Welcome to the Blue Gate Farm website! 

Blue Gate Farm is the small, family operation of Jill Beebout & Sean Skeehan.  We are Certified Naturally Grown, producing chemical-free fruits & vegetables, free-range eggs, raw honey, and alfalfa hay.  We run a limited membership CSA and are regular vendors at the Des Moines Downtown Farmers Market.

During the majority of the growing season we publish a
weekly Newsletter for our CSA members - the entire archive can be found on the Newsletters page.
Visit us on Facebook or Jill maintains a blog
about our adventures on the farm: http://beyondthebluegate.blogspot.com/. 

Farm Crawl 2012 was a beautiful day and
lots of fun!  Join us next year on Sunday, October 6th, 2013. 
This will be the 7th year of joint open houses at each of the eight participating independent family farms in south-central Iowa.
Visit www.farmcrawl.com for more details about
past and future Farm Crawls.

 In late winter of 2009 we completed work on a second, larger, high tunnel.  High tunnels allow us to extend our growing season both earlier and later - this new high tunnel was planted March 17th with cool tolerate crops (salad greens, spinach, etc.)  We have posted some pictures in the Photo Gallery.

A tornado stopped by the farm in the pre-dawn hours on
May 30, 2008.  All the people and animals were unharmed but some structure were damaged or destroyed. 
Some pictures are posted in the Photo Gallery.

In spring of 2007 we had the misfortune of herbicide drifts from neighboring fields that damaged a majority of our vegetable crops.   With the assistance of an attorney we recouped a small portion of our financial losses.  Simultaneously we have developed and continue to implement strategies to avoid similar problems in the future, including: better communication with neighbors, registering with the Iowa Agriculture Department's sensitive crop program, signage at our property lines, and planting buffers.  Our story was featured in an article in the
August 16 - 22, 2007 edition of Cityview paper.  
You can view the story, as well as other press about BGF,
from our:  In The News page.

Have a look around the site and come back often as new features, refinements and content are added.  Please contact us with questions or comments.  Thanks for visiting!

Jill & Sean