Thank You.

Twenty years ago, as another heartland winter worked its chilly way toward planting season, a few of us were busy inside a county courthouse dusting off and polishing one or two neglected nuggets of the democratic promise. As we soon learned, we were far from alone.

But it sure felt lonely. We didn’t have money. Our farms were on the line. Many of our friends and most of the bankers who cared to listen to our idea thought we were nuts. Who can blame them? We were hoping to start a cooperative and invest everything we had in a “new” and maligned philosophy and system of farming—organic! it seemed an outrageous proposition for a rag-tag group of family farmers, at a time when prospects for farmers in america were as dismal as they had ever been.

The first years were joyful though nail-biting times. We pitched in to overcome every challenge. We milked cows by day and balanced the co-op’s books at night. We scrambled for nearly everything—office space for meetings, trucks to deliver our organic milk and a chilled warehouse to store our organic cheese. But you know, we were never afraid and we never doubted. Because we could always see you and hear you coaxing us on to create an organic choice.

The story of this cooperative is every bit as much your story as it is ours. Your courage and your dedication and your support through these first twenty years has humbled our own efforts. All through the food system, from regional distribution coordinators to natural foods co-op grocers to supermarket managers to conscientious investors to our dedicated staff to the citizen-partners who chose and still choose organic foods for their families, you are the true heroes to us.

We thank you. Every morning that we thrill in a sun rising over the glistening grasses, clear streams and loamy, fertile soils of our shared earth, we thank you.

In cooperation, partnership and love of the land,
The Family Farmers of Organic Valley and Organic Prairie