Full Harvest Farm, owned by Chuck Frase and Terry Vlossak, became a certified organic CSA farm in 2003 and since then has been providing CSA members, as well as West Bend Farmers Market, with fresh produce every harvest season.
After earning a B.S. degree in Soil Science, Chuck had an opportunity to do some farming and vegetable growing on a co-op. He really enjoyed his time there and decided to make a career out of it. Here in Wisconsin he met Terry and soon after they started as a small CSA farm together in Washington County, establishing themselves at the farmers market and looking for wholesale customers.
“We grew on just a couple of acres the first year, and it was a steep learning curve,” Terry says. “Even though Chuck had years of experience, growing on our own soil was very, very different. You make all of the decisions and find yourself asking questions you never thought of asking as an employee.” Terry’s background is in secondary education and years of experience working as a chef, so they both could bring a lot of useful skills to run their farm.
The goal of Full Harvest Farm is to educate CSA members and others about the value and importance of all the work that goes into being able to proudly call your farm “organic”. In late 2002, when Chuck and Terry bought their land, they decided to get organic certification right away. The process included reporting what chemicals had been sprayed on the soil in the past three years to ensure the soil was free of anything that was not allowed under the organic law.
Terry says it is important to go through the process of getting certified, because there are still people who abuse the word “organic” and do not disclose what chemicals they use on their soil. “This law requires us to rotate crops, seed and test our soil, it restricts what pesticides and herbicides we can use,” Terry says. “When we became certified organic, we agreed to follow those guidelines.”
Another way Chuck and Terry make sure their certification is up to date is to get anything that they use on the crops approved by the Organic Material Review Institute (OMRI). OMRI is an international nonprofit organization that determines what chemicals and products can be used for organic farming. Full Harvest Farm submits their product ingredient list for testing every 3-5 years to receive the OMRI label.
“Our vegetables may sometimes look imperfect with some three-legged carrots and leaves with a few bug chews on them, but we always know exactly what we put in our soil and we are open about it to the public,” Terry says. “It is our goal to educate CSA members that perfect vegetables only exist in a portion of a crop.”
Chuck and Terry have also encouraged a number of farmers to get the organic certification, after recognizing sustainable farming practices in other farms. “It is a small community and we support other farmers,” Terry says. “We learn so much from one another and there is no point of being adversarial.”
To receive a weekly box of fresh and healthy organic vegetables or sign up for the Worker Share Program, visit their website. Full Harvest Farm will begin to accept new CSA members for next season in January 2021.