Meyer Produce

Jeff is a long term market vegetable farmer. He started his career at a very early age growing radishes and selling bunches of them to his neighbors as he rode his bicycle door to door. A few years later in the early 70’s, Jeff and his older brother planted a “u-pick” strawberry patch and maintained this for years. Jeff’s brother established the Meyer Produce farm with Jeff’s help. The Meyer brothers were part of the first farmer’s markets at Lincoln Square and what is now known as “Urbana’s Market at the Square”. In those days the market was set up along the sidewalk in front of what is now Common Ground Co-op. In 1988, Jeff bought the Meyer Produce business from his brother. He was just starting college and planned on using the business as his part-time job through school. As time went on, Jeff’s produce business and love for the land grew, so in 1992 he bought the current Meyer Produce farm; 25 acres in rural Villa Grove. Ben Oberg is a local Villa Grove kid who grew up visiting Jeff’s farm. Throughout his teens he started working for Jeff during the summers and gradually spending more and more time on the farm. After graduating from college as a diesel mechanic, Ben decided he wanted to become a vegetable farmer and has been working for Jeff full-time ever since.

Over the past few years, Jeff and Ben have built the farm up to what it is today. Meyer Produce has seven greenhouses; three small ones for plant propagation and starting seedlings in the springtime, four large ones for growing vegetables. The rest of the land is divided between areas cultivated in vegetable plants using rotational planting and natural grassland used for cutting hay mulch. They have a small fruit orchard of established peach, plum, apricot, apple, and pear trees as well as growing strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and a few blueberries. Ben’s beehive colonies promote pollination and the extra honey is bottled and sold at the farmer’s markets.