Kyle Jacobson is a first generation farmer. He grew up in a family of big gardeners, and says one of his earliest memories is bobbing for radishes. He went to school for environmental science and ecology, wanting to do something with a positive impact, and never really expected to end up in agriculture. He started ten years ago on leased land, watching YouTube videos and working a piece of family property, and bought this farm in parts over about five years.
When they bought it, the place was conventional corn and soy. That September they hired a local farmer to brush hog the standing soybeans, roughly twenty thousand dollars of crop, because they wanted to start over immediately rather than wait out a harvest. They worked the residue back in for fertility and seeded pasture and native prairie that same fall.
The farm is now about 60 percent diversified cool season grasses and 40 percent restored native prairie. Most grazing operations hit what ranchers call the summer slump, when shallow rooted improved grasses stop growing in August heat. Prairie roots go down ten, twelve, fifteen feet, so the animals keep gaining through a dry August. The ecosystem came back with it: dragonflies, praying mantises, salamanders, snakes, and thousands of birds working around the cattle and sheep.
Because they started here, they never learned another way. They have never used a pesticide, and there was no conventional system to transition away from.
They run nearly every enterprise except dairy. Grass finished beef and lamb, pastured pork, pastured poultry, and eggs from chickens, ducks and quail. The laying flock moves to fresh ground every two days into a coop they built on an old hay wagon, with rollaway nest boxes so the eggs stay clean, on ten acres seeded specifically for poultry. Turkeys take a high share of their diet straight off the pasture. Alongside that there is a market garden, gourmet mushrooms, honeybees, and three thousand fruit trees.
The orchard is planted as a food forest, mimicking natural succession. Nut trees stand tallest to the north, walnut and chestnut and cold hardy almond. Below them apples, pears, peaches and plums, with paw paw, persimmon, fig, shipova, medlar and quince. The shrub layer underneath is elderberry, blackberry, blueberry and raspberry. Plums sit lowest because they tolerate the most water. Peaches sit high enough for airflow. Apples get the most room because they keep, and many of them only get better in storage.
About 80 percent of the revenue comes from Chicago farmers markets, which means 4am and tents. The rest is the online store, home delivery and a CSA, plus on farm sales through the farm store and a few restaurants. They started the other way around, selling to a fine dining restaurant group in Chicago, until COVID erased that overnight and they went ten times harder at markets and never looked back.
What he wants is for people not to have to read a sign and take it on faith. Customers can come and see how it is grown, and for the ones who cannot drive out from the city, he made a drone tour of the farm so they can see it anyway.
Ask him what he would tell someone who wants to start, and there is no romance in the answer. Keep your day job for a while. Start small. Lease land before you buy, and make your mistakes on someone else's ground.
Come out here during golden hour and watch the cows munching grass. Yeah, it's worth it.
Kyle Christopher Jacobson
Owner and Operator
Kyle began cultivating the land of his childhood home at a young age, inspired by his Swedish farming heritage and his years as an Eagle Scout. He holds a dual degree in Environmental Science and Physical Geology with a specialization in Ecology from Northeastern Illinois University.
