Farms & Gardens

I’m a morning person by nature; I’m often the first one in the office pounding out more work in the first few hours than I do later in the day. So last summer, when I ventured to Virginia to work on a farm, my tendency to wake up early helped me face the weekly, pre-dawn job of preparing for our weekly trip to the farmers’ markets.

Abby Andrusko, co-founder of The Grass Fed Cattle Co. in Edina, MN, is telling me the story of when she and her husband (and business partner) Marcus decided to give up industrially produced meat for good. "We were with a group in the boundary waters [Marcus and Abby also run a mission-driven company called Boundary Waters Experience], and the food we'd brought [from a major, national food discounter] was tasteless and fatty - definitely not healthy, and we didn't feel good about it. Marcus and I decided then and there that we were done with that kind of meat." On July 4, 2008, the couple decided to punish their families and friends one last time, cooking and eating every last bit of "the bad stuff" in a tribute to our country that was every bit as American as apple pie and fireworks. All the meat was eaten, and - fortunately - nobody got sick. An idea was born.

Dick Larsen is not the guy you'd expect to be at the helm of a revolution. He's soft-spoken and slightly built. With his thick, retro, architect glasses and pink rock-a-billy shirt with two roosters over the left pocket, it wouldn't be surprising to see a pack of cigarettes rolled up in his sleeve, but there are none. A carpenter by trade and, now, the sole proprietor of The Vegetable Revolution, Larsen is a self-taught man. His workshop, located in Northeast Minneapolis, is bathed in sun pouring in from the windows that run the length of the space, crowded with heavy duty carpentry machines. The air is light with the smell of freshly cut cedar, which he fashions into cold frames, the starting point of his brainchild, The Cabbage Patch Garden.

Two summers ago, my good friend Becky made me a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) alternate — when families who picked up CSA shares at her house were out of town, I was the beneficiary. Several weeks that summer, I had a bin full of fresh, local veggies, and the pleasant challenge of figuring out what to do with them. It was a gateway experience.

So last summer I bought my own half share in a CSA for Foxtail Farm. The downsides soon became apparent. Interestingly, they weren't ones I could have predicted, like, I never had a zillion zucchini to use up in a hurry.

You know you should eat your greens, but if the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum has its way, you’ll soon be growing them, too. As part of its new Powerhouse Plants summer exhibition, the Arboretum is featuring original artwork, demonstration gardens and interactive events to celebrate the connection between healthful plants and healthy people, and perhaps to inspire us start our own edible gardens.

When I walked into my first of a series of four livestock workshops at the University of Minnesota’s St. Paul campus, I wasn’t sure what to expect of the curriculum, but I was pretty sure what to expect of the students: a bunch of new-age, backyard chicken growers, to be sure.

As I’m planting my crop of tomatoes this year, I couldn’t help but ponder about how much I’ve benefited from this one item of produce. In her recent Simple Good & Tasty post, Rhena Tantisunthorn described the history of tomatoes, so I reflected on my own history and realized how my love for tomatoes has been a catalyst of growth for me in so many ways. Here are just a few of them:

I don’t just love strawberries; I love them, love them, LOVE THEM! Never, until recently, did I think I would feel this way about this ubiquitous berry. Never, until recently, had I eaten a strawberry for any other reason than their nutritional value. (I’d throw them in a smoothie and suck them down in liquid form to simply get it over with.) Never, until recently, did I eagerly accept a strawberry when it was offered to me with an enthusiastic “Have one!”  Never, until recently, did strawberries invoke any passion in me, only obligation in the name of my own heath and well being, and in the desire to be polite and not offend anyone.

But recently my luke-warm feelings about strawberries changed during an impromptu date with a strawberry from a very different place. This strawberry was sort of a distant cousin to the strawberry I had had a unfulfilling relationship with over the years – a nature-vs.-nurture-debate sort of strawberry.

Fans of the deep-yellow, grass-fed butter from Pastureland dairy co-op have had a tough spring. At several of the Twin Cities dairy cases where it’s usually found – from Seward Co-op to Whole Foods – a big gaping hole has replaced its one-pound packages for the past month. Who knows how many plans for fettuccine alfredo and pound cake and rent-a-movie-night popcorn have had to be shelved for lack of their star ingredient.

For everything there is a season, but for fresh produce grown in the Upper Midwest, it can be a frustratingly short period of time. It’s a hard truth that local food lovers in colder climes have accepted with resignation: enjoy the seasonal bounty of fruits and vegetables while you can, before the growing season quickly comes to an end. For many of us, the abbreviated availability of certain fresh foods make the concepts of eating locally and seasonally seem incompatible for a good portion of the year. But now, an emerging farm technique is stretching the traditional boundaries of the growing season and could help bring the local and the seasonal together under its roof. 

Early Surprises