Mar 7, 2025

Organic Grower: Cattail Organics’ Katrina Becker plows her path

Katrina Becker, owner of Cattail Organics, has long had an interest in agriculture.

Cattail Organics produces organic vegetables, melons, seedlings, maple syrup and herbs from its Athens-based farm in north central Wisconsin.

The company began in 2017 after owner Katrina Becker wanted to find a new opportunity and life change. She transitioned out of another farm business, Stoney Acres Farm, that she was involved in for about a dozen years.

“I had managed vegetable production at that farm and was looking to start a new operation,” Becker said. “I obviously had some experience setting up a vegetable farm in the region and had established accounts, so in many ways, the farm built on my past experience.”

She started her new venture, which grows tomatoes and melons, including cantaloupe and Korean cantaloupe, somewhat small, mainly focusing on small farmers markets and small sales to schools and grocery and restaurant accounts.

“At first, we were just doing three acres of production,” Becker said. “We actually grow on a very small footprint with only about 17 acres tillable. Most of my farm, which is 50 acres, is wooded.”

During that first year, Cattail Organics put up a pack shed, which eventually became a four-season insulated packing building; started a heated greenhouse for vegetable, fruit and herb production; and put in two high tunnels.

“We grew that first year from about $70,000 in sales to over half a million this past year, so it’s been fairly rapid growth even though our footprint hasn’t been expanded that much,” Becker said. “Today, we have eight high tunnels and caterpillar tunnels on our farm, and we have about an acre of covered production, which means we’re able to extend our fairly short growing season.”

Throughout it all, Becker focused on profitability and growing out the farm’s direct-to-wholesale sales, and a CSA accounts for 20% of sales. Cattail is doing some online farmers market sales, with the rest being direct to institutions, stores and restaurants, as well as working with local aggregators and a cooperative.

Finding a love

Becker lives on her farm with her husband (who runs his own farm business) and three kids.

Originally from New York City, Becker found an early interest in food insecurity and in her spare time would deliver meals to people who needed help. After high school, she attended Cornell University and dedicated much time to volunteering in community gardens, immersing herself in the world of seeds and the complexities surrounding them. Becker graduated in 2003 and got her master’s degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with an emphasis on food and agricultural policy.

“During that time, I was working on small farms as a side project, as I felt it was important for me to understand agriculture in a more hands-on way,” Becker said. “I’m a very active person, and I realized there was something about this type of farming that was uniquely challenging in ways that other careers didn’t feel to me.”

For Becker, the core mission of Cattail Organics is personal, rooted in the reasons she became a farmer. It’s a commitment to nurturing community connections, fostering a more just food system and cultivating high-quality produce that showcases the beauty and challenges of sustainable farming practices.

Seasonal strategy

Being in a climate where there are approximately 90 guaranteed frost free days can present a challenge.

“We have a short, fairly intense growing season,” Becker said. “That kind of impacts the investments we made and how we structured our farm season in a lot of ways. We are actively producing during that season and start greenhouse production around the end of February. We have unheated high tunnels with standing crops (like scallions, onions and spinach), and by April we are harvesting greens out of those tunnels.”

Usually, plantings don’t begin until May because of the moisture and cold. The season runs from mid- May until around Thanksgiving, with harvesting out of tunnels through New Year’s.

“We do produce a lot of root vegetables, so during our dormant season, we have three employees who come in to wash and pack, and then we put them in storage to see to school and grocery at this time of year,” Becker said.

Organic philosophy

Cattail Organics is all about making the connection between farming and food transparency and teaching consumers how to eat seasonally and organically. Most of its customer base is within two hours of the farm.

“It’s completely satisfying to provide people with good food, and I have an interest in eating delicious food myself,” Becker said.

The company is certified organic and Real Organic Certified, with a focus on soil as the most important component of management for the farm.

“All of my practices are rooted in soil,” Becker said. “A lot of the ways we have made investments in the farm are to get crops harvested very efficiently. We are mechanized probably three times our production size, which allows us to hit narrow windows given the climate extremes we face.”

The farm also uses cover crops on every inch of its soil throughout the year, which Becker feels is important for success.

“We do use compost, bringing it in since we don’t have animals here, especially for use in our high tunnels where they are not going to be exposed to the elements in the same way,” Becker said. “We use exclusively efficient irrigation — all drip irrigation or micro-emitters — so we don’t have any large-scale overhead irrigation, which does improve soil health.”

The farm also stewards a freshwater stream and pond, a 20-acre maple grove, three acres of beneficial insect habitat and a small apple orchard.

In 2025, Cattail Organics, which uses some beneficial nematodes for control of a few pests, is going to be experimenting with some biologicals, such as wasp releases and brassica crops.

“It’s new to us and is an exciting area across agriculture,” Becker said. “Because we’re so far north, we don’t have many of the pest issues. Our season is fast and can be terrible — it is negative 40 here in the winter, but it does afford us a certain amount of pest control.”

Tech talk

Since opening six years ago, Cattail Organics has made big investments in machinery, such as a root vegetable harvester, which has reduced labor.

“It also means something that would have taken our farm team almost two weeks to do can now be done in two days,” Becker said. “The payback is not immediate, but we tend to make decisions on both economic payback and risk.”

The farm also uses inventory and other computer-based systems, though it does go old-school as well, with whiteboards and walkie talkies among its most important tools.

“As an organic farm, we do a lot of hand labor, especially to control weeds, and because of that, there is a certain amount of physical labor that needs to be done,” she said. “But we have cultivating tractors and equipment and a lot of tech for field production.”

This year, the company also invested in moisture monitors to get data on how the farm’s irrigation is working.

Looking ahead

Though she’s raising her kids on the farm, Becker isn’t sure if they will follow in the family business, even though her 14-year-old son seems to have a shared interest in agriculture.

“We do want it to be an option for our kids to move back and take over this land someday, even if they wind up using it in a different way or for different crops,” she said. “But we’re also open to maybe transitioning it to other farmers someday.”

Since she still enjoys the physical aspect of farming, as well as the other work that goes into running a business, Becker doesn’t think Cattail Organics is going anywhere anytime soon.

“It’s uniquely challenging and there’s always stuff to learn,” she said. “The more I know, the more I can explore really interesting things. I love that.”