Saying no to the norm at Rebel Pickles

Until six years ago, Cassie Wipperfurth and her family were living on five acres in central Minnesota. Each year, the lawn became smaller and the gardens larger. She was a math teacher but longed to be gardening and spending more time with her three young children.

When her husband’s job relocated in 2020, they bought 22 acres in Afton, MN, about 25 miles east of Minneapolis. Wipperfurth didn’t go back to teaching. Today she’s a full-time farmer, growing mixed vegetables and producing value-added farm products and baked goods through Rebel Pickle Farm and Pantry Share.

Wipperfurth wanted the farm name to distinguish her operation from traditional larger farms, like the dairy farm where her husband grew up, which she credits for sparking her interest in agriculture.

The name came out of a brainstorming session with her sister. It reflects her love of making pickles and the idea that customers choosing homegrown and scratch-made food are being slightly rebellious by opting out of the ordinary and trying new vegetables and foods.

“It turned out to be a name people enjoyed and remembered,” she said.

Currently, Wipperfurth grows about five acres of mixed vegetables with the help of her three teenagers and her husband, who has a full-time off-farm job. (That dairy farm is still in his family.)

They also have two acres of pasture where they raise pigs, layers and beef critters. A neighbor makes hay on the remainder of the acreage.

The property is sloped, split into what Wipperfurth calls the lower and upper gardens. Everything is planted on a four-foot center. Wipperfurth tries to direct seed as many crops as possible because she has limited capacity for raising seedlings.

The two lower gardens are less than one acre each. She preps the sandy loam soil with a PTO-powered rototiller and generally plants crops like carrots that need a fine seed bed. Since the lower gardens have irrigation, she also plants crops with heavy water requirements like greens and tomatoes. Wipperfurth ties into this irrigation system for washing the produce, all done outside.

She uses a different tillage approach on the upper gardens. A local farmer makes a pass with a field cultivator, which requires less soil disruption. This is part of her broader effort to move toward less intensive tilling practices. This ground is rougher and suited to fast-growing potatoes and corn.

The produce is marketed through 25 community-supported agriculture (CSA) shares and a farm stand at the end of the driveway. Wipperfurth hasn’t invested in refrigeration, so she harvests daily.

For the 2026 growing season, she is transitioning the CSA to a choose-your-own model rather than farmer-choice. She made this management change after watching a CSA customer put a specialty green eggplant that she was particularly proud of into the extras bin. She realized that initially it was beneficial to encourage customers to try new vegetables. But, she said, “Ultimately people like what they like, and they’re creatures of habit. They like to just get what they need and then be on their way.”

Customer preferences continue to drive the farm’s evolution. For example, although Wipperfurth loves cabbage, her customers don’t, so she’s growing less. And her customers prefer red tomatoes, so she plants more of those varieties and less of the rainbow-y heirlooms.

There is also strong demand for Wipperfurth’s value-added items and baked goods, which she makes in her licensed home kitchen. She strives to incorporate farm ingredients as much as possible. They add up to about 70% of her gross income during the growing season.

Value-added items include canned goods like relish, jam and pickles. Baked goods include breads, cookies, cinnamon rolls, pretzels, biscuits and granola. During the holidays, she offers gift baskets with four flavors of popcorn, made from their home-grown popcorn.

Wipperfurth also put together kits like a focaccia mix and a make-your-own refrigerator pickles. She includes QR codes on the packaging so customers can easily access instructions. The demand for these DIY products is high. She said, “People want to have a hand in, but they don’t want to take it all the way from the beginning.”

She also hosts baking classes in what she calls Flour School. In her autumn pie class, participants make blueberry crumble and apple pies while perfecting their lattice crust.

The popularity of these events has triggered Wipperfurth and her husband to draw up some plans for converting a section of their barn into a commercial kitchen.

“I think my sweet spot’s going to be not just produce alone … The transition to more of a commercial kitchen, that’s where it’s kind of pushing me to go because that’s where the demand is,” she said.

To learn more, head to rebelpickle.com.

by Sonja Heyck-Merlin