By Joe Kertzman, managing editor, Badger Common’Tater
Raised on a dairy farm in Phillips, Wisconsin, Clover Spacek is the first woman to serve on the Wisconsin Seed Potato Improvement Association (WSPIA) Board of Directors in its 120-year history, and one of the few women managing a certified seed potato farm in the country.
Spacek admits this information was a bit lost on her until a group of women from Black Gold Farms came to visit Eagle River Seed Farm as part of a Women in Agriculture tour and asked Clover to pose for a picture with them. When she asked why, they said, “We don’t meet many women farm managers.”
“I don’t think about it,” Spacek says. “You asked me about being intimidated. When I became a seed inspector with the WSPCP, the first few times inspecting fields at farms like J.W. Mattek & Sons and Schroeder Brothers Farms, who’ve been in this business a lot of years, that was intimidating.”
“I had a very supportive family,” she adds. “My dad made me feel like I could do anything.”
Doing anything includes managing the people and operations at Eagle River Seed Farm, an early generation foundation-class seed potato farm founded in 1935 by Felix Zeloski.
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