Sept. 10, 2025
Sydney Widell | Coon Creek Community Watershed Council – Watershed Coordinator
The Coon Creek Community Watershed Council is thrilled to share that Monroe County recognized our Vice President Tucker Gretebeck, and his wife, Becky Gretebeck as its 2025 Conservation Farmers of the Year. The annual award, which is in its 50th year, celebrates Monroe County farmers for outstanding stewardship, including community involvement and conservation education. Award recipients are nominated by their peers and mentors, and selected by a Monroe County committee.
If you know the Gretebeck Family, you know just how well-deserved this recognition is. To spend time with them or step foot on their farm is to be inspired by their bold conservation vision, and to be moved by their strong community ethic.
“It was a complete honor to be recognized,” said Tucker Gretebeck. “I feel really lucky that I get to farm the way I do. I have found a way to interact with the world, and I feel like I can have an impact on others in a positive way whether they realize it or not.”
The Gretebecks and their two children graze 50 dairy cows and raise horses at All Seasons Farm, near Cashton, in the headwaters of the Coon Creek Watershed. In the fall, they also run a pumpkin patch in their valley.
In addition to making the transition to managed grazing, the Gretebecks experiment with a diverse suite of soil health and flood mitigation strategies on their farm. These measures range from structural interventions, like the pond they dug last summer to retain runoff and protect water quality; to large-scale management shifts, like adopting agroforestry in the upland pastures where they’ve planted 1,100 trees.
“This is a prime example of what you can do on the uplands,” said Monroe County Conservationist Bob Micheel. “Tucker is infiltrating as much water as he can as a farmer and a landowner, and he’s doing everything he can to mitigate climate change and build resilience.”
Micheel said the Conservation Farmer of the Year award recognized what he sees as the Gretebecks’ passion for not only putting conservation into practice on their farm, but for advocating for climate resilient land management across Monroe County and the Coon Creek Watershed.
“If you step back and look at their family, it’s a lifestyle, being stewards of the land,” Micheel said. “And it doesn’t matter if it’s preschoolers, college students, elected officials, or neighbors, they do such a great job welcoming people in and getting that message out there.”
Back in 2022, I was one of those college students, and the Gretebecks’ farm was one of the first places I visited in the Coon Creek Watershed. It was June, a month after their family had undertaken their massive tree planting project, in partnership with the Monroe County Conservation Department, The Nature Conservancy, and the Savana Institute, and with the help of many neighbors and friends. Later, Tucker told the Learning to Make Running Water Walk Oral Narrative Project that the shift to silvopasture had felt like a giant “leap of faith.”
While bringing the forest onto his fields may have been an enormous risk, Tucker also saw it as an important opportunity to diversify his farm and make his land and livelihood more resilient to everything from shifting agricultural markets to accelerating climate change.
“If I can make this farm more resilient, there are just more places to lean when something happens,” Tucker explained.
The Gretebecks’ approach to conservation has always stemmed from their desire to honor those who lived on the land before them, to do right by those who live downstream, to produce high quality milk, and to leave a legacy for their children. But after 2018’s record flood, land conservation took on even more meaning and urgency for their family.
The flood devastated the Gretebecks’ valley bottom pumpkin patch and event space, scouring out fields and washing away entire buildings. As they began the long recovery process, the Gretebecks noticed they sustained less damage in places where there were roots in the ground.
Their experience in the flood deepened the Gretebecks’ commitment to conservation and land management practices that enhance flood resilience by reducing runoff and soil erosion. For Tucker, the flood also brought into focus the urgent need for a watershed-scale approach to land conservation.
“Things aren’t going to get better if no one does anything. But farmers don’t jump unless someone does it first,” Tucker said. “We just had to prove that you could do it in a different way. Not that mine is the only way, but it happens to work on my farm. Watching it grow out has got to be the best feeling.”
For Tucker, serving at the helm of the Coon Creek Community Watershed Council and connecting other Coon Creek farmers with conservation resources and examples of ways to farm differently is an extension of the land stewardship ethic that drives his farming practice. He envisions the council as a supportive network that could make “leaps of faith” a little less daunting for others.
“We get to make connections with people, and get them out on each other’s farms,” Tucker told me. “We just need to get our feet on the ground and get connected again. The relationships are the most important thing to me.”
When Tucker talks about the diversity of conservation practices he’s adopted on his farm and the wide range of causes he throws his energy behind, he talks about the exciting ideas that emerge when neighbors come together to solve problems, as well as the importance of creating places to lean when times get hard. More often than not, we at the CCCWC also find ourselves leaning on Tucker and his family, whether it’s for a last minute visit on a watershed tour, a do-it-yourself tent installation, an idea just far enough out there to work, or reassurance over a milking hours-cum-office hours phone call that “everything’s gonna be fine!”
We are so grateful to know the Gretebecks, and thrilled to see them recognized with this award. It’s a long way off, but please join us in celebrating them at the Monroe County Conservation Banquet in Sparta, Jan. 24, 2026. As in past years, the CCCWC will sponsor a table for its members at the banquet. More information about the banquet will be released in the coming months.
In the meantime, you can congratulate the Gretebecks at the next Coon Creek Community Watershed Council meeting, which will be 6:00 Wednesday, Oct. 1 at the Burke Farm (E7624 County Road P, Westby).
Congratulations!!!! Tucker and Becky!