On Tuesday, September 9th, Minnesota Farmers Union co-sponsored Clean River Partner’s “Growing Resilience” Field Day. The event was organized by MFU member and Rice County president Tessa Parks of W&T Farms. The goal of the field day was to gain insights from farmers who shared their experiences with making a livelihood amidst land, market, and weather challenges. Over 40 people were in attendance. 

The field day was hosted on Churchill Grass-Fed Beef Reserve, and MFU member Todd Churchill opened the event with a walk and talk around his land to share his farming story and management strategies. Todd was a co-founder of Thousand Hills beef company, but sold his share to his partner about ten years ago, and continues to raise cattle on his land. During his talk, he emphasized the importance of fungi dominated soils for perennial pastures. To create that type of soil in his pastures, Todd has spent time cutting down understory trees and shrubs including boxelder and buckthorn, which are left as compost piles in his pastures and add fungi into the soil as they decompose. Participants were led to the area on his land to view where Todd implemented this strategy. Attendees also got the chance to view Todd’s winter pastures, which are uphill from where the damp, cool air settles on his land, and include evergreen trees for windbreaks. 

Lunch was provided by Native Harvest Catering. Following lunch, attendees enjoyed spending time in one of Todd’s pastures alongside grazing cattle to ask questions about management. 

The day continued with a series of three farmer panels centered on different farming enterprises. During the first panel, Helen Forsythe of Feed the People Farm Cooperative shared her experience as a part-time farmer raising chickens and marketing them through Regenerative Agriculture Alliance, in addition to running a curbside compost pick-up business in Northfield. Wendy Johnson of Joia Food and Fiber Farm near Charles City, Iowa shared about her experience raising livestock including cattle, sheep, pigs, and poultry, and raising crops such as fruit trees and Kernza. The next panel featured Bryan Lips of B&T Farms, who raises wheat and barley for a local business in Northfield. The final panel featured Dave Legvold who is transitioning his operation to his son Mark Legvold, also an MFU member. The Legvold’s farm is in Rice and Dakota Counties near Northfield, and Dave shared about their experience adding conservation practices to their corn and soy rotation including strip-till, no-till, split fertilizer applications, and cover crops. He also gave insight on the recertification process for their Minnesota Agriculture Water Quality Certification.  

Participants were engaged in the discussions, raising important considerations such as the necessity of processing and marketing facilities for small grains and how to get value out of raising new novelty crops like Kernza.