FarmHer Profile: Delicia Brown, Broadview Farm and Gardens
Farm Name & Location: Broadview Farm and Gardens – Marengo, Illinois
Years Farming: 10 years
What do you grow or produce? What is your best-seller?
We are a diversified vegetable farm, best known for our clean, long-lasting salad greens and what we call our “Salad CSA.” Our goal is to make local food approachable—fresh, clean, nutrient-dense vegetables that people already know and love, without the overwhelm that can sometimes come with more adventurous CSA boxes.
Before we started our CSA, we often heard people say they struggled with too much repetition or unfamiliar vegetables. While I personally love talking food and recipes, not everyone wants a TED Talk before dinner—they just want to eat. So we designed our crop plan and CSA around ease, familiarity and quality.
In addition to vegetables, we maintain a small flock of about 60 laying hens, raise 300–500 broiler chickens annually, partner with another farmer for pork, and began a small beef herd in 2025. We’re also hoping to establish a production orchard in 2027.
Why farming?
I often joke that I was “dragged into farming kicking and screaming.” While that’s a bit of an exaggeration, it certainly wasn’t my original plan.
My husband leads the field work—planting, cultivating, and growing—while I have always been on the post-harvest side: designing systems, washing, packing and preparing food for our customers. It sounds simple when you say it in three words, but it’s a full day’s work from sunup to sundown.
I also serve as the farm manager—the “desk farmer”—handling the business side of things. Before farming, I worked in business-to-business services for one of the largest commercial refrigeration distributors in the Midwest, and that experience informs how we run the farm today.
Why do I do this? Because it has become everything I didn’t know I needed. Farming has made me a fuller woman—one I didn’t know existed, and one I’m incredibly grateful to have become.
How do you feel about being a woman farmer?
I’ve spent much of my life working in male-dominated environments, believing I had to be louder, harder, and tougher to succeed. There’s a German word—Kampfzwerg—that translates roughly to “fighting dwarf,” someone always in battle mode. That was me for a long time.
Farming changed that.
Being part of a farm family has allowed me to grow into a softer, more grounded, yet somehow stronger version of myself. Farming places you directly in the cycle of life—you experience wins and losses in real time. I’ve witnessed birth and loss, abundance and scarcity, long nights caring for animals, and early mornings that don’t always end the way you hoped.
I’m deeply grateful to bear witness to that rhythm. Being a woman in a farm family is powerful, humbling and deeply meaningful.
What is your biggest win? What makes you happiest?
Like many mothers, my first answer is my children.
I grew up with a yard no bigger than a table, in a place where we were not always safe. Today, my children run freely across 10 acres in what feels like one of the safest places they could be. They are present for our work, our challenges and our successes. They are confident, curious, and unafraid to speak their minds (sometimes very loudly!).
The life we’ve been able to create for them is my greatest joy and my proudest accomplishment.
Biggest challenge?
Beyond the physical demands of farming, one of the biggest challenges has been learning how to work alongside my spouse in a business setting.
We both came from professional backgrounds where we were used to being “the boss,” and as the saying goes—there can only be one. Learning to define clear roles, respect each other’s areas of leadership, and build a shared vision took time, but it has been essential to the health and harmony of both our farm and our family.
How are you thinking about the future of your farm?
In the short term, I’d like to see us gain more control in the marketplace—not by controlling markets themselves, but by building stable, direct relationships with our customers.
We are working toward a larger, more accessible farm stand on a main road—something dependable and welcoming, where our community can consistently access high-quality, locally grown food from across McHenry County.
Farmers markets are wonderful, but they can be weather-dependent. Restaurants can be impacted quickly by economic shifts. Direct-to-consumer access creates stability for both farmers and families.
And if I can add a commercial kitchen into that vision someday … well, that’s a dream I’m excited to keep building.
Regenerative / ecological practices
We are a Certified Naturally Grown farm, which means no synthetic chemicals and no GMOs. We focus on soil health through crop rotation, cover cropping, and thoughtful land stewardship.
Anything else you’d like to share?
At the end of the day, our goal is simple: to grow good food, care for our land, and contribute something meaningful to the place we call home.
