Twin Cities Crop Mob at Living Song Farm

Our beta Crop Mob went off very well yesterday, with five brave folks descending on Living Song Farm outside Delano, MN for a day of weeding, throwing hale bales, and other cool work. Anne McHale, who started the Twin Cities Crop Mob Facebook page, Lisa Burger (of the blog Celadon) and her husband Mark, Leslie Kruempel, and myself. It was a terrific group, and the weather could not have been more perfect for a day on the farm — 75 degrees and sunny, with a cooling breeze. Exquisite.

Living Song is a small operation located in the rolling prairie about an hour west of the Twin Cities. They specialize in garlic, grains for milk cows located on the farm, rotational grazing, and a wide variety of herbs and other fruits and veggies. Owned now by Marienne Krietlow (right) and her husband Jerry Ford (in the center, next pic down), 80 acres of the farm has been in Marienne’s family for over a hundred years, and it’s where she grew up.

I think all five of us were moved to be so graciously welcomed by Living Song. As will happen in a farm this old, family history emerged in every conversation, and each hill and ravine had a story, a past. Leslie and I  were lucky enough to haul firewood with Marienne’s father, Willard, for our first Crop Mob job. I’m not exactly sure how old Willard is — a very hale 70 or 80? — but he told us about how he started using good soil-preserving and conservation practices back in the 1940s. The plowed fields of Living Song run in smooth, rounding contours along the gently sloping hills, preserving swaths of grass to anchor the soil and prevent erosion. A contrast to the neighboring farms, where every inch of every hill was cultivated.

Willard (right) pulled us in a flat-bed trailer with his tractor and took us to a piece of land that he’d conserved for wildlife many years ago. There were cedar trees out here and cattails ringing a small pond. Willard said he came across a pair of Canadian geese out here when he was chainsawing the trees into firewood. “They scolded me for interrupting their privacy.” Willard  found the piles and we stacked them onto the flatbed while frogs sang in the nearby pond. Wood will help the family save on heating oil next winter.

Next came throwing hale bales. The cows were still in their pen, eating winter hay and mooning at us with their big eyes. Anything to do with cows gets the city kids all excited, of course, so Anne Leslie and I took turns bouncing hale bales down from the loft to the barn floor where we stacked some for Jerry’s loader and some near the cow pen. Before releasing the cows on to the grass, Jerry said, they would let the grass get good and tall in order to crowd out weeds.

The pic at right shows a paddock that’s almost ready for a cow party (cow pen is at the top of the hill; I think that’s corn planted in the foreground).

Next came lunch. I have no decent pics of the meal because I was way too busy devouring it, and besides, I think Lisa and her fancy camera will give a far better impression of how special it was. The problem with food blogs, this one included, is that every meal and recipe is delicious! and yummy! and Teh Best! I need to impress on you that this really was no ordinary lunch — it may have been one of the best meals I’ve ever eaten. Marienne made us a yellow curried soup that was perfectly balanced between sweet and spicy. Brandon the Intern made an Irish soda bread with currrants that was hardy and perfect with Hope butter. Garlicky homemade hummus garnished with olives. Perfect asparagus. Chutney. A glass of fresh, creamy milk that was squeezed that morning. I mean. Ya gotta. I can’t really. Ha!  It was just. Wow!

It was also a special lunch because Jerry and Marienne wanted us all to tell our stories, how we came to care about local food and farmers. That might sound dorky and forced in a summer camp, getting-to-know-you way. But it wasn’t at all. Great to hear how Jerry and Marienne fell in love, how Crop Mobber Lisa and her husband met, and how intern Brandon came to pursue a summer of interning at organic and sustainable farms. Getting to know your farmer isn’t just a catch phrase or USDA marketing, here. It’s fellowship and friendship. Very real. This summer, most Crop Mobs will be much larger than this one, and there won’t be time for such intimate, wonderful lunches. But I’m grateful we were lucky enough to do it this time.

After the amazing lunch, Anne, Marienne and I marched off to kill buckthorn. Let me say here and now, organic partisan though I am, I say “exterminate ‘em” when it comes to buckthorn. What a demoralizing, predatory, and evil beast. It preys in the shadows of other plants and crowds them out, grows so fast and furiously with an aggressive root system that has to be seen to be believed, and can destroy whole trees, it’s so potent. I only pulled buckthorn for an hour or so, and I was totally depressed afterward. I would love to hear how any organic farmers out there deal wtih buckthorn, if any non-chemical weapons exist to deal with it. Cuz, me, I was agreeing with Ripley from Aliens, afterward. 

The rest of the Crop Mob day was pretty light. We hauled some scrap metal, threw big pieces of wood caber-style, watched Jerry chainsaw some stuff, I got to drive the farm truck backwards for a really long way, and some of us weeded the garlic field (the last pic, above). When asked about the garlic harvest, if we could come back for it, Jerry said, “Sure, but I never know when it is. We might know a few days out when it’s time to harvest, but it’s always a fair amount of guess work.” (We talked about signing people up for a “Flash Crop Mob,” where we’d text and email willing participants to drop everything and race to Living Song when the garlic was ready. Interested?)

It was funny to leave the farm at the end of the day. There’s no doubt that working on a farm with such generous and friendly farmers, even for just 6 hours, gives you with a feeling a longing when you leave it. Jerry said our little Crop Mob did a week’s worth of work in day out there, and that was definitely the best part of a gratifying day.

Next Crop Mob will be June 12 at Cornercopia Farm in St. Paul. The one after that will be July 17 at Lighthouse Farm. If you’re interested, save the date for now, and watch Twin Cities Crop Mob for more information about joining us for a great summer of helping local farmers.