The staggered plantings rise up to the horizon. The shortest row is Steve's hopes to extend the sweet corn season. It will mature right as the cold weather hits, but, if the temperatures agree, it will mean a couple more days of sweet corn for Josephson's customers. In the field neighboring Steve and Sue Josephson’s house, rows of sweet corn rise in steps away from the bordering county road. The [...]

For Bob Draheim, owner of Busy Bee Honey Farm in Cannon Falls, MN, bees began as a accessory to his farm in Byron, MN about 20 years ago. “We had a pick-your-own strawberry, pick-your-own raspberry farm… We needed the bees to pollinate raspberries, so I bought two hives of bees,” Bob recalls, “We had such a good raspberry crop that one year, the second year we started with the bees, [...]

The long rows of green beans in Sno Pac's fields near Caledonia, MN Most CEOs would feel out of place in a farm field, but not Pete Gengler. He is the fourth generation of his family to farm and freeze vegetables for Sno Pac Foods in Caledonia, MN and it is in a farm field that he feels most at home. “I started out picking strawberries when I [...]

On many evenings, you can find Grant Schultz in the back of Costas Candies and Restaurant, patiently stirring a pot of bubbling caramel. For two to three hours he keeps vigilance over the hot confection until it is ready to pour onto a marble slab to cool for the night. Costas Candies and Restaurant has been a main stay in Owatonna, MN for almost a century, but the Schultz family [...]

Tom Ruhland was enticed, like many Midwesterners, with the promise of easy riches if he were to have a coveted food concession stand at the Minnesota State Fair. He began experimenting with puff pastry as a hobby while he worked as a teacher. “This was, quite honestly, kind of a side gig for me,” Tom recalls. “I used to paint houses in the summer time as additional income and I [...]

Spring Grove makes nine flavors (Cream soda not pictured) and Ferndale is proud to carry them all. Rhuberry is their newest flavor combining the summer flavors of strawberry and rhubarb. When Bob and Dawn Hansen moved just outside the small town of Spring Grove, MN in 1983, the company Spring Grove Soda Pop was quickly approaching its 90th birthday. It would be another 20 years before they would [...]

A local apiary drops by to install more bee boxes in the Open Hands bee colony. A dusty flatbed pickup rolls along the gravel driveway of Open Hands Farm and out past the fields of lush vegetable plants. The bright patchwork of bee boxes strapped securely to its bed will soon house the growing swarm of pollinators that work alongside Erin Johnson and Ben Doherty on their organic [...]

  The Lorence Family (L to R: Gayle, Shawn, Jake, David, Susie, and Emily) standing next to one of their strawberry fields. As the warmth of June settles into the valleys around Northfield, the first strawberries at Lorence’s Berry Farm grow heavy on their leafy stems. The Lorences nurture fields of strawberries, asparagus, and fall raspberries just west of Castle Rock, MN. The asparagus has been pushing through [...]

In 1878, after immigrating across the Atlantic Ocean, the Hubmer family settled in the vast Minnesota prairie to begin farming. Ever since, the family has worked the land, stewards for each generation of children who would farm after them. Roger and Dawn started farming together in 1982, after their marriage. In 1998, they started Prairie Pride Farm. “Prairie Pride came about because of a passion for providing good, clean, healthy [...]

In 1968, Ed and Mary Lorentz were visiting family in Chicago when they received the call that the Bremer Brother’s Meat Market in Ed’s hometown of Cannon Falls, MN was for sale.  Ed was working at an ammonia plant at the time, but he had experience as a meat cutter and a rich entrepreneurial spirit so he and Mary made the leap into owning their own business and started the [...]