Atina Diffley

Atina Diffley is an organic farmer, educator, and memoirist whose writing connects land stewardship with family history and civic action. Turn Here Sweet Corn recounts the work she and her husband Martin undertook at Gardens of Eagan, among the Midwest's early certified organic produce farms. The book combines memoir, farming instruction, entrepreneurship, and legal drama within the Fesler-Lampert Minnesota Heritage series. Its central pressures include destructive weather, the loss of fifth-generation farmland to suburban development, and a proposed crude-oil pipeline crossing their new farm. Diffley's account shows how customers, legal advocates, agricultural specialists, and an organic system plan helped protect vulnerable soil. The book won a Minnesota Book Award in memoir. Beyond the narrative of one farm, Turn Here Sweet Corn explains how practical knowledge, community organizing, and careful records can give small growers influence when development and corporate power threaten the land on which their work depends.