Share This Article
Ellie Lassiter and her farm, Age Old Agriculture, have been named the County Farm Family of the Year for Baxter County for 2024 by the Arkansas Farm Bureau Federation.
Lassiter is now in the running to win the Arkansas Farm Family of the Year award at the end of the year, following additional judging by the Federation’s judges.
Lassiter, and her husband Matt Millner, left their careers in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, and moved to Baxter County to set up a farm of their very own in 2018.
Her love for farming came from an unsustainability and consumerism course she took while attending Parson’s School of Design in New York City.
Originally an Arkansas native, Lassiter found that the class had changed her outlook on life, and she quickly moved to change her degree from design management to environmental studies.
After wrapping up her first internship at her Brooklyn youth farm, she took up another internship at Brooklyn Grange, the world’s largest commercial rooftop farm.
Founded in 2010, Brooklyn Grange quickly became one of the United States’ largest promoters of urban sustainability. The Brooklyn farm features 5.6 acres of cultivated area, producing more than 100,000 pounds of food annually.
Lassiter would work at one of their Queens locations before finally leaving New York City.
After finishing her time in New York City, Lassiter headed west to Colorado, where she took up a job at Zola, an American-based company focusing on creating European-style windows.
While in Colorado, she would meet Millner, who was working as a fishing guide, through a mutual family friend. The couple would stay in Steamboat for about two years before moving back to Arkansas to pursue their dream of owning a farm.
Millner continues to be a fishing guide through his business, Rising River Guides.
After finding a home in 2017, the couple worked to open their new farm in the spring of the following year.
Located on Denton Ferry Road, Lassiter and Millner’s farm sits on a two-acre plot with roughly three-quarters of an acre currently being farmed.
Age Old Agriculture uses a community-supported agriculture (CSA) program to raise crops. The program, introduced to Lassiter during her time at Brooklyn Grange, functions like a subscription service that allows customers to be a part of the farm.
Under the program, customers agree to share in the risk and rewards of the season. Lassiter said if they harvest a bumper crop of tomatoes throughout the season, customers can expect large crop deliveries.
If the crops freeze or are otherwise wiped out by flooding or insects, customers will have to wait until the farm can regrow the lost crops towards the end of the season.
Age Old Agriculture grows everything from fresh greens to herbs and flowers throughout the year. The farm’s crops can be found in businesses like the Cotter Bridge Market and local restaurants in Baxter County.
The farm is also a staple of the Mountain Home Farmer’s Market.
Since 1947, the Arkansas Farm Family of the Year program has helped to recognize outstanding farm families throughout the state. The objectives of the Farm Family of the Year program are:
- To give recognition and encouragement to farm families who are doing an outstanding job on their farm and in their community;
- To recognize the importance of agriculture in the community and state; and
- To disseminate information on improved farm practices and management.
Selection criteria for the Arkansas Farm Family of the Year includes efficiency of production, conservation of energy and resources, leadership in agricultural and community affairs, home and farm improvement, and home and farm management.
The families of each chosen farm will be visited by a set of judges to determine eight District Farm Families of the Year, which will be announced June 17. The Arkansas Farm Family of the Year will be announced in December at the Farm Family of the Year luncheon, who then represent Arkansas at the Southeastern Expo Farmer of the Year event in Georgia.
Arkansas has had three Southeast Farmer of the Year winners, Brian and Nan Kirksey of Clark County in 2008 and Wildy Family Farms of Mississippi County in 2016 and the Cobb, Lyerly and Owen Family/Partnership of Craighead County in 2023.
Sponsors of the Arkansas Farm Family of the Year program are Arkansas Farm Bureau, the Electric Cooperatives of Arkansas and the Farm Credit Associations of Arkansas. Additionally, support for the program is provided by the Arkansas Agriculture Department, Arkansas Department of Career Education, Arkansas Press Association, University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture and the USDA’s Farm Service Agency, Natural Resources Conservation Service and Rural Development.
For more information on the Arkansas Farm Family of the Year program, please contact Matt Jackson at [email protected] or 501-517-4237.
