Ellie and Don Pruess: Organic Farmers
A Plowboy Interview with Ellie and Don Pruess, owners of the Teel Mountain organic beef farm near Stanardsville, Virginia. How they pulled up stakes from the big city and built a very efficient solar-heated house and rebuilt a run down farm.
September/October 1978
By Bruce Woods
How does a middle-aged couple from The Big City pull up stakes, move to the country, oversee the construction of their own very efficient solar-heated house, rebuild a completely run-down farm . . . and then successfully establish themselves in the "all natural" beef business?
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Quite gracefully, if that couple happens to be Ellie and Don Pruess . . . owners and operators of the Teel Mountain organic beef farm outside Stanardsville, Virginia. And if that name sounds familiar, it's only because you've seen Teel Mountain's "Veal and baby beef, milk-fed, raised naturally at mothers' sides, no hormones, insecticides, or antibiotics used. Tender, delicious. Supply limited" ads running in such widely varied publications as Natural Food & Farming Magazine and The Wall Street Journal.
But just how do a couple of happy, fun-loving, down-to-earth folks take life into their own hands and build an organic farm from scratch? And how do they make it pay off . . . even when—as happened last fall—their fields are attacked by hordes of army worms? MOTHER staffer Bruce Woods recently visited Greene County, Virginia and spent a pleasant afternoon (an afternoon which ran on far into the night) talking to Don and Ellie Pruess. And that conversation turned up just the kind of answers that you'd probably expect . . . plus, perhaps, a few unexpected surprises too!
PLOWBOY: Don and Ellie, the things you're doing here—farming wholistically, living in a solar-heated house, controlling pests with environmentally sound methods—certainly aren't new ideas . . . as I'm sure you'd be the first to admit.
But your operation is unique, because you've taken a whole raft of what most folks tend to think of as "dream stuff", blended it all together, and turned it into a practical way of living and a profitable working farm. How did you do that? What brought you to Teel Mountain in the first place?
DON: Well, to start at the beginning, both Ellie and I are Oregonians. She was born in Portland and my family moved to Grants Pass shortly after my birth . . . I guess you could say I was raised there from "year one".
PLOWBOY: Did either or both of your families farm in the Northwest?
ELLIE: My people lived in town—I didn't know a thing about agriculture, really, until after Don and I were married—but my parents were very much "outdoor" types . . . we were constantly hiking, backpacking, mountain climbing, and such. And the way my mother always stressed nutrition and the necessity of eating healthful foods, I think, influenced the way I finally turned out.
DON: My folks had a farm but it wasn't a business, really. My father, you see, was an attorney and that's the way he made our living until the depression hit us . . . .
ELLIE: Then he had to take pigs and other bartered goods in exchange for the legal work he did.
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