Wrenshall news

While most of us are excited just to see brown outside instead of white, there is a lot of green poking up in our farm’s potting shed this week. My husband and I own and operate the Food Farm and we have onions an inch high and the tomatoes are showing their cotyledons (a wonderful-sounding word that means the first two leaves of a plant). Our family took lawn chairs out to the greenhouse last week just to bask in the sun and pretend we were on one of the tropical vacations we keep seeing in people’s social media feeds.

Its CSA sign-up time for many of the farms in Wrenshall right now. For those not familiar with the term – CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture, and it is a way to connect people who eat food to the people who grow it. In the typical CSA system, members pay before the start of the season for a share of the farm’s harvest. In turn, they receive a portion of the farm’s bounty each week throughout the season.

A big part of CSA is knowing who your farmer is. There are three organic vegetable CSA farms in Wrenshall: Rick and Karola Dalen run Northern Harvest Farm (www.northernharvestfarm.com), Catherine Conover runs Stone’s Throw Farm (www.stonesthrowfarm.wordpress.com), and my husband, Janaki Fisher-Merritt, and I run the Food Farm (www.foodfarm.us).

We all participated in a CSA fair in Duluth this past weekend. It was neat to see that our little two-mile radius of Wrenshall made up a third of the farms represented at the event. To sign up for a share from one of these farms, visit their website or pick up the phone — this kind of farming is all about the relationships between eaters, farmers, and the land that supports us all.

In related farming news, there was a planning meeting this past Sunday for Wrenshall’s “Breakfast at the Farm” hosted by Duane and Doreen Laveau. Mark your calendars for 8 a.m.-1 p.m. June 29 for this family-friendly event. Don’t miss your chance to tour a modern dairy farming operation and connect with farmers in this area.

That’s the same weekend — June 28-29 — as the Free Range Film Festival, which maintains the tag line “a farm fresh alternative to stale cinema” and shows movies inside a big old barn just south of town.

Whether it’s these events, Brickyard Days, or the Corn Maze and Haunted Shack, we’re just glad to know the planning is underway to bring visitors out to our slice of paradise.

If you have Wrenshall-related community news or there is someone you want to see recognized, please contact Annie Dugan at 218-310-4703 or [email protected].