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Harvest Public Media is a reporting collaboration focused on issues of food, fuel and field. Based at KCUR in Kansas City, Harvest covers these agriculture-related topics through an expanding network of reporters and partner stations throughout the Midwest.Most Harvest Public Media stories begin with radio- regular reports are aired on member stations in the Midwest. But Harvest also explores issues through online analyses, television documentaries and features, podcasts, photography, video, blogs and social networking. They are committed to the highest journalistic standards. Click here to read their ethics standards.Harvest Public Media was launched in 2010 with the support of a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Today, the collaboration is supported by CPB, the partner stations, and contributions from underwriters and individuals.Tri States Public Radio is an associate partner of Harvest Public Media. You can play an important role in helping Harvest Public Media and Tri States Public Radio improve our coverage of food, field and fuel issues by joining the Harvest Network.

My Farm Roots: Room to Roam

Abby Wendle
Mitchell Matthew, 19, grew up helping on his family’s Illinois farm. Here, he stands in front of a greenhouse bursting with tomato plants.";

The Matthew family farm, M&M&m Farms, outside of La Harpe, looks different from the farms surrounding it in western Illinois. It's not filled with neat rows of soybeans or lines of corn that's over-my-head high in late July. The Matthew's place is a bit more disorganized and far more diverse.

“A lot of people grow corn or beans,” Mitchell Matthew tells me as we take an afternoon stroll around his parent’s hilltop property. “Here, we grow everything. Everything you can think of.”

Mitchell points out peach trees, apple trees, cherry trees, and blueberry bushes. Greenhouses filled with tomatoes are nestled into fields of sunflowers, sweet corn, and popcorn, and there are beds of zucchinis, peppers, onions, leeks, green and yellow beans, and squash.

Despite helping his folks plant, raise and harvest so much produce, Mitchell, 19, said he doesn’t eat much of it. Unless you count his burger toppings.

Credit Abby Wendle
On their farm, the Mitchell family grows lots of produce, including patches of sweet corn and popcorn.

“I like to eat a lot of hamburgers,” he said with a sly smile. “I put some onions in my hamburgers.”

Mitchell, who falls somewhere on the autism spectrum, grew up selling produce with his mom at area farmers markets and helping his dad care for the hogs they used to raise. He remembers feeding the animals and taking them to get butchered. It was his job to spray hog manure on the vegetable beds for a boost of nutrients.

“My dad taught me a lot about farming,” he said. “He kind of made me who I am. When I start a job, I want to finish a job. Like, I don’t stop.”

Credit Abby Wendle
Mitchell Matthew likes to raise what he calls “rainbow popcorn.” He helps hand-shell, bag and label the red, yellow, and blue kernels that all pop bright white.

Mitchell graduated from high school this year and is full of dreams for his future. He plans to grow his lawn care business, work part-time stocking shelves in a big box store in town, and continue helping his parents with the farm. He loves working with machinery, too, like generators and big lawn mowers, so he might enroll in a trade school in a few years.

Mitchell’s dad, Mark, credits his son’s strong work ethic to growing up in a small, rural community.

“I just feel like he would have been lost growing up in a city,” Mark said. “Out in the country, you’ve just got room to move around.”