Wichita singer-songwriter Emily Judson released the single “It’s My Farm” earlier this year and witnessed the tune connect with an appreciative audience.
Since its release, she’s taken home an award from the Elite Music Awards in the category of Collaboration of the Year -- more on that momentarily -- and another from the World Songwriting Awards in the category of Best Music Collaboration.
The track finds her teaming with fellow songwriter Andrew Chappell — they also collaborated on his “Messed Up” earlier in 2025 — and making something of an unexpected departure into the terrain of country music.
Judson recently spoke with KMUW about the origins of the song and her work with Chappell.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
This song marks the second time that you’ve collaborated with Andrew Chappell. How did that partnership come about?
We’re both members of the International Singer-Songwriters Association, and he actually beat me in a radio contest last year. Well-deserved. He’s a great songwriter. When I went to the International Singer-Songwriters Association Awards in Atlanta last August, I made it a goal that I was going to find Andrew Chappell and give him a hard time for beating me. You can’t miss him: He’s got a big, long beard. I saw him in the distance and said, “There he is! I’m going to go give him a hard time.” That’s how we met and became friends.
I had done the “Riverside” album about my life currently, here in Wichita, but I wanted to swing back and write about and honor my parents, where I come from, my hometown. Before I went to Atlanta last year, I knew I already wanted to record and produce a song about our family farm. After meeting Andrew and getting to know him better, I decided to ask him if he would be willing to be featured on this song with me about our family farm. We decided to trade collaborations. That was a lot of fun. We’ve had a lot of fun working together, and I hope we can work together in the future.
What was the inspiration for the song?
It started with a conversation that I had with my dad. His parents weren’t farmers. His dad was a lawyer. But he wanted to start farming in his young adult years. That’s really hard to do, to start from scratch. Almost impossible. He had a lot of people that mentored him and helped him start farming. It’s neat now as an adult to see where my parents started as farmers and how much they built up the farm and made it this beautiful space.
There are a lot of changes happening at our family farm especially in the last year. Both my siblings have moved back to settle in my hometown. There’s been lots of conversations about the farm, and it’s been a really exciting time with my siblings deciding to take root there. All of those things helped with the song, but it was really the conversation with my dad. A lot of the lines in the song are direct quotes from him. I basically stole our conversation and turned it into a song but also tried to throw in aspects that were important to me. It came pretty quickly because it was from a conversation but, also, there’s a lot of emotions and exciting things with my siblings moving back, building a house and being on our land.
It was really about wanting to honor my parents as they get older and also as a thank you to them for giving us this childhood in this beautiful place. Even though it’s not where I’m living now, it’s a special place to me and there are so many wonderful memories from there to think about when writing.
And being a song about a farm, it had to be a country song.
OK, this is embarrassing. When I wrote this song, I sent it [to a few people] and said, “What genre is this?” They said, “It’s classic country.” I said, “No, it’s not.” They said, “Yes, it is.” What happened? [Laughs.] Normally, I don’t write or produce more country-sounding songs. I would say I fit somewhere in alt-folk. Since I love songwriting and songwriting’s the focus, I’m not very focused on genre. I just write what comes. But I definitely am the most comfortable with folk because I can kind of swing different directions. But with this song, being raised in rural Kansas, country definitely was the prominent type of music that was listened to. That’s what I was raised listening to, so I’m not surprised at how it turned out. But actually, I kind of even surprised myself but it made sense to do since Andrew was collaborating with me.
Devon Teran played pedal steel on it. He incorporates pedal steel into all kinds of music. He’s a friend of the family, so we asked him to play on it, and we really ended up liking that vibe.
This single has won some awards and there’s been other recognition for it. That has to feel pretty good.
When you write a song you don’t ever truly know if it’ll resonate with people, especially this being such a specific song about a Kansas farm, family farm. But I’m really thankful that it has [done that]. It’s been really fun.
