Release Date: March 15, 2013
Application Deadline: March 31, 2013
All information can be found at this link:
Tag Archives: minnesota
Accepted!
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News Release Contact: Allison Goin 612-558-6183 allison@organicfieldschool.org Organic Field School 5680 290th Street West Northfield, MN 55057 |
ORGANIC FIELD SCHOOL ANNOUNCES 2013 INCUBATOR FARMS:
BOSSY ACRES AND HUMBLE PIE
NORTHFIELD, Minn. – October 23, 2012 – As part of the 2013 growing season, Organic Field School (OFS) at Gardens of Eagan will be home to two new incubator farms, Bossy Acres and Humble Pie, both focusing on organic growing practices and community involvement.
The organic farm incubator program was established by OFS in 2008 as a way to bolster the efforts of beginning farmers near the Twin Cities — who often face challenges in securing land for small-scale farming — while providing an educational connection point for the wider farming community and general public about the benefits of sustainable growing practices. OFS is the only farming incubator program in the state to offer up to three acres for new organic farmers to launch their businesses, and one of just a handful of such programs in the country.
Bossy Acres, which had its first growing season as a certified organic farm in 2012, will continue to provide vegetables and herbs for its community supported agriculture (CSA) members and farmers’ market customers, while benefitting from the guidance and resources of OFS.
“We’re very excited to be part of the OFS incubator program,” says Bossy Acres co-founder Karla Pankow. “This is such an amazing opportunity to get a solid foundation for our farm and to work with such a broad range of leaders in sustainable agriculture.”
Humble Pie Farm was started in 2012 by Jennifer Nelson and Mike Leck, both of whom have organic farming experience as employees of Gardens of Eagan. In 2013, they will grow cut flowers and herbs as a specialty add-on to CSA shares of Fazenda Boa Terra.
Both farms will help to advance OFS’ mission of transforming our food and farming systems through education and support, believes Allison Goin, OFS Program Director. “We’re proud to welcome two such distinctive farms into our incubator program,” she says. “As OFS broadens its reach in the community, we know that farms like Bossy Acres and Humble Pie represent the future of our growing, robust organic farming community, and we’re looking forward to fostering these viable, independent farm businesses.”
Incubator farms receive access to land, training, equipment usage, affordable supplies, and expertise through the Organic Field School’s partnership with Gardens of Eagan, an organic vegetable farm operated by the Wedge Community Co-op. The program meets a crucial need in our community for linking dedicated new organic farmers, who have some training and expertise, with access to affordable land and equipment. Past incubators include Loon Organics in Hutchinson and Fazenda Boa Terra in Northfield.
On November 17, OFS will host a fundraiser at Kitchen in the Market to support the expansion of the incubator program this year. For more details and to RSVP, please visit the OFS Facebook page.
For more information about OFS, visit http://www.organicfieldschool.org.
Organic Field School at Gardens of Eagan
A 501(c)(3) project of the Wedge Community Co-op, OFS provides on-farm, organic and ecologically based practical education and research for farmers, educators, policy makers, and the public, articulating the benefits and values of regional, organic farming systems.
Bossy Acres
Started in 2011 by farmers Karla Pankow and Elizabeth Millard, Bossy Acres focuses on sustainable farming practices, strong land stewardship, and community-based programs. With its first full production season in 2012, Bossy Acres employed the community supported agriculture (CSA) model and will be expanding its reach in 2013 through inclusion in the OFS incubator program. More information is available at http://www.bossyacres.com.
Humble Pie Farm
Humble Pie Farm was started in 2012 by Jennifer Nelson and Mike Leck, both of whom have organic farming experience as employees of Gardens of Eagan. In 2013, they will grow cut flowers and herbs as a specialty add-on to CSA shares of Fazenda Boa Terra.
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preserving heirlooms
Uncle Roger salmon fishing like a pro
When I was growing up, my Uncle Roger seemed like an alien. To a kid from the suburbs who’d memorized the prime time TV schedule, his upbringing—on a farm as one of 13 kids—was so foreign to me that I felt more in common with Laura Ingalls than my own uncle. Adding to the gulf between us was his manner, which I perceived as gruff and unfriendly, so much so that my brother and I nicknamed him “Uncle Ogre,” only half-jokingly.
He hunted, fished, built everything himself, constructed a smoker in his backyard, and kept a one-acre “garden” that mainly went toward supporting his pickling and canning habit. Every year, he’d bring out his well-used crock and make the most amazing sweet pickles I’d ever tasted—everyone in the family was addicted, and when he handed them out at Christmas, I can’t say there wasn’t squabbling if someone got just one extra jar.
As I got older and became more and more interested in sustainability and farming, his experience and my enthusiasm finally overlapped, especially in the past few years as Karla and I worked to start our own farm. We sat around his kitchen table, talking about cucumbers and turnips, tractors and markets, and his once-gruff language now seemed like the best kind of straightforward talk I’d ever heard. Like a mentor, he asked questions that led us toward thinking in new directions about what we were growing and how we intended to sell the result.
When we’d convinced him that we were serious in our farming venture, he gave me the famous crock and said it was my turn now for the sweet pickles. Neither of us knew that only a few months later, he’d lose his fight with colon cancer, and he’d never get to taste the results of my first effort. But still, there was a sense of a torch being passed, of family continuance, of that crock becoming an heirloom of sorts.
My uncle and I making sausage a few months before he died
He never got to see our farm, yet he knew about every bed, all the varieties of tomatoes we’d planted, and gave us ideas about how to handle the imminent abundance. Our last conversation, just a few days before he died, was about radishes. “Pickle ‘em,” he said. “People who don’t like radishes don’t know what they’re missing, so you teach them with those pickles.”
A month later, we’re now faced with the abundance that he knew was coming. In this first year of harvesting, Karla and I are suddenly in the swing of trying to capture all of the gorgeous flavors in the ways that my uncle knew well—canning, pickling, dehydrating, and fermenting. When it came time to make the sweet pickles, I brought out the crock and followed his recipe, crying my way through most of the process. But they all sealed and looked perfect, and I could almost hear him behind me with that tough old voice of his, saying only: “Yep, you got it.”
My great aunt in all her tomboy glory
It made me think of the long line of family behind me, all farmers except for a couple recent generations. My father used to tell me about my great grandmother and how she could grow anything and had no use for people who couldn’t make themselves useful. I have a photo in my office of my great aunt holding up a long string of trout, with a grin on her face that seems to say, “I only quit because I got bored.” And without knowing it, when I chose a house in Minneapolis, it was only two miles from where my great uncle had a sprawling, beautiful farm that’s now (sadly) a shopping mall.
When Karla and I started farming, I thought my interest came from a recent, personal impulse—to be closer to my food system, to provide organic produce to my community, to live sustainably. But when I heard those first pings of sweet pickle jars sealing, I knew that I was part of a much older, much more intimate tradition.
My first ever-jar of sweet chunk pickles
I now have a deeper sense of humility and gratitude for all who’ve come before me—living through the loss of my uncle in a season of fresh beginning and abundance has taught me that I’m part of a cycle and a tradition. Preserving our harvest has now taken on more meaning than I could have ever imagined, and connected me not just to my family, but to a broader sense of simplicity and sustenance.
Like my uncle said, it’s my turn now. And I intend to cherish it.
getting certified…
last week, we got a piece of paper that didn’t contain many words, but seemed monumental to us: our organic certification.
all it took was weeks of tracking down seed receipts, doing soil and water testing, getting a prior land use declaration signed by our landlord and a statement from the horse ranch owner who gave us manure. then there were the crop rotation plans, land use strategies, and inspections of our rented land and greenhouse space, as well as a few dozen emails with our certifier and other experts. just when we felt like we couldn’t look at one more form, we earned the certification, and could breathe easy. at least until the next round, that is.
one of the most interesting aspects of becoming certified is that it wasn’t a path we’d intended to go down initially. for the first six months of the farm’s existence — which is half its life, really, since we’ve only been in operation for a year — we were steadfast in believing that we wouldn’t go for certification because we’d be forging direct relationships with our customers instead. in a csa program, our shareholders would get to know us and how we farm; we use organic and sustainable methods, and we felt that explaining these strategies was sufficient.
if we’d become a csa-only farm, most likely we would have been satisfied with having those conversations and being non-certified instead. but when we began selling a few items at our local co-op, we encountered what we called the orange tag syndrome.
our rented farmland
at our co-op, like many others, organic produce is separated from conventionally grown produce through color-coded tags. organic gets green, and the conventional stuff gets orange. although we’ve always grown on non-sprayed land and used organic methods (we prefer to skip even the organic pest controls, although the potato bugs are testing us), the co-op’s policy is that if you’re not certified, then you get the orange tag. they did list our produce as “naturally grown without pesticides,” but still, we were an orange dot in a field of green.
the situation made us think. it would have been far too much work to get certification simply to earn a green tag, but we began to consider how the farm would be perceived in other situations, too. what about farmers markets? already, we had customers there who asked us about certification and were happy to listen to our explanations about our farming practices, but i wondered about the people who didn’t step up to ask in the first place. also, some local chefs were touting the inclusion of organic produce on their menus, and I noticed that they leaned heavily toward those farms with organic certifications.
the last consideration was the upcoming changeover of the farm bill. in its current iteration, there’s significant reimbursement for certification expenses, and we knew that if that feature got yanked, there would be a chance we’d have to pay out of our own pockets instead.
so, we gave it a shot. the whole process was made much easier by our certification agency, midwest organic services association, and the willingness of the staff to patiently answer our kajillion questions.
my partner, karla, filled out the paperwork and although the forms note that it should take about eight hours, it ended up taking her three days to fill in all the necessary fields. we’d really gone for a diverse crop for our first year, and every single seed had to be tracked and noted. as i dug around in the files to find receipts and notes, she worked to articulate our farm’s layout, philosophies, and crop arrangement.
some transplants waiting for their chance to be bossy
when the certifier visited the farm, karla got a chance to show off her farm ninja skills during the interview process, which was intensive in terms of material. the certifier wanted to make certain that we knew what we were doing, and not just looking for a label we could slap onto our website.
in the end, the certification was just like anything else that requires an array of paperwork and the time to fill it out (think of it as a shorter grad school thesis, or maybe getting an estate settled through probate). true, we now earned the green tag, but we feel that the certification is broader than meeting that smaller goal. It gives an assurance to the customers we can’t meet, and lets them know that we value organic and sustainable practices — it starts conversations about how we manage the land, and how we see our farm in the agricultural landscape.
still, it’s also pretty nice to finally be green.
organic vs local
much debate goes on ….. organic vs local ….. which is best….which makes ya feel better about your food…..and so on.
well….with the bossy, ya get a two-fer!
16.8 food miles if ya buy our goods at the Fulton Farmers Market.
15.3 food miles if ya buy our goods at the Linden Hills Farmers Market
9.8 food miles if ya buy our goods at the Mill City Farmers Market
and now, as of june 18th….usda certified organic!
to market, to market
bossy e was chosen as 1 of just 6 in the country to blog on a monthly basis for the national young farmers’ coalition.
here’s her first/latest entry:
a few weekends ago, at minneapolis’ always busy mill city farmers market, our bossy acres booth was located just opposite two very established and respected growers and for about the millionth time this spring, i had to take a deep breath and trust that, somehow, everything would work out fine.
our presence at this very robust and well-known market had been months in the making, and thankfully, was made smoother by some “practice” at winter farmers markets that helped us iron out the many kinks that come with setup, product selection, customer acquisition, and even tiny details like weighting a tent and buying the right size tables.
for our very first market ever, done last november in the week just before thanksgiving, we worked all night on harvesting and packaging, and tweaked our table’s look by setting everything up in our living room. at about 3am, we started making up silly songs about the farm, and by 5am, with everything done, we enjoyed an entire half hour of sleep before loading it all into my mom’s suv.
bossy k at indoor market
setting up at that market, surrounded by growers i knew from shopping at their farmers market booths, i felt so new, like it was my first day of school. everyone seemed to have their systems down for speedy setup, while we tried to remember how nicely things had looked at home. since we live in minnesota, the market was held inside at a community center gym, which enhanced that new-girl feeling and made me briefly flash on some sour gym class memories. (ff you’re reading this, middle school gym teachers: please discontinue square dancing lessons.)
as the market began, we quickly discovered that we’d made a poor choice of packaging. offering mainly pea shoots and hoophouse-grown baby greens, we’d opted for biodegradable plastic bags. although this was a lovely eco-friendly choice, the small amounts of gourmet greens looked a bit minimal in the opaque bags.
still, we ended up selling out an hour before the market ended, and despite our newbie status, we felt like it had been a major success. we’d launched bossy acres to the general public, handed out tons of csa flyers, and talked with customers who have ended up following our adventures and coming back again and again.
after the holidays, we signed up for several other winter markets and each one helped us to see what worked and what didn’t. now, with the summer season approaching, we’ve just started our first regular market and have acted as fill-in vendors at other high-profile markets like mill city.
the profusion of markets that we’re taking on now—and the ability to do winter markets at all—was made possible in large part by karla’s foresight in growing hoophouse-friendly greens like pea shoots, sunflower shoots, and especially, microgreens.
our microgreen mix includes 20 different varieties, including beet greens (the red pop of color is very enticing to customers), radish, mustard, and other spicy varieties. e charge $9 for a densely-packed mason pint jar and offer samples at the booth. the latter is essential: i’ve seen those little sample cups turn a non-believer into a steady customer many times. plus, we let them know that the microgreens keep for about two weeks in the fridge in the glass container, and kapow, suddenly we’re making change from a $20 bill.
our 20-variety mighty micros
when we first started growing microgreens, it was just a fun winter activity to keep karla from getting more restless as the seed catalogs kept arriving. but now, in the early part of the season, they’ve become a major specialty product for bossy acres. at every farmers market, we sell out of them by 10am, and we’ve had people show up to the market as soon as it opened because they wanted to make sure they bought a jar. seriously, nothing beats seeing a customer make a beeline for your booth as you’re still laying out the tablecloth.
another significant plus for us in these early farmers markets has been a formidable social media campaign. karla is extremely adept at twitter (she has about 13,000 tweets, and i have less than 100), and the booth is regularly visited by her twitter friends. we also heavily promote the markets on our facebook page, and comment like crazy on the pages of other farmers, our customers, and the market’s main page.
but with all that said, it’s not like we don’t get nervous, especially me. a few days before each market, i look around our humble, rented greenhouse space—with its leaky roof, weedy dirt floor, and hand-crank windows—and i think, “well, this can’t possibly be enough for market…we’ll never make it…” in other words, i’m the piglet farmer, always fretting and fussing, while karla is the zen-like pooh, always finding more honey at the bottom of a seemingly empty pot.
bossy k summer market
so, at mill city, after taking that deep breath and having faith that our jars of microgreens and heirloom tomato starts would sell, i began chatting with customers, and an amazing thing happened: everything worked out fine.
always enough…
a note to our csa members ….
i’ll never forget that saturday in november — elizabeth and i were sitting in the front row, as we always did, in our farm beginnings class.
a woman, activist, farmer who we both admired….the mother of local organics, atina diffley stood in front of us, taking a moment to guide us through one of our exercises on holistic management goals, needs, and dreams.
i’ll admit ….. we were having a moment of feeling like we’ll never get our hands on a farm and land that we could call our own. many in the class around us had inherited land, had equipment and the infrastructure to really make things happen. we, on the other hand, had a 1.25 acre piece of rented land that had never been tilled, 30 miles outside of the cities. no equipment. no infrastructure. no real farm transportation. all we had was each other, a vw beetle, one hoe, a couple of rakes, and a burning desire to get bossy.
(photo credit: lavender magazine)
so it was in that moment…..of feeling down and a million miles away from our dream, that atina kneeled down in front of us, lowered her voice, and started sharing with us some of her struggles, pains, and heartache of just starting out and feeling like they didn’t have enough. not having everything, be it money, land, all the right equipment…turned out to be a blessing. while others around her were just throwing money and bigger tractors at their problems, she got intimate with the farm, the land, weeds, bugs…..she gained a knowledge and an understanding that the others would never obtain.
i remember listening to her so intently. in many ways, she seemed like a mother, a super-hero, a mentor, and a friend….all in one.
and in a stern, determined voice she told us …..
never let money, land access, lack of equipment, or even bigger farms get in the way of your dream. your passion.
there will always be enough to make it happen.
if you truly want it, then there will always be enough.
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i couldn’t help but think of that over and over again this morning as i was out in the fields harvesting for this week’s csa.
we still don’t have that dream farm. no equipment. no infrastructure. it’s just e and i …. with a pair of hands, old crunchy knees, and a passion to make this work.
we can’t give you tomatoes and cucumbers out of season.
we can’t offer you farm fresh eggs or fruits and berries that come from being able to have animals and long-standing perennial trees and plants.
but we can give you an honest day’s work of doing everything we can to grow healthy, chemical-free food for you and your family.
we know that there will be some deliveries where you wonder why there isn’t more.
we also know that there will be days when you think we gave you way too much.
but in the end … and overall ….. we hope that you will enjoy being a part of this adventure with us and that you, too, will have faith that there will always be enough.
into the fields
after rocking it out at the greenhouse and getting our seeds started in that lovely hippie grow cave, we’ve finally been moving some transplants out to the main fields.
it’s a little nerve wracking to make the transfer, we’ve found. we can deal with the re-introduction of muscles deep in the glutes that come from so much squatting (we’re calling it “bossy butt”), and it’s been hugely satisfying to plant a row of cabbage or lettuces and see that tidy little line just waiting for a chance to get bigger.
bossy k planting taters!
but the weather has proven to be a challenge with such a famine-to-feast spring. we started with drought conditions, so the soil was hard and crumbly, but then the rains came and turned the beds to mud. we managed to get the tiller into some of the beds in the time between crumble and muck, but it was still a little anxiety producing to see standing water on part of the field yesterday.
maybe our csa members would be okay with us turning our operation to grains and then we could turn the whole shebang into a rice paddy?
another challenging element is to put the starts into the field on their own—it’s like sending kids off to kindergarten. in the greenhouse, the plants are cozied up with each other and look so lush in the trays. in the field, they get separated and placed into their own spots and maybe it’s a bit of anthropomorphizing, but they seem smaller and more wistful that way. when it comes time for harvesting, we’re sure that they’ll be hearty and abundant, but for now, we just act like encouraging parents and hope for the best.
beyond the challenges, though, it feels amazing to finally be out in the field. digging in the soil, being on our knees, planning out the rows—all of it isn’t just the culmination of a winter spent dreaming, but of years spent wishing to get to this exact point.
in may, alone, we’ve already done seven farmers markets – ranging from fulton farmers’ market to mill city farmers’ market to kingfield farmers’ market. plus, coming up this friday we’ll have our very first csa delivery and on sunday, we’ll be adding the new linden hills farmers market to the list!
bossy e at market
it seems like everything is going at double speed, so it’s delicious to sit back and look across the fields in the midst of planting.
this is where we want to be, and despite the bossy butt, it’s an awesome feeling.
planting o’ the green
it seems fitting that the week leading up to st. patrick’s day, we’d be seeing a whole lot of green, and working to see even more in the months ahead.
thanks to the warm weather, we’ve been able to get a jump on planting, and like many other eager farmers, we started seeding for transplants. for the past few months, we’ve been happily growing our micro greens, pea shoots, and sunflower shoots, but there’s a different feeling to seeding for our main farmland.
filling the trays
every seed feels important and
filled with potential.
it’s exciting to think that a tiny orange seed about the size of a freckle will become a thai green eggplant at some point. then, it will become a delicious ingredient in a dinner crafted by our food-loving csa members and farmers market customers (we’re thinking now of curries and coconut milk and the mind reels with possibilities).
the space in our “hippie grow cave” at grow! twin cities feels luxurious after some limited growing in raised beds last year, and we’re filling it fast with all sorts of starter plants. in february, we planted onions, leeks, celery, and celeriac. more recently, we’ve seeded broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, eggplant, chives, parsley, oregano, some flowers, miscellaneous salad greens (arugula, mustard, various asian greens) and even some poppies.
best job ever!
nothin' like getting your hands dirty!
progress!
happy greens!
peas!
there’s something zesty and awesome about emptying a seed packet carefully into some rich soil. along with those little wannabe vegetables, we’re also planting our hopes for an abundant, kickass season.
grow, bossy seeds, grow!
farming community …
nearly every profession has its share of resources for those who are new to the field: mentorships, apprenticeships, networking groups, linkedin referrals, and on and on. both of us have worked in the corporate world, and so have seen this helping-hand strategy many times, with numerous stories of those who were assisted in their careers by others who resided a few rungs up the ladder.
but neither of us have seen any industry or company that’s been as responsive, gracious, and flat-out generous as organic and sustainable farming folks.
that’s not bias, even though we love our farming life. even seen from an objective view, the willingness of farmers to help other farmers is stunning. we’ve talked to people who, in another profession, may have regarded us as direct competitors — we’re reaching out to the same customers, in the same geographic regions, and offering the same product — and would have held their tactics in reserve as a result.
instead, if we need advice, we simply ask and it comes in a deluge, from multiple sources.
here’s just a sampling of all the support systems that give us comfort on a daily basis:
- organizations like the land stewardship project, renewing the countryside, the sustainable farming association, minnesota grown, and the institute for agricultural and trade policy are geared toward creating a free flowing informational river that just seems to keep getting deeper and wider.
- the university of minnesota runs a couple of listservs (sustag and mnurbanfarmers) that connect farmers with each other and with various resources. for example, an urban farmer recently asked about affordable soil testing services on sustag, and about a dozen people responded within 24 hours with phone numbers, email links, personal experiences, price quotes, and other ideas.
- midwest organic and sustainable education service (moses) has set us up with a mentorship with loon organics, a very established csa farm that sells at mill city market and is run by laura frerichs and adam cullip. at the recent moses conference, adam patiently answered the kajillion questions we had about spring planting and gave us a kajillion ideas in return. we’re really thrilled to know that if we see a roadblock looming ahead, a quick note to laura and adam could potentially help us figure out how to swerve around it.
moses organic 2012
- our fellow beginning farmers and established farmers alike. from the super energetic dayna burtness of laughing loon farm to the very knowledgeable atina diffley (co-founder of gardens of eagan), we’ve met such a wealth of helpful, enthusiastic farmers, and we have yet to encounter someone who won’t answer one of our questions with gusto.
farming can sometimes seem so overwhelming, like trying to empty a bathtub with a teaspoon.
we're in this together!
but our local — and, to some degree, national — farming community is like having a few hundred people using their teaspoons at the same moment. and for no reward other than the satisfaction gained from creating a healthy, stronger food system that benefits us all.
