What is a CSA? - Lida Farm

(light musical score) - Our daughter and son and their families live near the Twin Cities.

They were telling me about a food subscription service that is available to them.

Meals are prepared and then delivered to their door where they can be used right away or put into the freezer for use at a later date.

They love the convenience and freshness of the food, especially when supplemented with a trip to their local farmer's market.

Well, here we have CSAs for fresh food, so let's find out what that is all about.

- [Announcer] Funding for "Prairie Yard and Garden" is provided by Heartland Motor Company, providing service to Minnesota and the Dakotas for over 30 years in the heart of truck country.

Heartland Motor Company, we have your best interest at heart.

Farmers Mutual Telephone Company and Federated Telephone Cooperative proud to be powering Acira, pioneers in bringing state-of-the-art technology to our rural communities.

Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen in honor of Shalom Hill Farm, a nonprofit rural education retreat center in a beautiful prairie setting near Windham, Minnesota.

And by Friends of Prairie Yard and Garden, a community of supporters like you who engage in the long-term growth of the series.

To become a Friend of Prairie Yard and Garden, visit pioneer.org/PYG.

(light upbeat music) - [Mary] I have heard Ryan Pesche speak at Hort Night and several other horticulture meetings.

I thought he was very knowledgeable about business and vegetables.

Then, I found out that he is a place called Lida Farm where he grows and markets lots of vegetables.

Well, I had to find out more, so I called Ryan and he said we could come for a visit.

Thanks, Ryan, for letting us come out and see your operation and learning more.

- Yeah, Mary.

Love to have you.

Thanks for coming.

- Tell me, how did you get started, and what's your background?

- You know, I mean, my background's kind of weird for horticulture.

I mean, I'm a Gusty grad from Gustavus Adolphus.

And I don't know, I studied classics, so Greek, Latin, stuff like this.

But growing up in a rural area, I just sort of had an interest in farming.

Didn't grow up farming at all.

So I grew up in East Grand Forks as a city kid.

Just kind of had an interest in farming and kind of food based on my interactions with the Food Co-op in St. Peter and said it was something I wanted to explore.

So after I graduated from Gustavus, I spent two years apprenticing on a vegetable operation in the St. Croix River Valley.

- What is a CSA?

- Yeah, CSA starts stands for Community Supported Agriculture.

So the whole idea is somebody who's a- become a member of the farm for the season.

And then what they do is they pay up front for a membership, and then as return, they get kind of what's in season each week.

The whole idea behind the supportive part is, like, they're supporting the farm and kind of taking the risk with the farm over the course of the seasons, so.

My claim to fame is over now 20 seasons.

I've never missed a CSA box, right?

We've done 16 boxes, or 16 weeks, for 20 years now.

But there certainly have been some boxes that saw a little bit of hail, right?

So maybe a certain crop didn't look that good or got in the- or didn't get in the box.

But for the most part, it's this idea, like, the members of the farm are kind of in it for the season with the farmer.

And then together, we're supporting one another.

- [Mary] How did you end up here by Lida Farm?

- [Ryan] After I graduated from graduate school, after a little time in the Twin Cities when I started farming, I got a job with extension and I got a job in community economic development.

So my day job took me to Fergus Falls in Otter Tail County.

I had planned that whole time to do commercial vegetable production because, you know, after three years of doing it, I was like, "Well, I'm really into this.

I wanna keep doing it."

So we found this one spot, 20 acre farmstead, in Northern Otter Tail County, and we just been here ever since.

So that's kind of what brought me to Otter Tail, and, you know, we just dug in and been growing since.

- How many people work here at the farm?

- It changes year by year.

I typically have one apprentice a year.

So for the last eight years, I've had somebody that typically lives and works with me on farm.

Even if they're living and working here, it's not a full-time job.

There's typically 20 to 30 hours a week is what somebody works for me has.

They, like, live in the little intern house over here.

Now this year, we're a little scaled back from where we have been previously.

So I have one person that works with me generally one day a week and another person that sort of helps out every so often, other than our family.

So this year, my daughter who's 18, she's on the payroll this year, if you will.

So she's working with me maybe, I don't know, 12, 15 hours a week kind of thing.

- [Mary] Ryan, how do you know how much to grow?

- [Ryan] It really comes down to my training as an apprentice.

You kind of get a sense of the scale, right?

You get a sense of the number of plants, the number of acres, the number of- the amount of seed.

You know, if we're doing beans and you need to fill 70 boxes, you know, what does that look like?

And so just after doing that for two years, I had a really good sense about kind of the scale, right?

So if they were at a 100 shares and I need to scale it down to 40, I just take what they were doing generally and brought it down to 40%, right?

And so- and then after a while, you just sort of get used to it.

(laughs) You try to go a little excess, but you don't want to go a lot excess.

You know, over time you just get better at it.

- Do you have a set amount for a share or can people get, like, a half share or two shares if they have company coming?

- No, it's really set.

I do a set box.

Some people do half shares and full shares.

What I do is I do full shares where you're getting something every single week, and then I have an every other week share.

And so on my end, it becomes much easier, right?

So a box each week is a consistent box.

- [Mary] When do you start the plants?

- [Ryan] Well, we will start basically herbs and onions the very beginning of March.

Those just take time, right?

We're talking 10 to 12 weeks before we're planting 'em out.

You know, and a lot of herbs can take a very long time.

You think of a rosemary.

I mean, starting a rosemary by seed, you know, even starting at that early, we still have rosemary plants.

They're like little baby plants.

Like, somebody in California would laugh at our rosemary, you know what I'm saying?

And so yeah, that's just starting.

But, you know, a lot of the kind of the main crops, say, think of, like, the tomatoes or peppers or something.

You know, I mean, we're doing those.

We're starting those peppers eight weeks before we plant them out.

And we typically look at a June 1 plant date.

I mean, and they might be different like in southwest Minnesota, sure, in southern part of the state.

But we always look at warm season crops right around June 1 just to be safe.

- [Mary] Do you have a greenhouse that you start plants in?

- [Ryan] Yep, yep.

We got one greenhouse.

Kind of a mainframe greenhouse, four season thing, we actually do some winter greens in, that we'll start transplants in.

In off season, we will grow winter greens in them in that same greenhouse as well.

Other than that, then we have two high tunnels.

Or we can do some early planting for some warm season crops.

But it's just the one greenhouse is kind of our starts.

- Do you have some things that you direct seed right out into the gardens too?

- Oh yeah.

You know, all the typical things.

I mean, you really need to direct seed a carrot, right?

I direct seed beans.

But there are certain things that I will, especially on an organic system, if I can transplant it, I will.

It's kind of futsy, right?

But it allows those plants to just get started that much earlier.

We actually did some beets this year in the high tunnel and it went in the first CSA box.

I've never done that before.

Worked really great.

But otherwise, you know, it's all these, you know, things that you would, like cilantro and...

I mean, I dunno how to do it any other way.

We'll direct seed those.

- [Mary] We're here early in the season, so what are some of the crops that you have now?

- [Ryan] Yeah, I mean, all the ones you'd typically think of, right?

Radishes, early greens, lettuce, salad mix, the greens like a kale and a Swiss chard are all coming in.

This week, week two, we've picked the first zucchini.

So, I mean, that's the first warm season crop.

A lot of 'em are those cooler season crops you'd expect.

- [Mary] So do you get 'em or pack 'em out here or where do you do that?

- [Ryan] Yeah, we do just- it's all about harvesting, getting 'em into crates and harvest bins, and then we bring them up to the packing shed, and that's kind of where a lot of the magic happens.

(soothing guitar music) - [Mary] Bees are just the most fascinating insects and are so very important to agriculture.

Taking pollen from flower to flower, bees energize growth, powering up to nearly 35% of global food production.

As you know, bees also make delicious honey and sumptuous wax that can be used in a variety of products.

Meanwhile, beekeeping is becoming a more popular industry across the US and especially here in Minnesota.

So we are delighted to be at Ames Farms today in Delano, Minnesota, where they raise bees in more than 1,200 hives that produce the golden brown honey that you can use in tea, baked goods, and so many other recipes.

But there are other products that are made from beeswax to create safe, environmentally friendly, non-toxic products that you can use.

Brian Fredrickson has been running Ames Farms since 1994, and he loves nothing more than to share his knowledge on beekeeping with visitors on his beautiful farm.

- I like raising bees and keeping bees because it's a interesting interaction between the environment, landowners, and customers that buy our honey.

We make two products, actually: beeswax candles and beeswax food wraps.

- [Mary] Not only can you buy environmentally friendly candles, but products derived from bees are also healthy for you.

- [Brian] Single source honey is unique to Ames Farm.

It's something I came up with in the late '90s.

And it's honey produced in one hive in one location in one time period.

So we'd like to sell honey that's as close to what the bees are making rather than combining all these different sort of entities into one big crop.

- If you'd like to learn more about beekeeping or to find beekeepers in your area, go to minnesotagrown.com for more information.

(soothing guitar music) - Well, Mary, this is where we do the packing.

This is the packing shed.

- Okay, how many customers do you get boxes ready for?

- You know, this year's a really low year for us.

We're doing a lot of, I don't know, cover crops and sort of some farm fertility improvement.

Typically, we're doing 70 boxes a week.

I've done that for the last few years.

This year, we're at half of that, only 35.

So it's a piece of cake.

- [Mary] So why are you doing that?

Why fewer?

- [Ryan] Commercial vegetable production is actually pretty hard on ground, right?

It's fair amount of tillage.

It takes a lot out of the ground.

It isn't like- we do have a rotation of the family.

We do have a rotation.

We typically use cover crops, but there's a couple areas of the field that have either kind of weed pressure issues.

Think of a field that's, like, way too quacky or way too much thistle.

Some amount of it is fine.

But when it gets too bad, you gotta just say, "We're gonna just deal with this entire field."

And so take it outta production, get it in the cover crop, and, you know, take care of it that way.

- So how often do you harvest and deliver to your customers?

- Every single week.

So once we start that third week of June, we go four months straight.

So every week for 16 weeks.

- [Mary] Do you also go to farmer's markets or have people come here too?

- [Ryan] Yeah, yeah, we have a self-serve farm stand.

We've done that now, I think, 12 years.

So we typically open that once we kind of have excess from the CSA.

We have almost like this little mini cooler.

We also do greens and stuff out there, beets, carrots, all of that.

And it's self-serve, so people just come.

They could come at three in the morning and buy a tomato if they wanted to, you know.

And yeah, I did Farmers Market Detroit Lakes for 14 years.

I took a little break from it.

And then, I started a new farmer's market in Pelican Rapids.

So here we are on a Monday.

We'll pack CSA boxes.

Friday we'll do a farmer's market.

And actually later today, I'll also do a very mini market that's new this year at MANNA Food Co-op in Detroit Lakes.

- So how many drop sites do you have?

- Yeah, this year, we only have two drop sites.

Again, it's a simplified year, so people either pick up at the farm or they pick up at MANNA Food Co-op downtown Detroit Lakes.

In other years, we've typically had five drop sites.

So we've gone to Fergus Falls, Pelican Rapids, Perham, Detroit Lakes, and on farm.

- Do you have to refrigerate the vegetables as you're transporting them too?

- No, no, there's no legal requirement, right?

I mean, it might be good, but typically, we're doing a lot of the cooling of produce and stuff here.

So we're getting the produce kind of in a good state, right?

We'll just throw the air conditioner on in the vehicle and get there, if you will.

But, you know, one of the keys to kind of, like, good produce, really it's how we're handling it after we get it out of the ground.

So, you know, we talk about post-harvest handling strategies.

And so think of something like a broccoli or a cabbage.

You know, a lot of people in their home garden are gonna be like, "I don't know, I'm gonna go harvest the cabbage."

You just cut the thing, you bring it in the house, you might wash it a little bit.

That's it.

Here on farm, what we're typically doing, say, something with a cabbage or a broccoli, we'll hydro cool that for a good 40 minutes, 60 minutes.

Even if something's kind of cool on the outside, you can still have a lot of field heat that's retained in this cabbage or broccoli or something like that.

It's a washing exercise.

We're getting it clean.

But we're also, you know, just cooling the temperature down in the product.

We get that core temperature down, we get it in the cooler.

It actually holds better once the customer gets it at home if it's actually spent a night in the coolers.

- Then, how do you- just walk me through how you actually pack the boxes.

- Yeah, yeah.

Right here we're standing in front of the tables that we'll lay out all the different vegetables on.

There's a little roller over here.

What we'll do is we'll pack, we'll take each of these boxes, right?

One per customer.

As we roll it down the roller, we'll put the individual crops in, right?

So it's like a little assembly line.

And then, it'll go off into the vehicle to get delivered or it'll just be left here to get picked up.

- [Mary] Then, do your customers give you the empty boxes back?

- [Ryan] Yep, yeah, that's part of it.

And, you know, that's one of the allure of a CSA, right?

This is a wax box.

It'll typically last us the whole season.

We try to minimize the amount of plastic that we're using.

And instead, people- it's just gonna come in this reusable wax box so there's less waste.

Yeah, we also do a lot of processing here in the packing shed other than just washing, if you will.

Like, today, we're processing basil.

So my daughter Sylvia here, she's kind of cleaning up the basil a little bit after we brought it in from the high tunnel.

Got a little stressed and butted out a little more than we wanted it to.

So just to kind of improve the appearance.

We also do, you know, pack salad mix and things like that in here as well.

So there's a lot of kind of cutting and cleaning and sort of, like, just making the produce look pretty, right?

I think that's kind of a big part of, you know, doing commercial produce well.

- [Mary] When you do the greens, do you put those into their own individual bags then?

- [Ryan] Yeah, like salad mix will go into their own individual bags.

Part of what happens here in a commercial vegetable farm is it's a lot of counting.

So we gotta make sure we have the right number of everything for the right number of boxes.

- [Mary] Okay, well that is so interesting.

And then, I'd kind of like to see another part of your operation too.

Like, what do you do for summer crops and fall crops?

- [Ryan] Oh yeah, Mary, I mean, this is only part of the operation.

You know, I'd love to show you, like, the backfield and see some other crops.

(light upbeat music) - I have a question.

I have some black and brown spots on my hydrangeas.

What could this be?

- Ooh, I'm seeing a lot of shrubs and trees with black spots and brown spots and yellow spots as well.

There are actually a lot of different kinds of causes.

On hydrangeas, the most common cause that we'll see is leaf scorch, which can have to do with a lot of drought and heat conditions that we've been seeing this year.

So it really depends.

If you're seeing it on the south side of your hydrangea, it's probably sun scorch or something like that.

We'll see a little bit of it on our hydrangeas as well.

So you'll see these kind of leaf margins over here that start from the edges and then progress their way inward.

That's usually a heat or a drought response.

But then, you might see something like splotches that are more uneven or widespread throughout the plant.

And this is actually something that's usually caused by a fungus called Cercospora.

Cercospora leaf spot is pretty common on hydrangeas as well as things like red bud as well.

So you'll see these kind of really cool little spots all over the leaves, and that'll happen.

It's a response to maybe a cool wet spring that is followed by a hot humid summer where that particular type of fungus really takes off.

The good news is it's mostly cosmetic.

So meaning it's not gonna affect your overall plant health.

It's just gonna be something that really takes away from the appearance of your plant, especially later on in the summer.

But usually, it's not a cause for alarm.

However, it is important to keep an eye on your hydrangeas to make sure that if they are struggling from year to year with the exact same thing, eventually that plant is gonna get weaker and weaker and it might succumb to the disease along with a combination of other things.

The best thing that you can do to protect your hydrangea's health though is make sure that it is watered in times of drought.

Make sure that you have a good layer of mulch on the ground underneath the hydrangea that will help conserve water and suppress some weeds.

And then overall just rake up your leaves, especially if they do have these leaf spots on them.

Make sure that you are raking up your leaves because this is gonna be the source of infection for next year.

So the more that you can get rid of these, compost them, remove them with the rest of your tree leaves if you do clean up your yard, that will really help reduce the occurrence of the disease next year.

- [Announcer] "Ask the Arboretum Experts" has been brought to you by the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum in Chaska, dedicated to welcoming, informing, and inspiring all throughout standing displays, protected natural areas, horticultural research, and education.

(light upbeat music) - Yeah, here we are down in the lower field.

You see some of the summer crops that we have down here, including, you know, these melons on plastic.

- I was going to ask, you're an organic farm, correct?

- Yep.

- What does that mean?

- Well, there's this USDA definition, and then there's kind of organic methods, right?

For seven years, we were a certified organic farm that is every single year we had an inspector out that made sure that we were following the correct organic practices as laid out by USDA's rules, right?

So as opposed to synthetic fertilizers, we're gonna use natural fertilizers, like blood meal and a bone meal.

You know, instead of, you know, using an herbicide, we're using other kind of cultural practices to deal with weeds, whether it's hand hoeing or mechanical cultivation or things like this plastic mulch or this.

You know, we're using this black plastic essentially as a plastic mulch to hold down weeds.

So right now, we're actually not certified.

We haven't been certified the last two years.

That's something I gave up during the pandemic.

It's super important if you're, say, wholesaling and...

But considering that I direct market everything, everybody kind of learns about my practices, how I grow, and they kind of hear that from the horse's mouth, if you will, so.

- So then how about if you have insect or disease problems?

What are the things that you do to help with that?

- Well, you know, again, a lot of it comes down to cultural practices.

Like in terms of disease issues, you know, the number one way anybody can deal with disease issues before they sort of, you know, reach for a fungicide, I guess an organic method you would say, "Is there anything you need to do first," right?

Sometimes we're made quick to reach for an input.

Something like early blight, right?

I mean, we get early blight every single year.

It's manageable.

It's more manageable if we buy seed that is more resistant to blight.

It's also more manageable if we're consistently doing a rotation and we're rotating families.

So those are like cultural practices that we do on an organic farm.

But also, I mean, early blight comes for tomatoes, for me, every single year.

At some point, you know, you just ask yourself, "Is this gonna affect the fruit or not?"

And oftentimes, early blight isn't.

I mean, it makes a plant look a little bit ugly.

But if the fruit is set and then blight comes on, no big deal.

So some of it just sort of like, you know, may not rush into judgment, if you will.

Let the plants do what they're supposed to do.

The big thing about organic production is if you have a strong soil and you feed that plant well, it's just gonna be a stronger plant, and it's just gonna be less susceptible to some of these disease issues, pest issues, insect issues.

There's only one insect that we actually use an input on and those are Colorado potato bugs.

So we use a spinosad on Colorado potato beetles.

But other than that, I don't spray for anything.

- What are some of your common summer crops that you include?

- Yeah, you know, I mean, the whole mix of things.

I think one thing with it being a CSA operation, we do about 30 different crops, right, between cool season, spring, fall crops.

And then, I don't know, pretty much any summer crop you could think of, right?

We're standing by the melons, we do peppers, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes.

You know, our main crop of onions is back in this field.

We also have things, you know, traditional cucumbers as well, some specialty cucumbers, things like that.

- [Mary] So what are your fall crops that you finish up with?

- [Ryan] Yeah, you know, like I said, we're talking a bit about the greens, right?

I mean, a lot of people I think suffer, say, with spring spinach.

For example, this year, I didn't even try to do spring spinach.

I'm only doing spinach in the fall.

Performs way better in the fall.

Salad mix performs better in the fall.

Certainly we do a fall brassica, all the, you know, kohlrabi and broccoli and cauliflower.

Things like that do great in the fall.

- [Mary] How late in the season do you keep on harvesting and delivering?

- [Ryan] Yeah, we'll go all the way into October.

So in terms of the CSA, we'll deliver kind of the beginning of October, and then we do start to wind it down a little bit.

Although we will harvest as late as, you know, mid-December in high tunnels.

We'll do kind of a hot season, kind of, you know, cherry tomato crop or tomato crop in a high tunnel.

September, we turn that over to greens, salad mix, spinach, things like that, and we'll harvest those as late as mid-December.

- So then what do you do in the fall with all of this area to take care of?

- You know, I mean, we do put some of it to a cover crop, although it's often really kind of hard in a commercial vegetable production situation simply because it's really only those things that are coming out as, you know, as early as September that you can really get a cover crop established on, right?

Once we're getting into October, things will germinate.

It's getting cold.

It's kind of difficult to get something going.

I mean, for the most part in October, I'm, like, super tired and, you know?

So I just do- I limp along and try to, you know, pull up the mulches and clean up the fields as best I can and, you know, just try to put it to bed for the year, if you will.

- [Mary] If you're like every other gardener, do you have trouble with deer and rabbits getting after your crop?

- [Ryan] (laughs) Well, yeah, sure.

I mean, every gardener has, like, kind of the big pest problem, right?

Here on the farm, we don't have like a deer fence or anything.

Some commercial places will put in a big tall deer fence to kind of separate the garden from the deer, if you will.

The only thing I've got are two very enthusiastic dogs.

I've never really had much of a rabbit problem.

Here and there, we get some deer coming through.

You know, we're here in Lakes country.

It's very wooded.

There are a lot of deer around.

- [Mary] Well, thank you so much for letting us come out and learn about CSA and what it is and how you do things.

If you were to give advice to somebody that wanted to start a CSA, what would you say?

- [Ryan] Yeah, you know, I think my best advice is start with a farmer's market, right?

The proving ground, the stepping stone in terms of going commercial, if you will, the greatest place to start is a farmer's market.

It gives you that chance to kind of build your skills, make sure you're putting out a kind of a consistently good product, and you also get this good customer interaction.

And so you learn, like, I mean, "Are my carrots up to snuff or not?"

Well, you're gonna hear about it.

Are they gonna get sold on the table or not?

And I think from there, you know, you get good feedback, you get your skills up.

Then, you're in a good place in order to do a CSA well.

- [Mary] Well thanks so much for letting us come out.

- Hey, happy to have you, Mary.

Thanks for coming.

- [Announcer] Funding for "Prairie Yard and Garden" is provided by Heartland Motor Company, providing service to Minnesota and the Dakotas for over 30 years in the heart of truck country.

Heartland Motor Company, we have your best interest at heart.

Farmers Mutual Telephone Company and Federated Telephone Cooperative proud to be powering Acira, pioneers in bringing state-of-the-art technology to our rural communities.

Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen in honor of Shalom Hill Farm, a nonprofit rural education retreat center in a beautiful prairie setting near Windham, Minnesota.

And by Friends of Prairie Yard and Garden, a community of supporters like you who engage in the long-term growth of the series.

To become a Friend of Prairie Yard and Garden, visit pioneer.org/PYG.

(light upbeat music)