This story was featured in the October-November 2025 issue of the Heartbeat newsletter.
When Jeff Murphy climbs into the cab of his combine near Girard, the view isn’t just rows of wheat—it’s generations of work, hope, and soil beneath his feet. His family has farmed this ground since the 1800s.
Today, Murphy Generations Farm carries that history forward in a new way: by rebuilding the land for the future through regenerative agriculture.
Murphy is part of a small but growing movement of farmers using methods that aim to heal the soil rather than deplete it. His operation includes heritage wheat, grass-finished beef, and pastured pork—all produced with an eye toward soil health, biodiversity, and long-term sustainability.
“What we’re trying to do,” Murphy explains, “is mimic or work with nature rather than trying to dominate nature with chemicals, with tillage, with equipment, things like that.”
That philosophy has reshaped nearly every part of the family’s operation. Instead of tilling, Murphy plants cover crops—living roots that protect and enrich the soil even after the main harvest is done.
“In other words,” he says, “we’re planting all our fields twice, where a normal farm with conventional agriculture, you’d only plant once.”
The practice adds extra time and cost, but the results speak for themselves. Cover crops keep topsoil in place, add organic matter, and support thriving underground ecosystems. Over time, Murphy says, they can reduce or even eliminate the need for fertilizer.
Murphy’s approach goes far beyond cover crops. On another field, he grows a diverse mix of milo, cowpeas, sunflowers, buckwheat, and pumpkins—a living example of how nature thrives on diversity.
“When you get these different plant groups out there working together,” he says, “it really feeds different populations of microbes and fungi that then start working together and really feeding your plants. And you just create kind of a symbiotic system.”
The results are tangible. The mix can be grazed by cattle, harvested for hog feed, or left in place to protect the soil. Murphy has seen it thrive even when nearby corn and soybean fields were drying up in the heat.
“A mix like this won’t do that,” he says. “It just kind of creates a microclimate and it’s much more efficient with water.”
He’s quick to note that making these changes isn’t easy—it takes patience, creativity, and a willingness to question decades of conventional wisdom.
“We have to get out of this mindset of monocrop,” he says. “You’ve got to think a little bit differently to do some of these things.”
The name “Murphy Generations Farm” reflects both where Jeff came from and where he’s headed.
“Our family has been on this land for six generations,” he says. “I would like to be banking soil fertility and life in the soil health of the farm so that those future generations have an even better land than I’ve inherited.”
That long view shapes everything from his daily work to his business strategy. Rather than expanding acreage, he focuses on “stacking enterprises”—adding value by producing and selling directly to local customers through Painted Barrels, the family’s retail store on the Girard square, and through a growing Internet presence.
For Jeff, it’s not just about profits; it’s about purpose.
“If I love my neighbor, I care about them having healthy food, I care about them having healthy, clean water,” he says. “Those things really do impact me and drive me to keep moving in this direction.”
On one October day, Jeff harvested soybeans with a combine while his wife, Sabrina, drove a tractor behind him, planting cover crops. Their teamwork is part of a larger rhythm—one that ties the health of the soil to the health of their family and community.
From their home near Girard, the Murphys are proving that small, intentional changes can yield big results over time. Their approach takes patience and faith, but it’s rooted in something enduring: a belief that good stewardship today will give future generations something even richer to inherit.
“It’s just amazing how connected we are to the land,” Jeff says. “The healthier those microbes are in the soil, the healthier the food and our bodies are.”
To learn more, find Murphy Generations Farm on Facebook and Instagram or visit murphygenerationsfarm.com.