Laura Frerichs said her farm’s barn, century-old home and other outbuildings have undergone numerous modifications during the 15 years that she and her husband Adam Cullip have owned Loon Farm.
Laura Frerichs washes lettuce during the farming season.
Loon Farm’s large hoop houses are the starting place for many of the farm’s 45 crops.
A barrel washer is used to clean fall carrots at Loon Farm.
Devotion to her family, livelihood and the Land Stewardship Project has a way of sending Laura Frerichs in a million directions during the early days of planting season.
Her calendar for the next several weeks? It’s packed.
Organic seeds headed for soil? That’s just weeks away at Loon Farm, formerly Loon Organics, the 40-acre sustainable farm Frerichs operates with her husband Adam Cullip, three miles west of Hutchinson.
And the Land Stewardship Project? It’s a busy time there as well. As one of the nonprofit advocacy group’s board members since 2017, Frerichs has a hand in this year’s efforts to champion more than 15 bills at the Minnesota Legislature, all aimed at building a fair farm economy and better food systems. Work on the next federal Farm Bill is also underway, and then there’s a new crop of budding farmers to train. Frerichs is involved in all those efforts as the board’s vice chairman.
Meanwhile, at home on the farm, she and Cullip have a long list of late-winter/early-spring projects, in addition to raising their two sons, Eli, 11, and William, 7.
“On March 10th, we open our greenhouse and plant our first seeds of the season,” she said. “We start thousands of our own seedlings that get planted out into our fields and hoop houses starting in April. We also grow bedding plants for sale via our online plant store. Plant pickup is at our farm in May. Our next few weeks will be spent finalizing our 2023 greenhouse and crop plans, filing taxes, organizing and cleaning up the greenhouse to open on March 10th, teaching farming workshops and trainings to other farmers, and I’ll be involved with LSP Board and Committee work.”
Frerichs seems to take her busy schedule in stride. She has a plan for everything, down to the smallest detail. Fortunately, she and Cullip both possess a calm, steady demeanor — an attribute well-suited for the mental and physical demands of their work.
They are an effective team, each with their own skill sets.
“Adam and I have really complementary skills for farming, so he’s involved with the machinery and equipment and I’m more involved with the plant care and production side of it,” she explained.
A community-builder by nature, Frerichs is as comfortable spreading manure over her fields and loading fall carrots into a barrel washer as she is speaking about racial justice to other farmers or discussing policy issues with lawmakers.
Her farm duties sustain her family and a seasonal worker. Their produce feeds about 180 households belonging to the couple’s community-supported agriculture program, or CSA. Starting in June and continuing for 16 weeks, members receive a weekly share of almost 200 varieties of produce, ranging from fresh broccoli, sweet peppers and greens to cherry tomatoes, cucumbers and squash. Literally tons more of their produce is consumed by thousands of students through Loon Farm’s farm-to-school contract with the multi-district food service program serving schools in Hutchinson, Litchfield and Dassel-Cokato. Yet more produce goes to local food shelves.
On and off the farm, Frerichs’ Land Stewardship Project involvement supports vibrant rural communities and promotes shared values. The 41-year-old member-driven organization now boasts about 5,000 member households in five Upper Midwest states. Its primary focus: Build a sustainable food and farming system and resilient rural communities.
Frerichs has worn many hats with the group, from mentoring eager learners of sustainable farming practices to working with lawmakers to make sure farm families have access to affordable health care insurance.
“She has been a really good leader and has been such a mentor to beginning farmers. And I think she’s been a great leader on our board,” said Brian DeVore, the group’s media coordinator. “I really, really love working with her.”
That’s high praise for someone who never set out to be a farmer. Growing up in Worthington, Frerichs took wildlife and forestry classes in high school. She even joined FFA. But actual farming? That was all about corn, soybeans and dairy, she thought.
“I didn’t even know that you could be a vegetable farmer, right?” she said. “I didn’t know that there were farms like that in the Midwest, other than some where you pick strawberries or pumpkins.”
IOWA SCHOOL PLANTED A SEED
Graduating from high school in 1998, Frerichs headed to Grinnell College in Iowa, where she caught the farming bug. There, she learned how CSAs enable consumers to buy local, seasonal foods directly from a farmer. Immersing herself into the local foods scene, she cultivated friendships with professors and others who understood the connections between healthy foods, the environment and rural economies. “That, I think, was the seed, the spark,” she said.
Leaving college, she returned to Minnesota, settled in Minneapolis, and began working for a nonprofit public health agency. But she was bored.
“I wanted to get a job on a farm for the summer just to get some experience in growing food and see what that looks like,” she said.
Her pursuit led her to Gardens of Eagan, one of the best-known, longest-running certified organic operations in the United States. The night before she started the job, she met Cullip. The two have been life partners ever since. They credit much of their love for the land to their mentors, the owners of Gardens of Eagan, Atina and Martin Diffley.
“They were farming in Farmington, and they were farming 80 acres of organic veggies, and wholesaling them in the Twin Cities,” Frerichs said. “That’s really large. It was great to see that type of farm, to see that it was something that you could do as a profession. So I learned a lot working there and I just loved the work. I loved being outside. There was so much to learn. It was such an experiential learning process of just knowing how everything works together, and the principles of organic farming and soil health. And then you know — I really loved the food.”
Picking up additional experience at three other farms, Frerichs and Cullip eventually started their own incubator farm on rented land. But they wanted a place of their own, preferably within 90 minutes of the Twin Cities.
“It takes a long time to find farmland if you don’t have family ties,” Frerichs said. “We just expanded our search and happened to see this farm listed for sale. And it was really the great coincidence, or our lucky break, that this farm was already organic and had been operated as a CSA.”
With help from a beginning farmer loan through the Farm Service Agency, the couple, newly married, bought and moved to their Hutchinson farm in 2008.
“So this is our 15th year on this farm,” Frerichs said, “and we’re beginning our 19th year of farming.”
The transition from farming rented land south of the Twin Cities to growing veggies on their own place went as well as could be expected. The couple had already established a market for their produce with a successful vegetable stand at Mill City Farmers Market in Minneapolis. And just as important, they had a strong enterprise plan.
“We were really organized,” Frerichs said. “We were enrolled in a farm business management program through community colleges that works with farmers to help them with really good farm financial management and analysis. It helped us with things like how to make a budget, how we plan for cash flow, what records we need to get a loan. It helped us get a handle on the financial aspect because it’s an important piece of making our operation sustainable … So it’s like any other startup business.”
GROWING A SUPPORT SYSTEM
Today, the couple help prospective and new farmers obtain the same technical know-how and experience through the Land Stewardship Project’s Farm Beginnings Program. It’s common for Frerichs to lead tours of her farm, explain how to clarify goals and strengths, even open Loon Farm’s books to show starting farmers how to manage cash flow.
Among their students were Nick and Joan Olson, who moved from the Montevideo area 12 years ago to operate a certified organic vegetable farm near Litchfield.
“When we first started our farm, we actually worked for Laura and Adam part-time for two seasons,” Nick Olson said. “They were one of the reasons that we chose to move to Litchfield. We wanted to be in proximity to other farmers doing similar stuff and this happened to be building a relationship with Laura and Adam. It felt like a good fit.”
Today, Olson works for the Land Stewardship Project as an organizer for Farm Beginnings. He credits Frerichs as being instrumental in the program’s success largely because of her community-building skills.
“From early on, she’s been willing to share her knowledge with others in the movement,” he noted. “… She’s been first and foremost an advocate for local foods.”
She’s also an advocate for creating opportunities for farmers of color to be successful.
“For us, this is a core value. We can’t move forward if we leave so many people behind,” she told the National Press Club during a 2018 speech in Washington, D.C. “… There is no sustainable agriculture, there are no healthy communities, without racial justice. These are difficult conversations to have in the community, but there is an openness and potential when we do it in the context of relationship.”
She’s delivered that message locally as well.
“I saw her get up and speak to a roomful of farmers in Redwood Falls, mostly older, white, male farmers, and she just spoke from the heart about the way she’s farming, and how it’s equally important to and equally needed in all our communities,” Olson said. “And just to see the folks in the room respond to her openness — because her demeanor was very positive, very inclusive. Even though she was delivering a very different kind of message to that room, I felt everyone was nodding their heads and in full agreement because they recognized her commitment to the community and to farming.”
Frerichs has also been praised for breaking down barriers of the so-called “rural-urban divide.” DeVore said she’s not afraid to explain to nonfarmers the significance of local agriculture — its role in feeding local communities, its importance to local economies, and how it can be practiced in ways that don’t harm the environment.
“She’s willing to reach out to those people and say, ‘Hey, we’re in all of this together,’” he said.
That ties in well with the Land Stewardship Project’s mission of promoting a strong sense of community — similar to the social and economic tethers that connected European immigrant farmers in the Upper Midwest during the pioneer homesteading days of 160 years ago. Members are encouraged to share their know-how with other farmers, whether their farms are small or mid-sized.
“I do a lot of outside educational work,” Frerichs said. “I speak at a lot of conferences, I do a lot of workshops, and I’m involved with the U of M Extension and their food safety work. I’m a farmer trainer for the Minnesota Food Safety Team.”
HEALTH SOIL, CLEAN WATER
As its name implies, the Land Stewardship Project is about protecting and enhancing the land. Frerichs preaches that the soil must be healthy to produce safe food.
“The soil is really the foundation of organic agriculture,” she said. “So it’s personal. You need to feed your soil and have healthy soil to have nutritious, great-tasting food.”
Striving toward that goal, the Land Stewardship Project opposes forces that put land and water in harm’s way. That sometimes puts the group in legal crosshairs, especially with large, corporate farms.
Recently, the owners of the Daley Farm, the largest feedlot in Winona County, filed a lawsuit against several of the group’s members for opposing the feedlot’s proposed expansion from 2,000 animal units to almost 6,000. The county already has a limit on feedlots of 1,500, and the owners of Daley Farm have been grandfathered in to keep just fewer than 2,000. Neighbors and environmental groups including the Land Stewardship Project members worry the expansion will create more water pollution.
“Local neighbors and residents are saying, ‘We don’t want this here,’” Frerichs explained. “And so LSP has a real demonstrated record over many decades of pushing back against that kind of corporate agriculture. Fighting the worst, promoting the best.”
Farming in an eco-friendly way is one of the messages Frerichs shares with Farm Beginnings participants who visit Loon Farm. She explains how her neighbors have honeybees that pollinate her farm’s vegetable plants. She explains how she uses no synthetic fertilizers, no synthetic pesticides, fungicides or herbicides, and how drip irrigation keeps things green.
Drip irrigation is a must, especially during recent summers. The erratic nature of climate change is having an impact. “There’s no way we could have survived the last two growing seasons without supplemental irrigation,” she said. “We’ve definitely noticed it, and we’ve experienced (a change) in the wind. We’ve really noticed really high winds.”
Growing about 45 crops on 12 acres of tillable soil requires detailed planning. Typically, only four or five acres are planted each season with the remaining tillable land maintained with a cover crop to enhance soil health. In its early years, Loon Farm employed as many as five to eight seasonal workers along with several others to staff the couple’s farmers market stand. That workforce has been reduced in recent years to “right-size” the operation, according to Frerichs.
Keeping the operation manageable and organic is key. “I wouldn’t even know how not to farm organically because this is just what we’ve always done,” she said.
To grow the best-tasting crops, Frerichs chooses only organic or non-GMO seeds. Flavor is what it’s all about, after all. And that requires matching the right seeds with Loon Farm’s soil. It requires trial and error.
“We’ve really focused on selecting varieties that have really excellent flavor,” she said. “There are varieties of carrots that taste like the sweetest, crispest carrot you’ve ever had. It’s the kind you can’t buy in a grocery store. We select the highest-quality varieties of vegetable that have amazing flavor that do well in our soil. And there are some things that taste amazing that don’t do well here. So we’ve really tried to hone in and select the things that do.”
Change is a constant at the farm. The most recent big change is the name switch — from Loon Organics to Loon Farm.
“To be clear, nothing about our farm practices or product has changed,” Frerichs told her member households in a recent email. “We are still farming organically. But we chose to not continue certification in 2023 so we are phasing out of using the USDA-regulated term ‘organic’ in our farm name. Nothing about our growing practices or commitment to organic growing practices is changing or will change in the future. After 19 years of farming organically, it’s the only way we know how to farm.”
After two years of modest deficit spending, the Atwater-Cosmos-Grove City School Board wants to close its budget gap by about $200.000.
Not all of the proposed adjustments would be in the form of cuts, Superintendent John Regan told the board Feb. 27, after a 2023-2034 budget had been given its first look by the district’s Finance Committee. The committee found a few other revenue sources, he said. But facing a slightly lower enrollment than last year, and seeking to balance the district’s revenue and expenditures for the first time in three years, the committee is taking what Regan, Business Manager Blake Stoltman and a board member of the Finance Committee, Scott Stafford, termed a “conservative approach” to next year’s budgeting process. This may require adjusting administrative and classroom staff assignments to better match available revenue.
Although the board is not taking formal action at this time, more than a dozen teachers were present at the meeting, apparently reflecting their concern over impending funding cuts. Regan and Board Chairwoman Megan Morrison noted that, until the legislative session concludes in May, the district won’t have a firm idea of how many additional dollars might be headed the district’s way during the 2023-2025 biennium. Since the state has projected a budget surplus, it is highly likely that per-pupil funding will increase. However, since the district’s enrollment is down about 20 students from this time last year, total state revenue available may decline, even if per-pupil funding goes up. Also, federal COVID emergency funds have run out, and that funding enabled the district to invest in several facility and programming needs during the 2021-22 and 2022-23 school years.
A likely way that the budget will be balanced is for school officials to develop ways to get by with a fewer staff, slightly larger class sizes, and fewer academic course options. If the legislature comes through with significantly more funding, proposed cuts could get restored. But the district needs to notify its contracted staff by early spring of any potential that their contracts might not be renewed, and that is before the legislative session is over. “If lawmakers come back with more, it would be a benefit,” Stafford said.
“It’s a moving target,” Regan told the board. “We need to figure out how to allocate our resources to align with our strategic plan.”
The board did make one revenue adjustment Monday evening, raising the cost of preschool to $350/month for four-year-olds and $175/month for three-year-olds. Activities Director Marj Maurer said that is the same or slightly lower that other area school districts charge.
Other business
- The board heard that the district had cancelled school enough times due to weather that two “snow days” need to be made up. Five “e-learning days” where students did schoolwork on their electronic devices, were permitted by state law, and therefore do not need to be made up. It is anticipated that the “make up” days would be in mid-March. Otherwise, district attendance is running between 94 and 95 percent this school year, a slight improvement over the last couple of years.
- In personnel matters, the board hired Sabrina Sackett and Samantha Anderson as long-term substitutes to replace two paraprofessionals who had left the district. A resignation from elementary teacher Rachel Junkermeier was accepted and Haiiley Schumacher was granted maternity leave for later this spring. Three assistant or junior high spring sports coaches were also assigned.
- Building and Grounds Supervisor Tom Fordyce told the board that snow removal costs will be significantly higher this year. Elementary auditorium improvements are nearly complete, he told the board.
- The board signed a contract with the Minnesota State College and university systems to handle Post Secondary Enrollment Options for 2023-24, in a manner similar to prior years. Basically, the state reimburses local districts for the cost of tuition for district students who are enrolled in PSEO.
• Signed a contract with Pact for Families Collaborative for 25 percent of the cost of a school social worker, plus several other supports for district students with mental health needs.
• Sold three pieces of surplus school equipment to the highest bidders. Additional surplus equipment is offered on the district web site.
