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Meet Minnesota’s Cottage Food Community: Breaking Down Barriers to Building a Registered Food Business
The very legalization of Minnesota’s cottage food enterprises is a major accomplishment. The 2021 amendments increased the sales cap per registered individual and added pet treats for dogs and cats as a cottage food product. “We’ll keep working to educate the public about the importance of registering and how to run a business safely,” said Shelley Erickson. “It’s essential to recognize what it means for a business to have registered and why that’s important both for the business owner and their customers.”
Feeding the Grass for the Best Grass Fed Beef: Blackberry Ridge Farms
“My biggest surprise in running Blackberry Ridge Farms is how much failure is involved in farming. Nearly every day we say, ‘Okay, that didn't work, what will we do next?,’” shares Erin Gervais. “We are constantly pivoting and innovating. It's so humbling and at the same time incredibly rewarding because many times we do succeed, and success is far sweeter after some failure.”
The Black Radish: Reinventing the Urban CSA, One Yard at a Time
The Black Radish is an urban oasis where sunflowers tower and ripe beans dangle in magical tunnels. Tucked into its south Minneapolis neighborhood, this farm fosters community through the weekly gathering of CSA pickup, the volunteers who make the work possible, and the yards that nourish local residents.
Behind the Scenes: How Shared-Use Kitchens Shape Our Local Foodscape
"The shared use kitchen sector is, in some sense, a public service that caters to the needs of the local community," explains Jason. "Whether that need is geared towards serving a specific ethnic group, whether it's meant to be affordable kitchen access for startup food businesses, or for scaling businesses that need more warehouse and fulfillment space."
Forever Green Initiative at the U of M: Rethinking Minnesota’s Amber Waves of Grain
An especially unique attribute of the Forever Green Initiative is its focus on commercialization, adoption and scaling. “Broadly speaking, we think of three areas of work: strategy, landscape, and market,” explained Colin. “We need many businesses sourcing these crops, making products and moving them to consumers, either as ingredients or as finished products.”
Why Kernza Crackers Matter: Perennial Pantry’s Quest for the Home Cook
“Bringing an entirely new crop out into the world while making it something that people can easily become familiar with and start to use is fundamentally a very hopeful act,” observed Christopher Abbott of Perennial Pantry.
