Photos by Noah Fish / Agweek Andy Olsen and Tiffany Tripp on their farm in Faribault on Feb. 9, 2022.
DUCKS AND PIGS Former dairy farm finds a new purpose
By Noah Fish | Agweek
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hen Tiffany Tripp moved back to the farm she grew up at in 2011, she didn’t realize just over a decade later she’d be running her own successful operation on it. Tripp and her husband, Andy Olsen, run Graise Farm in Faribault, where they raise a few hundred ducks for eggs, chickens for eggs and farrow-to-finish pastured pork. The couple started the farm in 2015. After pursuing a college degree in agricultural economics and Spanish, Tripp traveled the world before she returned to her family’s farmstead in 2011. From 1944 until 1998, the land where Graise Farm operates now was ran by Tripp’s family as a dairy. “My grandparents, and then my dad farmed here with my mom,” said Tripp.
Page 30 – March 2022 – West Central Tribune
At the time she moved back, the farm was not being used for any operation, as her parents had retired from running the dairy in 1998. “Besides a couple of years of renting it out, it had sat empty for 15 years,” said Tripp. Tripp and Olsen, who didn’t grow up on a farm but was always passionate about animals, started their own operation in 2015. Tripp said they started farming initially to raise their own food. “We started with chicken eggs, because that was a natural kind of food that we were consuming,” she said. “We got our first laying hens actually at the end of 2014, right at the beginning of winter — and we started meeting with a fellow farmer to create our farm plan.”
