Garden Gone Wild: In Conversation with Landis Spickerman

"Landis and Steven Spickerman own and operate Hermit Creek Farm in Highbridge, Wisconsin and have been providing local vegetables to the northwoods for almost a quarter of a century. Their farm, a collage of hoop houses and open field surrounded by national forest, has become a rich and fertile plot after decades of careful stewardship. A few weeks ago, Landis baked us rhubarb pie and answered our questions about washing carrots and putting down roots. What follows is our edited conversation from that day.

"I kind of married into northern Wisconsin. I grew up near the Gulf Coast and wanted a big piece of water to live nearby, and for a lot of reasons you can’t live by an ocean and farm. But Lake Superior, you could. I was fascinated by it. We set out to homestead, and live a simple life and grow all our own food, but one thing led to another and really, we joke it always comes down to a garden gone wild – we just couldn’t help ourselves. We didn’t set out to farm; we set out to live simply. We homeschooled, we chopped firewood, we built our house, we wanted to grow our food and that’s what we set out to do and it just seemed really natural. Our passion turned into an occupation."

Written by Our Shores: Ultrarun for the Lake. Read the full article ​here.

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