Rebuilding at Prairie Wind Family Farm

Hello, we are Jeff and Jen Miller, owners of Prairie Wind Family Farm, and we're organic farmers in Grayslake, Illinois. For 17 years, we've grown local produce, year-round for our community of 250 farm share/CSA members, 350 households, farm stand, local chefs, schools and food pantries. We farm using regenerative methods and open our farm to researchers, universities and local educators to inspire climate solutions through agriculture.

On the morning of Tuesday, April 4th, our farm was hit with severe storms including an extreme wind that destroyed most of our protected growing structures. We lost three hoophouse structures growing spring crops, and experienced significant damage on a fourth hoophouse and our greenhouse filled with seedlings.

These structures are vital to our farm. Hoophouses and greenhouses allow us to extend our midwest growing season into the early spring and late fall, and grow summer crops that need additional care and weather protection.

While total replacement costs are much higher, we believe our hoophouse repair experience paired with some level of reused materials will keep our clean-up, repair and replacement material costs to $60,000.

Our farm insurance does not cover this loss, and asking for help doesn't come easy to us. However, many in our community have asked how to help so we've decided to share this story.

Your contributions will go directly toward the purchase of hoophouse materials and labor. These materials will include climate change-ready materials better able to withstand future extreme weather events. The labor costs are needed to rebuild and clean up the damage.

We're grateful for the outpouring of kindness and understanding. We know many farmers are impacted by increasingly extreme weather events. We plan to take the lessons we learn through this difficult process and share with others to strengthen other local food growers.

Thank you very much for supporting local farmers,

~ Jeff & Jen Miller