Tyler Carlson farms near “Gopher Prairie,” the fictional setting for Sinclair Lewis’s 1920 novel, Main Street. In the book, Lewis, who grew up in the real Gopher Prairie, otherwise known as Sauk Centre, used biting satire to poke fun at small town life. On this summer day, Carlson is finding the havoc burrowing rodents are… Read More →
Innovative Farming Requires an Innovative Approach to Soil Health It’s a bright June day in southeastern Minnesota, and the hilly landscape is in full summer bloom. But as Chuck Henry watches his dairy herd graze a mix of winter wheat and Sudan grass, he has numbers on his mind: 33,000 bites per day, per cow;… Read More →
Farmers possess a kind of ground-level common sense that seems increasingly rare in today’s fast-paced, technologically-driven world. Farmers develop this common sense from a real, experiential understanding of their land. Mike Krause is one farmer who not only understands the generations’ worth of knowledge behind his family farm, what the land has been through, and… Read More →
Giant Bull Statue Accompanies Citizens to Lakeville LAKEVILLE, Minn. — Rural neighbors to a proposed factory hog farm in Goodhue County’s Zumbrota Township travelled to Lakeville today to confront Jeff Kohlnhofer, one of the factory farm’s proposers. Kohlnhofer, the vice-president of Kohlnhofer Insurance Agency in Lakeville, also co-owns Circle K Family Farms with his brothers.… Read More →
Without MPCA Citizens’ Board, Neighbors Shut Out of Decision ZUMBROTA TOWNSHIP, Minn. — The Commissioner of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) has decided an inaccurate and incomplete Environmental Assessment Worksheet (EAW) on a proposed factory hog farm in Goodhue County’s Zumbrota Township will not be corrected. Neighbors to the proposed facility learned late last… Read More →
Incredibly, MPCA Environmental Review Missed Neighbors’ Homes & Wells Land Stewardship Project members in Zumbrota Township in southeastern Minnesota’s Goodhue County are facing the possibility of having a proposed 4,700-hog factory farm and 3.7-million-gallon liquid manure pit in their community. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) is charged with doing an accurate and thorough environmental… Read More →
The first decade of a farm is full of challenge, sweat, growth, difficult lessons, satisfaction and joy. In order to get more successful farmers on the land, new farmers need to establish their farms in a way that cultivates financial, ecological, personal and relationship sustainability. Land Stewardship Project’s Journeyperson Course wants to help you achieve… Read More →
Our federal elected officials finally seem to be getting serious about passing much-needed comprehensive immigration reform in Washington, D.C. That’s good. It is also important to note there’s a very important immigrant worker rights issue that needs to be addressed right here and right now in rural Minnesota. No new laws need to be passed,… Read More →
I talked to a Todd County farmer yesterday who uses 100 percent no-till and other conservation measures to raise his crops. Conserving soil is important to him, and so he’s quite upset at how mobile humus has been on neighboring farms this fall/early winter. “You know that little skiff of snow we got the other… Read More →
On April 15, the Land Stewardship Project saw farmers, community members, agency staffers, nonprofit folks, legislators, school district staff, and champions of Farm to School engage in this farm-to-fork initiative in the most hands-on way possible — by breaking bread together over school lunch trays at the Hutchinson High School. This diverse group of people… Read More →
