Winter Visits
A faming community relies on a lot of visiting. Meeting at the cafe for coffee in the morning to hear the news of the town, going to the neighbor's house in the afternoon for tea, or meeting a farmer on the road and talking through open truck windows about which old tractor is getting fixed this time.
The sustainable and organic farming community is a little more spread out geographically, but we still like to visit (especially in the winter when we actually have time). It's a time to meet new people, trade ideas and stories, and strenghthen our growing farm community here in Minnesota.
Sally and I are working with the Land Stewardship Project and a team of farmers to reach out to other farmers in our area to develop communities. I was happy to visit Marshwatch Farms in Prior Lake today and chat with Joe and Terrie Adams. They live on an old farm in Scott County and have a CSA business. The farm is beautiful, they fed me a delicious lunch, and I was happy to get to know another farm couple (and see an old barn too!)
I decided to do some more visiting and drove to Le Sueur to check out Know-How Brews and Foods and chat with Rusty Rybolt. He and his wife Ann have opened a homebrew and cheesemaking supply shop in the Le Sueur Mall! Since we are going to have a lot of goat milk a few months, we have been interested in learning how to make cheese, yogurt, and kefir out of the milk. Well, now we can drive five miles to get our cultures and utensils. Amazing. Plus, the homebrew stuff will come in handy in the fall for hard apple cider! I bought some culture to make yogurt and kefir, and I'll go out and buy some Cedar Summit milk for the recipe.
What a nice couple of visits for this mid-winter day!
