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Farm Beginnings™ Profile: Charlie & Tzeitel Kersey
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Tzeitel, Charlie & Alida Kersey |
As a Peace Corps volunteer in Panama during the 1990s, Charlie Kersey helped spread the word about soil conservation by bringing farmers together to talk about goals and strategies for achieving those goals. This experience taught Kersey the benefits of farmer networking when it came to adopting innovative production systems. So when he decided to become a farmer himself, he enrolled in Farm Beginnings, a course that emphasizes this kind of farmer-to-farmer education.
“It totally made sense, especially for someone who doesn’t have any background in farming,” says Kersey, 38, one day recently while giving a tour of La Finca (Spanish for “The Farm”), the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) produce operation he and his wife Tzeitel, 32, run near Bruno.
Starting this fall, other wannabe farmers from northeast Minnesota and northwest Wisconsin will have an opportunity to get their food producing careers started by networking with established farmers. Lake Superior Farm Beginnings,® which begins classes in Cloquet this October, is the latest version of the Land Stewardship Project’s popular farmer development initiative. During the past 11 years, Farm Beginnings has provided seminars, skills sessions and on-farm educational programs to people of all ages from throughout the Midwest who are looking to adopt innovative farming systems that are profitable and good for the environment. As of 2008, over 300 people have completed Farm Beginnings courses in southeast Minnesota and western Minnesota, and 60 percent of the graduates are farming, making it one of the most successful beginning farmer initiatives in the country (Farm Beginnings is also offered in Nebraska, North Dakota and Illinois). Farm Beginnings graduates are involved in various innovative farming enterprises, including organic fruits and vegetables, grass-based livestock, Community Supported Agriculture and specialty products.
Now it’s the Lake Superior region’s turn to begin developing the next generation of farmers, says Cree Bradley, who is facilitating the program in the area for the nonprofit Lake Superior Sustainable Farming Association. As with other Farm Beginnings initiatives, at the core of the Lake Superior program will be a series of classroom sessions led by established farmers and other agricultural professionals from the area. Farm Beginnings participants learn goal setting, financial planning, business plan creation, alternative marketing and innovative production techniques. The students are also exposed to real-world farming through a series of on-farm educational sessions and mentorship experiences.
Bradley says the time is right for a beginning farmer training program in the area — an informal food assessment of the region done a few years ago confirmed what farmers have been experiencing firsthand: there is a huge demand for local food.
“That’s when we realized, wow, we have much more demand than supply here,” recalls Bradley, adding that Farm Beginnings, with its emphasis on sound business planning and innovative marketing, is a good fit for people who want to produce food for local markets. “Farm Beginnings graduates in other parts of the Midwest have done a great job of satisfying the growing demand for local food.”
Farm Beginnings is useful for people who have extensive farming backgrounds, as well as those who have little or no agricultural experience, according to Bradley.
Kersey, who grew up in Saint Paul and has an anthropology degree from Macalester College, had no agricultural experience before going to Panama. It was there he caught the “farming bug,” and after returning to the U.S. he took the Farm Beginnings course. He says for him the most valuable part of the program was that it was taught by established farmers dealing with real-world problems.
“That was what was most useful to me -- people who were out in the field actually doing it,” Kersey recalls. “One farmer shared a real balance sheet with us.”
Once they entered the real world of food production themselves, the Kerseys decided to adopt the CSA model of farming. CSA farmers sell shares in their produce operations before the growing season. In return, subscribers receive a delivery of fresh produce each week during the season. The young couple was attracted to the model because it allowed them to get started with minimal resources. Also, they like the way it connects them with the people they’re producing food for.
“Now people say stuff like, ‘I really like the way you’re farming,’ ” says Charlie while taking a walk around La Finca with his 19-month-old daughter, Alida. “Just that connection with the people you’re growing food for is a very fulfilling part of the CSA farm.”
The Kerseys launched their farming career in the Twin Cities suburb of Lake Elmo, where an environmentally-conscious developer had set up a CSA operation in the midst of a housing development. For four years Charlie and Tzeitel raised vegetables for Twin Citians. It was a great way to get started with little financial risk, but eventually they decided they didn’t want to farm in the suburbs anymore. In 2003 they bought 40 acres near Bruno. The land had originally been part of a large beef operation, and the Kerseys spent three years getting the soil in condition to raise vegetables. In 2006 they re-launched their CSA farm (www.lafincacsa.com) at the new location. Annually, La Finca sells around 375 shares total: they have 150 subscribers for the certified organic summer vegetable share, plus they sell pasture-raised chicken (they use the chickens’ manure to build soil in fallow vegetable plots) shares and a fall vegetable share. Most of their subscriber base is still in the Twin Cities area.
Charlie and Tzeitel say it’s been a bit of an adjustment moving their farming operation further north. Obviously, the shorter growing season can be a problem, plus the soil was more fertile in Lake Elmo. But they’ve been able to make adjustments, such as growing shorter season tomatoes and using plant covers. Plus, their customers see benefits such as getting vegetables in the middle of summer that have already played out on farms closer to the metro area.
“You can get beautiful broccoli in July,” says Charlie. “There are advantages and disadvantages to every area.”
-- A version of this article originally appeared in the Summer 2008 Land Stewardship Letter. For more information on LSP’s Farm Beginnings program, see www.farmbeginnings.org. More information is also available by calling 507-523-3366 in southeast Minnesota or 320-269-2105 in western Minnesota.
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