Down to Earth at Sweet Frond Farm

How corporate America on the West Coast led one Rapid City farmer to regenerative agriculture

As with much of life Up North, crop farming comes with an onslaught of weather unknowns. Will it storm today? Will that storm bring torrential rain that uproots the carrots that were just seeded, or is a sneaky early frost around the corner?

Since 2022, Rapid City farmer Ryan Lanham wakes each morning to questions like these. Despite a “nonexistent” work-life balance, sleep deprivation, and the financial uncertainty of farming, he wouldn’t trade it for the glossy ease of a corporate everyday because he’s been there, done that.

“It’s a net positive trade-off in my mind,” says Lanham, a University of Utah marketing graduate who spent his post-college years working for Adidas to brand the company’s snowboarding and skateboarding division.

Rethinking the Dream

To Lanham, the Adidas gig was “a dream job on paper.” For three years between 2016 and 2019, his role at the company’s Portland, Oregon, headquarters was the culmination of a lifelong love of boarding that came with a steady paycheck and the chance to travel. For all intents and purposes, he’d arrived.

But Lanham calls himself a kinesthetic learner, someone who needs to move and groove, as evidenced by the joy of actively participating in the things he was now only a part of by corporate association.

“It was a rough transition going from doing what you love to talking about what you love to do,” he says. Lanham felt like a “teeny tiny fish” in a large pond. “I had trouble understanding how what I did on the daily made any bit of difference in the grand scheme of things.”

Craving something more down-to-earth, literally, Lanham took a marketing job with a Portland kombucha company, where he was introduced to regenerative agriculture, a way of farming that prioritizes soil health and sustainability. “I was gung-ho on being a part of some sort of climate crisis solution,” he says.

When layoffs at the kombucha company happened in 2019, Lanham saw it as a chance to dive into farming, accepting a full-time apprenticeship at Foodwaves, a nonprofit vegetable and animal husbandry farm outside the city that was set to begin in April 2020. In the meantime, he worked retail at Patagonia, which ended up closing indefinitely when the pandemic hit. “It felt like everything was pushing me toward the farm,” Lanham says.

Since they were providing food to their community, Lanham and his Foodwaves crewmates were considered essential workers, podding up on the 6-acre educational farm, where just a few months later Oregon’s wildfire season edged within a mile and a half of them. For two weeks, Lanham farmed under falling ash, the orange-hued sky filtered by a haze of smoke. “Plants weren’t photosynthesizing, there weren’t any insects…” he recalls.

The whole experience, combined with Oregon’s high land costs, kiboshed any dreams Lanham had of starting his own farm there. Plus, he wanted to be closer to family in Michigan, where he’d grown up downstate in Midland and spent family vacations along Torch Lake. “The apprenticeship made me realize that once you start a farm, it’s hard to leave.”

Not wanting to put down roots too far from home, he headed back to the Mitten State, purchased the land that is now Sweet Frond Farm, and sold his first vegetables at the Sara Hardy Farmers Market in 2023.

The Microfarm Life

It’s been four years since Lanham purchased the property, three since he started growing on just two-thirds of an acre, and while Sweet Frond is technically a microfarm selling exclusively at farmer’s markets, he’s used the organizational skills he learned during his corporate years to maximize output, designing 136 compact but efficient beds where he tries to stick close to Mother Nature’s way of growing through no-dig and shallow-cultivation techniques (meaning he disrupts only the first inch of topsoil instead of tilling).

Those beds produce an annual bounty of two to four successions each—a whole rainbow of onions, radishes, herbs, and heirloom varieties like gai lan (Chinese broccoli). But Sweet Frond’s top crop is one northern Michiganders are desperately seeking amid the cyclosporiasis outbreak: homegrown salad greens. A short-season crop that requires constant maintenance and turnover, the leafy greens are continually cared for by Lanham and his small crew, including his mom, Becky, and pup, Maple, through late September.

Lanham’s entire operation is hand-harvest only, not a tractor in sight, and this time of year, working the fields from dawn until dark makes for 80- to 90-hour workweeks.

“There’s more to do in a day than time allows,” he says. But when he’s kicked back next to the fire come winter, all of this will be another season well-spent not in front of a computer screen or idling in a meeting. That’s not to say he’s left his corporate days completely behind—a spreadsheet does wonders to keep the business side of things straight. And even when Lanham’s exhausted from battling cucumber beetles in the blazing sun, this really is the dream job.

“Most of the time I feel so lucky to be able to get to do this,” he says.

Say No to Pesticides

Staying true to the regenerative agriculture ethos that hooked him in the first place, “We don’t spray any pesticides whatsoever,” says Lanham. 

That means no fungicides, herbicides, or insecticides, even the ones approved by the USDA for organic production. Instead, farmers like Lanham who practice no-spray on their farms focus on creating and maintaining a healthy food web—that is, the network of organisms, big and small, that keep Sweet Frond’s veggies and herbs growing.

This practice goes hand-in-hand with regenerative agriculture. That doesn’t mean every regenerative farm practices no-spray, but it’s one way Lanham keeps pesticides off his while helping the microbes and bugs, like earthworms, that create rich soil, from being killed off. 

Speaking of, one of Sweet Frond’s best defenses against bugs is…bugs? Instead of eliminating pests with sprays, Lanham relies on beneficial predators, like ladybugs that feed on aphids, to help keep crop-damaging insects in check. 

While he is proud of the farming style he’s chosen, Lanham’s produce is less “marketable” because of it. 

“There are definitely trade-offs to not using sprays,” he says, like farm market goers not wanting to buy veggies with holes, dings, or spots, which sprays help prevent. Still, he says, in the overall scheme of things, keeping pesticides off his yields is better for the community consuming them and for the environment.

Learn more about the farm at sweetfrondfarm.com.

Photo by Allie Andriese

View On Our Website