(soft upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to "Farm Connections."

I'm your host, Dan Hoffman and on today's program... (host drowned out by upbeat bluegrass music) (upbeat bluegrass music continues) All today on "Farm Connections."

(soft upbeat bluegrass music) - [Narrator] Welcome to "Farm Connections" with your host Dan Hoffman.

- [Narrator 2] Farm Connections made possible in part by.

- [Narrator 3] Minnesota Corn Growers Association, working to identify and promote opportunities for corn growers, enhance quality of life and help others understand the value and importance of corn production to America's economy.

EDP Renewables, North America, owner operator of Prairie Star and Pioneer Prairie Wind Farms, Minnesota and Iowa.

EDPR Wind Farms and Solar Parks provide income to farmers and help power rural economies across the continent.

- [Narrator 4] Northern Country Co-op, a full service cooperative in grain, agronomy, feed and lumber.

For the latest news, job openings and podcasts, you can go to their website, NCountryCoop.com.

- [Narrator 3] R & S Grain Systems, a family owned business serving its customers for 50 years with leading designs in the manufacturing of grain handling equipment and grain storage systems.

You can call them for a quote today.

(upbeat bluegrass music) (upbeat bluegrass music continues) (upbeat bluegrass music continues) - Welcome to "Farm Connections" and Frickson Family Farms and with me is Darienne.

Welcome.

- Thank you.

- And Andy.

So on your farm, you've got a lot of things happening.

What's going on here?

- We raise direct to consumer meat.

So we raise heritage pork and premium beef products for the end consumer.

They can buy retail right from us.

- [Dan] Well, it's all around us in your showroom, right?

- Yeah, this is our farm store.

We have a small retail shop down here in southeast Minnesota stocked completely with our heritage pork and beef products along with other locally sourced food products.

- Well it's a beautiful location right along I-90, but what's the address, Andy?

- 40221 County Road 104, Dakota, Minnesota.

If you don't know where Dakota is, we're probably about 10 miles south of Winona.

- Awesome, right along Interstate 90 and you can actually see it on the south side, right?

- Yep, yep.

We got perfect interstate access and viewing as you're driving by.

- Well sometimes people like to look at the web, too.

Do you have a website?

- Yes, we do.

You can visit us at www.fricksonfamilyfarms.com.

- Well I had the luxury of traveling to your farm and I'm here and I'm enjoying it a lot.

But why should somebody go to the website or come here?

- So if you order online, you can have a smaller bundle of predesigned collection shipped right to your doorstep via UPS.

It's there overnighted or two day.

And we also offer bulk sales of quarter, half, whole animals as well.

If you visit our farm store in person, you have the option of buying individual cuts and have access to a lot of other locally sourced foods.

- Well you two didn't just start today.

Where'd you meet?

- Ah, a backwoods party back in the day.

(Darienne and Andy laugh) That's where we fell in love and then she realized I was a farmer and she couldn't keep her hands off me.

(Dan laughs) (Andy laughs) - So she's not a farm girl?

- Nope, she wasn't originally.

She's a town girl.

- [Dan] She is now, huh?

- Yep, now she's a farm girl.

- Yeah, I got here as fast as I could, I say that.

- Well said.

So you happened to find this guy randomly but it seems to be really working well.

Any family members inside of the family besides you two?

- We have three kiddos.

So our oldest is seven, our middle is six and our youngest is two.

- Do they help on the farm?

- Try.

- Yes.

(Andy and Darienne laugh) It's an interesting task trying to keep everything together, but it's fun and we get to be home, you know with them, versus daycare and other things like that.

- Huge.

So you have a business but you also have a business that incorporates a lifestyle?

- Yes.

Yeah, it's our way of life.

We couldn't envision it any other way than being here raising our kids and crops and animals all together.

- So on a good day, what's it look like?

- A zoo.

(Darienne laughs) There's people in and over here all day long.

I mean it's just, it's crazy.

The sun's shinin', people wanna shop and we got field work rollin' and we got a couple neighbor guys that help out with us and harvest and spring planting, so there's always a lot of action.

And then Darienne, she's always in her farm store here and helping the customers out.

- That's the favorite part of my business is being in here, interacting with the end consumer, yeah.

- [Dan] Why?

- Because I like to have, I like to engage with them, I guess, and educate them on why we're doing what we're doing and I feel that's super important for them to gain trust, to like, no one trusts us and why we're doing this so that they become more accustomed to buying directly from the farmer.

- [Dan] You mentioned trust.

Why is it important and how can people build trust?

- So I think, especially in our generation and even beyond that, the consumer is really finding distrust in the food industry.

And when they can come directly to your farm and meet the face that raised their food, that gains them a sense of, you know, trust in what they're feeding themselves and their family for the end product.

- Are you saying go as close to the source as you can and don't let the third party influence you as much?

- You got it.

- Yeah, exactly.

- So do you feel like you're the source?

- Yes, yes.

I mean we know from literally the seed that's grown what them animals are eating.

We raise all of our own non GMO crops, corn, alfalfa hay and soybean meal and we have a custom blend that we feed these animals so we know from basically start to finish what is being put in them.

We source them as babies from a couple of partnering farms and once they're weaned from the mom, we take them back here and finish them on our own ration of feed.

- Well you mentioned three children and of course yourself.

Do you eat the food that's produced on your farm and do you drink the water that's from your well?

- For the last, well I'm 33 years old, so yeah.

- Yep, yep.

And we may be biased because we eat it every day and I think sometimes we take it for granted how lucky we are.

I teased with somebody else that it's like having a beautiful wine cellar.

You get to walk out here and have your pick any day of the week.

- [Dan] Great analogy.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- [Dan] Andy mentioned 33 years, so this is your family farm?

- This is, yes.

Pretty much born and raised here.

I was seven when we moved to this farm, but I moved literally a mile down the road.

So I grew up on a dairy farm and we kinda, when we got married, we started dairy farming, so we kind of had a gap there where my family didn't dairy farm but I worked for a neighbor dairy farm.

So I always, I loved dairy and that was my thing.

So we milked for a good 10 years and with just the way corporate America has gotten, you know, they're all going to big dairies.

So in this little area, in a four mile stretch, we lost seven dairies in, what, 14 months?

And today they're zero dairy farms.

So that kind of fueled this business.

You know, if we wanna sustain as a young farmer, we have to do something different.

So why don't we just sell direct to the consumer and not worry about, you know, the big guy?

- The middle person, yeah.

- And they have their place.

I mean, we'd starve in America if we didn't rely on some of the bigger packers, too, so they definitely have their place, but if you want something fresh, different, come and visit the farmer.

He's the best person in the world.

We're not the scary guy in the back gravel road.

I mean, we're young, we're hip.

(Darienne laughs) So, yeah.

- Well, I agree.

- Yeah.

- So you have partners besides just the store that merchandise your food?

- Yep.

- Yep.

So we work with a handful of local restaurants and we have wholesale accounts with them and they utilize our products.

One special partnership that we have is Heirloom Seasonal Bistro in Winona and we work together amazingly to offload, if we're have a lot of overhead product or something, they'll create a featured dish around it and just bringing awareness to the community of how important it is to know where your food comes from.

- So if we go to your website, do you have a connection to that restaurant?

- It's not listed on our website, the restaurants that we do work with, but they have it listed on their chalkboard, their menu chalkboard that changes daily and weekly.

- Andy, you mentioned 33 years, you mentioned being really on this farm most of your life.

How about the people that came before you and your family?

What did they do and how did they help you get to where you are?

- Well, my grandpa, he was a big part of it.

I farmed with him since I was probably, you know, a good 10, 12 years old and he kinda taught me more of the crop side of things, you know.

And then my other grandpa, the Frickson, he was the dairy guy, the cattle man.

He was a auctioneer at Lanesboro Sales Commission for 64 years, so he taught me the cattle business.

So I kind of got both sides of it and I got lucky.

Both of my grandpas were farmers in different areas.

- When you think about the business operation, your family, the community, what do you want people to take away after a visit from here besides just product?

- Well, I first and foremost want them to enjoy what they bought and come back but I want to build a friendship, almost, in a way.

Like that's my main goal is whether you buy it from us or a farmer that's your next door neighbor, just start making it the new normal to buy directly from someone that's trying to sell directly to the consumer because you don't understand how important it is for us to sustain farming as a young family.

It's very, very, very tough for young farmers to get into this business and stay at a small level that you can manage, you know, just two people.

- Thank you for that.

Andy, she referenced it's hard to get into farming, especially for young people.

What does she mean?

- It is.

It's capital intensive.

I mean, 100,000 don't get you very far.

I mean, you can't even buy a new tractor for that.

I mean, it's ridiculous.

So my advice to young people that if you take interest in it, there's a lot of older generation that don't have children that wanna do this.

They have children, they just don't take the interest in it.

My advice to the older generation would be to, you know, put yourself out there and you might have a young family like us come along, and I mean how cool would that be to be able to stay on your farm and watch a young couple take it over instead of selling it to another larger corporate operation or whatnot and to watch your farm continue.

It might be not exactly family, but it'll continue a different way.

And I think it's kind of hard to do.

I mean, it is.

Farmers don't wanna put themselves out there.

They're reserved.

They're reserved people.

But there is a lot of older people, I think that's what they really want.

- They want their farm to live on?

- Mm-hm, they want their farm to live on.

Yep.

- We also asked the question, when somebody leaves here, what do you want them to take with besides the food product?

- Farmers are normal people just like you.

I mean, we got questions that we want to ask, if we weren't familiar with a certain product or something, too.

And just like when they come in our place, we like them to ask us a question and I'm, you know, when it comes to the crops side or the cattle side, I'm the guy to ask and I enjoy telling them.

I enjoy talking about it.

- To get here, we drove by a small elementary school.

There's absolutely nothing around it except cornfields and a few homes.

- [Andy] Yeah.

- How important is rural Minnesota and farming and food and farm to fork to that school being sustained?

- Well, we work with one school district and they're really big into this topic.

They have greenhouses, hydroponics.

They buy a lot of their burger from us.

And to teach them kids at a young age that, you know, to work with a farm like that.

I find it very cool.

And I think more schools need to do that.

It starts with the children, it starts with the kids.

- It's very progressive.

And what do we have if we don't raise a healthy generation that is knowledgeable in where their food comes from?

Like, that's where it starts.

Just like with cattle and crops, it starts from the beginning.

Same thing with kids.

- Awesome.

It's a great farm.

You mentioned that there's also some other projects in the works as far as people actually being on site and enjoying this space?

Can you elaborate on that?

- We started a very small campground this year with a few different sites and we're looking to possibly expand that next year.

So we're welcoming the public to basically stay with us overnight and that's a great educational opportunity.

And beyond that, we're gonna start a small petting zoo behind our store, hopefully next year.

- You both talked about trust and gaining trust from consumers, people that buy food, consume food.

But doesn't it take a huge amount of trust to open up your home, your farm and your business to people that you've never met before?

- Absolutely.

When we first started this, it was very hard for us to break out of the shell of being reserved.

And I think in dairy farming, that did that to us.

You don't wanna talk about your pain points or what your struggles are while farming.

And to completely transition into opening this up to the public was a huge transformation for us.

But it has been in a good way and we've seen it through the support we've got.

I mean, the support from not only our local community but beyond is amazing.

- The transformation led to transparency and how much more trust can you show than being transparent, right?

- Right.

- Awesome.

What's your vision for the future besides that?

- The vision would be maybe to expand our store.

I would love to eventually be able to expand and incorporate other local products, but targeting a broader range of people.

We're working on shipping throughout the United States currently.

And again, just building that trust with the end consumer and if nothing else, even helping other young farmers that are getting into this business.

We don't look at them as competition.

We look at it as a new normal for a way, an avenue to buy products from a farmer.

- Creating a new normal.

- Yep.

- Creating a new normal.

That's kind of how we look at it.

- Yep.

- The more of us out there, the more comfortable people are buying that way.

- Thank you.

Thanks for your honesty and sharing with our audience.

- Thank you.

- All right.

- Stay tuned for more on "Farm Connections."

- [Narrator] "Farm Connections" Best Practices brought to you by.

(soft upbeat music) - My name's Daniel Kaiser, extension soil specialist for the University of Minnesota and this is today's Best Practice.

Optimal alfalfa management is important to ensure maximum forage yield and also quality.

Two things that we've been looking at recently at the University of Minnesota have been two major topics alfalfa growers typically deal with, that's potassium management and also the management of sulfur.

One of the main questions I've been getting, particularly with potassium management, has been timing of application where some growers really are looking at pushing application towards later in the growing season for stand persistence.

One of the things that recent research tells us is that timing of application is less important than making sure that the the optimal rate of potassium is there for a given crop.

So the key point here is that if you're an alfalfa grower, don't worry as much as when the potassium is applied, just make sure that you have enough for that crop within the given year.

Recent work with sulfur has also showed a large yield increase to that particular nutrient, particularly in soils that are 3% organic matter or less.

For the majority of the southeastern part of Minnesota, areas would be likely seeing a response to sulfur being more critical for yearly production within a particular growing season.

The other aspect that we've been seeing with sulfur has been an increase in protein.

The data from Rosemount we've been getting is an average about 2% increase in protein with 10 to 20 pounds of sulfur applied annually, regardless of what source we've been applying.

So the key points here with alfalfa, when we start looking at it is always pay attention to your soil tests.

So one of the key critical components, be watching your potassium levels, making sure they're not dropping too low, that you're risking a potential deficiency of that particular nutrient.

Then with sulfur, one of the things we really stress is that there's not a good soil test for sulfur.

So one of the things you wanna watch out for is your soils that particularly are 3% or 4% organic matter in the top six inches of your soil.

Those are areas you're gonna be looking at some application of sulfur.

So 20 to 25 pounds being what we're currently recommending for a sulfur production.

So again, this has been Daniel Kaiser with today's Best Practice.

Thank you for watching.

- Welcome to "Farm Connections."

We traveled to Winona, Minnesota to the Heirloom Seasonal Bistro and with me is the owners and proprietors, Gavin and Kristi.

- Hi.

- Hi.

This is a neat place.

Why do you do this?

- Well, Kristi and I were in kind of a unique opportunity to make a restaurant that's from scratch cooking with local ingredients from our community that Winona just never really had before.

- [Dan] Is that what happened, Kristi?

- Yeah.

We have a strong passion for eating well and we just wanted to provide something new to Winona 'cause they deserve it.

- You mentioned passion.

What drives your passion?

Where did it come from?

- I think it's just something that's always been there.

I've always just had a great appreciation for food.

- What's your favorite food?

- I'm always very inspired by Greek cuisine.

I love the freshness, the brightness and I think that shows here pretty often on our menu.

- Well, I guess really I'm in your space, but this is amazing.

We've got a wonderful menu behind us.

We've got a board in back which tells how much people appreciate what you're doing for them in this community around food and getting together and breaking bread together.

What happens here on a normal night when you're serving food?

Today is a Monday, we've had many people come to the door and we have to turn 'em away because you're closed.

But on a Friday night, what happens here?

What's it look like?

- Well, there's normally a little bit of music playing.

We have people that come in and hang out, but there is a lot of online ordering and takeouts that happen.

We do only seat 30 people and we only have eight tables, so unfortunately we don't take reservations, but we have become a very good place for people to come hang with us.

- It sounds like it.

Where do you source your food, Kristi?

- Well we base every dish around what our local farmers can provide to us at any given time, so our menu changes almost on a weekly basis at times during the peak of the season and we take great pride in that.

- Well, I noticed seasonal in the the name, Heirloom Seasonal Bistro.

So does that tie into the seasons of Minnesota and the nature of what happens on a farm?

- [Kristi] Absolutely.

- So walk us through how you interface with our farm community.

Obviously you do something that perhaps they don't but they do something that maybe you don't.

How do you interface with them and bring what they do on the farm to your restaurant?

- I think we've become just kind of the safe space where local hobby farms can just kind of feel like they can come in and tell us that they're sitting on too much of a certain product and we'll just take it off their hands.

And we love providing that to them.

- Well, recently the team, the film team and I were at a farm that said really good things about you, but they also complimented you on how you take seasonal things that maybe they have a lot of and do something really special with.

And then when you run out, we switch to something else.

Is that how it works?

- Absolutely, that dials it down very perfectly.

- [Dan] So would that include things like pumpkin soup?

What does that mean?

- Yeah, we do have a pumpkin soup on the menu right now with apples.

It's absolutely phenomenal.

- Really?

So what do you suggest your customers pair it with?

- So we finish our pumpkin soup with coconut milk and a balsamic reduction and it comes with sourdough toast that we do make in house that we rub with garlic and it's just a very, very happy bite.

- [Dan] Awesome.

Do you both cook?

- We do, yep.

So I've been cooking for about 16 years in this area.

And then Christie did some fine dining catering up in the cities and then she came down and started working at a fine dining location in La Crosse before we opened this up.

- Did you know her when she moved to La Crosse?

- Yes, actually.

Kristi moved down here for me.

- Awesome.

Worth the move, right?

- Absolutely.

- Gavin, when customers leave your restaurant after a fine meal and an experience here, what do you hope they take with them in addition to the food?

- [Gavin] Well, we want people to come in and know that this is a comfortable atmosphere, casual, that they can almost make it like a second home.

- [Dan] You talked a little bit before about the teamwork that you two have.

What's that look like when you're actually cooking together?

- Hectic.

(all laughing) So I mean, both Kristi and I have our own, I guess, style of cooking, but the end result is always the same.

We want the customer to get the best possible meal in every way that they possibly can.

So there's a lot of attention to detail and a lot of that I will say comes from Kristi.

She's a little more hard on making sure that things are perfectly perfect but that's what gives the customer the best end result, the best diner.

- What programs are you using to make this restaurant as successful as possible?

- I think the program that we're most proud to have partnered with is the Minnesota Cooks Program, brought on by the Minnesota Farmers Union.

We just really, really love working with them.

Wonderful people.

- [Dan] What has it done for you and your business?

- I think it's just really shown a light on our specific efforts of sourcing locally and we are very appreciative for their partnership.

- So what happened when you signed on with that program?

Did you get in a calendar and get a photo op?

- Yeah, we sure did.

So we met Claudine Arndt and Katie Cannon when they were doing a book signing here in Winona at Blue Fruit Farms.

And we were just so excited to let them know that we were about to be opening a restaurant, the following month, actually, and we were over a little overwhelmed with how excited they were for us and we're just happy to have maintained that connection.

- [Dan] And I think the entire community has showed that same enthusiasm from what I gather.

Is that true?

- [Kristi] Absolutely.

- [Dan] Most entrepreneurs think beyond just today, otherwise they would not have the successes that you've had.

What's your vision for the future?

What are you going to do going forward?

- Well, we're very proud to have this little spot as of now but we do look at it as kind of a stepping stone into getting our full service operation to where we can even further utilize our local products, our local farmers in an even better way.

- Awesome.

Both of you, I wish you all the best of luck and thank you for what you do.

- Thank you.

- Thank you very much.

- Thanks again.

-_ Appreciate it.

- Stay tuned for more on "Farm Connections."

From farm to fork, food makes the world go 'round and there is a culture of cultivation behind the movement to make even the most basic of foods a reason to get together with friends and loved ones.

I'm Dan Hoffman.

Thanks for watching "Farm Connections."

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