Our Story

While our farm has been growing quality grains for over 70 years, our story’s beginning is over a century old.  In the early 1900’s a man named Walter Jepsen immigrated from Denmark to the United States.  Like many immigrants, he arrived at Ellis Island in New York.  After a brief time in Minnesota, he eventually bought a small piece of land south of the small town of Ione, Oregon.  Walter married a German immigrant and together they raised 9 children.  One of these is our grandfather Robert (Bob) Jepsen.  Walter’s main business was raising chickens for their eggs, which he sold to local markets.  Bob worked with the family business, but when he was old enough began working for neighboring farmers.  One of these was the Dobyn’s wheat farm about 3 miles up the hills.  Bob helped harvest his first wheat crop at age 15 in 1944.  That got his foot in the door, and in 1950 Bob signed a lease with the landowners to take over all operations and began growing his own wheat.  Bob saw many changes in wheat production during his lifetime, and made significant investments into the sustainability of the farm itself.  He was recognized as the Morrow County soil conservation man of the year.  Eventually his son, William (Bill) Jepsen took over operation of the farm in 1991.  Bill pioneered direct seed wheat production in the county, a practice that has greatly improved soil conservation and soil quality for our crops.  Like our grandfather, Bill was also recognized as a conservation man of the year.  Bob continued to work on the farm until just weeks before his passing in 2016.  He died just a week before harvest started.  If he’d lived just a month more, it would have been his 72nd harvest in a row. Bill and his wife, Nancy, had five children.  I’m the 2nd of those five.  After finishing college my first job was growing potatoes on a farm in the Klamath Basin.  Later I also worked in growing onions.  When my father, Bill, was considering retirement, I made the decision to continue the family legacy of growing wheat and move my own family to the farm.  Together with my wife, Bethany, and our 4 children, we harvested our own first crop of wheat in 2020.  That’s when the idea for Liberty Grains was birthed.  Bethany loves to bake, and naturally we had lots of our own wheat to grind.  Both of us agreed that when we began grinding our own flour that the baked products tasted great and settled better in our stomachs than what we could buy at the store.  About the same time that we began to grind most of our own flour, I was also trying to make some additional sales of wheat for seed.  To my surprise I also received inquiries about our wheat for personal consumption, too. Bethany and I realized other people can enjoy the same grains that we grow and eat.  The name for our grains, “Liberty” comes from the old Liberty School House, which sits prominently on our property.  We hope to be growing healthy, great tasting grains for years to come.