(lively music) (lively music) (intro music fades) - Hello, and welcome to "Prairie Pulse."

Coming up a little bit later in the show, we'll see Episode Three of "Black Histories "of the Northern Plains."

But first, my guest joining me now is Bjorn Solberg, the owner of Hugh's Gardens, LLC in Halstad, Minnesota.

Bjorn, thanks for being with us today.

- Thank you very much.

Appreciate this opportunity.

- Well, as we always do, tell the folks a little bit about yourself and your background.

- Yeah!

So, right now I'm currently involved in quite a few things.

What I'm here to mainly talk about is how I own a business called Hugh's Gardens LLC, which is an organic, certified-organic potato storage and supply business, at a wholesale level throughout our region here.

But, I'm also involved in many other things.

So, I'm current President of the Halstad Business League up in town.

I'm on the Western Norman Community Fund.

I'm a mentor with Shock and Awe Youth and Philanthropy Group for that region up there.

I'm also a M.C.

deejay with Harmon Entertainment in the summertime, so you might see me doing some weddings if you attend some this summer, over the next few years.

And plenty of other things that I keep myself busy with, as well.

- It sounds like it, it sounds like.

So, where are you originally from?

- So, I grew up on a farm just south of Fargo.

It used to be about 15,20 minutes now.

Now, we're about 10 minutes, or so.

It's been growing out to us.

But yeah, I grew up on a farm just outside, and I attended in Park Christian School in Moorhead.

Went to Concordia College in Moorhead.

So, I've always been around this area.

- Okay, well as you said, we're here to talk a little bit about your business, Hugh's Gardens.

And what do you manufacture there?

- Yeah, so what I own is a storage facility, and a wash plant that was actually built in the early '40s.

And a gentleman bought the business from those original owners in about 2000, 2001.

And converted into a certified organic facility.

And so what we do, is I work with two certified organic potato farmers.

So, I don't do the growing.

I work with the farmers, so they grow it.

They haul the potatoes to me, and I'm in charge from then on, basically storing, washing, packaging, and marketing out to various outlets throughout the region.

- Do you buy the potatoes from them?

Or, is it a deal that once they're sold, then y'all share?

- Yeah, it's maybe a little bit different situation, I kind of inherited, the previous system that that previous owner had set up.

But how it works is they bring in the potatoes to me.

I get my orders, I ship the orders out.

And then, once I get paid for those potatoes, then I'm able to send that payment off to the farmer.

And there's a couple of different reasons why we do it that way.

- How do you strengthen the connection between farmer, and then, consumer?

- Yeah, that's one of the main reasons why I wanted to buy this business, was because of that direct involvement, and that kind of control that I could have, in not only supporting our local producers by marketing their products, and getting a good price, hopefully for them, but then also just recognizing the need for access to healthy food, and that's just in if you have direct access to a grocery store nearby, or if it's a price issue, I wanted to be in a position where I could help people of all income ranges to be able to access healthy food, and so, that's the other aspect of the business that I appreciate it.

- Well, and then there you go.

Other than making money, because obviously people have jobs, why do you do what you do?

- I guess throughout life, I have experiences.

And those experiences give you a perspective.

And I've had a lot of experiences that made me wanna focus on reality, and the real issues that are facing people every day.

They happen to be in my family, and I understand that we're not alone in that.

And so, really it boils down to, as humans, we need access to food, water, and shelter.

And to me when I kind of dived in, in college in a sociology class, and learned about our systems that we have set up, I wanted to focus my attention towards maybe fixing, or being in a position where I could help, if something were to ever happen.

And so I guess, did it, because I wanted to make an impact and help people.

And currently in this position I'm in, I'm able to do that.

- Yeah, from your viewpoint, what do you see wrong with our food system as a whole?

- Well, there's a bunch of different factors, and that's one of the main issues.

It's not one main issue, it's a lot of things that, in my mind are all kind of unstable.

And so, one of them would just be, and what I'm talking, when we think of agriculture, and a lot of people think wheat and soybeans, and all of that, which is food products.

My passion is more on local, fresh healthy foods.

So your vegetables and meats, and everything.

And right now, obviously, we've gone through a long winter, and people understand there's not a lot of local food production in our area.

We're really reliant on, say, California and Florida, and just states a long ways away.

And so the distance that they have to travel, you have other issues with just size of farms getting bigger, and there's issues with that.

The supply chain issues.

When you have higher gas prices, and you have trucking issues, and you have, I don't know, you can go on and on about all the different issues.

But to me the answer, or one way to answer a lot of this issues is kind of more, local production, more local control over the food production.

And so, that's what I'm trying to help establish in our region here.

- So what kind of small town and community support do you receive?

- Yeah, so my business is located about 45 minutes north of Fargo-Moorhead, in Halstad, Minnesota.

So trying to buy a business when I'm, I bought it four or five years ago.

It kind of took a six, seven year process to, from beginning to right now, to be where I'm at.

So right off the bat, just the community support in those small towns of the banks, and the regional development centers, to help me give access to loans and grants, to help me purchase the business was phenomenal.

I have kind of a unique situation where the original owners of the facilities that I own now, actually run the bank, and a couple of other businesses in town, so I have a loan through them.

And, it's been a good relationship working with them.

And just also being a new guy in town, a young guy in town, and having a lot of people just offer up support, and buying my produce from a local grocery store, or just saying hello, definitely a welcoming community up there in Halstad.

- Maybe you said it, how long have you had this business?

- So, I've owned it for about, I'll be going into my fifth growing year here this summer.

So it's spring of 2019, is when I bought it.

And I probably started looking into it about 2016, or so.

- So, what's the farm-to-school program that you're involved in?

Tell us about that.

- Yeah!

So my degree from Concordia College is actually Social Studies Secondary Education.

So the plan, the last couple years of college was to be a high school teacher and a basketball coach.

And like I said, I took that sociology class, and it kind of made me rethink what I wanted to do.

And so, I put my teaching degree in the back pocket for now.

I wanted to pursue opportunities.

And so, ended up finding the one up in Halstad, there.

And so, while I'm still involved in the agricultural aspect of things, what I appreciated about the business is I have a foot in the door with educational, and healthcare systems.

And so, farm-to-school program, is essential schools purchasing their products, direct from producers, or cooperatives, or food hubs, instead of going through the traditional distribution route that is standard.

So the farm-to-school program, I've been passionate about, not only giving access of healthy foods to kids during lunchtime, but also because I'm able to do classroom visits, and they're able to have that direct relationship with local farmers, and businesses.

And farmers, I think, should be more involved with classrooms, and being able to show more experiential learning opportunities, or being able to give experiential opportunities to students in the classroom.

- Your program, is it potatoes only, that you're working with?

Or, is there other produce involved?

- The business I bought, just work strictly with potatoes.

We did work with one producer who grew beets and squash.

And my goal was to expand upon that.

Because potatoes, what's nice about them, is they store for a long time.

So I figured if I could market any other produce from September to May, June, typically is when I run out of potatoes, if there's anything else I can squeeze in there, I might as well.

But unfortunately, it's not always rainbows and butterflies, especially in the agriculture business, so, I haven't been able to expand.

I've been just focusing on trying to get the potato structure set up.

- So what schools do you work with, currently?

- Currently, I've sold my potatoes to Aida Public School System, Moorhead Public School System, Dilworth-Glyndon-Felton.

And I've also in the past, a couple of years ago, sold to Fargo Public Schools.

I'm hoping to expand into Detroit Lakes, and Alexandria.

And really with the volume that I work with, I can be working with any school throughout the state that would be interested.

But the main one that I've been working with since taking over, and looking into the business, was working with Minneapolis Public Schools.

And they've got a really good farm-to-school program.

Really robust and work with many different producers around the region.

So, I'm trying to take that experience of working with them, and start applying it to schools in our region.

- Has there been any reaction from the schools to your potatoes being eaten in the lunchroom?

- Yeah!

So, last fall I was able to go to Moorhead, we had a farm-to-school day event with them.

And I was able to be in the lunchroom, and interact with the students.

And so, they had a baked potato bar that day.

And what I've heard throughout the years is that, I never really understood, is not a lot of kids have eaten baked potatoes.

And so to give them that opportunity, and it went over well, as far as all the students coming up to me, and telling me that they've enjoyed it.

But, there's also many other things Minneapolis has.

I know, made wedge potatoes, and French fries with them.

Mashed potatoes, I though would be a big hit, but apparently kids don't like those in some of the schools.

So, always a balancing act, I'm sure, for school cooks, on how to make it right, and give it to kids where they'll enjoy it.

- And I would assume mashed potatoes would of been a hit.

But, what do I know?

- I also did, too.

- You talked about cooperative.

What is the Red River Harvest Cooperative?

- Yeah, so that is a group of us local food producers in the area here, that formed a couple years ago.

And basically, we run an online farmer's market.

We saw that there is a need for, not only on-line more accessible access to being able to shop for local food, because obviously online shopping has really been taking off the last few years.

But also, we wanted to have a consistent, year-round market place for people to be able to buy local products.

Often times, your go to place is a farmer's market.

And obviously in our region, that runs from early to July, through October, generally.

But I recognize that I got my potatoes throughout the winter.

There's meat producers, there's people with high tunnels and greenhouses that have products beyond that season.

And so, being able to give them a consistent online platform to market their products, is kind of the main goal.

And offer other services, too, to producers, to help them out.

One of the biggest things for me, is you put a lot of work into growing the produce, and harvesting, and everything.

That, and often times, for local producers in our region, especially, it's a side job for them to be doing, it's not a big money maker, so they've got other jobs, other commitments, families.

So really, there's not a lot of time for them to market their products.

And so, that's kind of one of the main services that we provide as a cooperative, is helping them market in an efficient manner.

- Sure, what are current issues is that you're facing, farmers are facing, other producers are facing?

- Well, we can start with the weather.

That's been a huge thing.

And that's always been an issue, obviously.

But when you have either drastically changing, or extreme differences in the weather systems and patterns, it really affects the agricultural sector.

I can speak to me, in my business, weather-related, when I bought the business spring of 2019, I finished out marketing our potatoes from that summer of '18.

But if, probably most people won't remember that, the fall of 2019 was one of the most wet, early cold, worst harvest seasons in years.

And it effected sugar beets, potatoes.

Unfortunately, it effected me and my potatoes.

So outside of all that, weather definitely an issue.

But you have your supply chain issues.

Where you're gonna go to, for me at the wholesale level, how can I get my product from point A to point B, in a reasonable manner?

You have your marketing, your time that you're not able, you know, again, not a lot of time that you're able to dedicate towards marketing, when you're sitting at a farmer's market for four hours.

And you have to set up and tear down, and you're playing a guessing game of how much product to bring in?

And what do you do with what's left over?

There's just a lot of different factors that make it a high-risk, potentially high-reward, but financially, at least.

But, always high-rewarding in getting people good, healthy food.

- Let's go back.

Can you talk about, maybe, your family farm?

I understand it recently celebrated 152 years?

- Yeah!

152 years.

My great, great-grandfather came from Norway, and settled on it in 1870, or 1871.

So that, we threw a, a little delayed farm celebration because of COVID, but invited some friends and family, and neighbors over, and had a fun celebration.

So, that's one of the things, too, that has put me on this path, as I grew up on the farm, out in the country.

I never was too interested in the farming aspect.

I saw the stress and everything that my dad had to go through.

Factors out of his control, that I'm finding affect me, too.

But, that's kind of what instilled that, my dad's a hard worker.

What's going wrong?

And you start seeing there's other factors out of your control that play into it.

And so, growing up on the farm, not too interested in production.

Growing up near town, I was always social and in town.

So, I like the position I'm in, where I'm not growing, but I'm able to help support, and be the person that clearly likes to talk a lot.

(Bjorn chuckling) - Okay, so talk about, how can healthy food be accessible to everyone in the United States, and in the world, for that matter.

Do you have an opinion there?

- How can it be?

Well, I think that's one thing, is that, obviously the point of businesses is to make money.

And so, there needs to be a realization of how to balance, having a profitable business, but then also keeping the food accessible for many people.

One thing with my business is that, we basically have four grades of potatoes.

And so, number one quality is going to your grocery stores, they look really nice, minimal skinning and everything.

Number two quality is like what's going to the schools, and maybe restaurants will take.

'Cause, they're gonna chop it before the end person sees it.

Then we have a third quality, and that's like, maybe no one would wanna pay for this potato, but it's still clearly edible.

And we're able to donate that.

So we donate to the Great Plains Food Bank, hundreds of thousands of pounds, each year.

And otherwise, the fourth quality would be, that's going to the cows, or just going into the compost, into the ground.

So I think it's a right that everybody should have access to healthy food.

And that's why I'm passionate about the farm-to-school program.

Is because, while we're having kids in one location, that's the best way to get them access to healthy food.

It might be their only access to it throughout the day.

So, that's why I really like a farm-to-school program.

And I'm getting more and more passionate, in trying to get more involved in a farm-to-food bank, where they're not just getting the third quality, or the last quality produce.

There's way to get them fresh, good quality, so that it's not, just bad quality going into the people that need it, hands.

- What is the Minnesota Ag in Classroom Program?

- Yeah, so that's put on by a non-profit in Minnesota.

And so basically, they saw that there's a need to help facilitate relationships between the classroom and producers.

Especially during COVID, they saw an opportunity to not just bring farmers into the classroom, or have classrooms go physically to farms, but we can use things like Zoom and YouTube to create videos and upload it.

So, they've done a really good job of putting on virtual field trips, and also putting on classroom visits, which I was able to do in Minneapolis here a few weeks ago.

- Well, it sounds like you stay involved.

But if people want more information, wanna find out more, where's the best place you can send them?

- Yeah, so for me and my business, I am much more involved on the Facebook side.

So Hugh's Gardens LLC on Facebook.

You'll see more posts and updates.

I do have a website, hughsgarden.com, where you can access that.

Otherwise, if you want more than just potatoes, you can go to redriverharvest.com, where you can shop for our products, it's free to sign up as a customer.

We just need a little bit of information up front.

But that's the best way to reach us.

Otherwise, stay turned to the Facebook page for Red River Harvest Cooperative, as well, and you can keep up-to-date with us.

- Well, thanks so much for joining us today.

- You bet, thank you very much.

- Stay tuned for more.

(lively music) Episode three of "Black Histories of the Northern Plains," profiles a former slave named Joseph Godfrey.

Who escaped from Fort Snelling in Minnesota, lived with the Dakota Indians, and even fought in the U.S.Dakota War.

(reflective string music) - [Narrator] In August of 1862, Sheriff Charles Rouse of Brown County Minnesota, wrote a hurried dispatch to Governor Alexander Ramsey, detailing the gruesome murder of several German immigrants at the hands of a group of Dakota warriors.

The last sentence of his letter identified an unexpected suspect among the culprits.

Wabasa's band, a negro leading them.

The events that followed, which we now recognize as the U.S. Dakota War, were perhaps the most consequential days in Minnesota's history.

A unique set of circumstances placed a young Black man at their center.

- In his 1935 study, "Black Reconstruction in America," W.E.B.

Dubois, asked a pointed question about the ethical obligations of history.

"Nations reel and stagger on their way, "they make hideous mistakes.

"They commit frightful wrongs.

"They do great and beautiful things.

"And shall we not best guide humanity "by telling the truth about all this?

"So far, as the truth is ascertainable."

One of the traumatic wrongs in U.S. history, was to prolong assistance upon shadow slavery.

Another was the violence land dispossession on Indigenous peoples.

And the story of Joseph Godfrey, a Black man living among the Dakota as a fugitive, we see a unique perspective that blurs our popular understand a free north.

I'm Troy Jackson II, for "Prairie Public."

Our narrator is Madeline.

And this is "Black Histories of the Northern Plains."

(reflective string music) - [Narrator] Though the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, and the Missouri Compromise of 1820 both effectively outlawed slavery in the United States territorial lands of the Great Lakes and Northern Plains, enslaved African Americans were a regular feature of life in the Northwest.

Several thousand slaves had lived in French, and British Canada, before the European empires abolished slavery there in 1793, and 1834.

Many of them were Indigenous Pawnee.

But this group included enslaved Africans, as well.

When France seated Illinois country to England, as a consequence of the French and Indian War, for example, 900 enslaved Africans lived in the region, according to Professor Christopher Lehman.

Some of these enslaved men and women worked as the personal servants of fur traders and explorers.

But, many were enslaved by the very people tasked with enforcing law and order in the Northwest Frontier, officers in the U.S. Army.

Who had moved steadily west-ward from the original 13 colonies, since the United States declared independence.

In the Northern Plains, the epicenter of slavery, was at Fort Snelling, a military outpost built at the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers in the 1920s.

And the small Metis communities that formed nearby at Camp Coldwater and Mendota.

The unique driver of slavery around Fort Snelling was an extra-legal Army program that reimbursed officers for the expensive of their personal servants.

In this way, the U.S. Army incentivized, and even subsidized the cheapest personal servants available to officers on the free frontier, enslaved African children.

In 1831, a slave named Courtney was sold to Alexis Bailey, an American fur company trader for $450.

She would work as a domestic servant in the Mendota home Bailey shared with his wife, Lucy, the Metis daughter of Jean-Baptiste Faribault.

Courtney raised her son, Joseph, fathered by a French Canadian trader named Joseph Godfrey, in the Bailey household, and together the two seemed to endure regular violence.

The next few years brought some profound changes for Courtney and Joseph.

They moved with the Baileys throughout the Mississippi River Valley, first to Prairie Du Chien and then to Wabasha.

In 1835, they were separated when Bailey sold Courtney and her younger son William, to a Missouri lawyer, who helped them successfully sue for their freedom in a precursor to the lawsuit later filed by Dred Scott, another African American enslaved in the Fort Snelling community.

As a teenager in the late 1840s, Joseph Godfrey escaped to live with the Red Wing Band of the Dakota, and moved with them to the lower Sioux agency on the Minnesota River in 1853.

He lived among them, married a Dakota woman named Takanheca, and fathered a child as a fugitive, unsure of his fate in U.S. courts.

Nine years later, Godfrey took part in the U.S. Dakota War.

Though his role in the conflict has been unclear.

During the military trial that followed the Dakota surrender in the fall of 1862, Godfrey claimed that Dakota warriors had threatened him with death to take part.

And in a letter sent from prison to the missionary, Stephen Riggs, in 1865, he reiterated his innocence writing, "God alone knows I have done nothing bad."

Godfrey was one of the 303 Dakota men tried in the aftermath of the war, and sentenced to death.

He narrowly avoided joining the 38 Dakota warriors publicly hanged in Mendota, on December 26th, 1862.

Godfrey spent three years in prison before he was pardoned and freed.

He spent the rest of his life on the Sante Reservation in Nebraska, until his death in 1909.

- The Civil War and the U.S. Dakota Wars revealed the complexities of race in the Northern Plains.

And profoundly reshaped life here afterwards.

The results of the conflicts redefined who was welcomed to live in Minnesota communities, and with what levels of personal freedom.

Amiss a population boom driven primarily by European immigrants, the fate of free and enslaved Blacks, and Indigenous Americans, which had previously been intertwined in the lives of the Bungas and Joseph Godfrey, began to diverge.

For the Indigenous peoples of the Northern Plains, the end of the 19th century brought continued population decline, and adjustments to a new way of life on reservations.

Black folks, on the other hand, began to migrate to the Northern Plains on their own volition.

The end of the 19th century offered new possibilities, both real and imagined.

I'm Troy Jackson II, for "Prairie Public," thanks for watching.

(reflective string music) - Well, that's all we have on "Prairie Pulse" for this week.

And as always, thanks for watching.

(lively music) - [Announcer] Funded by The Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.

With money from the vote of the people of Minnesota, on November 4th, 2008.

And by The Members of Prairie Public.