Finding Turtle Farm
The story of starting and running an organic farm—told by the woman who owned one of the first Community-Supported Agriculture operations in the Upper Midwest
On a twenty-acre farm in Iowa in 1995, Angela Tedesco planted the seeds (quite literally) of a quiet revolution. While American agriculture had strayed so far afield, her farm would raise food that served the earth and the community as well as the palate. In Finding Turtle Farm, Tedesco recounts this adventure in all its down-and-dirty work and wonder, from plan and plot to harvest, with nods along the way to the vagaries of weather, pests, and human nature.
Introducing Community-Supported Agriculture to Iowa, Tedesco’s Turtle Farm educated its customers along with providing seasonal boxes of produce—an undertaking that continues here, as Tedesco describes what it takes to establish and run an organic operation, bringing to bear all her experience growing up on a family farm, studying chemistry and horticulture, and shepherding a religious education program. From ordering seeds and tending greenhouses to surviving floods and a personal health crisis, Tedesco tells a story of transforming a piece of land and the life within it. She includes practical information about harvesting and preserving food, the discoveries of research conducted on the farm and bonds established between farmers, and even recipes to make delicious use of the produce in your CSA box.
Looking forward to a healthier, happier future when crops are more than mere commodities and food feeds the soul of a community, Finding Turtle Farm is an enlightening, hard-won, and ultimately hopeful account of what it means to meet the most basic of human needs.
For seventeen years Angela Tedesco was the owner and operator of Turtle Farm. A founding member of the Iowa Network for Community Agriculture, she has served on the board of Practical Farmers of Iowa and was a contributor to Teresa Opheim’s book The Future of Family Farms: Practical Farmers’ Legacy Letter Project. Prior to her career as a farmer she worked in research laboratories and was director of religious education at the First Unitarian Church in Des Moines. Now retired, she lives in Johnston, Iowa.