The Spray Family

Glen and Rex Spray standing in front of their storage bin of organic feed corn.
Photo by Gregory Spaid

Brothers Glen and Rex Spray farm 730 acres in Morgan Township. Their farm has been organic since 1972. Both Glen and Rex live on the farm with their wives, Evelyn and Elsie, and Glen's son Howard also lives and works on the farm with his wife Sarah and their two children. The brothers formed a partnership in 1956 and purchased their farm from their father and siblings. They raise organic beef and have a four year crop rotation of corn, soybeans, small grains like wheat and red clover hay. They chose to farm organically in order to reduce their costs of production and to increase their quality of production.

"It just got to the point where we didn't think we wanted to use and handle the chemicals. We decided that we could farm without them and we thought we'd give it a try. We just thought it would be a better way of doing things, and we thought we could reduce the cost of production plus increase the quality of what we produce."
Rex Spray