By LINDA McGURK
Indiana Correspondent

HILLSBORO, Ind. — Kim Crane’s and Nick Johnson’s first attempt at farming came off to a bit of a rough start last year. With only two months to prepare and no real hands-on experience with agriculture, they toiled on Crane’s family farm, working soils that had lain fallow for 20 years, with antiquated equipment.
Then the rains came, and they didn’t stop for five consecutive weeks, flooding everything and pushing the planting season to the end of June.

But not even for a second did these two thirtysomethings regret trading white-collar jobs and a life in congested, suburban California for the dream of living off the land in quiet Hillsboro.

“It was kind of a spontaneous decision,” said Johnson, who grew up in the suburban sprawl of Highland, about an hour east of Los Angeles. “In February last year, Kim just said, ‘Let’s go home and start a farm.’ We had two months to plan. We got here in April and had about enough time to put our stuff down and start planting.”

The Indiana farm has been in Crane’s family since at least 1836 and has grown over the years to include 250 acres of mostly woods and pasture. Though she grew up in Danville, Ill., Crane, her parents and five siblings would spend weekends and summers at the rustic homestead south of Hillsboro. She remembers raising a few farm animals, helping plant a Christmas tree nursery and enjoying the bounty of blackberries, raspberries and persimmons that grew wild in the woods.

“We have an amazing little ecosystem here; we’ve got forest, a pond, pastures and it all works together,” said Crane. “We have a ton of pollinators, butterflies, bumblebees, that people are just crying for. I think my family has done a fantastic job of keeping everything in a nice balance.”

But it wasn’t until Crane left the Midwest to go work as a teacher in California that she really started to appreciate her Hillsboro haven: The silence. The flocks of wild turkey. The enormous herds of deer that would run across the pastures every night.

“In California we’d drive two hours in traffic just to get to a place where you can be outdoors, and then when you get there, it’s packed,” Crane said. “Out West, this is what everybody wants and I didn’t pay attention to any of it until I went away.”

Two years ago, Crane started contemplating a career change and going back to school for a master’s degree in environmental engineering. But with the economy heading south and few job prospects in that field, the plan changed.
“This property was just sitting here. My siblings are all over the place,” she said.

So, instead of going to grad school or spending a small fortune to buy something in California or Oregon, the idea of starting an organic farm back in Indiana began to take root. Johnson, whom she’d met when they were both substituting at the same school, was on board. A marketing and computer professional who had lived in the city his whole life, Johnson liked what he’d seen of rural Indiana so far.

“I thought it was all beautiful. The cornfields, the puffy clouds, the fireflies. I’d probably been back here six or seven times before to see Kim’s family, so I knew what I was getting myself into,” he said. “I do like the fact that there’s room here, the cost of living is lower and there’s no traffic. And it was time for a change. Most people I know never leave.”

But his friends and family were a little skeptical of the move. “They said ‘What do you know about farming?’ And they thought I was going to live in a barn. They asked me if we’d have running water,” Johnson said.

Before leaving California last April, the couple prepared as well as they could by reading up on organic growing methods, but they knew they would have to learn the rest by trial and error. It was a steep learning curve for both.
“In California, if you need your car or mower worked on, you call somebody. Everybody’s got a gardener and a mechanic,” Johnson said. “I didn’t even know how to run a chainsaw, so I had to learn all the basics, like where the oil goes in the chainsaw.”

They named their venture Craneberry Farm, a name that both pays tribute to the family name and the word from which “cranberry” was eventually derived. Even though they hit a few bumps the first year, word of their pesticide-free produce trickled out and people started stopping by the farm. Crane and Johnson sold their first homegrown produce from a roadside stand and at local farmers’ markets. Soon, they started a community-supported agriculture program and made plans for a pumpkin patch and hayrides.

Now in its second year of production, the farm boasts three acres of produce and countless acres of wild berries and morel mushrooms.

“We’re already weeks ahead,” said Johnson, about this year’s vegetable production. “This time last year, we were still trying to get the push tiller to work. We’ve done everything differently this year.”

The couple also planted grapevines that could possibly expand into a vineyard later on, started offering whitetail and turkey hunts and are thinking about adding more animals to the farm’s flock of 14 chickens. Though Johnson still works from home with search engine optimization for an Indianapolis company, the longtime goal is for the farm to support both of them.

In order for that dream to come true, the couple vows to keep working to make their farm a destination, for locals and tourists alike.

“The sky is the limit. But we don’t want to spread ourselves too thin, so we won’t expand until what we already have is running 100 percent. Right now, we’re just trying to get up and going,” Crane said.