From Your Farmer

It’s mid-July and in any typical year that would mean we’d be busy with summer farm tours.  We’d have already hosted the annual Co-op Farm Tour and had an evening on the farm with the chefs and butchers that source our turkey.  Of course, this is no normal year.  Historically, these have been some of my favorite days each summer and I’m missing them tremendously. Thinking of farm tours reminded me that I wrote in March about how our birds move through our farm in their younger days. I owe you a conclusion to that cliffhanger about how our turkeys live once they’re on range. Each spring, when the age of our turkeys and our faith in a “real” spring weather forecast intersect, we chase our first flock to range and continue that pattern throughout the summer.  When we initially move our turkeys fully outdoors, there is a pattern of adjustment as they adapt to new shelters, feeders, and [...]

Maybe it’s the busy season on our farm that hits each year around this time. More likely, it’s the result of the turbulence in our world and the frayed thinking that results.  Either way, I struggled to build a cohesive theme to share this month.  Instead, I want to share a couple of loosely connected thoughts to all that’s happened in the world of food and agriculture over the past few months. First, I’ve learned from my English instructor wife that words have real power.  As the pandemic escalated, our country began an informal discussion about who would go to work and who would work at home.  Farmers, meat processors, grocers, and food workers were deemed essential, and the public recognition felt powerful for the many people hidden behind the big brand name on a food package.  The “essential” status gave visibility and purpose to those who keep the country fed. All of this is a stark reminder of [...]

In one of the final days before our world came to a virus-induced halt, I attended the funeral for Marlene Willis.  Marlene was our very first retail clerk at Ferndale Market, hired right before we opened our on-farm store in the fall of 2008.  Her hiring was purely a matter of dumb luck and good timing, as my mom happened to bump into Marlene and she expressed an interested in our store-to-be.  I called her up and offered her a job - no application or interview needed.  That’s how the best things work in a small community. We’d known Marlene and her history in local retail, owning the Hallmark store and working the front desk at the Cannon Falls Beacon newspaper. From the start, she was our biggest fan, even when we probably didn’t deserve the cheerleading.  We were total retail novices, but she encouraged us forward, making signage and teaching us how to better merchandise.  She told me [...]

It’s both an honor and a challenge to be an “essential business” during the COVID-19 pandemic.  No doubt most farmers would gladly tell you they’ve always been essential, but the impacts we’ve felt here at Ferndale Market have pulled us in many new directions.  We’re in the food business from farm to table at Ferndale Market, so it’s been like riding a rollercoaster blindfolded as the situation turns each day. In our on-farm market, our team rallied incredibly fast to get us ready for curbside grocery pickup and local delivery.  We’re fully up and running with both, and I’m proud that we were able to quickly find ways to serve both customers and local food partners, all with social distancing in place.  The curbside and delivery options had been aspirational long-term goals for quite some time, but became a reality in less than two weeks with thoughtful work and hours of web programming.  Our frequent cleaning of all surfaces [...]

I realized recently that we talk a lot about our baby turkeys (poults) and big birds on range, but not necessarily about the time in between those stages.  Although brooding (starting baby turkeys) and life outdoors are two of the high points (and definitely most labor intensive) on our farm, there is plenty that happens between those periods. I thought I’d share more about that process here. All of our turkeys begin their life in a brooder barn.  By the time they arrive on our farm, they’ve already put in an honest day’s work, pecking their way out of their egg at the hatchery, being sorted into boxes of 100, and then riding in a warm, comfy truck to the farm.  Our poults arrive within a day of hatching, and we place them in small groups, encircled by cardboard dividers to create rings, where they can easily find heat, feed, and water.  And they like the heat!  While we [...]

I’m not used to winning awards.  I must be too old for the everybody-gets-a-trophy era, and my own abilities have rarely proven award winning.  In our family, our trophy heyday came over 80 years ago, when my great grandparents took turkeys to regional and national competitions to show their birds.  We have the trophies and platters to prove that my ancestors were true award-winners, but we’ve had a long dry spell since. This experience probably explains why I didn’t think to stick around for the awards ceremony at the Feast Festival in December.   So, you can imagine my surprise when I learned the next morning that Ferndale Market had been given the “Inspiring Social Benefit Award,” which recognizes a business model that incorporates community values and social benefit causes.  Needless to say, I was incredibly surprised and honored. I believe business can – and should – be a force for good.  Change can be spurred in many ways, and [...]

What would you like to see from Ferndale Market in 2020? This is the question on our minds and in our discussions here as we start the New Year.  2019 was good year for us here.  We experienced some high-profile milestones, like the 80th anniversary of our farm’s founding and the chance to be at the state fair with Minnesota Cooks, while also making slow-but-steady progress on the unseen, daily projects that prepare us for the future – building more ranging shelters, planting new trees, and replacing worn fences. In 2019, we are proud to have launched our new Ground Turkey Breast and our Birchwood Café Turkey Burger.  In our on-farm market, we introduced our now-popular glass bottle milk from Crystal Ball Farms and re-introduced local favorite Thousand Hills Cattle Company grass-fed beef.  We also welcomed a number of new members to our team and somehow allowed a few to sneak off into the world of retirement.  We expanded [...]

Buy now with one click!  Next day shipping!  Free delivery!  Although speed and convenience may be the fuel for our world today, it stands in stark contrast as we reflect on our Thanksgiving season and look ahead to Christmas. There are few things fast about farming.  We spend months planning our farm schedule to best-guess sizing for the Thanksgiving season.  Once the birds have hatched, our days are tied to their natural growth rate, which means we invest months in growing our turkeys.  There’s no high-speed mode or accelerated pace, and success in farming comes from attention to the daily, minute husbandry details that lead to a healthy, happy flock.  It’s oftentimes slow, deliberate, and intentional, but it’s worth the investment of time and care. Likewise, we know you have many convenient options for holiday gift giving.  In a world of speed and convenience, we appreciate that you make the trip to visit us at Ferndale Market to build [...]

There are only 30 days until Thanksgiving, so it’s our season to shine at Ferndale Market. This time of year, I can feel the pace quicken with preparation on the farm, in the market, and in our warehouse. The turkeys look good, the store is busy stocking holiday items, and the delivery trucks are humming. This is what we work toward all year. I’m reminded of Howard Buffet’s concept of “40 chances” during our Thanksgiving season. The basic premise is that a typical crop farmer, growing an annual crop and working an average career span, will have 40 crop seasons – chances – to leave their mark. I love the way this frames the work in agriculture; instead of a continuous cycle of plant-to-harvest, it’s instead an opportunity to start anew each season. Although we turkey farmers get to cheat quite a bit (growing more than one flock each year), the Thanksgiving season is still the bookend of our [...]

The Minnesota Twins went 2-and-1 and I hardly saw a minute of the games, but I won’t forget my favorite baseball series of the year.  You may have seen that Ferndale Market had the opportunity to be a vendor at Target Field for the Twins vs. Tigers series in late August.