When we hear the word "farmer", many of us have a traditional - if not stereotypical - image that comes to mind.
It could be overalls, tractors, or hard, sweaty work. Or maybe cows, pigs and corn that's 'knee high by the 4th of July.' But in this month's “A Closer Look” with Laura Oakes, she introduces us to a few farmers who buck that image, but whose impact on our food system, restaurants and economy can't be underestimated.
It’s 2:45 on a hot, humid Saturday where the newly crowned "Best Chef in the Midwest" is:
A) Checking in with her tight knit, small team of chefs on today’s staff meal before customers who made reservations weeks ago arrive to sample 13 courses over the course of an evening.
B) Cleaning the dirt from under her fingernails after picking elderflower at a Cokato farm earlier in the day for a concoction she’ll pair with tart cherries for tonight’s dessert.
C) All of the above.
Chef Karyn Tomlinson is living her dream as owner of tiny Myriel, tucked away in an old brick building on Cleveland Avenue in St. Paul, where each evening’s menu pretty much came straight out of the ground that day.
“I think the ingredients are better,” says Tomlinson. “All the other stuff that we're working with, that our farmers have grown, they just take so much pride in what they're doing. And I also think it's better for us to eat food that comes from nearby. And another reason why I feel so strongly about sourcing this way is that it's really hard for so many farmers to figure out how to make a go of it with their business. Farming is a business.”
Tomlinson's mission doesn’t involve chasing accolades like the prestigious Best Chef: Midwest she just won at this year’s James Beard Awards, known as the “Oscars” of the food world. It's bigger than that.
“I just love getting to know these people,” she adds. “To me, there's so much more joy in cooking and eating when you know what your ingredients are, not just that they were local or came from somewhere nearby, but you know who grew them and all the work that goes into that. All the love that went into that. And to me, you know, to all of us at Myriel, that's really been a game-changer.”
A New Way of Growing
The small traditional farmer supplying fresh produce to local restaurants isn’t going anywhere.
But new markets, and ways of growing and doing business, seem to be cropping up every day.
“This section here of two walls is going out to Meritage and Farmer's Kitchen and Bar, utilizing them right now in their menus,” says Jesse Grothe who is the owner of Frisk Fra Boksen in Shoreview. “Loosely translates to 'fresh from the box.' It's a Norwegian phrase.”
And by box, he means two refrigerated shipping containers he calls his "farms."
“We grow everything in vertical sections,” says Grothe. “We have four distinct grow walls with each its own set of LED grow lights. And each with its own set of irrigation systems. So each one of these sections receives water from a tank in the back that is balanced in real time, with all of the nutrients held at the proper pH, held at the proper water temperature that, as closely as we can, optimizes their growing environment.”
Grothe sells those hydroponically grown lettuces to nearby high end restaurants that pride themselves on fresh, local ingredients.
“I think the freshness and hyper-local aspect of it is really intriguing to them,” explained Grothe. “And, on top of that, the year-round access to some of these crops whereas they would be buying through a large wholesaler that would be getting supplied through say, California or Arizona or Mexico, for some of these lettuces and leafy greens. They have access to them right here in their backyard all year round.”
Minnesota: Agriculture Powerhouse
What's unique in this story is how these chefs, farmers and growers, and their unconventional ways are adding richness and ingenuity to the state's bigger farming scene.
And that, Minnesota Agriculture Commissioner Thom Petersen says, is nothing short of an agricultural powerhouse.
“We rank in the top 10 in so many different commodities,” Petersen said. “Corn, soybeans, hogs, turkey, dairy, we're home to General Mills, Cargill, CHS, Land O’ Lakes. We have over 400 farmers markets. We just have a vast array of agriculture. It’s everywhere, and it's well supported.”
In fact, corn and soybeans make up more than 80% of the state's crops, with corn mainly used for ethanol production and animal feed. Most of the soybeans are exported internationally.
And while the list of things that keep Petersen up at night can be long, usually involving less-than-ideal weather that can impact crops or animal diseases like avian influenza, he remains an optimist and is particularly excited about how farming is evolving for the future.
“But we also look at who's gonna farm in the next 20 or 30 years? University of Minnesota Extension says that 50% of all the farmland in Minnesota will change hands in the next 20 years,” noted Petersen. “And so we look at the average age of a farmer, pretty much looks like me, middle 50s, white. But that's changing rapidly. And as our demographics change in Minnesota, we see a large Hmong population, a large Somali population, a large East and West African population, our tribal nations are all getting into agriculture. So there's a lot of exciting things happening. Those tend to be smaller farmers, but they can produce high dollar value crops. And to me that's really exciting.”
Another thing Petersen is excited about? The role of technology.
“You actually can use computers to pinpoint-spray a weed in a huge field now,” he said. “We have farmers that can be two hours away that can move cattle with invisible fencing. You can turn on and turn off your pivot irrigation, all these different things. But it also saves, whether that's product or water. So I think there's a lot of technologies that are really going to play a big role both in big and small farms in the next 10 to 20 years. And so that's exciting to me too as well.”
Six Generations of Dairy Farmers
“Plunger is from Plumber and then she has a daughter named Plunkett, like the company. There's Root, and her daughter Root Beer is over there across the way.”
You better believe sixth-generation farmer Christine Leonard has names for every one of her family’s 45 dairy cows. Their Norwood-Young America farm is just a few miles from their biggest customer, Bongards Cheese, a farmer-owned co-op that's been churning out products to schools, grocery stores and retail markets in countries as far away as Australia since 1908.
And even though the Leonard’s operation is small, the care and attention lavished on each and every cow is anything but. Here too, technology is huge, whether it's the artificial insemination process, milking by machine, or even monitoring each cow's nutrient absorption to ensure the best quality milk possible.
“Not only do we have a bulk tank sample that tells us every other day how much our cows are giving as a whole, each cow individually also gets analyzed to make sure that we're taking the best care of her that we can,” says Leonard. “And we're recording all sorts of stuff. So this is her somatic cell count, and this is pregnant verified. The date she was bred, the date she's due, the date she's due to dry up.”
Not only is the milk closely analyzed, so are the crops the Leonards grow themselves to feed their herd.
“We actually have a nutritionist that comes out and analyzes our cows,” explained Leonard. “He analyzes all of the feed that our cows have, or that we're able to provide. Then he can do everything from taking samples of their manure to you know, how is everything looking? Are cows looking like they're giving enough energy? What are the numbers from their milk telling us? Do they need something else? And then he balances our ration, and then we have a fourth ingredient that we buy from the co-op that adds a little more protein, vitamins and minerals. Anything else our cows might be missing we add in with that.”
The challenges of farming on a small scale are real. Christine says the economics go in waves, where at times her family was paid less for their milk than farmers in the 1970's were.
To help compensate for that - and actually generate cash flow and income- Christine also runs an artisan cheese tasting business called The Grater Good. She uses these opportunities to educate people on the importance of knowing where their food is coming from.
“I think that as we've become more and more generations removed from the farm, we've lost this sense of grounding, this sense of what is actually - it doesn't just appear, it takes cultivation,” she says. “It takes work. It takes research. It takes business smarts. It takes all sorts of these things. And with this separation, there has also become almost an entitlement. The more that I dig into it and the more I get invested into artisan food in general, we need to find a balance between food that is affordable for everyone to eat and food that is sustainable for our future.”
Young Farmers Committed to the Food - And the Land
About an hour's drive south and east of the Leonard Farm is the nonprofit Sharing Our Roots farmstead near Northfield in Dakota County.
Sharing Our Roots has restored 100 acres of previously degraded farmland. It is a place for smaller, emerging farmers or even folks who just want to give the farming lifestyle a try without a huge financial commitment.
That’s something that appealed to Wyatt and Tessa Parks who are raising a small herd of grass-fed beef cows.
“The white ones with black ears and black nose are basically purebred, British whites, we don't know the whole genetic history on all these guys,” Wyatt explains.
The Parks are actually West Coast natives, but found an opportunity they couldn't pass up, with showing love through food a big part of Tessa's upbringing, and Wyatt's unexpected journey to a farm management degree.
They sell their product through smaller, sustainable retailers and farmers markets, and also grow organic hay with the help of a state grant. It's hard work - and nobody's getting rich.
“I don't want to get too nosy about your finances, but how much does something like this cost? Or what has it cost you to get started in this business?” asks Oakes.
“I can give Holstein numbers because I know the Holstein numbers really well. We figured it cost us $150 a calf,” Wyatt says. “We could get an animal to market for under $2,000. So basically, our margin ends up being about $1,000 per animal once it's in retail packaging.”
Yet, they make it work. Since getting married on the farm in 2018, they squeeze in together time where they can.
“He's in the middle of a hay field, I just got done with the day job, I pick up dinner, we meet out in the fields, crank the AC in my car, and have our dinner,” Tessa says. “That's date night. Or, getting ice cream after bottle chores has been our regular routine.”
Tessa and Wyatt represent a growing number of young farmers who are choosing a way of life that aligns with their values, as difficult as that may be.
“For us, being better stewards of the resources we have is how we're going to be able to keep farming,” says Tessa. “If we want to make it to the average age of a farmer which is in 30 years, we're going to need to be able to protect the fertility, and our topsoil, and make sure that these spaces are going to continue to be productive. Not only so that our animals have something to eat, but then so does our community.”