By Joe Kertzman, Managing Editor, Badger Common’Tater
On any given day, you can find Jacalynn Gumz out in the potato, onion, carrot and mint fields at Gumz Farms LLC, in Endeavor, Wisconsin, and the quiet community, located on Buffalo Lake in Marquette County, is not such a bad place to be!
When Jacalynn’s great-grandfather started farming, he expanded his own father’s farm in northern Indiana into Wisconsin, in the 1940’s. In the late 1950’s, Jacalynn’s grandfather began managing the main farm in Indiana, and since there were management opportunities in Wisconsin, her dad, Richard, and uncle, Rod, moved to the state.
Gumz Farms LLC grows, stores, and packs red and yellow potatoes and yellow onions for retail, carrots for processing, field corn, soybeans, and mint. The Gumz family has been raising mint in Indiana and Wisconsin for over 100 years.
And while Gumz Farms LLC has grown in both size and as a vertical business, the family has also grown alongside it.
Jacalynn was recently elected as a new member of the Potatoes USA Board of Directors, which guides the organization’s efforts to promote and support the potato industry. The Board sets strategic objectives for the organization and allocates resources to marketing, research, and education initiatives.
