From Your Farmer

I think nearly every Midwesterner would agree that this winter carried on at least a month too long, and I rejoice at these great spring days we’re having as I write this. Suddenly, our grass is growing inches a day, the neighborhood frogs are back, and the plant rack has made its annual appearance in front of the market. This time of year is also the start of my favorite season here on the farm. Our springtime is marked by unlatching barn doors to turn our flocks back outside after winter, and then chasing flocks from our outside barnyards to our ranging pastures. This time of year makes our free-range practices so visible with our flocks back outside. For those of us on the farm, it’s a daily reminder of the very different way our turkeys live. Funny thing is, this is just standard operating procedure around here. Far from being something we do purely for a marketing point-of-difference, [...]

I think it’s natural to romanticize farming, or maybe business ownership in general. One of my mottos here is that we should try to solve problems so our customers don’t have to. In today’s business speak, we’re trying to eliminate pain points, so we work hard to make it all look easy. But, as any business owner would tell you, sometimes there’s just a lot to be done. I had a recent weekend here that didn’t go quite according to plan, and I thought it could be an enlightening glimpse into the less glamorous parts of owning a farm or business. Here’s the string of events: Friday evening: we were going out to dinner with friends, so I was working hard to sneak out early. On my way out, I got a call from our market that the cash register had crashed so our staff wasn’t able to ring up customers. I did my best to put a temporary [...]

Out of nowhere, everybody seems to know the price of a dozen eggs. We’ve grown all-too-accustomed to this by now. The last three years have taught us to lurch from empty shelves to price hikes. Between pandemic-induced supply chain issues, inflation, and changes in our shopping behaviors, we sure spend more time thinking about the complex levers that impact our food prices. But, back to the price of eggs for a moment. I’m happy to tell you that our price for a dozen eggs hasn’t budged a bit ($4.49, since you asked). In fact, I think it’s been over a year since we’ve adjusted our egg price. Why are we so unique? The story of eggs demonstrates the beauty of a local food system. Our local egg farmer isn’t selling onto the global commodity market, so the eggs on our shelf don’t pass through brokers, warehouses, or big egg companies. Our farmer’s eggs pass directly from her farm to [...]

It seems like one of the recurring themes in my recent podcast feed and reading list has been the so-called urban rural divide. Most interestingly, I seem to bump into this from both sides of the table. I’ll read in an agriculture publication that the urbanites don’t get it, and then I’ll hear on the radio that it’s the rural folks that just don’t understand. We seem to be crossing signals somewhere! Call me naïve, but I don’t completely understand the divide, especially around food. I’ll admit up front that geography may skew my opinion, because although I live in rural Minnesota, I often take advantage of our close proximity to the Twin Cities. Like many folks in our area, we often say we have the best of both worlds. I can work all day on the farm and have dinner and a Twins game in Minneapolis. That disclosure aside, I think both sides are missing the point if [...]

Happy New Year from all of us at Ferndale Market! As we flip our calendars to the New Year, it’s fun to celebrate a few victories from the year that was. Although it wasn’t always smooth sailing (don’t get me started on the high cost of turkey feed these days…), we have a lot to feel proud of at Ferndale Market as we close the book on 2022. Here are a few accomplishments to share: We are so grateful to have dodged avian influenza. It was a scary and uncertain time for all poultry farmers, so we are thankful for healthy flocks. While it may be been pure luck, we count ourselves as fortunate. Our freezer got a little bigger! We were able to replace a couple well-worn shipping containers with a new freezer in our warehouse space, just in time for our big autumn push. It felt like we wouldn’t have survived another day without the extra space, [...]

I always come into our post-Thanksgiving season with a deep feeling of gratitude – for our team, our customers, and the many, many partners it takes to pull it off together. As I often remind our crew here, we almost certainly do more than we’re equipped to do each November, but we manage to make it happen without tumbling off the rails. It’s turkey season, after all! I know I speak for everyone here in offering a sincere thank you for the kindness and support you show us each Thanksgiving season. We know so many of our customers make an extra effort to seek us out, and we appreciate that you believe in our Ferndale difference. And, now for something completely different!  I want to share a quick and not-so-flattering story, because it drives home the merits of local food. A couple months back, our local school district was serving our turkey hot dogs. Unfortunately, they didn’t turn out [...]

It’s a tremendous relief to reach this Thanksgiving season. While it’s typical for our year to feel somewhat like a mountain climb to the Thanksgiving peak, the relief is heightened this year after the constant worry about avian influenza (“bird flu”). As influenza continued to impact farms both big and small, across all corners of the country, it was hard to shake a nagging sense of worry. Now, we can feel a deep gratitude to approach the Thanksgiving season with the relief of having been spared. I often think of our Thanksgiving season much like the harvest push for a vegetable, fruit, or crop farmer. Around on our farm, we spend most of the year planning and planting (in our case, brooding poults) and tending closely to make sure all our flocks do well. This year, we did it all with the shadow of a proverbial hail storm. We tried to follow all the best practices to avoid avian [...]

I’m very aware that there are many places you can buy food today. We live in a time and place where groceries seem to be everywhere: gas stations, home improvement stores, big box membership stores, and even delivered to your doorstep in a box. All of which is to say, we know Ferndale Market isn’t your only option. Of course, we’d like to think we’re doing something a little different here, but we never take for granted that you seek us out in a crowded and competitive world of food. It was probably a crazy idea to open an on-farm local food store in 2008, but Ferndale Market is still here today because of you. I think that’s well worth celebrating each year, so please consider this your personal invitation to join me and our team for our annual Customer Appreciation Day next Saturday, October 1st.  Lunch is on Ferndale (you can guess the main course!), and we have [...]

I was at a food show recently and talking with one of our local food partners (shout out to Northern Soda Company!) and we were discussing the many hats all business owners wear. In our case, from farm to market. Someone commented “you must be busy.” Well, yes, I have plenty to do, but I suspect all farmers and business owners would say the same. But I’ll let you in on my little secret: I don’t do any of this alone. In fact, I feel like I’ve had more time away from the farm than usual lately, with a mix of work travel, meetings, and some family trips sprinkled in. Every time I’m away, I’m reminded of what a capable team we have here at Ferndale, and this seems like a perfect chance to showcase all they’re working on each day. For a small business like ours, we have an incredibly diverse set of job descriptions and most folks are [...]

This is one of my favorite notes to write each year, because I get to personally invite you to visit our farm! I always love having company, and I especially enjoy the chance to pull back the curtain on our farm and Ferndale story, so our customers and fans can see our turkeys first-hand. In that spirit, I hope you can join us on Saturday, July 16th as we participate in the annual Co-op Farm Tour. For our part, we’ll be providing hay ride tours around the farm, so you can see our turkeys, our land, and hear what makes our Ferndale products unique. Days like this are special in agriculture, because they’re the missing link in the sea of typically-anonymous foods. We know how rare it is for a shopper to see the farm their food came from, and unfortunately, it’s even rarer for a farmer to stand face-to-face with the customers that are nourished by their efforts. And, [...]