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Searched for: regional food systems

Hitting the Conservation Target with Prairie Strips

Gary Van Ryswyk’s concern for how his farming methods impact the landscape is obvious. A practitioner of a no-till system that avoids disturbing a field’s surface as much as possible, he is particularly focused on keeping soil in place. “None of us who farm want the soil to move—we care,” Van Ryswyk told me one…  Read More

Rolling Our Land to Death

I sat in a farmhouse one afternoon last month as a hot wind lifted rich topsoil from surrounding fields. On the drive in, I’d noticed a surprising amount of rill erosion on newly tilled cropland—surprising because recent rains had not been all that intense and the fields were not unusually steep. Out of the blue…  Read More

The 3 Ps of Farmland Conservation: Passion, Policy & Price

While leading a group of natural resource professionals through one of his dairy pastures one early fall day, Martin Jaus made it crystal clear he farms the land for more than a milk check. “Every day we see something that just amazes us,” he said with a smile. “One day I was making hay and…  Read More

California Dreaming

A Farm Beginnings Grad Makes a Go of it in an Urban Setting

2025-2026 Farm Beginnings Class LSP is now accepting applications for its 2025-2026 Farm Beginnings class session. For details, click here. ♦ ♦ ♦ By the time Elyssa Eull moved back to Minnesota a few years ago, she already had several years of experience working on vegetable farms. But she felt that in order to successfully…  Read More

Staring Down Doubts

How Valerie Hsu Saw Livestock as Part of Her Farm Dream

2025-2026 Farm Beginnings Class LSP is now accepting applications for its 2025-2026 Farm Beginnings class session. For details, click here. ♦ ♦ ♦ This is a story about how traffic jams aren’t all bad, the powerful draw of regenerative agriculture, an MBA project, and how one woman living in the suburbs got over imposter’s syndrome,…  Read More

A Sense of Where You Are: The Quickening

Part 6 in a Series

Note: This is the 6th installment in the 12-part “A Sense of Where You Are” series.  When your context is farming in the city, everything is a little faster, denser, and louder. “We grow everything very intensively,” said Elyssa Eull on a warm evening in early September while she stood near the entrance to California…  Read More

Open Hands Farm

Open Hands Farm is a 20-acre certified organic CSA farm located just two miles north of Northfield, Minn. We think that healthy food should not be a luxury, and that a CSA share is an inexpensive way to enjoy organic vegetables and fruit. Our shareholders come to the farm once-a-week from early June through the…  Read More

Prairie Drifter Farm

Prairie Drifter Farm is a diversified, certified organic vegetable farm serving the Minnesota communities of Litchfield, Dassel, and Saint Cloud through Community Supported Agriculture. Pick-up locations include the farm, Litchfield Natural Food Co-op, Dassel Community Room, and the Good Earth Food Co-op in Saint Cloud. Our farm is committed to building community through food, stewarding…  Read More

From Crisis to Community

A Shared Threat Prompts a Shared Vision for a New Farm As the land auction progressed, it looked like the parcel was on its way to exchanging hands at a decent price. But the landowner grew increasingly anxious about the guy who was likely to get the highest bid—he was a well-known owner of large-scale…  Read More

Farm Beginnings Profile: Andy Cotter & Irene Genelin

Wheeling into the Future

It’s not every day that you see the words “unicyclists” and “farming” used in the same sentence, but here we go: national and world champion unicyclists Andy Cotter and Irene Genelin launched a farming operation a half-a-dozen years ago. Now, this is the part of the story that cries out for a familiar trope like…  Read More