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Meet FARMER Bethanee

Farmer Bethanee Wright is a mother, an organic vegetable farmer at Winterfell Acres and shamanic practitioner at Earth & Cosmos Shamanic Healing. She is a lover of the Earth, enjoys moving her primal body ancestrally, loves to cook nourishing foods for her family and is a devourer of books.

Bethanee runs her organic farm, facilitates healing work for others and enjoys rural life with her husband, two daughters (six-year old and 21 month old), three big white fluffy dogs, one tiny farm cat and lots of geese, pigs and chickens.

Learn more about Beth by listening to these podcast interviews:

Farmer Bethanee’s Journey

My name is Bethanee (Nitz) Wright and I have been in love with growing food for as long as I can remember. My first experience with garden-fresh food was when my mother handed me a slice of tomato grown fresh from our garden when I was five years old. It was the best thing I had ever tasted- I can still remember it and experience it every time I bite into the first field-grown tomato of the season!

Fast forward through my childhood gardens and cooking experiments with my ‘adopted’ grandma, I landed an internship on a whim at a two-acre farmette at a retirement home for Catholic nuns. I decided to stay in the Driftless region of Wisconsin after my freshman year of college to learn to farm under a radical Franciscan sister with a degree in plant pathology. I learned so much: mostly how to weed effectively but also how to care for young fruit trees, dig carrots, braid garlic, discard blighted tomato plants and conduct various soil testing techniques. Simply, I was in love with it all, but at that point, I never thought about making a living farming.

Then, the winter after I read a book, ‘The Dirty Life: On Food, Farming and Love’ by Kristin Kimball, and it changed my whole perception of farming. Kristin and her family run a whole-diet CSA year-round in upstate New York by draft horse power! It was inspiring- imagine getting all your food needs from dairy to fruit to veg from one farm. At that point, I still planned on going to graduate school to become a psychotherapist. But after reading that book, I saw a way to make a modest living farming for the first time.

I finished my sophomore year of college with a major in psychology and “playing collegiate softball” when I transferred to UW-Madison to get a degree in the closest thing to sustainable agriculture that I could find at the time: Community and Environmental Sociology with an Environmental Studies certificate. There I worked my way into an amazing internship with FairShare CSA Coalition where I fell even more in love with organic, direct market farming. My new plan was to finish my degree as fast as possible and work for minimum wage on a CSA farm to learn more about the art of vegetable farming and I enjoyed every challenging and rewarding second of it. For three years I did that before starting my own CSA farm in 2014. And now I am proud to say I am a FairShare-endorsed farm and recently stepped down as the president of the Board of Directors of that organization.

During my time at UW, I met Travis, who loves cooking and eating delicious food as much as I love growing it. We fell in love and climbed Mt. Rainier (twice), where he proposed to me on our second attempt. We got married on September 12th, 2014 in the rain with our closest friends and family and celebrated under the trees with great homegrown food and a favorite string band. We are a great team and love the simple, conscious life. On any given night, you can find me cooking us a delicious family meal or studying up on herbalism while he is carving his next spoon or playing with our daughters. In my spare time, I love to meditate on our Land, read many books, move my body ancestrally, knit, cook and play with our daughters. I also see clients for healing work in my private shamanic practice.

My plans for the farm are simple and intentional: build a base of wonderful farm members who enjoy delicious, local, organic veggies, fruits, flowers, herbs and now, chicken, geese and eggs. While allowing folks the opportunity to develop a relationship with the farmer who grows their food, the land that fills their dinner plates and the food that brings their family and friends together.

Travis and I have goal of fine-tuning our farm homestead in the coming year (read about the farm story more here). We plan on continuing to raise our children, all the veggies and meat we need for us and our CSA community and chefs, care for our young orchard, and encourage our wild woods. I hope that you will join us on this wonderful path of life and that our farm products will nourish and sustain you and your family for years to come.

Cheers!

Farmer Bethanee