Profile 60: Area farmers markets wind down for the season

The 2021 Farmers Market season is nearly over on the Iron Range.  It was a good season, rescued by late summer rains after a spring drought that devastated many specialty crop farmers and gardeners.  Twenty-eight of the 8,140 “official” farmers markets in the lower 48 U.S. states are in Minnesota’s Arrowhead region.  You can find information about each of them at www.arrowheadgrown.org and on the Arrowhead Grown Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/ArrowheadGrown .  The Minnesota Department of Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation, Blandin Foundation, Iron Range Tourism and the Rutabaga Project funded promotional videos for many of the markets this year, all available at the Facebook page.  Check them out!  Although there are a few winter markets in the area, most of the markets in rural communities are closed or closing soon.

I manage the Virginia Market Square farmers market in Virginia, and we closed for the season October 14.  It was chilly and windy on that last day and several vendors arrived early to set up inside the heated building on Silver Lake.  We thank the City of Virginia Parks & Recreation Department for the provision of that wonderful space all summer!  Steve Solkela braved the chill and entertained outside for the final market.  The weather didn’t stop the vendors’ children from running and playing inside and out as they have all summer.  That’s one of the fun things about our market—between nine and thirteen kids ages 2-12 have become such good friends that they were exchanging their moms’ phone numbers so that they can continue to get together this winter.  They delight us all!

I made my usual rounds to the vendors on closing day with an additional question: what’s your favorite thing about this farmers market?  Here are some of the responses.  “Community….all the kids……the old man and his reading dog……it gets me out to socialize…..management is organized…..the entertainment….the people…..meeting new people…..seeing old friends…..new adventures and product innovation this year….the free beverages (I provide cold ones in the heat and hot ones in the cold)….trading among vendors….buying produce with Power of Produce tokens….the people…..the community and feeling of togetherness….the PEOPLE and feeling at home….all of it…..meeting our customers…..the PEOPLE!”  Obviously, there’s a theme here: the people are what make the market.

Our market has a mix of farmers and food and craft vendors.  At the height of the season, we averaged twenty-one vendors a week, and on the last day we had eleven.  Some can come for the whole season and others only part of the summer, and this year there were several whose crops were so damaged by late spring frost and drought that they couldn’t come at all.  But we still had a good selection of products---everything from pickled green tomatoes to beaver fur can cozies---and a friendly helpful group of vendors.  The market runs under the sponsorship of the Iron Range Partnership for Sustainability and operates on vendor membership and weekly fees.  I am a volunteer manager.  This year it cost vendors $50 to join and $5 per week or $125 for the season with no further fees.

We have insurance through the Minnesota Farmers Market Association.  All of our vendors have provided State of Minnesota Department of Revenue ST19 tax forms to verify their eligibility to sell.  Those who offer pickles and baked goods have provided proof of their Cottage Food exemption from the Minnesota Department of Agriculture.  Our meat farmers are either approved processors themselves or use USDA-approved processors.  Their animals are free-range, with the livestock grass-fed and the birds fed a non-GMO mix in addition to the bugs and grasses they eat.  Our farmers use natural soil amendments and pest control and offer pesticide-free produce that has been grown within fifty miles of Virginia.

The bottom line is that we believe in local!  Our goal is to support local farmers and growers as much as we can.  A USDA National Farmers Market Managers Survey in 2019 found that farm vendors increased overall production and even added workers employed on the farm to meet farmers market demands.  About 40 percent were able to sell “imperfect” products that might otherwise go unsold, and three quarters of vendors diversified the kinds of products they grew.  Our market gained new vendors to increase in size by about a third from 2020 to 2021.  And we had the pleasure of two food trucks joining us this year: Later Tater and Go Figur’s.  Yum!!!

Our market, along with the Cook, Tower, and Hibbing markets benefit from the Arrowhead Economic Opportunity Agency’s provision of staff who handle SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits redemption and matches.  Minnesota Hunger Solutions provides a $10 match for SNAP dollars, and, in Virginia, Essentia Health provides an additional $5 match.  Essentia helped to fund the SNAP staff at several of the markets as well.  In addition to offering matches, we were able to offer market tours in conjunction with the University of Minnesota Extension SNAP Educators.  We also offer the Power of Produce Club in conjunction with Essentia Health.  Children receive $2 in tokens each week to buy fruits and veggies.  This year, we were also a test site for the University of Minnesota Extension’s POP Plus, a Power of Produce initiative for seniors age 60+. 

One of the special attractions at our market this summer was the Virginia Public Library’s story time, activities, and reading dog.  Dave Koop and his Newfoundland Yogi sat with children who read to the dog all summer.  Library staff directed fun sessions for kids of all ages and story time with special guests.  Adults and children could also check out and return books to the library at the market.  What a great addition!  All in all, it was a good year.  Plan to visit your local farmers market next season and do your part to keep our farmers and growers thriving!

Profile 59: The Gawboy farm is about self-sufficiency and food justice

This is a farm that, until recently, fed 18-20 people for every meal at its long dining room table.  And they grew ¾ all of the food they ate, still do.  Nestled in the woods south of Tower, Minnesota, this 100-acre farm has about everything necessary to be food self-sufficient.  I visit on a sunny warm Sunday in late September, and we start my tour in the huge 1 acre fenced garden.  Becky Gawboy has just harvested broccoli and two beautiful cauliflower heads, and the pepper bushes are overflowing with a wide variety of peppers.  A long row of red cabbages waits to be plucked and fermented into sauerkraut.  Everything looks green and abundant now, but this summer has been a huge challenge.

In addition to the extended drought, swarms of grasshoppers tried to eat their way through this garden and many others on the Range.  Becky read about a white flour remedy in an old book and tried it, sprinkling the entire garden with white flour until it looked like winter.  And it worked!  The shear volume of grasshoppers in the pastures and fields around the farm were far more than the guineas, ducks and chickens could possibly eat.  But at least those grasshoppers stayed out of the garden.  This plot is irrigated from a well.  And the soil is amended with composted horse and pig and chicken manure from the animals here.  The abundant “green manure” plant residue is gently tilled under each season for a further boost.

I walk through rows of raspberries, tomatillos, cauliflower, broccoli, peppers, chard, potatoes, peas, beans, asparagus, native white sage, kohlrabi, squash of every kind, pumpkins, turnips, onions, thyme, tarragon, mint, lettuce, kale, comfrey, tomatoes, cucumbers, beets, apple mint (for tea), buckwheat, horseradish, and Bear Island flint corn grown to eat and also contributed to seed banks.  The early grasshoppers decimated the rutabagas and carrots and severely stunted the raspberries….before the white flour remedy.   And those June frosts took out the rhubarb completely, froze the blossoms off every apple tree in the adjacent orchard, and killed 70 of 72 tomato plants.  Becky replanted tomatoes and had a decent crop—at least they benefitted from the mid-summer unusually high temperatures.

When it’s not eaten fresh, all of this produce is canned or fermented.  Becky points out her institutional gas stove in the large kitchen—the place where canning happens.  And a pantry that is now a fermenting room filled with various stages of kombucha and kraut as well as hot pepper sauce fermented with garlic over three years.  The basement provides storage for vast quantities of home-canned goods.  Freezers store meat from 20-30 birds annually as well as at least one pig and some lamb.  And there is a large concrete root cellar built into the side of the hill near the house.  Becky thinks it was built in about 1930.

The pastures are huge and spread out on three sides of the garden.  Just east of the garden is an old barn-turned chicken coop. Becky’s husband Jim recently converted it.  It features two repurposed windows with stained glass, so they call it the “chicken chapel.”   Fifty to sixty layer hens inhabit this coop and the surrounding grassy area.  Farther to the east are the sheep.  One ram has his own habitat in a large field west of the garden.  A horse grazes in the sun up the hill, and this year’s two pigs have their own house and pig yard a little farther away.  The pigs are great composters, as are the chickens, so nothing goes to waste here.

We walk a few hundred feet into the woods over a trail padded with soft pine needles.  Here the children have built a traditional longhouse where they actually held school one entire winter.  Its surface is a tapestry of blankets, each one special to a particular child.  Many children have thrived here.  Over the years from 1996 to 2004, the Gawboys provided foster care to about 90 youth.  In 2004, they adopted their first child, followed by five siblings, then another six siblings, all Indian kids.  Jim is Ojibwe and Finnish and Becky is mostly Finnish.  So, of course there’s a sauna here in the woods too.

Becky and a former husband bought this place 37 years ago.  She and Jim married 31 years ago, and he has done most of the house remodeling.  A nine-bedroom house with an enormous kitchen and a music room and a library is heated by wood until the temperature stays around zero, then a gas furnace and fireplace help to keep it toasty.  Next year, they plan to add solar panels to produce more of their own energy.  The property has a creek running through it and is bordered on one side by the East Two River.  There is a 20-acre cedar swamp and acres of dense woods in addition to the pastures and gardens.  Roaming it all is a flock of Cayuga ducks, a domestic breed of duck that is all black.  Up near the house is Becky’s medicine garden.  She and Jim mostly do their own doctoring, using traditional herbs and plants for healing.  That is a legacy they have passed on to their children and (now 17-plus-two-on-the-way) grandchildren.

This farm is part of the World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms organization (WWOOF) and regularly hosts young people who want to learn organic farming. This summer, six interns lived here and helped on the farm.  You can learn more about WWOOFing at https://wwoofusa.org/ Those who visit the Gawboys can expect to learn animal care, bread making, cooking, fermentation, food preservation, foraging, seed saving, syrup harvesting, biological pest control (ducks and guineas) as well as self-sufficiency and food justice.  It’s what this “hundred-acre-wood” is all about.

Profile 58: Mahoneys' little slice of paradise

Heather calls it “our little slice of paradise,” but I ask if this small hobby farm has a real name.  “Mahoney Homestead” will do she says.  After touring the 40 acres I would add “and wildlife refuge”!  Their trail camera on the northeast corner regularly shows the moose, deer, coyotes, bears, bobcats, wolves, and pine martens who roam this land.  And up closer to the house the owls come into view as well as many warblers and other interesting birds.  Heather is a birder and delights in sharing what she sees with others in the area.  She’s an avid photographer too.  I know Heather Mahoney because I volunteer with the Rutabaga Project at AEOA which she manages.  But I hadn’t seen her home near Embarrass until today.  “Paradise” and “Embarrass, Minnesota” aren’t often used in the same sentence.  But the more sweet farms I write about from this fair town, the more I think it fits. 

This land was mostly pasture when they bought it seven years ago, aside from the house, pole barn and garage.  It is surrounded by hunting land, state land, and vacant land so there are woods as far as the eye can see.  When she and her husband Rory moved in, there were huge heaps of hundreds of old tires, broken appliances, and the non-burnable remains of old burn piles.  They’ve done an amazing job of cleaning up and cutting trails through the woods.  Rory has two deer stands in the remote areas.  There are wide areas of alder brush, fields of wildflowers, and plenty of birch, Norway, White Pine, and spruce.  Heather said she always wanted to live where the trees made noise when the wind blew.  This is the place. 

There were two very large, fenced gardens here when they moved in and they’ve re-built the fencing to protect precious crops of beets, cabbage, tomatoes, carrots, kohlrabi, pole beans, wax beans, cucumbers, peas, lettuce, and chard as well as Juneberries and honeyberries.  Outside the gardens are wild chokecherries and raspberries.  And in raised beds in the woods they raise onions, garlic, and potatoes.  A hoop house nearby houses several varieties of peppers and basil….and whatever else needs a little protection.  Heather sells produce to the Mesabi East Farm to School program and at the Mesabi East Environmental Education Center’s farmers market. 

She has offered “Heather’s Home Goods” for sale under a Minnesota Department of Agriculture Cottage Food exemption for the last two years.  She sells salsa, pickles, pickled beets, apple butter and a variety of jams.  This year hasn’t been good for apples or fruit for jams.  Like most area growers, Heather lost blossoms to frost and even more to extreme heat, wind, and drought.  The enormous rain barrels on the garage only fill to capacity when there’s enough rain, and that didn’t happen this year.  She drives containers of water out to the remote raised beds as well as to the grape arbor in a clearing in the woods and the pumpkin patch in another clearing. 

Having been a former pasture, the soil out in the distant areas is pretty good.  For the closer-in fenced gardens, Rory tills in their compost and they buy black dirt mixed with composted horse manure from a neighbor.  Last year they added biochar and ash as well.  They heat with the abundant wood culled from the property, so there’s no shortage of ash.  Propane supplements the wood heat.  And a shiny green John Deere tractor supplements the human labor. 

This year’s major undertaking was a deluxe chicken coop and run.  Expertly constructed and heavily insulated, the coop will provide a warm shelter in the cold Embarrass winter.  The well-reinforced large outdoor run protects the ten hens and two roosters from predators.  The chickens arrived earlier this summer and the hens aren’t laying yet, but soon!  Heather has been feeding them organic chick feed and is looking to transition to a more standard non-GMO feed soon.  And she’s hoping to sell eggs along with her cottage foods.  Heather also sews small items like potato bags, microwave bowl cozies rice packs and canning mats.  You can find her at https://www.facebook.com/heathershomegoodsembarrassmn  

As we drive the 4-wheeler along the trails Rory has cut through the wilderness, Heather shows me where they’ve laid down habitat for the many snowshoe hare that live here.  The grouse are plentiful too.  They don’t feed the animals, but there is a salt lick for the moose.  Last year they had twin moose, now a year old and healthy.  This year they had twin fawns.  Must be a good habitat for the wildlife.  Up closer to the house, the birdfeeders have attracted bears, so there are far fewer now.  Still, Heather sees Great Horned owls, Merlins, Sharp Skinned Hawks, Northern Flickers, Golden Crowned Kinglets, lots of warblers and a rare Lazuli Bunting!!  

When Heather isn’t gardening, canning, sewing, or caring for her chickens, she’s managing the Rutabaga Project for Access to Healthy Local Food, a food advocacy program housed at the Arrowhead Economic Opportunity Agency’s Virginia office.  Her work is funded by a USDA Farmers Market Promotion Program grant and involves recruiting new farmers to sell at area farmers markets, promoting the Arrowhead Grown eat local campaign, helping area grocery stores and restaurants buy directly from farmers, expanding farm-to-school programming, and helping to coordinate the Northland Food Network.  Learn more at https://www.facebook.com/therutabagaproject   

Profile 57: Kudrle Farms is thriving despite the drought, originally published in Hometown Focus

This 38.5-acre patch of clay near the Hibbing airport used to be an appaloosa horse farm. Now it’s a specialty crop farm yielding produce, meat chickens and turkeys, honey, and, in a better year, hops for beer. There’s no electricity or running water here, just a tiny lowland spring. This is part of Kudrle Farms. Scott Kudrle grew up in Bloomington but went to college at Hibbing Community College as a young adult and always wanted to move back up here. He worked two jobs the year before moving and saved up enough to buy some land—this tract and seven acres on Hwy 169 near Virginia eleven years ago. The smaller property is where he lives with his wife Nicole, extension educator for 4-H youth development in north St. Louis County, and their two young children, with a third on the way. The laying chickens are at that location, along with two large gardens.

This location is where Scott has reclaimed the overgrown alder brush and built up the soil with manure, compost, Epsom salts, gypsum and lime to yield a productive operation. One high tunnel, built with help from the Natural Resources Conservation Service, is filled with carrots, beets, tomatoes, bell peppers, zucchini, cucumbers, onions, and cantaloupe. Scott hauls water to keep them hydrated and they’re looking good for a year of severe drought. Outside to the south there are rows of sweet corn, broccoli, brussels sprouts, peppers, watermelons, and peas. The beehives are nearby. And in the north area, 60 apple, apricot, pear and cherry trees are bordered by blackberries, raspberries, and the hops. As on most other farms this year, the fruit and berry crop this year succumbed to the late frost.

To spend less time weeding, Scott buys billboard tarps from a St. Cloud company and uses them as a ground cover, cutting holes for planting. That’s about the only thing “artificial” here. He tills very little and uses the new tractor (a 1950 Farmall---the old one is a 1940 Farmall, still adorning the property) to haul water. All of the produce here thrives on healthy soil and transported water, or, in a good year, rain. Scott uses no artificial fertilizers or pesticides. The turkeys and meat chickens here forage in a large pasture and eat non-GMO feed mixed by Floodwood Farm and Feed (the subject of a previous column).

This and the 7 acres on 169 are the homestead Scott wanted. He chops his own wood by hand and heats with wood. His family eats what he grows. He sells produce, eggs, pickles, jams, jellies, salsa, ketchup and homemade soap at area farmers markets (you can always find him at the Hibbing and Virginia markets). And he takes orders for meat birds. He is licensed for home processing and delivers frozen, pre-ordered chickens and turkeys in the fall. I bought chickens from Scott last summer and made the best ever chicken soup all winter! I love growing and freezing my own parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme for homemade chicken soup.

The “other half” of Kudrle Farms is Nicole. She met Scott on a blind date arranged by friends in 2010. Scott had just moved north and bought the two properties and Nicole had just moved to Ely after college for a job with the Boy Scouts’ Northern Tier base. She initially thought he was crazy, living in an RV having completed just three rows of logs on the cabin in which they now live. But she liked his passion for doing everything himself, knowing where everything comes

from. And she had some farming experience, growing up in Wisconsin and helping her grandmother can prize vegetables for the county fair. It was a match.

When they moved into the log cabin there was no water or electricity….a true homestead just like Scott had wanted. Now, of course they have a well and electricity, and this is home base for all of the canning and preserving and soap making and egg production. Nicole says it’s a joint effort, the canning. But Scott does all of the farming and garden tending as well as the chicken care and eventual butchering. In fact, Scott is delivering the frozen chickens I ordered this year tomorrow morning. Chicken soup, coming up!

Scott and Nicole are like many specialty crop farmers (“specialty crops” = crops that aren’t commodity crops like corn, soybeans, wheat) in that Nicole’s job provides the health insurance coverage that farmers need and often can’t get. But, unlike other specialty crop farmers, Scott does this full time. I once commented on the stellar nature of his produce at the Virginia market and his response was “I do this full time, I’d better know how to do it!” And he does. You can learn more about Kudrle Farms at their website, www.kudrlefarms.com, and their Facebook page www.facebook.com/KudrleFarms. Or you can stop by the Virginia Market Square farmers market on Thursdays 2:30-6pm on Silver Lake at West Chestnut, or Hibbing Farmers Market on Tuesdays 2-5 and Saturdays 9-1 north of Hwy 37 across from McDonald’s.

Profile 56: Drivin' a tractor at age 5

Geary Shaw on his farm

The music blares all night in Geary Shaw’s high tunnels….to keep the bears away.  And the sprinkler propped on top of a ladder delivers well water all day……to keep the outside crops like squash and corn going in this drought.  They’re protected from bears and abundant deer by an electric fence.  Crops like tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower fill the two large high tunnels and are drip irrigated.  Geary and Deb bought these 60 acres near Embarrass in 1997.  We’re standing on the 20 acres with gardens and hoop houses.  The other 40 are across the road and kept in a forest management program.

Farming is in Geary’s blood.  He grew up on a farm in Indiana, drove a tractor by age 5 and farmed his grandpa’s land at age 13.  Geary provided the labor, and the old man gave him 1/3 of the profits.  He took a break to go to diesel mechanics school and worked in that field for 5 years.  But farming was in his blood.  So he went back, working on a 2,500 acre farm that grew corn for ethanol and soybeans, as many other farms did.  But most of this farm was focused on peppermint and spearmint, perennials that are grown like hay and mowed.  After mowing, they are raked up and blown into rolling tanks and taken to the still where they are steamed until the oil floats.  The oil goes into 55-gallon barrels (about 550 pounds of oil).  It’s typical to get about 60 pounds per acre, so 9 acres would fill a barrel.  Wrigley’s and Colgate bought the oil, and you know the rest of that story.

The farm also grew 80 acres of onions, yielding about 1,000 bushels per acre.  They sorted and bagged them and sold them to Kroger’s distribution center in Louisville.  Diversified farms like that were not so common in Indiana and Illinois where I grew up.  Most of my farming relatives had corn and soybeans and hogs or cattle.  But smaller, diversified farms growing “specialty crops” as the non-commodity crops are known, are the norm in northern Minnesota.  And that’s what Geary has now.  Homegrown in Embarrass, the company that he and his wife Debra run, provides fresh produce to several area retailers and to many neighbors and friends who stop by to get their veggie fix.

Tomatoes are close to ready in early August

It fed their family of four with fresh and preserved produce for many years.  And it contributed to the Babbitt Farmers Market (which is no longer running).  Geary established a relationship with Natural Harvest Food Coop and still supplies them with local produce.  And his farm is one of five participating in the experimental aggregated CSA begun by the Rutabaga Project this year.  The CSA collects produce from multiple farms and “aggregates” it into share boxes which are then delivered to customers.  If the experiment is successful, the program will expand to sell CSA shares next year.

Early in the spring, about March 15 when the snow is likely still on the ground, Geary starts everything from seed under grow lights in the family room.  He moves the crops outside as early as he can.  The high tunnel nearest the house is heated, so he can get a good head start on tomatoes and peppers.  He plants things like broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower later in the year to avoid bugs and harvests them in October.  He prefers to outsmart the bugs so that he doesn’t have to use insecticide sprays.  Good quality soil prevents pests, too, and Geary tests his soil every year and adjusts.  His friend a few farms away provides plentiful manure.  Geary hauls it home in the fall and lets it sit over the winter before mixing it in with the soil in spring.

The south high tunnel and adjacent crops

He relies on Seeds ‘N Such in Graniteville, South Carolina for non-GMO seeds.  Like Geary, farmers up here usually have a favorite seed provider.  Some use Johnny’s in Maine, some Jung’s in Wisconsin, many use High Mowing Seeds in Vermont, and some buy locally from Seed Treasures in Angora, Minnesota or North Circle Seeds in Vergas, Minnesota.  More and more folks are saving their own seeds, too.  Many of us ran into seed shortages in 2020 and again in 2021 as folks, spurred by Covid’s disruption of the food supply chain, began planting their own gardens.  And then the 100-year drought of 2021 slowed us all down a bit.

Geary uses grow lights inside early in the spring and high tunnels or hoop houses for season extension outside.  They allow him to plant early and late and to avoid the frost damage that so often threatens Embarrass, Minnesota.  For example, as I write this on August 13, Geary reports 35 degrees last night.  Embarrass is located in a low basin of the Embarrass River Valley and parts of Geary’s land are wet in a normal season.  Heading out his back door into the wooded area, he tells me you would usually get your feet wet…. not this year!  But he plants on the high spots and, even this year, has stellar-looking crops.  Let’s cross our fingers for rain late in the season!

A row or two of gladiolas brightens up the field

Profile 55: Sax-Zim Bog is ALIVE with biodiversity!

Fringed orchid

While this column usually focuses on farmers and large-scale gardeners, I decided to take a slight detour into our local Sax-Zim Bog to explore what grows and thrives there.  The bog attracts visitors from all over the world, especially for its winter birding opportunities.  The bog is actually a mix of habitats including “black spruce and tamarack bog, upland aspen/maple forests, floodplain forest, sandy upland pine stands, rivers, lakes, farms, meadows and towns” according to the website (https://saxzim.org )  It encompasses an amazing 300 square miles extending from  just south of Zim almost to Floodwood north-to-south, and stretches from the Toivola Swamp to  Stone Lake and Hwy 53, west-to-east.  The bog is probably best known for its birds, especially Great Gray Owls in winter and hard-to-find species like Yellow-throated Vireos in the summer, it is home to over 2,400 species of living wonder.

I attended the bog Bioblitz on Saturday, July 17—where 65 citizen-naturalists in ten teams led by area experts found and identified over 400 species of spiders, insects, butterflies and ladybugs, dragonflies and damselflies, birds, bees, moths, lichen, fish and aquatic life, wildflowers, plants, sedges, shrubs and galls (growths on plants).  It was pretty amazing to see the array of flora and fauna collected that day!  I’m no expert, so it was all new to me.  But to the well-versed folks gathered for the event, there were some exciting, rare finds in the bee and gall categories. 

Sundew

The entire bog area was formed after the last glacial retreat in Minnesota, about 10,000 years ago.  It is a wet and poorly drained area not really suitable for agricultural development or large settlements.  It was discovered by a traveling minister in 1963 who saw six Northern Hawk Owls while driving down Highway 7.  It turns out this family of owls was one of the first documented nesting in the lower 48 states.  The Minnesota Ornithologist’s Union heard about the siting and folks started coming to see for themselves.  The bog was catapulted to fame in 2004-5 when hundreds of owls came south due to a shortage of voles in Canada.  That spurred Duluth bird guide Mike Hendrickson and the town of Meadowlands to cooperate in creating the Sax-Zim Bog Winter Bird Festival in 2008.  The festival continues and brings folks from far and wide to our unique wetland.

It has been designated as an “Important Bird Area” by international and national organizations.  But three area folks took that designation a step further in 2011 when they formed Friends of Sax-Zim Bog to “preserve and protect the Sax-Zim Bog for future generations.”  Since then, Friends has purchased over 500 acres of bog in the area.  They specifically purchased Black Spruce bog which provides habitat for species like the Great Gray Owl that depend on large areas of undisturbed bog to survive.  In 2013-14, with local labor and materials, they built the Welcome Center at 8793 Owl Ave, Meadowlands, which now hosts field trips and other events year-round.

Bottled gentian

Volunteers and supporters of the bog have also constructed three boardwalks in various areas of the bog to highlight various bog characteristics.  Auggie’s Bogwalk, sponsored by Heidi and Ben Yokel in memory of a friend of the family who lost an infant son, spans a Fringed Gentian Bog with 360 feet of tamarack for walking.  The Bob Russell Bogwalk at Winterberry Bog is 1200 feet long! It was made possible by the Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Regional Trails grant and fundraising by Kim Eckert, longtime friend of Bob Russell, a dedicated bird advocate.  The third boardwalk is the Warren Woessner Bog Boardwalk through the Warren Nelson Bog, a Black Spruce bog.  This boardwalk was made possible by a generous gift form Warren Woessner and Iris Freeman.  There are also five completed trails and two under construction.  You can find a map and description of all the bog tracts at https://saxzim.org/about-sax-zim-bog/sax-zim-bog-land-tracts/

Social media has really helped to spread the word about this unique area.  The private group, Sax-Zim Bog on Facebook has 7,700 members!  Folks share amazing photos and videos of wildlife and bog plants they’ve seen as well as educational materials and related events.  A favorite is the frequent photos of “Manny” the tripod owl who lands on birders’ tripods and other posts and signs.  Facebook tells us that Sunday, July 25 is International Bog Day, established in Scotland in 1991.  Here is some brief information from Facebook “Bogs are peatlands of the north country. Around the world, these amazing ecosystems host bizarre plants including carnivorous pitcher plants and sundews, nestled among an often-floating carpet of sphagnum moss. Tamarack trees, spruce and cedars are joined by heath family shrubs such as bog rosemary and leatherleaf …. For centuries bogs have provided peat for fuel, and in Northern Europe, have revealed preserved human remains dating over 2,000 years old!  Today few bogs remain undisturbed. Canadian peatlands are mined, their peat being shipped to China to fuel power plants in order to supply the world with goods.  IBD promotes awareness of these fascinating, rare ecosystems and encourages preservation of bogs and other peatlands around the world.”

Between 5-6,000 folks from all over the U.S. and the world visit this bog each year.  Far from being just a “swamp,” (with all those negative connotations), bogs are home to rare orchids (first included photograph is of a fringed orchid seen on the recent bioblitz), and carnivorous plants that eat insects (see photo of the sundew also from the recent bioblitz) as well as an amazing array of wildflowers.  Bogs are peatlands, important carbon sinks and areas of rare biodiversity.  And Minnesota has six million acres of them.  Sax-Zim is probably the largest bog habitat at the southern end of the boreal forest.  Check it out!

Monkey flower

Profile 54: Min and Pat Baker grow award-winning veggies!

They met in Korea, her home country, when Pat was in the service there, and eventually made their home in Hibbing where Min became known for “Min’s Egg Rolls” at the fairgrounds.  For their day jobs, he was a firefighter and she worked at the hospital.  In retirement, they bought the Side Lake Store and moved to lake country.  But living at your business makes retirement really challenging.  They decided to actually retire in 1999 and purchased the home they’re in now, on a hill outside Side Lake with 40 acres of rolling hills and woods.  I visit on a breezy warm day in July and get to enjoy the rose garden and flower gardens at every turn.

I notice that all of the “fences” are actually antique iron bed head- and footboards—there must be a hundred of them—each fence unique.  I ask Min about them.  She tells of a friend inviting her to “dumpster dive” and finding the first few.  Once folks heard that she liked them, they started dropping them off and she continues to receive them periodically, gifts left at the driveway and repurposed to ornate border markers.  The fencing for the huge vegetable and berry gardens is more substantial, though, designed to keep the bears and the deer from the nearby woods out. The dining room table is covered with state, county, and regional fair ribbons that Min has won for her fruits, vegetables and flowers.  I look through them, realizing that there are boxes more nearby.  From small blue first place ribbons to huge rosettes with streamers, Min has won them all.  I spent my summers at age 16 and 17 making awards just like these at a factory in an old, un-air-conditioned building in downtown Rock Island, Illinois.  I think the wage was $1.65/hour, and I worked 3:30-9:30pm every night and all-day Saturday (a devastating schedule for a young woman wanting to hang out with friends).  Just out of curiosity, I turned one of the large ribbons over to see where it was made and sure enough, Regalia Manufacturing Company is still operating 50 years later.

We head outside to pick raspberries and walk the beds of squash, dill, cucumbers, lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, onions, potatoes, cabbage, beans, peas, strawberry spinach (which I had never seen before), and apple trees.  Pat and Min’s stand (Made by Min) at the Cook and Virginia Farmers Markets sells jams and jellies, pickled cucumbers and beans, antipasto, authentic Korean kimchi, several kinds of fresh as well as home-canned salsa, quick breads and whatever vegetables are ready that week.  As we walk the vegetable beds that produce this abundance, I notice that they’re all well-mulched with leaves—and that makes perfect sense when you have acres of woods. 

But I don’t see any bugs and I ask Min.  She is noticing this too.  They don’t spray here—they count on natural predators and hand-picking bugs when they appear.  Min says that she doesn’t spray because she and Pat eat from the gardens, too, and she wants her customers to have the same freedom from pesticides that she enjoys.  She doesn’t do much watering, either, because she doesn’t want to run their well dry.  They soil is extremely sandy here and any water runs right through it.  But the plants look stable despite this summer’s drought.  The raspberries are plentiful, and we pick two pails full which Min sends home with lucky me!

What we really notice is the lack of bees.  They’re usually buzzing through gardens like this, especially the raspberries.  And we don’t see a single one.  The Honeycrisp apple tree just up the hill has only two tiny apples on the whole tree.  Something is up.  We humans rely on bees to pollinate everything—they are absolutely essential to the food chain.  According to www.pollinator.org,, “Birds, bats, butterflies, moths, flies, beetles, wasps, small mammals, and most importantly, bees are pollinators.”  You might have noticed that this hasn’t been a good year for any of these pollinators in northern Minnesota.  The drought has impacted us all, from the bears down to the flies.  And loss of habitat has, too.  Plant a pollinator area, urges the state of Minnesota.  The Board of Water and Soil Resources will show you how and help you (http://bwsr.state.mn.us/l2l#:~:text=Minnesota%20residents%20can%20apply%20to,for%20their%20total%20reimbursement%20request) 

But another factor may be operating in the case of bees: neonicotinoids, water-soluble insecticides that can be applied to the soil around plants to protect from unwanted insects.  According to Texas A&M extension, “Although these low-level exposures do not normally kill bees directly, they may impact some bees’ ability to foraging for nectar, learn and remember where flowers are located, and possibly impair their ability to find their way home to the nest or hive.”  More research is needed, but something is reducing the bee population across the U.S., and this is one candidate.

We end our visit on the patio surrounded by lilies, next to the garage with a large loft housing Min’s sewing room.  If you’ve seen her at farmers markets, you know that Min makes amazing Minnesota mittens, sports-themed throws and warmers and children’s jackets and jumpsuits.  Her Made by Min Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/MinMadeIt ) can keep you up to date on products.  And you can find Pat and Min at the Virginia Market Square on Thursdays 2:30-6 on Silver Lake and on Saturdays 8am-1 in the Cook City Park all summer. 

Profile 53: Foraging diaries by Kaare Melby with the Finland Food Chain

“Living in sync with the cycles of the land can build a powerful connection with your local environment, and incorporating locally harvested wild foods in your diet is a wonderful way to celebrate and create local food traditions.  In an effort to document and share the experience of following the gathering cycle, Kaare Melby compiled a series of monthly articles about his experiences living through the 2020 Gathering Cycle. These articles first appeared in the Finland Food Chain newsletter.”  Kaare has given me permission to excerpt them here as a guest column for Grown on the Range.  After all, wild food is the original and enduring food grown on the Iron Range!

Here are Kaare’s writings from May through December 2020, quoted by month.  You can find a summary of all the foraging opportunities up north at the Finland Food Chain website http://finlandfoodchain.org/wp/resources/the-gathering-cycle/

May

“Winter has given way. The maple sap season is well over, the birch sap season is coming to a close, the fishing season is starting, the snow is mostly melted, and it’s time to start gathering roots! This time of year, wild roots are still sweet from their winter slumber. One of the most widely known wild plants is the humble dandelion (Taraxacum officinale), and right now is the best time to harvest dandelion roots and their tender young spring greens.  Another root you can harvest this time of year is wild ginger (Asarum canadense). In order to harvest wild ginger this time of year, you need to know where it is growing, because there are no leaves growing above ground to find yet.  Another thing to keep your eye on are sucker fish. The local wisdom is that the sucker fish start running in creeks when the aspen leaves are ‘the size of a mouse’s ear’.”

June

“The world has turned green! With the warm weather, and some rain (finally) all of the plants are booming with growth. The dandelion greens are getting bitter, but they are putting out their beautiful yellow flowers. These often despised or ignored flowers hold delicious culinary opportunities, such as jelly, wine, or even battered and fried! Another wild food that has sprung forth is spruce tips, which are the new growth at the ends of spruce trees. These yummy tree-greens are high in vitamin C and taste slightly of citrus. You can eat them raw, cook them like a vegetable, dry them for tea, or make them into jelly. And last, but not least, the plantain leaves have started to appear. Plantain is a very useful medicinal plant that helps with pain, cuts, and burns. But it is also an edible green. Add it to salads or cook it like any other leafy green.”

July

“As summer starts to ramp up, we are on the verge of the next great gathering opportunity: berries! While we wait for that bounty to arrive, there are a few other yummy wild treats waiting for us out there. Due to dry conditions, there have not been many wild mushrooms around my neck of the woods yet. I have seen a few Oyster Mushrooms around, but they have been few and far between. If we get some rain, I really suggest you go out and look for them, I am sure they are ready to explode once the rain finally comes. The Wild Mint is still going strong and will continue throughout the summer. It’s the perfect addition to drinks, cold and hot alike. The Clover has started to bloom. Clover is great for tea, or a foraging snack. For tea, pick the flower heads and either use right away or dry. As a foraging snack, just pluck the purple parts out of the flower and eat raw. Lambs Quarter is a great wild green that can be used like spinach, kale, or swiss chard. Also called goosefoot, fat hen, and many other names. Lambs quarter is from the Chenopodium family which is the same family as quinoa. The seeds can even be collected later in the season and cooked just like quinoa. But right now the part of the plant to collect are young green leaves that are really good cooked or fresh. Fire Weed is another wild edible the is thriving this summer. It’s not quite blooming yet, but soon we will have a sea of green and purple to harvest!” You can use every part of the plant!

August

“When I close my eyes, I see nothing but blueberries. Blueberries are only ripe for a short period of time, but we want to be able to eat them year-round, especially in the winter. So we must go into “blueberry mode” to harvest and freeze enough to last a whole year. Juneberries are a little hit or miss this year. The drought we had earlier in the year really hurt some juneberry bushes and the berries just dried up before they were ripe. But in other places where there was a little more rain, the juneberry bushes are just filled with berries! You can freeze juneberries for winter use, but they really are best fresh. Thimbleberries and raspberries are also ripe. Chokecherries are just starting to ripen now. I like to wait until they are very dark – nearly black – before I harvest them. They make wonderful jelly, and excellent wine. The chanterelles are here! It’s a dry year, so the wild mushrooms are struggling. But there is still a bounty to be found. If you want to go out mushroom harvesting, your best bet is to go out after a good rainstorm. In addition to chanterelles, I’ve also seen lobster mushrooms and boletes out there. If you have never harvested wild mushrooms before, it’s best to go with someone who has experience. Wild mushrooms can be a tasty and bountiful wild food, but picking and eating the wrong ones can have unpleasant, and even deadly results. Hazelnuts are ripening, and the game of letting them get as ripe as possible before they fall and are eaten by squirrels has begun. Technically they can be harvested now, but the longer you wait, the better they are. They are covered with tiny little stickers that poke your skin. If this bothers you, you may want to wear gloves when harvesting these nuts. Hazlenuts are one of the few tree nuts that grow in our area, and some years they can really produce a sizeable bounty.”

September

“Mushrooms and wild rice have consumed my life for the past few weeks. This year, the mushrooms came late, but they came on strong. Interestingly, the drought seems to have helped the wild rice this year. Too much water at the “floating stage” of wild rice development can actually uproot the plants. The experience and connection to the land that comes from gathering wild food in such abundance is awe-inspiring. Being able to harvest enough food in one day to feed your family for a whole year is a magical experience. As the nights get colder, new opportunities arise. Some of us have already seen frost! But with the frost comes the highbush cranberries. So keep an eye out for bursts of red in the forest. And now that the frost is coming, it is time to harvest roots again – the cold triggers the plants to transfer energy down to the roots in the form of sugars and other compounds. If you have found a good patch of wild ginger during the summer, this is a good time to start harvesting some roots for the winter.”

October

“This is the time to go grouse hunting. Grouse are fairly large forest-dwelling birds that eat berries and tree buds – thus transforming wild plants that we can’t (or don’t want to) eat into nourishing and tender meat. Grouse can often be found along trails in the morning eating small pebbles that aid in the bird’s digestion. If you want to go grouse hunting, you need to get a license from the DNR. It’s also a good idea to learn how to hunt from someone who has experience. Another wild food that can be gathered this time of year is acorns. Acorns are an ancient food source that has been consumed by traditional people all over the world. In Europe, it was mainly replaced with grains, but there are some areas that still make acorn bread and acorn porridge to this day. Acorns are a complete food, and they provide a healthy balance of protein, fat, and starch. But, they do require some processing to remove the unpalatable tannins. Check out this video to learn more about processing acorns: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QitkIGNwUgs “

November

“It’s hunting season. Deer hunting is like an annual meditation. You get up early and trek out into the middle of the woods, then you sit silently for hours. And if you are EXTREMELY lucky, you might see a deer. Deer or not, I always enjoy the time I spend in the forest hunting deer. Walking in the woods to and from your hunting spot is a good time to spot chaga. Chaga is a medicinal fungus that grows on birch trees. Folk medicine describes all sorts of reasons you might want to drink some chaga tea. Another fun winter tea is cherry bark tea, which is made by simmering chokecherry or pin cherry twigs in water. And, of course, you can make evergreen tea, which is particularly good for treating those respiratory sicknesses that are common in this season.”

December

“As the darkness settles in, and we begin to get used to the early sunsets, you might think that there is no more wild food gathering to be done. But grouse hunting extends until the beginning of January and there is still time to get out and harvest them. Another way to gather wild food this time of the year is to go ice fishing. And as the ice gets thicker on the lakes, more and more people will be flocking out to set up their ice houses. Remember, you need a fishing license to go ice fishing.”

“It’s fun to get creative with the flavors of our local wild foods. I encourage all of you to experiment with these wild foods, find ways you like to eat them, then let us know what you find! Together we can develop what the Japanese call Kisetsukan, roughly translated as “the celebration of seasonal produce”. Each day has it’s own special flavor, just waiting for us to discover it. So go out and find the abundance that surrounds us! Happy foraging!”

Profile 52: North Cedar Valley Gardens, originally published in Hometown Focus

In 2020, growers on the Iron Range had a spring drought and a June frost and hail and we thought that was a bad year, but it didn’t top 2021 for weather disasters.  Growers all over northern Minnesota lost whole crops to frost, then to severe heat and wind, and then to frost again.  Throw a little hail in there with the few storms we’ve had, and you’ve got the picture.  Whew!!  When I asked Rich and Patty Johnson if I could come visit their North Cedar Valley Gardens near Silica, Patty said “oh it’s been such a bad year for growing…...”  But I told her that’s what I want to write about—it’s the reality of growing in northern Minnesota!

Forty-three years ago, Rich and Patty bought these 35 acres and moved here into the woods, with just a hunting shack and an outhouse, AND a 9 month old baby.  With the help of Patty’s father, a carpenter with his own sawmill, they built an array of amazing log structures all from local trees.  They started gardening to feed their growing family of five children and just kept on doing it into retirement.  Today, North Cedar Valley Gardens is a meticulously maintained landscape of woods, a half-acre pond which they dug, 2 acres of fenced gardens, a half-dozen home-made high tunnels, a “pit” greenhouse, a lovely home and several log outbuildings.

A couple of years ago, before the price of lumber went sky-high, Rich replaced 6-foot electric fencing with 10-foot deer fencing around the huge garden areas.  The deer managed to jump the 6-foot fence, but none have made it past the new one.  Rich also built the high tunnels out of PVC pipe and cattle panels.  When I visit in June, the plastic is off and the bees from Patty’s hive are coming in to do their job.  We’ve in a fairly intense drought, so the pump is running from the pond, sending water underground to the high tunnels and garden areas where sprinklers are set up and 5-gallon buckets are stacked for hand-watering the 110 squash and pumpkins.

All of the plants begin inside the house in a large sunroom supplemented by grow lights.  We’re talking large quantities—like 200 tomato plants and 2,300 onions and beans in the multiple hundreds.  There’s just about every kind of vegetable here including multiple varieties of cauliflower, Chinese cabbage, and of course rutabagas.  I ask which veggie they plant the LEAST of, and the answer is rutabagas—only 24 of those.  As the starts grow, Patty makes “plugs” and plants them outside when the time is right.  The soil is sandy here, so they use compost from a Meadowlands hatchery, bone meal, and coffee grounds for soil amendment.  Bugs are controlled by hand-picking them off the plants.  Rich tills a few of the larger areas with a small tractor, but Patty uses a broadfork for the rest, including the high tunnels.  Broadforks are amazing tools—the topic of another column soon.

Patty uses a Jang seeder (photo) and a pinpoint seeder for most of the planting.  The 45-foot rows in the large gardens go fairly quickly with these human-powered tools.  The bucket on Rich’s small tractor serves as the wheelbarrow.  Their son plants and tends the onions, Rich handles the squash and pumpkins, and Patty does the rest.  It’s a full-time job tending this operation and the Johnsons are retired, so thoughts of “how many more years can we do this….” crop up now and then.  But for now, the gardening is going ahead full force.

Rich also manages the Hibbing Farmers Market and Patty acts as treasurer. 

Just when summer’s work begins to slow a bit, canning season begins.  Patty always canned their garden produce for their family.  Seven mouths to feed meant 52 quarts of everything, 1 for each week of the year, from pickles and jams to beans, peas, summer squash, broccoli, rhubarb, and tomatoes.  And then drying and cool storage for garlic, onions, winter squash, potatoes, carrots, rutabagas and herbs.  The pit greenhouse (into the ground 4 feet) attached to an outbuilding gets so hot in the summer that Patty uses it to dehydrate some produce and herbs.  Their Facebook page (Cedar Valley Gardens) shows photos of dried kale being ground into powder last fall.  She still cans for sale at the farmers market.  Dilly beans are a big favorite there. 

Home-made high tunnels using cattle panels and PVC

What used to be a large chicken coop will soon become the new pack shed where produce is cleaned and packaged for sale at the market.  You’ll find Rich and Patty there at the Hibbing Farmers Market every Tuesday 2-5 and Saturday 9-1.  The market is located just east of the intersection of 169 and 37 at the east edge of Hibbing, on the north side of 37, right across from McDonald’s.

Profile 51: Byrns Greenhouse grows locally in Zim!

Thousands of rootless cuttings, through many months of tender care, become the fourteen hoop houses teeming with plants in May when Byrns Greenhouse opens for the season.  Yes, you read that right, thousands of cuttings, and each is without roots, requiring a careful process of rooting in order to develop and flourish into maturity.  They come from all over the world, from South Africa to South America, arriving in the dead of January winter to a farm on the border of the Sax-Zim Bog of Minnesota—a 147,000-acre nature preserve (another story of the wondrous things that grow up here).

Bob Byrns’ father Francis bought the farm in 1956 from the Wise Brothers of Red Wing.  Twenty-eight acres had been planted in celery for a number of years, but Francis planted potatoes in 1958 and won the Minnesota state record for yield per acre.  He switched to cauliflower and rutabagas before settling on carrots in the 1970’s.  According to the Byrns Greenhouse website, they grew, harvested, packed, and shipped their produce from warehouses on the farm.  “In 1969, the warehouses burned to the ground and from the ashes, Byrns Greenhouse was born.”  Francis bought the metal, bent it into hoops, and put up a greenhouse by hand.

In 1976, they added sod to the farm and added a second sod farm.  In 1977, Francis fell ill and Bob and his wife Pat and their two daughters came home to help.  Bob’s sister Louise came in 1980 and joined the crew.  And then in August of 1983, the huge greenhouse literally blew away in a storm.  By November 1, the family had built a new one which still stands today.  They expanded to five hoop houses and today there are fourteen.  Francis died in 1991 but his wife Peggy lived on the farm until her death at age 95 in 2015.  She was known to tell Bob “Good thing your father’s not here….the rows aren’t straight enough.”

These days, Bob and Pat’s daughter Deb Erickson is running the business.  Her two sons and their spouses all work in the greenhouse.  You can usually find Bob and Pat there too when Bob’s not in his 1-acre garden nearby.  He donates much of his produce to the Salvation Army in Virginia.  (Their other daughter, Barb, runs a dairy farm near Northfield.)  Byrns Greenhouse no longer includes sod, but it is still a working farm.  Chickens handle bug patrol inside the growing areas.  And the flock of Baby Doll sheep get to graze what grows under the plant benches when the season is over, the weather cools, and the greenhouse doors can shut them in.  They leave it clear of all unwanted vegetation by the time they’re done.  I get to meet Rick the ram, a friendly dude who comes when his name is called.

I find Deb watering in one of the many greenhouses.  One well serves the entire farm.  It is a very warm day outside and it is more than tropical inside these humid spaces.  She moves quickly from one bench to the next, having done this thousands of times.  I follow and ask questions.  Do you use fertilizer?  Yes, for the ornamentals, a time-release organic plant food that is applied only once in the season.  For the edible plants, fertilizer isn’t necessary.  All they need is water and sunlight.  There is 40,000 square feet of growing space here.  I ask about overwintering plants like canna lilies.  Yes, they do!  A “grow house” is kept just above freezing all winter and succulents and bulbs go dormant there.  Starting in February, they start to heat the “big house” and move the bulbs and succulents in.  They gradually warm up as the greenhouse warms up.

Byrns Greenhouse takes pride in not using herbicides and pesticides or any synthetic products.  Their website states “We believe in growing locally, with organic practices, using our own soil and water for sustainable agriculture.  We will not compromise our quality, selection or service by using anything that may harm your family.  For us this is the only way we will grow!”  That takes some dedication…and sometimes education too.  When a chicken crosses the aisle in a greenhouse, not everyone is amused.  And not everyone realizes what voracious pest devourers chickens can be.  Or why that might be better for your health than spraying pesticides.  But folks are willing to learn and Byrns is willing to teach.

Everything comes to life by May when all of us are anxious for the outside growing season to start, though June can be fickle in northern Minnesota.  Some of us take risks planting outside right away and others are cautious, protecting plants in a home greenhouse or basement growing area.  At my house we are lucky to have both.  And the temptation is strong to get everything outside.  But the average last date of frost in zone 3a is the end of May, so we have to be patient.  But the growing season eventually arrives, and we are ecstatic…. all of our plant dreams coming true.  Happy growing to all!

Profile 50: Area Farmers Markets are Opening for the Season! originally published in Hometown Focus

Farmers market season is here!  The Grand Rapids and Aitkin Farmers Markets are already open and the other six area markets will open soon.  They’re located in city parks and parking lots and empty lots and wherever they can find space to use, preferably without cost.  Most farmers markets up north are run by volunteers or vendors who double as managers.  Any joining fees that markets charge vendors are used for advertising or space rental.  So the profit generated at a farmers market goes directly to the farmers and other vendors who sell there.  Most markets around here have guidelines that limit vendors to those who make/grow/produce their goods within a certain number of miles of the market.  That means that the dollars you spend at a farmers market stay local and support the local economy.

Farmers markets are a tiny slice of food sales when you look at all food dollars spent.  But they are one of the ways that customers can buy directly from local farmers.  That means that you can ask the farmer how the food was produced—is this beef from grass fed cows, or are your pigs pastured, or do you use pesticides on your tomatoes, or how much sugar does your strawberry jam contain?  There’s something comforting about knowing where your food comes from and how it was made or grown.  There are also limitations—and seasonality is the main one in the northland.  I manage the Virginia Market Square Farmers Market and we always have someone who comes at the beginning of June asking when we’ll have tomatoes and sweetcorn.  That means that farmers markets have to be educators too.  If you want to eat fresh and local, you’ll be eating asparagus, rhubarb, chives, lettuce, spinach and some herbs in June, but that sweetcorn and those tomatoes don’t ripen until at least late July or August.  Zucchini you can get in early August, but winter squash like butternut or Hubbard won’t be ready until late September at least.  And pumpkins are ready just in time for Halloween.

Many of our area markets accept SNAP/EBT payments and FMNP checks.  SNAP stands for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and FMNP stands for Farmers Market Nutrition Program.  Both are funded by the USDA and are part of the Farm Bill.  Most markets also participate in “Market Bucks,” a matching program funded by the Minnesota Legislature and administered by Minnesota Hunger Solutions.  Each of these programs aims to increase the purchase of fresh local food at farmers markets by recipients.  In all cases, the market vendors reap the benefits in the amount they’re able to sell.  For the past several years, some area markets have offered the Power of Produce Club for kids.  Each child gets $2 worth of tokens to spend on veggies or fruit at the market.  And this year, several markets will pilot the Power of Produce Plus program for seniors.

Each market is unique in its mix of vendors.  Some include craft vendors as well as food.  Before COVID, many markets offered children’s activities and entertainment.  And we hope that can return sometime this summer!  Markets operate under the jurisdiction of the Minnesota Department of Agriculture and are considered part of the food service sector.  So we follow their rules.  The Minnesota Department of Health is also involved in the licensing of vendors who sell “value-added” products which add ingredients not grown on the farm.  And then there are all the Cottage Food producers who make jams, jellies and pickles and other foods that the Department of Agriculture considers “non-potentially hazardous” because of their acid and water content. 

Here are the area markets and opening dates, in order of opening:

Grand Rapids May 5, Aitkin May 8, Ely June 1, Virginia June 10, Hibbing June 15, Tower June 18,  Cook June 19, and the Mesabi East Environmental Education pop-up market opens July 31.  You can look up the days and hours that each market is open, the location, and whether they accept SNAP/FMNP in the farmers market directory at www.arrowheadgrown.org .  The markets are listed by region and the directory covers northeast Minnesota.  We’re working on adding a page to this website that gives the approximate month in which common vegetables and fruits are available in our northern climate…..coming soon!

A new feature for some markets is online ordering.  For example, the Grand Rapids market vendors list their products on the Open Food Network, an international open-source platform, so that customers can shop from home and pick up their order at the market.  Here’s a link to their online “store” as an example: https://openfoodnetwork.net/grand-rapids-farmers-market/shop#/shop .  Last year because of COVID,  the Cook Area Farmers Market conducted all of their sales via online ordering and pick up at the park with no live market.  This year they’ll be back with an in-person market at the park.  Some, like Virginia Market Square, use a combination of online and in-person sales.  For growers who work full time at off-farm jobs, online ordering provides a way to sell their produce without actually sitting at the farmers market.  It’s also a good way for markets to increase the products they have available.

In Minnesota, many markets are members of the Minnesota Farmers Market Association which provides insurance as well as marketing assistance, a farmers market manager guide, and an annual educational conference as well as weekly Zoom updates.  (www.mfma.org )  Many markets also join Minnesota Grown which publishes a statewide directory of producers and markets who sell directly to customers.  ( https://minnesotagrown.com/search-directory/ ) And the national Farmers Market Coalition keeps everyone up with all of the federal legislation and relevant programs.  (https://farmersmarketcoalition.org/ )

So check out the Arrowhead Grown directory and plan to visit your local farmers market as soon as it opens!  Thank you from all of the local growers and vendors who look forward to meeting you soon.

Profile 49: Family-owned and solar powered at Floodwood Farm & Feed, originally published in Hometown Focus

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.

Profile 48: Grown on the Range Farmshare to Pilot this summer, originally published in Hometown Focus

I’ve written about CSA farms here before, but just as a refresher, CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture.  It’s an arrangement where folks buy a “share” of farm produce from a local farmer up front, paid before the growing season begins, and they receive a box/basket of produce each week for a specified period of weeks or months.  In northern Minnesota, of course, that’s approximately June through October, but in some places it’s year-round.  The first documented CSA in the U.S. was established in western Massachusetts in 1985.  Since then, the idea has spread across the country.

I’m a bit of a research nerd, so I checked in to the latest research on CSAs.  In most of the U.S., CSAs are growing, morphing into new CSA-like arrangements, and competing for the local food/organic food market share.  There are no uniform state guidelines or regulations on what constitutes a CSA, so it can vary.  Some are all veggies and a few berries, some include meat, some are flower CSAs, some are purchasable at retail locations on a pay-as-you-go basis, some deliver, but most have grown out of a fairly specific set of values: that buying local is good, that small farms accountable to specific customers who want healthy food will treat the land with care, that building community is as important as profit,   and that alternative economic systems are worth trying out.  So, CSA farms started as a way to help folks eat local and healthy and to directly support their local farm economy.  With most food on our plates traveling an average of 1,500 miles to get to us, CSA food is different: it comes from the soil around us and the people who live nearby and it saves all that transport fuel.  And there are additional benefits.  If we want to know how the food was grown, we can visit the farm and ask.  CSA farms often welcome volunteers and interns who want to learn the trade.  And they buy their supplies locally too.

For the farmer, the CSA cuts out the middle folks—processors, warehouses, marketers, distributors, retailers and guarantees a fixed price for what is produced.  The farmer and the CSA members share the risk…of success or failure.  In areas where CSAs are competing with each other for members, you can imagine that innovations abound.  Want your CSA every two weeks?  Sure.  Want it delivered by mail?  OK.  Want the produce mixed with jams and jellies and breads?  Got it.  Want a discount for picking your own?  Yep.  Want to pack your own box from the variety of what’s available that week?  No problem.  Want to order and pay online?  Of course.  And on and on.  No matter the model, farmers need to keep marketing and retaining customers and customers need to keep up the demand for fresh local food each week.  There are CSAs in northern Minnesota, but not close by.  The CSA Guild lists eleven in the Duluth area and one in Grand Marais.  Minnesota Grown lists 80 in the entire state, but most are in central and southern Minnesota.

Now let’s shift our lens a bit farther north to the Iron Range of Minnesota, USDA Zone 3a, where we can have frost in July and snow in September.  Where we’ve mostly forgotten our foraging and farming roots.  And where your local grocer can get you bananas in January and sweet corn in April.  Despite this, we have had active local CSAs with 40-80 members each, but we’ve lost most of our CSAs on the Range in the past three years.  The farmers have given up on CSAs, at least for now.  Most have taken other jobs, or, in one case, kept the other job they’ve always had and turned their attention to a different project.  The exceptions are Fat Chicken Farm in Embarrass with about 20 shares, and a small brand new CSA just starting: Alfred Smith’s Farm outside of Hibbing.

With season extension strategies like hoop houses and high tunnels, storage options like root cellars, and new technology like deep winter greenhouses, you’d think we might be booming in CSAs.  But we’re not.  And given our recent past, I don’t think we’re lacking demand.  We just don’t seem to have farmers in positions where they can launch a CSA and stay with it.  So this summer, the Rutabaga Project, using a USDA grant, is piloting something new--an “aggregated CSA.”   We’re calling it the Grown on the Range FarmShare.  And we’ll be studying it in every detail to determine whether this model is feasible on the Range.

Here’s how it works: 1) recruit farms to participate in a weekly CSA of just a few shares running from June through October.  We have recruited these farms: Aspen Falls Farm in Cook, Bear River Farm in Bear River, Early Frost Farms in Embarrass, Homegrown in Embarrass, and Murray Family Farms in Angora.   The farmers will pick the week’s produce and wash it so that it’s ready to be aggregated.  2) find funds to pay for a limited number of experimental shares—AEOA Senior Services will generously fund the initial shares for five seniors.  3) Identify recipients—Virginia HRA has identified five seniors in public housing in Virginia as recipients--they will be asked to share what they receive as they are able.  These seniors will then act as a focus group to provide feedback for needed changes and improvements for next year.  4) Hire an aggregator who will travel weekly to each farm, collect the share ingredients, pack them into rolling coolers, and deliver them.  We have an aggregator on board for this summer, paid through the USDA grant. 5)  Get the appropriate insurance and license.  With insurance provided through Virginia Market Square farmers market and the market site as the cooler-washing facility, we have applied for the appropriate Retail Mobile Food Handler License.

We’re going to give it a try and keep meticulous records of the costs involved, evaluate our progress frequently with the participating farmers and recipients, and decide whether an aggregated CSA like this can pay for itself with sufficient subscribers.  Wish us luck—if we succeed, you’ll have the opportunity to buy a Grown on the Range FarmShare next year.

Profile 47: Old Ed Kuehl's Work Farm, originally published in Hometown Focus

The sap is running in Minnesota and all over the northland, folks are trekking out to the sugar bush to monitor taps and collect sap.  I grew up in Illinois where spring came a lot earlier than it does here in Minnesota, and we thought pancake syrup was that dark corn syrup in the Karo bottle.  That thick dark goo is made from cornstarch and flavored with a kind of molasses called refiner’s sugar….sounds awful to me now that I live in maple syrup land and have grown used to that wonderful boiled down maple sap with no flavoring needed.  Minnesota is the farthest north and the farthest west of the 19 maple syrup producing states.  Forty-seven maple syrup vendors are selling members of Minnesota Grown, but many more produce syrup just for their own use.

That’s why I went to visit Ed Kuehl near Embarrass last week.  I’ve known Ed for a few years and have had the pleasure of tasting his wines, all made from local produce.  He and his neighbors made 36 gallons of wine last year.   And now they’re boiling down maple sap.  When the daytime temperatures are above freezing and the nights are below freezing, the trees start yielding sap.  Ed says a tree should be at least 8” across at chest height in order to support one tap.  And it takes about 10 trees to yield a gallon of finished syrup.  Ed and friends have tapped maples in a number of places on the Range, but right now they’re tapping 400 trees near Gilbert on land owned by a friend in St. Paul.  The land has been logged, but they left all the maples—perfect!  I just assumed that tapping meant pounding in a tap and hanging a 5-gallon bucket, but this is much more sophisticated.

Clear 5/16” plastic drop lines run from the tap to light blue cross lines making their way past each tree and into a 1” mainline that drains by gravity into a 240-gallon tank.  The sap is then pumped using a vacuum system (that runs on two 12V batteries) into a 150-gallon “pick up tank” in Ed’s truck bed.  The syrup goes back to Embarrass and the poll barn with all of the tanks and tubes and boilers.  The team hooks up Ed’s portable reverse-osmosis system (first photo, above) to the 150-gallon tank and pulls out about 2/3 of the water so that boiling down the sap takes much less time.  (Sap is about 98% water.)  And then it goes into the massive fuel-oil-powered boiler.  It was the steam from that boiler that I saw coming out of the chimney in the poll barn as I drove up.

As I drove up, I noticed something different about this farm.  Everything looked so NEAT, no junk pile around, no old tractors, no chickens underfoot, no roosters crowing.  There were large clean pole barns and an enormous (about 2 acres) fenced-in garden.  And field after field of white spruce and red pine.  I asked about that.  When Ed and his wife bought this 116-acre farm in 1985, it had been logged over and the fields left fallow.  They reforested the entire farm with 1,600 white spruce and 2,500 red pines.  They used to have chickens, but, according to Ed, the raccoon got the eggs at night and the fox got the chickens by day.  He gave away the survivors to a neighbor and got out of the chicken and egg business.

But he kept up with beekeeping.  He had two hives last year but will have about six this year.  He winters his bees (and those of a neighbor) in a partially heated poll building.  And, just like the wine and the syrup, he and the neighbors make honey.  They also help to tend the large garden and preserve its yield.  Blueberries, raspberries, potatoes, asparagus, squash, beans, peas, and all the usual garden produce are tended by Ed and three others who help out.  Among the neighbors and the helpers, it all gets eaten or canned or stored in Ed’s basement root cellar.  That’s where the wine is too.  And onions hanging from the ceiling in old pantyhose legs—a great idea that I’m going to use at home!  He says it keeps them crisp all winter.

Like most farm owners on the Range, Ed worked off-farm.  He operated heavy equipment for St. Louis County, then retired as the road foreman in Tower.  Early on he worked in the mines but didn’t like it. And he served in the Army and Army Reserves for 28 years.  I got to know Ed when we both participated in a book group as part of Congregations Caring for the Earth.  Ed is a passionate advocate for the health of the planet, and his life reflects that passion.  I know that Ed’s religion is part of that inspiration, but I wondered if there was anything else that feeds it.  Ed told me that when he was 67, he was in the hospital with heart issues and having two stents put in.  They “lost” hime had to shock him to bring him back.  During the time he was “out,” he had what is usually called a “near death experience.”  He recalls floating up into outer space in an experience that was beautiful beyond description—so incredible that he still can’t describe it.  But it ended when he knew that he had to come back, he couldn’t leave this life yet.  It’s often the case that those who have had near death experiences return to life with a passion for living and no fear of death.

Now Ed is 85 and has survived the loss of his wife and two of his six children.  A relatively recent heart attack resulted in clearing a 99% blockage in two blood vessels.  But he’s regained his health and vigor and grown a beard.  His enthusiasm for all these local food adventures that he and his neighbors do for each other is contagious.  I went back home with two bottles of Ed’s wine and one of maple syrup and ordered some more seeds for my garden.  It’s spring in Minnesota!

Ed in his basement root cellar.

Grown on the Range Profile 46: Hemp Farming comes to the Range!

Hemp farming is coming back in the U.S. and in northeast Minnesota, and I’m glad to see it happen.  Hemp has a very complicated history.  In 1937, the Marijuana Tax Act made it prohibitively expensive to grow hemp, which wasn’t then, and isn’t now, the same thing as marijuana.  But in the 1930’s, those who didn’t want hemp products competing with their products won out, and hemp farming went dormant.  So, what products came from hemp that made it so threatening?  Here are a few examples: paper, newsprint, paint and varnish, lamp oil, nutritious seeds, canvas, rope and twine, fabric, shoes, carpets, caulking, brake/clutch linings, cardboard, fiberboard insulation, cement, stucco, mortar, salad oil and cooking oils, printing ink, solvents, lubricants, granola, birdseed and animal feed.  The hemp plant’s components—its stalk and the resulting bast fibers and hurds, its seeds and the resulting oil and food products, and its leaves and flowers and the resulting animal bedding and medicinal products yielded an enormous range of products.  The whole plant itself could also be used as boiler fuel and pyrolysis feedstock.

Hemp was the universal crop.  The U.S. Census of 1850 listed 8,327 hemp plantations of 200 acres or more.  That’s 16,543,000 acres of hemp being grown in 1850.  What for?  At that time all flags were made of hemp fabric, all bibles printed on hemp paper, all quality paints and varnishes were made from completely nontoxic hempseed oil and linseed oil, most twine and cordage almost all ships’ sails and covered wagon covers were hemp canvas, most clothing, rugs, and diapers were made of hemp fabric, and oil lamps all burned hempseed oil until 1859 when oil was discovered in Pennsylvania.  Rudolph Diesel invented the Diesel engine in 1896 to run on vegetable fuels like hempseed oil.  In fact, the first draft of the Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper.  Medical researchers documented amazing successes with cannabis flowers for pain.  Between 1842 and 1900, cannabis made up half of all medicine sold in the U.S.  It was listed as the primary treatment for over 100 illnesses.  And then, in 1937 with the Marijuana Tax Act, hemp (and all related products) was effectively banished. 

If you’re curious, it’s a great research project to sort that decision out.  But, for our purposes here, hemp died.  Until the 2014 Farm Bill, which allowed state departments of agriculture to administer pilot programs to study the growth, cultivation, and marketing of hemp.  Duh!  In 1938, just months after hemp was effectively banned, Popular Mechanics called hemp the “new billion-dollar crop.”  And some of you might remember that, during World War II, when our hemp supplies were cut off from abroad, the USDA circulated a film “Hemp for Victory,” begging U.S. farmers to grow hemp and offering them exemptions from military service if they did so.  And then it died again.  But, in 2014 we allowed ourselves to open that door once more.  The 2014 Farm Bill allowed state departments of agricuture to administer pilot programs to study the growth, cultivation and marketing of hemp.  In 2015 the Minnesota Industrial Hemp Development Act (MINN.STAT.18K) became law.

Our state’s pilot program operated from 2016-2020.  In 2018 the Farm Bill legalized hemp cultivation for commercial purposes and in 2019 the USDA set up the regulatory framework for hemp cultivation nationwide.  Each state had to submit a plan and Minnesota submitted our plan.  Hemp growers have to report the location of each variety of hemp they plant to the MDA for sampling.  A trained inspector takes a cutting from 30 different plants randomly selected, then dried for testing.  They’re looking for THC, the stuff in hemp’s cousin, marijuana, that makes you high.  The hemp must contain less than 0.3% which means, as my students used to say, that you’d have to smoke a telephone-pole-sized joint to get high on industrial hemp.

In the 8-county Arrowhead area of Koochiching, Itasca, Aitkin, Crow Wing, Carlton, Lake, Cook and St. Louis, 18 growers hold permits from the MDA to grow hemp.  Most of them are growing what is called “craft hemp,” a smaller variety bred for its cannabinoid content.  They’re extracting CBD oil or harvesting buds and flowers for smoking.  You’ve likely seen CBD products popping up everywhere.  Folks use it for pain relief, anxiety, depression and insomnia.  This is different from “medical marijuana” which does contain THC, the component that gets you high, and is heavily regulated.  Craft hemp products are sold over the counter in retail outlets and online by producers.  The producers that I’m familiar with are Finnegan’s Farm in Two Harbors which sells CBD gummies and Northern Roots Organics in Angora which sells smokable flowers and buds.

But there’s an industrial hemp farm on the horizon just south of the Bois Forte Reservation.  Renika Love and Love LLC are planting a crop this summer that will be used for the kinds of things that industrial hemp is best known for: textiles, biodegradable plastics, building materials, paper, and fuel.  Their project was recently selected for technical assistance and funding by the Northland Food Network.  The focus is to grow industrial hemp and to share that knowledge and experience to encourage other farmers to begin producing hemp for environmental and medicinal purposes.  The long-term vision is for the project, called Love’s Hemp House, to harvest enough hemp to produce products that can be sold to benefit the tribal community.  Love has identified an experienced hemp grower and an equipment operator/farm laborer who will join the project.  They are purchasing 40 acres to begin.  Love is a member of the Bois Forte Band and sees a future where hemp profits will be reinvested into providing fresh foods for the area in a Wiisiniwin Waakaa’igan (food house).  Maybe other area farmers will join the trend to reclaim this amazing crop.  I hope so!

Grown on the Range Profile 45: Free Range Eggs, originally published in Hometown Focus

Jan Dircks grew up outside of Aurora, Minnesota, and has raised chickens all her life.  Her husband Joe grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin.  Jan worked at Great Scott Meats for 20 years and Joe worked in the mines.  But they had this small 40-acre farm down by Zim, too, and in 2006 they got their first hens and started an egg farm.  I met Jan several years ago at the Virginia Market Square Farmers Market where she sold Dircks Farm eggs.  At the time, she had about 800 hens.  Now there are closer to 400. 

These hens produce what are called “pastured” eggs, which means that the hens are not caged and have free access to the outdoors.  In the winter, it’s a bit snowy in their large outdoor fenced area.  But in the summer, they alternate between two very large pastures where they eat greens and bugs in addition to their non-GMO feed.  They rotate from one pasture to another, eating down the grass and plants in one while the other re-grows.  Chickens are known to love grass and clover, dandelions and dock, and ticks and slugs, grasshoppers and crickets and spiders and flies.  And yes, they eat mosquitos!  While it’s easy to provide grass and bugs for the hens, it’s harder to find non-GMO feed.  The Dircks’ go-to source is Floodwood Farm and Feed where Nate and Maria Manner operate a solar-powered feed mill.  (check them out on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/Floodwood-Farm-Feed-163195343880162 ).

The day I visit Dircks Farm it’s warming up, 39 degrees, but extremely windy.  Most of the hens are in the large barn just hanging out.  Some are in the laying boxes, some on the roosts, and others walking around.  I meet many heirloom breeds as well as some “production chickens” bred to lay lots of eggs and not eat too much.  There are Red Laced Wyandottes, Delawares, Barred Rocks, Lakenvelders, Mottled Javas (the second-oldest breed in the U.S.), Black Sex-Links, Hy-Line Browns, Silver Laced Wyandottes, some Guinea hens, and a few roosters.  The most interesting-looking hen is a Buff Brahma—known to lay through the cold winter when others quit.  She has “furry” feet that help to keep her warm.

I comment that the roosters here are pretty laid back and friendly.  I’ve known of some mean roosters.  Jan says if a rooster gets mean, she kills him.  Period.  Okay, that explains these gentlemen.  Roosters rule the roost, as the saying goes, and that’s part of the pecking order established within every flock in the world.  The top chicken gets the best place on the roosting bar at night as part of this complex hierarchy.  The pecking order has an influence on feeding, drinking, egg laying, roosting, crowing, mating and even dust bathing.  Chickens are very social animals and enjoy being together, but they’re intricately organized in that togetherness.

The barn is huge and cleaning it every few days is quite a job—taking 5 hours or more.  Sometimes the grandchildren or the neighbor Thronson boys help.  There is no smell at all in this barn, contrary to what folks think a barn full of chickens might be like.  Every few days the huge roosting frames are moved out into the open field and all the wood shavings and chicken poo are shoveled out to a manure pile where they are composted for a year, then spread on the gardens.   Jan and Joe plant the gardens with squash and pumpkins, which grow like crazy.  They freeze in the fall and, in the winter, the hens eat them as a special treat.  They love pecking them apart.  Jan says that a huge pumpkin will turn into a paper-thin remnant of skin overnight.  Their winter feed is also supplemented with organic alfalfa meal, a green treat.  And in the spring the old hens are culled, bought by a neighbor woman who, with her family, butchers them and cans the meat.  New chicks or pullets join the flock, and the circle continues.

In the washing shed, a gleaming stainless-steel counter and sink covers one wall.  Opposite that wall are huge refrigerator/coolers stacked high with the signature yellow cartons of Dircks Farm eggs.  Each carton is signed by Jan or one of the grandchildren and marked with an “x” when it is re-used.  The grandchildren who live closest have learned the trade.  The oldest, Marley, knows the whole process—gathering, washing, candling, and packing the eggs for sale.  The grandchildren also love the horse and the miniature goats who share this place.  And, until a bobcat killed them all recently, there was a breeding pair of geese and 23 banties in a separate building.  The bobcat’s footprints in the fresh snow showed that it had tried to get into the big barn, too, but hadn’t been able to breach the doors, thank heavens. 

Dircks Farm sells eggs to Natural Harvest Food Coop in Virginia, the Positively Third Street Bakery in Duluth, Cobb Cook Grocery in Hibbing, and The Grocery Store and Floodwood Farm & Feed in Floodwood.  Jan delivers out of their pickup truck which is fitted with an insulated box built by their son.  The bottom of the box slides out for easy delivery.  This is what farm-to-grocery looks like.  No industrial-style egg production here, just Jan and Joe delivering eggs from pastured hens to buyers they know by first name.  That’s what a local food system is all about: the food, the humane treatment and care of animals, and the human connection.

Grown on the Range Profile 44: Stress and Depression Visit the Farm, originally published in Hometown Focus

This is the time of year when many of us get cabin fever—we’re tired of the cold and the short days and the prospect of weeks more of winter, and we just want out!  And if we’re pretty resilient, we make it through without that getaway to a sunny beach.  But what if we’re stressed, worried, overwhelmed by the threatened economic prospects of our livelihood, and alone?  Those of us who live on the Range are rural—we don’t always have community resources at our fingertips, or just down the street.  And for those who farm, there’s even more isolation—most farmers up here farm alone.  In the depths of winter, that can be tough.

Recent research in the Community Mental Health Journal (2020, 56:126-134) points out that agriculture, in general, has been identified as a stressful industry, and that farming and ranching may actually contribute to poor mental health.  For young and beginning farmers especially, factors like limited access to land, capital and affordable healthcare are prominent.  Personal finances and time pressures were topics of the most concern for young Midwest farmers in this research.  Most work an off-farm job, too.  And then there’s the weather, something we think about a lot right now in northern Minnesota.

This study, one of the most recent available on farmer depression, anxiety and stress, found that 71% of young farmers surveyed met the criteria for “generalized anxiety disorder” and 53% met the criteria for “major depressive disorder.”  That’s serious stuff for a category of independent farmers who don’t easily call a mental health center for help.  A 2019 study of mental health outcomes among farming populations worldwide noted that male farmers in the U.S. experience an increased risk of suicide compared to the general population.  According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, male farmers, ranchers and other agricultural managers have a suicide rate of 43.2 per 100,000 compared to an overall male suicide rate of 27.4 (https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/84275)    A 2020 study in the Journal of Agromedicine (25(3):258-358) addressed the connection of chronic farm stress with high rates of workplace injury and occupational health problems as well.

So, there’s a problem here.  Who has stepped in to help? In 2008 Congress approved the “Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance Network Act” to grant funds to states for behavioral health programs for agricultural workers.  But they didn’t appropriate any money for the legislation until 2019.  And the funds have been slow to reach states.  Some states have acted on their own, though, and Minnesota is one of them!  In 1993, Tom Mollinar, Dean of Farm Business Management at Ridgewater College in Willmar called the FEMA counselor who was working with flood victims and asked if he could work with farmers.  Ted Matthews said yes and it grew from there.  Mollinar wrote many grants to get support.  And eventually the Minnesota Legislature funded, and the Minnesota Department of Agriculture hired Ted Matthews on contract to provide mental health services to farmers. 

Matthews works independently, not inside the bureaucracy that many farmers want to avoid.  He is based in Hutchinson and he answers the phone any time of day including weekends. You can reach him at 320-266-2390 and there’s no paperwork required to talk with him.  When I talked with him on a 25-degree below day while writing this, he was as passionate as ever about his work.  He grew up in northern Minnesota and he loves talking to farmers.  Recently, Ted got the MDA to add rural mental health specialist Monica Kramer McConkey.  You can reach her at 218-780-7785.   Both Matthews and McConkey come from farming backgrounds so they can understand the situation farmers are facing.  The Minnesota Department of Agriculture’s website also features a Minnesota Farm and Rural Helpline which includes mobile crisis teams.  A printable brochure detailing all of the MDA programs to help farmers in stress is located here https://www.mda.state.mn.us/sites/default/files/docs/2020-08/copefarmstressbrochure8-2020.pdf  There’s also a collection of radio shows and podcasts about farm stress available at TransFARMation  https://www.rrfn.com/transfarmation/

Closer to home, the Miller Dwan Foundation just funded a rural mental health program in Duluth.  It was originally targeted to farmers but has expanded to miners and foresters.  It’s free and confidential.  This program launched in March 2020, the same month that Covid turned our lives upside down.  Program coordinator Rich Tunell is available at 218-730-6833 and he will meet you wherever you’re most comfortable or just talk on the phone.  Tunell emphasizes that asking for help isn’t about being “mentally ill” but about taking care of your mental health.

Covid 19 is worsening an already difficult situation.  According to the Farm Bureau, “A strong majority of farmers/farmworkers say the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted their mental health, and more than half say they are personally experiencing more mental health challenges than they were a year ago, according to a new American Farm Bureau poll.”  The American Farm Bureau Federation president recently said ““My takeaway from this survey is that the need for support is real and we must not allow lack of access or a ‘too tough to need help’ mentality to stand in the way.”

The stigma associated with asking for mental health services is strong, and it prevents folks from getting the help they need.  The National Farmers Union has also become involved.  “While farmers experience higher levels of psychological distress and depression than the general population, they are less likely to seek help for mental health issues. Even for those who do seek help, resources may not be readily available, as 60 percent of rural Americans live in areas with mental health professional shortages.  Recognizing these immense challenges, National Farmers Union (NFU) is partnering with Farm Credit and American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) to help family members, friends, and neighbors address the farm stress crisis in their own communities.”  Farmers Union members can learn more about this course at https://www.canr.msu.edu/managing_farm_stress/rural-resiliency-online-course-nfu.

If you’re a farmer in distress, take heart.  There are folks who want to help.  And the spring equinox is less than a month away!

Grown on the Range Profile 43: Deep Winter Greenhouses, originally published in Hometown Focus

We are in the “depths” of winter in northern Minnesota, even though we have just passed Groundhog Day (or Imbolc if you follow earth-based nature festivals), which is the half-way point between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox.  We still have plenty of winter left.  Our outdoor growing season is long gone but leave it to Minnesotans to invent a way to grow greens in the winter using materials you can easily get up here: lumber, glass, big rocks, dirt, and sunshine.  The Deep Winter Greenhouse (DWG) has gone through several re-designs, but it all started with a book by Carol Ford and Chuck Waibel in 2009: The Northlands Winter Greenhouse Manual.  They lived in Chippewa County, Minnesota, several hours south of here, but the idea caught on with growers in the far north too.

As part of a statewide initiative, the University of Minnesota Regional Sustainable Development Partnerships (RSDP) have worked with the College of Design’s Center for Sustainable Building Research to develop construction documents for three DWG designs.  UM Extension has conducted ongoing studies of each successive design. The RSDPs funded the construction of five models of the first design, DWG 2.0., in conjunction with community partners.  They were completed in 2017-18, so they’ve been operational for awhile.  The closest ones to us are in Finland (at the Organic Consumers Association’s Agroecology Center) and in Bemidji (at the Bemidji Community Food Shelf).

So, what IS a DWG?  It is a passive solar greenhouse that captures the sun’s light and heat during the day and stores the heat it in the earth to recirculate at night.  The greenhouse is oriented east-west with a large south-facing glass or polycarbonate wall built at an angle that will catch as much of the sun’s energy as possible, given the latitude.  The other walls are solid and very well insulated, often with reflective interior surfaces, and the north wall is sometimes earth sheltered, if the landscape permits.  It is the dirt, and sometimes gravel or large stones about four feet deep UNDER the greenhouse that act as a battery to store the heat that’s captured during the day.  That heat is blown underground with a fan and then ducted out and up into the growing area at night.

DWGs usually have a back-up heat source in case of prolonged cloudiness, but the stored heat from the sun usually lasts three days without recharging.  When I visited the DWG at the Agroecology Center in Finland, I saw damage where the stored heat was so intense that it melted some vinyl vent covers.  Wow, that northern sun is powerful!  One of the challenges with building this DWG was drainage—it is on a wet site, so they had to add fill around the insulated four-foot basement to prevent moisture from getting in.  And there are still some problems with mold in the back room.  All challenges that designers are working to solve.

Stefan Meyer who manages the Finland DWG has been harvesting all winter.  Lettuce, Asian Greens, salad mix, rainbow chard and napa cabbage.  By the time you read this, they will have planted spinach, arugula, and more kinds of lettuce.  These all need the lengthening days which tend to become noticeable by early February.  The greens are sold at the Finland General store, the oldest Cooperative in Minnesota.

The DWG at the Bemidji Community Food Shelf is located on the food shelf farm, just south of the food shelf building.  The farm manager and volunteers run the greenhouse and grow microgreens, radishes, chard, peas, and salad greens which are given away at the food shelf.  The farm produces an amazing amount of fresh produce for the food shelf, too.  But the DWG allows production to continue all winter while the farm fields lie frozen under the snow.  The food shelf is within the industrial park in Bemidji, which has a high water table---not good for underground heat storage.  They raised the foundation 12 inches, but now wish it would have been more.  They installed a berm around the foundation and added insulation but keeping the rock bed dry so that it absorbs the heat optimally is an ongoing challenge.  On a positive note, the Bemidji DWG has a metal exterior which has worked out very well and is maintenance-free.

Friends in Linden Grove have built a modified DWG as part of a complex that also houses their sauna, beekeeping storage room, work room, and root cellar.  Their greenhouse is on the south side and its south-facing wall is polycarbonate but is built like a regular greenhouse with a vertical wall and roof rather than the full wall at a 60-degree angle that is typical of DWGs.  It is built over a four-foot soil and sand heat storage area with pipes zigzagging through the sand, bringing the heat from the top of the greenhouse near the roof down into the soil/sand.  This greenhouse does not have a mechanism for blowing the stored heat back into the growing area.  But it stays at 40 degrees during the coldest part of winter, offering some warming to the greenhouse above.  They use mini-tunnels and space heaters to supplement heat to grow greens at this time of year.

The main benefit of this design, according to the owner, is that it can be used year-round.  It has side doors that can be opened in the summer and, for added heat in the winter, the sauna vents into the greenhouse.  And, of course, the structure houses multiple work areas for the farm as well as a root cellar to store crops beyond their harvest.

The newest DWG design is called a Farm Scale Winter Greenhouse. It is like a hybrid between a DWG and a hoophouse. The intent was to make a structure that is affordable to construct and operate. It might require a little more added heat than the early DWG models.  The new design can be found here https://extension.umn.edu/growing-systems/deep-winter-greenhouses#design-and-construction-2066621   Is a deep winter greenhouse in your future?  A University of Minnesota Extension publication might be helpful.  You can find “Starting a DIY Deep Winter Greenhouse Operation on a Budget” here https://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/199881/Starting-a-DIY-DWG-Operation-on-a-Budget.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y   And your local University of Minnesota Regional Sustainable Development Partnership can help.  Ours is the Northeast RSDP https://extension.umn.edu/regional-partnerships/northeast-rsdp .

Grown on the Range Profile 42: Introducing Arrowhead Grown, originally published in Hometown Focus

Demographic information can be pretty dry and boring.  But sometimes it helps us to understand the background for a topic, gives us the bigger picture.  Our topic here is farms and growing food.  And this column tries to tell the stories of farmers and growers in northern Minnesota.  I chose “Grown on the Range” as a title, using Range in the broadest sense to include the three Iron Ranges: Cuyuna, Mesabi, and Vermillion. The Tribal lands of Mille Lacs, Fond du Lac, Leech Lake, and Bois Forte are also contained in this area.  I tend to think of the greater Range in two parts, the five southwest counties and the five northeast counties.

The Arrowhead region of Minnesota—did you know that on January 10, 1925 “The Arrowhead” was selected as the official name for northern Minnesota?  A nationwide contest sponsored by the Northeastern Minnesota Civic and Commerce Association of Duluth gave us this name.  These ten counties of the Arrowhead (Pine, Carlton, Crow Wing, Aitkin and Cass in the southwest and Cook, Lake, St. Louis, Itasca and Koochiching in the northeast), are the proud home to 447,187 residents and 4,111 farms.  A farm for about every hundred residents.  About a third of those farms have annual sales of less than $2,500.  We are perhaps most familiar with those kinds of farms—they sell honey at the farmers market or jams and jellies at the local craft fairs, maybe eggs and produce at a farm stand or direct-to-customer meat sales. These farmers also hold off-farm jobs to provide steady income and health care benefits.  While writing this column for the past two years, I have only met two farmers who don’t have off-farm jobs.

The Arrowhead region varies widely in the market value of farm products sold between the five southwest counties ($107.4 million) and the five northeast counties ($31.4 million).  And so does farm size.  Farms over 500 acres, often growing row crops and/or livestock, number 247 in the southwest versus 104 in the northeast.  So it’s a diverse area when we’re talking about farming.  Only three of the ten counties noted an increase in the number of farms from the 2012 Census of Agriculture to the 2017 Census: St. Louis, Carlton, and Cook.  Cook County has an interesting profile here with a 78% increase in the number of farms (no increase in the acres of land farmed though), and a 338% increase in net cash farm income.  Interestingly, Cook County has the highest percent of farms that are farmed organically.  It also has the highest percent of farmland categorized as woodland (75%).  It appears that the local food movement and maybe forest farming is booming there along the North Shore of Lake Superior!

If we narrow our focus to just the “Iron Range,” the two counties where current or recently active mines are located, the landscape looks a bit different.  Together, St. Louis and Itasca counties contain 1,116 farms which do $24 million in sales. All are classified as “family farms” (98 and 99 percent respectively).  Forty percent of the farms in these two counties have sales less than $2,500 and 28% of farms are small--50 acres or less.  There’s not a lot of pastureland in this area, only about 12-15% of farmland, with half of the farmed land in crops and about a third in woodland.  Five hundred farmers here are listed as “new and beginning farmers” meaning that they have farmed less than 10 years!  And we need more if we’re going to feed ourselves in the future!

Many of the farmers in northern Minnesota grow what the USDA calls “specialty crops.” This category includes all fruits and vegetables, tree nuts, orchard crops, and maple syrup in addition to hops, Christmas trees, nursery crops, and floriculture.  To be considered a specialty crop, the item must be cultivated or managed and used by people for food, medicinal purposes, and/or aesthetic gratification.  (Specialty crops tend to be dwarfed by the quantities of crops eaten by animals, or sold as commodities—hay, corn, soybeans, oats, wheat--in the general Census of Agriculture.) So it’s hard to get county-level data for fruits and veggies there.  But it’s hard to find elsewhere too: in the Specialty Crop Census of Agriculture there are no county-level data at all.  So we have to rely on state data.  The entire state of Minnesota has 5,209 specialty crop farms.  About half of those farms grow vegetables, 1,061 are orchards and 638 are in berries with the remainder being Christmas tree farms, farms that produce maple syrup, nursery plants, flowers, and wood lots for short harvest. 

All of this background data points us to the future.  Our future, economically speaking as well as nutritionally speaking.  We spend millions of dollars each year on food, both in restaurants and in grocery and convenience stores and probably in mail-order food kits too.  Most of those dollars leave our area because the food we buy is sourced globally.  We have the ability to redirect our dollars to local growers.  But it will take commitment on our part as consumers and on the part of local food businesses as providers.  The Rutabaga Project for access to healthy local food is promoting the “Farm to Rural Grocery” effort, asking rural grocery store owners to consider buying locally.  We’re recruiting local growers to plant for grocers and schools and institutional food buyers.  Linking our local growing potential with our local buying potential is a massive economic opportunity for Minnesota’s Arrowhead.

Farmers markets are one small way to begin.  Across the Arrowhead, many farmers markets provide an opportunity for local growers to sell directly to consumers.  Visit www.arrowheadgrown.org to find the market nearest you.  Then mark your calendar and pledge to GO and buy local every week.  Yes, every week.  It takes a concerted effort to support our growers.  If you see a “local” section in your grocery store, buy from it!  Better yet, ask your local grocer to get produce locally.  If they don’t know where to begin, have them email the Rutabaga project manager,  Kelsey.gantzer@aeoa.org.  Or email me, mriffel@outlook.com and we’ll connect the growers and grocers and restaurants to make it happen!

Grown on the Range Profile 41: Bear Creek Acres, originally published in Hometown Focus

“No mean animals at this farm,” Mary Ann tells me as I survey the cattle munching on hay in the snow.  She and Shannon Wycoff have had this farm for 16 years.  In that time, they’ve crossbred their original Limosins with Herefords.  According to www.thecattlesite.com, “The Limousin has built a reputation for being The Carcase Breed. It produces beef with a low proportion of bone and fat, a top killing-out percentage and a high yield of saleable meat (73.3%).”  And they were very popular here in the north when the Wycoff’s started.  But, according to Mary Ann, those creatures were mean.  And that didn’t work.  Gradually, they’ve built a herd that is a Limosin-Hereford cross who appear to me to be pretty docile and friendly.

If you’d like to see happy cattle, check out the “Spring Fever” video of Shannon letting them out to fresh pasture after the winter last year.  It’s on the blog at www.bearcreekacres.com and here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5i8uQIcqzQI&feature=emb_logo  The horse who lives with them thinks he’s one of them and is the happiest of all to feel spring.  The cattle spend winter in a huge pasture where Shannon places their hay at strategic points around the acreage, moving it every few weeks to a new spot.  They fertilize the whole pasture and this way it grows their food the next summer.  The Wycoff’s make some of their own hay, but buy quite a bit from other farmers.  Summer 2020 was so dry that they had to travel the whole state to find hay.

The pigs are off in another direction in a huge pasture with quonset houses filled with hay.  It’s chilly the day I arrive to visit and many of the 25 or so are snuggled inside.  The rest are feeding—they eat a traditional mix of corn and soy from Widdes Feed, a third-generation family-run operation in Esko.  The hogs are purchased as feeder pigs from a family-run operation in Park Rapids and are at least half Berkshire (the breed originated in Berkshire, England).  I notice that all of the pigs have their tails—a key difference from confinement raised hogs whose tails are docked because they are so crowded that they will chew each other’s tails.  These pigs have the run of many acres and don’t have to compete for space.

Shannon and Mary Ann added something new and innovative this fall with a micro-grant from Natural Harvest Food Coop in Virginia: a new watering system for the cattle and pigs.  Up until this year, Shannon was filling huge water tanks twice each day from a well in the barn.  And heating them with 1500-watt heaters which pulled a lot of power.  The new Ritchie waterers are pretty amazing.  According to the website, Ritchie—Fresh Water for Life, “The Pork King 1 is a single drink, durably designed, heated hog waterer using 304 stainless steel to withstand the rugged nature of a pen full of swine. Use in a single pen. Ideal for up to 40 hogs.”  The hogs open the lid with their snouts and drink warm water whenever they’d like.  This waterer and the cattle version, “The EcoFount 2 is an energy efficient double drink automatic waterer for horses or cattle…waters between 1-60 horses or beef,” are both connected by insulated hoses to the well in the barn.  The hoses are protected by the Canadian company Heat-Line’s heat trace system which senses when the conduit needs heat and uses very little electricity.  It’s a big improvement and energy savings over the traditional watering method!  

Ritchie Hog Waterer provides constant warm water for pigs

And the cattle version

After I meet the cattle and hogs, we walk a bit of the farm with the two Wycoff dogs, as friendly as ever---remember, no mean animals here!  Bear Creek runs through this 167 acres of dense woods and open pasture.  The stately barn was completed in 1925 and the original house was built during the 1940’s by the Tom Saranpaa family who dug the entire basement by hand.  It took them 10 years to build the house while they lived in the sauna.  When the Wycoff’s bought the farm, it hadn’t been farmed for a long time.  But Mary Ann discovered that the Saranpaas were still living in the area and invited them to visit.  That’s when they learned about the hand-dug basement.  The Saranpaas had dairy cows, then beef and turkey and potatoes.  The root cellar for the potatoes is still here, along with the sauna.

The sauna, where the original farmers lived while building a house

Bear Creek Acres is able to sell in retail outlets because they use two USDA processors.  Lake Haven Custom Meat Processing is in Sturgeon Lake and McDonald Meats is in Clear Lake.  Like these two, USDA processing facilities are several hours from most producers in northeast Minnesota.  Meat processing in the northland is a bit of a challenge: area producers of chicken, pork and beef are experiencing a high demand for their products as a result, in part, of Covid 19 and its disruption of the national meat supply chain.  And most of the processors in northeast Minnesota are booked all the way through 2021.  There are three types of meat processing plants in Minnesota.  1)Custom processors are exempt and may be inspected up to four times per year by the Minnesota Department of Agriculture.  Producers who use custom processors may only sell directly to individuals.  All of the meat must be labeled “not for sale.” 2) Equal-to processors are under daily inspection by an MDA inspector who inspects the animals before and after slaughter.  Meat from these processors can be sold wholesale or retail but only in Minnesota.  They bear the stamp of state inspection.  3) USDA inspected plants are under continuous inspection with the animals inspected before and after slaughter by a USDA inspector.  This meat can be sold wholesale or retail, within Minnesota or in other states.  It bears the USDA stamp that we are familiar with. Most area livestock and poultry farmers are small-scale and sell directly to individuals rather than to retail outlets.  But some, like Bear Creek Acres, also sell to retail outlets. And that requires the special processor. 

If we, as meat consumers, want local meat to be available in retail stores in the area, it will require more USDA processing.  The plans to expand meat processing at the Northeast Regional Corrections Center in Saginaw are addressing that need to some extent.  If we’re willing to buy directly from the farmer, processors 1 or 2 above will work, but they’re all booked up.  So in order to buy more local meat, our area needs more local processors.  That’s a key part of building a local food system so that a geographic area can sustain itself within its own “foodshed.”  And that’s a topic for a future Grown on the Range column.

Bear Creek Acres’ 1925 barn