featherstone farm

Could you work up an appetite to rally around the cause of expanding access to local foods? A rallying of 70 community supporters came together in Fillmore County recently to do just that. Peggy Hanson (hilarious blow-by-blow how-to-use-a-CSA blogger for Featherstone Farm from 2009 to 2011) and Frank Wright (local gardener extraordinaire and rhubarb crop specialist) hosted the event in their home, the former Cady Hayes House bed & breakfast establishment in Lanesboro. But the real engine behind the affair was a cluster of passionate 20-somethings who recruited food donors, planned the menu, signed up cooks and orchestrated all the logistics. The dinner was a gala of volunteers, each sharing his or her authentic specialty, be it food, food prep, or flying through a pile of dishes. 

It wasn’t until Olivia Lara’s 16-year-old son was diagnosed with diabetes that she began to think about what she was eating. 

The tacos, juicy burgers and other fast food that served as their normal diet have now been replaced with spinach, potatoes and, on some occasions, vegetables Lara admits to knowing nothing about. 

The result: weight loss, liveliness and a desire to eat right long into the future.

“People are telling me now that I act completely different, like I have all this energy all of a sudden, “ the St. Paul resident said.  

Lara was among a healthy crowd of residents who turned up at a recent local foods event at the Hallie Q. Brown Community Center in St. Paul where food shelf officials, local farmers and others were trying to encourage similar transformations. 

A locally-produced film has been stirring up plenty of controversy in Minnesota’s agricultural and education communities. “Troubled Waters: A Mississippi River Story” is a documentary produced by the University of Minnesota’s Bell Museum about pollution and water contamination in the Mississippi River and Gulf of Mexico.

Although I spend a lot of my time thinking and writing about good food, I'm pretty inconsistent when it comes to what I actually do. When my (then) three-year-old boy went on a calcium strike, for example, I caved in after about four minutes and made him chocolate milk. When my daughter pouted instead of getting dressed for school, I offered a piece of candy as motivation to speed things up. When I picked the kids up from school, I'd bring lollipops and crackers. When I had a rough day at work, I'd reward myself with a piece of ice cream pie.

I'm writing about these things in the past tense because I'm committed to change. Summer's coming, and my strategy of doling out treats in order to keep people happy needs to change. It will change.

For years, I would see a vegetable like okra or mustard greens in a grocery store and imagine what it would be like to make a delicious meal with such exotic ingredients. I was constantly promising myself that next week I would find recipes to fulfill my culinary fantasies. But as the weeks passed, it became obvious that I needed something else to get my creativity going. Fortunately, my fiancé knows me incredibly well, and he gave me a CSA subscription as a gift.

There’s nothing typical about Featherstone Fruits and Vegetables, located in Rushford Vilage, Minnesota.

I love vegetables. My family and friends make fun of me, but when I look at their kaleidoscope of colors and shapes, they delight my senses in ways I can’t explain. So imagine my joy when I opened my CSA box yesterday and pulled out this Romanesco cauliflower!

Now I’m a registered dietitian and have been touting the benefits of eating your veggies for years, but I had never seen anything like this fluorescent green head of swirling spirals. I actually squealed with surprise when I pulled it out of the box. My husband and daughter came running to see what all the excitement was about. They both burst out laughing when they saw the thrilled look on my face, although you’d think they would be used to my exclamations by now.

Last night's Simple, Good, and Tasty local food event at Lucia's was truly amazing. Sure, there was the menu, created by Lucia Watson herself and perfectly executed in every way. And there was the great service, attentive and generous. There was the opportunity to meet and mingle with an astounding collection of people, just over 60 of us in total. There was the beautiful setting, the terrific organic wine, and the t-shirts that Lucia sent us all home with that said, "We know our Farmers better than we know our Doctors."  But what really made the night so especially fulfilling wasn't any of that.

It was the farmers.

I can't remember an event I've been as excited about as the one I'm co-hosting with Lucia Watson this Sunday, 10/11. The Twin Cities' first official "Know Your Farmer" event, fittingly held at Lucia's, is a chance to meet - and eat with - some of the best, most interesting farmers in our state. Even better, Lucia has designed a menu entrely from the foods these farmers have produced.