Tag: sustainable agriculture

Seed Saving for Home Gardeners

Garden Fresh Food

It is that time of year gardeners… Everything is ripening, and FAST in the garden right now. So right now is the time to start looking at your plants’ produce not just as food- but also as seed for next year’s garden crops. Time to start seed saving!

I started saving seeds because I got behind on picking my pole beans. When I found a few (ok, lots) of bean pods that were swollen and starting to yellow and a light bulb turned on. I didn’t have to toss these inedible beans into the compost- I could let these keep growing and save these to plant for more beans next year.

It was a sublimely empowering moment. One I want you to have too!

Beginners Luck

I got lucky starting with one of the easiest seeds to save. For the first few years I saved mostly bean varieties and native flowers. I’m still a novice when it comes to saving seeds. Which is why I’m the perfect person to pass the torch: if I can do it – you can too! I want you to feel that same kind of power that saving your own seeds invites.

The Barn + Diane’s Garden at Heritage Farm, Seed Savers Exchange. Photo Credit: Molly Moe

Seed Savers Exchange

Diane Ott Whealy and I in her magical heirloom garden. Photo credit Molly Moe

First- I want to give a shout out to the Seed Savers Exchange for their recent Summer Conference and Campout on Heritage Farm. I’m still buzzing with all the new information I brought home. I had to share some of what I learned with you all!

They’ve built a vibrant community of dedicated volunteers and staff, all starting with co-founders Diane Ott Whealy and Kent Whealy in 1975. I was lucky enough to meander through Diane’s gardens with her at the beginning of the weekend. Continue reading

Pick Your Own Blueberry Farm

Pick Your Own Blueberry Farms are becoming more popular and for good reason! PYO Farms bring together the best of summer- getting to spend time in the great outdoors in a beautiful setting, with friends + family, all working towards a tasty end goal; buckets full of blueberries! This is local food bliss. Blueberry Fields of Stillwater brings a sweet mixture of this bliss to their guests each year.Rows of netting covered blueberry fields

**Updated article 7/10/23**

Two women in straw hats standing in a blueberry fieldSummer took over Blueberry Fields of Stillwater in early 2022, and she is just as in love with the farm, connections to the earth, blueberries and customers as the previous owners. 

Blueberry Fields of Stillwater

As Summer explains, “I was looking to make a change and for a place where I could be more in tune with nature, while still being part of the community.  When I saw the Blueberry Fields of Stillwater property, I just knew it was where I needed to be.  The love, care, and hard work that Bev and Mike O’Connor put into the Blueberry Fields was evident; the land just sang to me.  I am so grateful that they were willing to let me carry on what they had started. They have been so helpful and supportive to me in teaching me the craft of blueberry growing hands on here at the Blueberry Fields of Stillwater.”

Getting the how to pick info from staff at Blueberry farm before picking our own.

So- same great blueberries, same ORGANIC farming practices, new smiling face. I’m in.

Is it the farm’s rolling hills and pastoral setting? Or the acres of immaculately maintained spacious rows all bursting with blueberries? Maybe it’s all the energy and love that farmers have poured into the land?

If you’ve never picked your own blueberries before no worries, they’re every bit as easy as strawberries and raspberries. You can just roll them between your fingers and the ripe ones will kind of fall off. You can easily tell the ripe from unripe berries. Continue reading

CSA’s So Many Ways

I’m already a pretty big fan of supporting your local farmer, and YOU all are my wonderful community- so “Community Supported Agriculture” is an obvious sweet spot.

**Updated 2/21/2023 with current links**

Turnip Rock Farm’s very own Farmer Josh

CSA’s (Community Supported Agriculture) have been around for in some form or another since the mid 1980’s- which first struck me as a much shorter history than I’d imagined. But, then I realized that the CSA idea came about jointly from both Farmers and consumers looking for new ways to grow good food- and eat good food.

This was one way to make a concrete change in how those consumers ate, and who grew their food. The basic idea of a CSA is that farmers get the purchase price up front to help cover costs of the upcoming farming season. With farmers knowing that they have that money, they are able to move forward with confidence, and maybe without a bank breathing down their necks…

Half Share from 2017, Photo Credit: Big River Farms

The rewards for a member of a CSA are manyfold; fresh in-season produce boxed up and ready to go weekly at a pick up location of your choice, often with a newsletter or recipe ideas included. As I see it, the biggest reward is building a relationship with a farmer.

My husband and I purchased our first CSA back about nine years ago to get fresh, locally grown produce while I was still working full time. It is kind of funny that I can’t remember the name of the farm, but I do remember I picked up my weekly boxes from one of the quaint little shops (The Nest) in downtown White Bear Lake. I never met the farmer, and there was never an invite from the farmer to do so.

CSAs give you a few of everything each week, instead of everything all at once! Photo Credit, Costa Farm

Things have changed, on both the farmer and the consumer sides. Farmers are being more proactive in forging relationships, and consumers are looking for more than good food grown cheap- more and more, the people buying CSAs are doing it for a chance to connect to a farm, a farmer, a piece of land…and to benefit from the GOOD food these farmers provide.

Now that the CSA idea has had time to take root- it has also branched out in a few different directions. For this article, I’ve chosen a few local farms that represent the wide variety of options available to those of us lucky enough to live around the Twin Cities. Each of the following farms has a unique twist to them, showing again there’s so many ways to grow good food!

I would absolutely recommend any of the farms covered- but I’d also urge you to do your own research too, there are more and more (yay!) CSAs popping up every year. Currently, according the powerful MNGrown CSA search engine there are 86 CSAs in Minnesota. Use these ‘case studies’ as a launch pad to get yourself thinking what you want out of a CSA… Continue reading

Raising Pollinator Lovers

Raising monarchs was one of the highlights of my kids’ summer- and the last butterfly emerged from her chrysalis right before the back to school rush, so it felt like we got to mark that last thing off our bucket list just in time. 

There is something magical about watching life transform before your eyes, and that magic gets magnified when you share the experience with children and their innocent, impressionable eyes… These memories are here to stay!

Like most of how my life happens, we were in the right place at the right time and stumbled upon a chance to adopt and raise these butterflies.

I love it when serendipity takes center stage!

My mom spotted this one in her gardens!

Continue reading

Forks’ Weekend Spread: July!

Twin Cities farm & foodie fans, here we go again with an over the top summer weekend overflowing with possibilities. And this time, I’ll be here to partake in the farm fresh tastes, sounds and celebrations! Time to jump on this hay wagon and enjoy the ride 🙂

July 15: Eat Local Co-op Farm Tour 

The barn doors are wide open. Twin Cities co-ops have gathered 27 of their hard-working farmers together to open their farms, fields, milking rooms etc. to you for the day. Use this Farm Tour guide to map out your self guided tour and see which farms have special activities, music, even samples that match your interest. This is a great FREE way to let your kid milk their first cow, see actual farm work being done, pull their first carrot and talk to farmers about how they farm. Be ready to stock up on farm fresh produce-right from the farm! Last year my boys and I experienced a great sense of community at Big River Farms,  along with a great wagon ride, samples and music. We bought a few things that had been picked right from the fields we toured. This year they’ve added a little something extra with pollinators! I remember it as one of best days with my boys last summer.

Wagon riders at last year’s Big River Farms’ tour day.

Tips: Wear farm appropriate clothing (farm boots, sun hat), bring along some bug spray, a cooler for things you buy and a lunch if you want. Learn from my mistake last summer! Print out a google map, because these are RURAL farms, you may lose service once you’re on the road!

Stay up to the minute and Follow on Facebook. TC.Farm (also featured below in the Tullibee Butcher Dinner) went the extra acre this year and created their own guide; which looks awesome!

Details: 10am-4pm. 31 locations across the extended metro area.

Continue reading

© 2024 Forks in the Dirt

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑