August 15th, I drive out to the farm for the weeding party and potluck. As I pull off Hidden Falls Road onto the farm's gravel drive, Hannah Breckbill, driving a Kabota tractor, zooms around a shed and deftly skirts the two Subarus parked in the driveway. Hitched below the deck of the tractor is a belly mower. Hannah is trimming the grass around the farm, getting ready for the 60 Queer Farmer Convergence participants who will be camping out on the farm this weekend.

Participants in the convergence will be camping, participating in workshops, talking with each other about sexual identity and alternative farming practices, and eating. The 60 participants paid only $50 for admission.  Meals prepared by Emily and Hannah will be provided throughout the weekend.

Hannah started the convergence last year, when she was feeling lonely and despondent about being one of the only queer farmers in the area. She decided to do something about it and organized the Queer Farmer Convergence, in order to network and share knowledge with fellow queer farmers. The first Convergence went well, and soon after Hannah and a planning crew began organizing the second. "I was shocked," Hannah said, "to see people register from New York, California, Alabama. I feel a responsibility to make this worth someone's flight from California."

Hannah is Midwestern-modest and would blush at being described as graceful; nevertheless, that's the best way to describe the way she leaps from the tractor onto the ground to kick a log aside. We walk past a work shed, a greenhouse, Hannah's yurt, and enter a gate that encloses the two acres of organic vegetables. We pass row after row of vegetables, until we come to couple rows of beets, where a handful of people are weeding.

We join them and commence the arduous, but very satisfying, task of weeding. Hannah and Emily are both bright and generous personalities, and this colors the atmosphere of third Thursday weeding parties. Conversation is typically casual and lighthearted. People are quick to laugh and quick to give attention to Gooseberry, Hannah's cat, who slinks between ankles and rows of vegetables.

After we stop weeding, but before the potluck, Emily feeds the pigs. They have nine pigs; three were recently sent to a local meat locker. Each pig is named and Emily, similar to any parent, is quick to narrate each pig's idiosyncrasies. The pigs are hungry, to put it mildly. And when Emily, standing in the pen and surrounded by the hungry hogs, hurls the feed from the slop bucket, she deftly ambles back over the fence with all her limbs. The word "graceful," again, comes to mind.

The potluck starts soon after. The food is spread on a large table outside Hannah's home. It's taco night! There's sourdough, spicy ground lamb, greens, black beans, guacamole, salsa, cheese, coleslaw, real butter.

We crowd around a wooden picnic bench and commence eating. Elbows are on the table, grease dribbles from my chin, and a pleasant din of munching teeth settles over our table as we each savor our food.