Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
I took the backroads down to Floodwood in the early spring—no leaves were out yet, but everything was greening up. I followed the St. Louis River part of the way along Hwy 29, and then landed, to my surprise, in “The Catfish Capital of the World.” I LOVE catfish, having grown up in a Mississippi River town in Illinois. But this is walleye country, right? Not in Floodwood where the July 9-10-11 Catfish Festival gives this town its designation. At the junction of the St. Louis, East Savannah and Floodwood Rivers, this community spreads over what was originally Anishinaabe land. Its Savannah Portage was eventually important to fur-traders until its logging history began in 1890….but ended in 1926. In the mean time, the pastures around the community supported dairy farms and the Floodwood Creamery Cooperative, established in 1911, sold dairy products across the world…..until the late 1960’s. It echoes the story of evolving rural economies across northeastern Minnesota.
But the reason I came to Floodwood was to write about the Floodwood Farm and Feed store and its grain mill. It has to be the tallest structure in town, and it was a coop until around 1980 when it came into the Manner family whose descendants, Nate and Maria, own and operate it today. The mill has eight monstrous bins, all original to the structure, which hold oats, barley, non-GMO and two other kinds of corn, soybean meal, protein pellets, and an empty bin so that farmers can bring their own product to mix with the others for a custom feed. That’s what Nate and Maria do best: help area farmers find the right feed for their animals.
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
The store used to sell mostly dairy feed, but that has changed over the years. These days they sell a lot of hog and chicken feed and, increasingly, feed for nontraditional animals like emus and llamas. They feature non-GMO ingredients and they don’t use any soy products. Their customers come mainly from areas north of Floodwood, including Zim, Palo, Walker, Aurora, and Maple, Wisconsin. And each customer wants a slightly different type of feed. No one-size-fits-all here! Nate and Maria live about 15 miles north on a farm where they have a few animals and two young daughters who help out in the store.
They’ve seen an influx of customers in the last few years who want to know where their animal-based food comes from and how the animals have been cared for. They connect folks who want to know with folks who do, and folks who need a particular product (like hay) with folks who grow it. Lots of networking happens here. They also sell seeds, bedding plants, birding supplies, pet supplies, boots, a few tools, deer feed, cattle gates, fertilizer, seed oats and wood pellets. Right now is the busiest season with everyone gearing up for summer up north.
The most unusual thing about Floodwood Farm and Seed is that it’s powered by solar panels located all across the south face of the roof. When Minnesota Power offered a rebate for solar, Nate and Maria were approached by Energy Plus as a perfect site for solar. They decided to go for it. The system has been functional for a year now and just chalked up an energy-neutral month in March (they produced as much as they used). They’re connected to the grid, so excess production goes back into the grid and when their panels don’t meet their needs, the grid supplies them. All in all, they’re happy with the installation. Like most solar panels in northern Minnesota, they produce less in the snowy season but make up for it in the summer.
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
I was particularly interested in the fact that the store used to be a coop. Finnish immigrants across northern Minnesota were known for establishing cooperatives throughout the area. I tried to find the specific history of the Floodwood Grain Coop but wasn’t able to locate anything. What I did find was a fascinating USDA magazine, “Rural Cooperatives,” that was published from 1934 until 2018. The 1999 issue celebrated 65 years of publication with excerpts from each decade, tracing the “evolution of cooperatives as a vibrant sector of the farm economy.”
In chronicling the 1980’s, the magazine titled the section “Mergers, Consolidations Change Look of U.S. Cooperatives.” This section tells the story of an East Coast conference on cooperatives, where a corporate CEO tells the attendees that “cooperatives must seriously consider merger or consolidation” and that “there is no justification for the intricate web of more than 5,000 farmer cooperatives existing today…” And so the story begins to end. I suspect it was that kind of atmosphere that led to the sale of the Floodwood Coop first to a cousin of and then to Nate Manner’s father in 1983. From farmer coop to multi-generation family-owned business, the Floodwood Farm and Feed lives on and now leads the town in renewable energy too.