Welcome to Fairplains Grains

Around 1906, 22 year old twin brothers, August and Carl F. Weidner

boarded a steam train in Eastern Nebraska seeking a better life in the west, as many others were doing at that time. We don’t really know if their goal was California or Oregon but we do know that Carl F. caught an ash cinder in his eye requiring medical care. After getting "doctored" in McCook, Nebraska, they ran into a land developer who sold  each brother 80 acres of unbroken sod. 

 

Now short of money, they couldn't get back on the train, so spent their first year living inside an overturned wagon–a true bachelor pad or man-cave in those days while they broke sod and watched their crops fail. However, periodically, Carl F. went back to eastern Nebraska to help friends with the fall harvest and earn some money.  During one of these trips, Carl F. met his future wife, Dora, who was just a teenager at the time. Eventually, he saved enough money to provide for and marry the lovely Dora, who was now 25. We can envision that many kegs of beer,

sausages and kolaches were consumed at their wedding and that they danced to every polka that was ever written! 

 

The newlyweds returned to the little 2 room, 16 x 20  home Carl F. had built for his new bride and raised a family of 4 children, one of whom was named Carl A., born in 1920. Carl A. served in the army 4 years during WW II until 1945 when he returned to southwest Nebraska and resumed farming with his dad.  

 

While in Europe, Carl A. began getting letters from a beautiful and kind-hearted fraulein, Blanche, also from eastern Nebraska and so began a 4 year, truly long-distance relationship! Once Carl A. returned home, he met, courted and married the young lady, bringing her back to the farm where they raised 3 children and spent their lives together farming. The youngest of those 3 children is Russ who lives with his wildly funny wife, Michelle, on the place his grandfather, Carl F., first homesteaded and farms the same land his dad, Carl A. did. 

 

So that’s the story of our farm. We are now at 5 generations who live on this land. I guess you could say we are “sustainable.” Like other multi-generational farmers, the Weidners have been through wildfires, blizzards, hail, dust storms, insects, failed crops and yet again, more drought. 

 

We are the first Weidners to go fully organic meaning we use a variety of non-chemical methods to enrich the soil and mechanical means–disking and sweeping–to control weeds instead of spraying. We were incredibly naive when we made the decision to become organic, never imagining the reams of paperwork it would take to get and keep our organic certification. We are able to track our wheat from the seed to the sale including every stop it makes on our farm as it travels from the field to your home. We formed Fairplains Grains in 2020 after getting our organic certification from One Cert and by some major miracle created a website.

 

As we are organic, we don't use the chemicals that non-organic farmers use. We eat the grain that comes out of our fields and want to feel comfortable doing so and selling it to you to feed to your family. We don't spray the soil with herbicides like atrazine and glyphosate to kill weeds and we don't spray the actual crop with anything. We do pray for rain to fall on the ground and growing plants, however. We appreciate this gift of land our relatives worked so hard to break out, nourish and maintain. Our desire is to hand off good, rich, healthy soil, free of chemicals to our children as well. Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns about our wheat or flour. Thank you for your interest.​​