• Apple Love is for Keeps: Cidery Grows out of Farming Interest

    Welcoming visitors of all ages, Nate and Tracy enjoy being a destination for multigenerational families, fermentation aficionados, or day trippers just looking for a change of scenery — their front porch, also known as the Keepsake Cider Tasting Room, truly is a family-friendly site

  • Backstreet Country Market: Small Family Beef and Pork Direct to Your Door

    “We are just a family farm working at preserving our livelihood that is built on a love for good tasting food and creating memories with our family on the farm or around the table,” reflects Tina of Backstreet Market in Gibbon. “We want people to have a great experience eating together. We are so lucky that our products have a place on our neighbors’ tables. That personal connection keeps us going and makes all the work worthwhile.”

  • 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.”

  • Mushrooms Powered by the Sun: Fiddlehead Knob Farm’s Sustainable Path Forward

    On a rise in southern Minnesota that Rachel Davis’ ancestors called Poverty Knob, Kalvin, Rachel and their two young children (soon to be three in January!) raise a myriad of mushrooms at their ten acre solar- powered farm. 

  • Fresh From the Field: Honeydew Fields Finds the Fertility of Regenerative Agriculture

    Honeydew Fields Farm, a regenerative flower farm in Sauk Centre, Minnesota thrives today thanks to a journey in infertility.  Lead farmer Leah Bischof knew from a young age that she wanted to farm and that she wanted to be a mom. While she and her husband struggled with infertility, vegetable gardening became a refuge, a place to channel the frustration she felt while they hoped and waited.   Wanting to improve her garden, she studied and read. Her research taught her about the need for diversity in her plantings.

  • Making it Personal: CSAs Nourish Communities Through Foods, Goods, and Local Connections

    Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farms and businesses are real life examples of individuals collaborating at the local level to support the common good and build thriving communities. Through the CSA model a farm becomes the community’s farm.