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Farm-At-A-Glance
Loon Organics
Eagan, MN
Farmers: Laura Frerichs and
Adam Cullip
First season: 2005
What they raise: Specialty vegetables
and herbs
Marketing strategies: Local
food co-ops, neighbor’s established roadside
stand, plan to start a CSA next year.
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September,
2005. Our field is a mere 100 paces from
our door, and every day I venture out there shortly after
waking. The mornings are still, calm and peaceful. Fog and
haze or clear and blue, it is one of the best times of day,
with the birds singing along to boot. Depending on the weather,
afternoons bring the pleasant bright sun soaking into bare
arms, which can quickly morph into a relentless heat with
no respite. And finally, dusk. Dusk brings pink, orange, purple,
yellow, and blue hues throughout the big Western sky. Despite
swarming mosquitoes, it can equal the stillness of dawn, but
has an underlying energy (albeit tired energy), with all of
the many accomplished tasks swarming around in one’s
head.
Just as one long day, the farming season plays out similarly
over the course of months, and with the end of September rapidly
approaching, Adam and I find ourselves approaching the dusk
of the season. In my mind, I am simultaneously reviewing lessons
learned over past months, while looking towards the future
of next season and beyond. The knowledge we gleaned this season,
and the plans we have for the future, are both exciting and
daunting.
I’ll start with the future: We are still planning on
starting CSA shares for next season, with the goal of garnering
fifty members. Right now we have a solid 10. In addition,
we’ll still sell to local co-ops and one farmers market,
focusing on products that did the best for us: zucchini/summer
squash, green beans, tomatoes, herbs, beets, and salad mix.
Our weekly CSA boxes will feature popular produce from neighboring
Gardens of Eagan, such as sweet corn, melons, cukes, peppers,
broccoli, and kale. This really takes a load off of us to
concentrate on growing and experimenting with more specialty
stuff and guarantees that we will always have consistent,
high-quality produce for our boxes. We hope to run a successful
CSA next year and expand our share members by double for the
2007 season. Maybe then, we could think about buying some
land….
For the past leading into the present: Many lessons learned.
I hope I can remember and apply many of them for next year,
or it may be lessons unknowingly spurned. I have been working
about 55 hours off-farm during the week, which left me with
little time to help out with harvesting at our busiest points,
and I cannot do that again. Adam spent much of August in a
sort of cherry tomato purgatory—picking by himself for
hours on end in the midst of blanketing heat and humidity,
only to find the majority of tomatoes had split from all the
rain received lately. He also cultivated, side-dressed, tilled,
and planted most of our crops from July on. On non-harvest
days, he worked for Gardens of Eagan, operating tractors,
harvesting, and helping out with odd jobs there, and the specialized
knowledge he gained there is a lot of what I was lacking.
I did have an extra year of farm experience under my belt,
so this season got him up to speed real quick, and we’re
now more well-rounded partners with complementary skills and
knowledge.
Besides our cherry tomatoes from hell, we had pretty good
success with other vegetables. Our zucchini/summer squash
crop was fabulous; easy, productive, and disease resistant
until the squash bugs invaded. It’s amazing how many
hundreds of pounds of summer squash we got out of 800 feet.
In the next weeks, we will begin planting garlic and are in
the process of figuring how much and what kind to plant. Also,
we did pass our organic certification inspection and are now
a certified organic vegetable and herb farm.
No one said farming is easy, and rightly so, but I think
I still love it. I will ponder that as I go out to bunch beets
in the glowing embers of the setting sun, putting on a flannel
to keep out the cool breeze and mosquitoes. Ahhh, dusk. 
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