Paving the Way
Matt Johnson and Tiffiny Clifton build community around food and access for all in the greater Omaha area.
Matt Johnson and Tiffiny Clifton
Long Walk Farm owners Matt Johnson and Tiffiny “Tiff” Clifton host the annual “Battle of the Chefs” event series, which they launched in 2024 as a way to build community, celebrate local foods and showcase culinary talent in the Omaha, Nebraska, area.
The series takes place at the farm and features eight chefs who compete, two per battle, in a bracket-style competition from mid-May through late September, with paying guests voting on the winning creations.
Dan Hoppen, Omaha culinary writer and “Battle of the Chefs” emcee, keeps an online food journal of the event that speaks volumes. Dan uses the platform to record the chefs’ creative use of the featured weekly local-food ingredients. Many of the pictures feature plates heaping with vibrant greens, smoked meats, mushrooms, crispy fritters or a tasty turnip pie.
But what shines through each week’s competition is the community that gathers to enjoy this food. People eat together around long tables. Apron-clad chefs grin, holding pans against the pastoral backdrop. This palpable sense of community and collaboration is just what Tiff and Matt were hoping to create when they started their farm in 2020, unintentionally, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Neither Tiff nor Matt grew up directly farming, but both had connections to agriculture and felt close to it. Matt always loved farming. His grandfather farmed on rented land, but Matt was steered towards work in information technology. Tiff grew up in farm country near Omaha, occasionally helping the neighboring row crop farmer with chores.
She and Matt met as adults while dropping off family members at a camp for children with disabilities – Tiff bringing her brother Caleb, and Matt bringing his son Kaleb. Matt and Tiff collaborated to organize a yearly stroller-pushing run from Omaha to Lincoln, Nebraska, in the Market to Market annual 70-mile race – the largest day-long relay in the nation. As they envisioned the long walk of their lives, they decided to take their teamwork back to the farm.
“We were in our early 40s,” Tiff says, “and it was time to explore the things we wanted for ourselves from when we were kids.”
Jumping In
Matt and Tiff began browsing Zillow, an online platform for real estate listings, for farmland in late 2019. Then, one weekend morning in early 2020, Matt found a 16-acre property that checked every box. “The family had been on the land for over 100 years,” she says, adding that the drive is paved all the way from the city to their house.
Matt and Tiff purchased the land in July 2020 and moved to the farm shortly after. Matt quickly bought goats, alpacas and pigs, fulfilling his childhood dream. He and Tiff planted greens and realized there was a major need for local produce. Tiff says, “We didn’t start growing our own food because of the food [distribution] channels, but it worked out well.”
Matt and Tiff poured their hearts, minds and bodies into their new farm. They dug fencing holes, built every bed and seeded and harvested by hand. Tiff recalls one day when she was so exhausted she fell asleep in the aisle between the plant beds. “It was a nice nap,” she says.
The pair quickly took Long Walk Farm to the Omaha Metro community. They marketed at farmers markets in 2021, through restaurants in 2022 and through Farm Table Delivery, a Harlan, Iowa-based local-food procurement and delivery service, in 2023.
Today, Tiff and Matt – along with two full-time and three part-time employees – grow produce on 7 acres, with 16,000 square feet under high tunnels. They also graze their goats, ducks and pigs on 8 acres of pasture. Not everything works (Tiff recalls one annual harvest that yielded just six potatoes). “We just trust that the failing forward was going to get us to the next place,” she says.
Long Walk Farm sets itself apart by growing atypical varieties, colors and types of produce. “We want to grow things that are exciting to cook and eat,” Tiff says. This also appeals to the Omaha-based chefs they work with. Long Walk Farm delivers produce to Omaha chefs once a week and takes requests. And if Matt and Tiff don’t have something requested, they recommend other nearby farms that do.
Starting “Battle of the Chefs” was Matt’s idea to connect chefs with real, local food and the people who eat out. His thinking was: “What better way to know where your food is farmed?” In addition to bringing people together over food, the event helps raise funds for the nonprofit organization, Gotta Be Me, that Tiff founded in 2014. The organization honors her brother by providing all-abilities programming for people with disabilities and their families.
To accommodate the needs of chefs and the influx of people who’d be at the farm, Tiff and Matt converted a former metal collection area to an event space featuring a walk-in prep area, grills, a wood-fired pizza oven, a patio and long tables and chairs. In each battle, two chefs prepare two courses each for attendees featuring a secret ingredient. Guests are encouraged to graze on charcuterie and salad provided by Long Walk Farm. A local baker also prepares dessert.
Of the ingredients, 97% are local products, either from Long Walk Farm or elsewhere. Matt and Tiff say they “like to see people have fun with food.”
Connecting Missions
Turnip pie, a creation from Brie White of Breeze Bakery in Omaha, uses Long Walk Farm’s turnips. Photo courtesy of Dan Hoppen.
Attendees enjoy interacting with the chefs and each other while eating local food. Reflecting the dual purpose of the series, guests are also signed up for Gotta Be Me emails. Tiff says this helps build community in multiple ways. She cites someone who attended a chef battle while pregnant, then brought her baby to a Gotta Be Me art event. “She said, ‘We got to have great food then, and today we’re getting to do great art.’”
Long Walk Farm continues to expand in ways that will increase food and farm access. Tiff and Matt recently received a Choose Iowa grant to construct an on-farm store, and the chef who works at the farm is now processing value-added products in Matt and Tiff’s new commercial kitchen.
The couple works to ensure that everyone can eat and live the way they want to. “When we talk about accessibility, disability always comes to mind,” Tiff says. “But the reality is that there’s so many people who don’t have access to fresh food [or] the farm.”
Walk Alongside
Building an accessible farm (in the Loess Hills, at that) requires constant reexamination. For example, wheelchair users can’t roll under a typical wash sink setup. The pizza oven Matt and Tiff use for “Battle of the Chefs” requires a standing user – which led an Omaha chef to bring a tiltable pizza oven to a battle.
But Matt and Tiff always aim to give the complete picture of what visitors are getting into and what help they’ll provide. They want visitors to have more control over decisions. “As an adult with a disability, you’ve been told ‘no’ a lot,” Tiff says. “I operate with, ‘If you get stuck, we will help you.’”
As their operation and audience grow, Matt and Tiff seek out new crops and new projects. “We want to be a long-term sustainable farm that can provide year-round employment and appropriate wages,” Matt says. Tiff continually centers the education and access aspects of farming, as well as love of the land.
“There’s really something to be said for sticking your hands in the dirt and working the land and community around us,” she says.
Matt and Tiff commit every day to each other and their community. The road is long, but the people they have gathered happily join them in their long walk.