Dan Bigbee prefers to communicate with nature more than with strangers, but when you get him talking about urban farming, he has plenty to say.
“I was an urban farmer before urban farming was cool,” he quipped, standing on Fassnight Creek Farm in the middle of the third largest city in Missouri. “All of a sudden what I’m doing came into fashion.”
Fassnight Creek Farm stands just north of Sunshine Street along Fort Avenue in Springfield, Mo. To the south is a main thoroughfare filled with fast-food restaurants and car dealers. Across the street is a garden business and to the north are homes and schools.
Dan has been working the 15-acre farm, along with another 5 or so acres neighbors let him cultivate, for the past 29 years. He points out that 75 years ago, when the farm was started by Ted Lazenby, it was far south of the city. As the city encroached, the farm continued, purchased by Frank Phipps and then Dan.
Fassnight Creek Farm may not have always been an urban farm, but Dan has always been an urban farmer. He began when he was just a boy, growing up on the north side of the city. The house is nearly 100 years old, and Dan still lives there with his family.
It was his grandfather who gave him his love for growing things. “I was kind of the apple of his eye,” said Bigbee. “We hung out and did all kinds of fun stuff.” When the seed catalog arrived in the mail, his grandfather got very excited.
“I figured if Granddad was getting excited, I ought to get excited, too.”
Between his grandfather’s and his father’s gardens, the family had fresh produce during the season, and they put up plenty for the winter, too.
Dan loved the time outside, working in the ground next to his grandfather. He also spent summers with an aunt and uncle who had cattle and row crops.
“I loved the setting and the field,” he recalled. “I would cry when I had to leave.”
When he went to then-Southwest Missouri State University he was one of the school’s first horticulture students, turning his love of gardening into a career. He began by working at Wickman Gardens, which is across the street from Fassnight Creek Farm, as a landscaper. That was when he met Phipps.
“I discovered that Frank was here doing what I loved to do,” he said.
“He was a marvelous gardener, probably one of the best tomato growers that I know,” said Dan of the man who would not only mentor him but eventually sell him his farm. “He was free with his information, so he didn’t mind me coming over.”
When Dan bought the farm at age 28 his plans were to “set the world on fire, grow things and make a million dollars.” That isn’t quite how it worked out, but he has managed to keep the farm going and support a family.
He began with big plans and “no comprehension of what it takes to do something on this scale,” he admitted. “Mr. Frank was always coming down to help avoid disaster. Finally, I started paying attention to him.”
Twenty-nine years later, Dan grows a wide variety of produce – corn and onions, green beans and tomatoes, broccoli and lettuce, peppers and potatoes, “just about anything that grows in Missouri.” He uses the water that always flows through Fassnight Creek to irrigate, and has a few modern tractors but prefers his old McCormick Farmall Cub.
Greenhouses allow him to start all his plants, and a small store allows him to sell to the public. Son, Cameron, 19, helps out on the farm, along with Felix Viella and Derek Smith, who work the fields. Jim Vaughan, Dan’s old high school coach, works in the store.
Dan loves using his farm to support others, including a friend who started The Grove Salsa Company, which is sold at local grocery stores and it is made with tomatoes from Fassnight Creek Farm.
“It’s the coolest thing in the world to see a local product being made into a shelf stable product that’s accepted,” said Dan. “Now he’s providing a living for others besides himself. It used to be that way. A lot of people made their living off farming here.”
Bigbee also supports nonprofit work in the community. Allowing “glean teams” from Harvest on Wheels and Ozarks Food Harvest to come in when he has finished with a crop, frost is about to destroy a crop or he has a similar crop that needs his attention. Bigbee said each glean provides hundreds of pounds of fresh produce for food pantries and feeding programs for the poor.
“That’s a lot of eating for hungry people, too.”
