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September 2024

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As ‘The Great Minnesota Get-Together’ has wrapped up and the fall season approaches, what a joy it has been to see Renewing the Countryside holding space at the Minnesota State Fair with the Agroforestry display and cooking demos that were delicious and welcoming to the appetite.

The cider at the fair helped me realize that fall and the vibrant color transitions that come with it are just around the corner along with pumpkin spice concoctions season, which are both favorites for so many this time of year.

As the seasons and temps change, we hope that your summer has been nourishing for you. Join us by getting out and enjoying the harvest and bounty of your local farmers, growers and producers!

—Gary Hampton, Project Co-Manager, National Urban Ag Initiative- Twin Cities

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MANY THANKS to Lakewinds Food Co-op and all of our supporters who "rounded-up" for RTC's work while shopping at Lakewinds in August! We love and appreciate the commitment to community!

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Urban Ag

The People’s Garden Initiative is a part of a nationwide effort on the part of USDA to invest in urban agriculture with a goal of centering equity, food access, advancement of local and regional food systems, as well as environmental conservation. Renewing the Countryside was pleased to be able to award People's Garden Microgrants to 13 Twin Cities gardening initiatives this growing season, including to Four Sisters Urban Farm, whose Spring Welcoming Event is pictured above. Appreciation to Gloria Iacono for the beautiful photo.

Read full article here. 

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Mini-Forests

 

The DNR's magazine Conservation Volunteer recently published a great article by Amanda Kueper on our Pilgrim Baptist Church mini-forest.

As the article explains, 

"As Minnesota’s climate continues to warm, trees in communities will play an increasingly important role. Cities, with their abundance of pavement and steel and lack of vegetation, tend to feel the heat more than surrounding natural areas, a phenomenon called the urban heat island effect." 

RTC's project lead Hannah Lewis was among the partners quoted in the article, saying, “The Pilgrim Baptist planting is not just an ecological project,” says Lewis. “It’s an environmental justice project and a healing project.”

The article starts off with a fantastic quote from one of the students helping with installation:

“This is fun!” Brandis, a fifth-grader from Maxfield Elementary School in St. Paul, smiles while tucking a tiny seedling into the earth. “I can’t wait to see this tree in 10 years. Or 20.”

 

 Read the full article here   

 

At right: 

Maxfield Elementary School student Sky’Lynn Winters plants a seedling at Pilgrim Baptist Church in St. Paul, where a community project is creating a miniature forest that will bring native vegetation to the urban site. Photo by Deborah Rose, DNR.

 

 

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Minnesota State Fair

Whew! What a lot of wonderful partners we worked with for this year's Food & Farming Exhibit in the Eco Experience Building at the Minnesota State Fair! Big thanks to the 12 different cooking demo chefs and 15 different local food samplers, as well as the many volunteers who contributed their time, energy, and enthusiasm! If you didn't hear, our exhibit highlighted the many aspects of AGROFORESTRY. We were thrilled to work in partnership with the Savanna Institute, whose work focuses heavily around this topic. For a deeper dive into agroforestry and related topics, check out the Savanna Institute’s Perennial Farm Gathering, happening in  Madison, WI, October 6-8, with additional, free farm tours in Spring Green October 5th.  Finally, don't miss the cover story for Local FEAST! magazine, vol.7: "Agroforestry—Farming with Trees."

 

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Farmland Access

Life After Farming…  What’s Next for You and Your Land?

If you participated in any of our previous webinars regarding farm succession and transfer, or simply want to learn about this topic, we hope you will join us for next week’s discussion to dig in with peers and supportive service providers working in this complicated space, Sept. 12 at 11:30 CT. 

As a follow-up to webinars in February (Your Farm’s Future Steward) and August (Life After Farming… What’s Next for You and Your Land, Part 1) this 1.5-hour program is designed to help you—as a landowner or retiring farmer—identify goals, values, fears, and challenges in a safe and supportive space as you think through the next steps for your land. 

As a group, we will dive deeper into the specific challenges and scenarios farm transitions present with facilitated support from farm succession coordinators and land transfer specialists. 

If you attended previous webinars, or would like to submit questions to consider beforehand, please consider filling out this short survey to help organizers prepare for the event.

 

 

For questions about the Farmland Access Hub, contact [email protected].

Also check out Bonnie’s article, "The Next Steward: Farm Succession and the Future of Food" in Local FEAST! magazine, vol.7.

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Go Farm Connect

Join us on September 9th from 1-4pm at the Farley Center in Verona, WI to see exciting agricultural conservation practices in action on the farm (and get free lunch featuring local farm-fresh ingredients)! Learn more and register here.

For questions about Go Farm Connect, contact [email protected]

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Come and Get It!

A scene from the Aitkin Summer Sip & Savor event in August is shown above, and you can catch more photos of the fun on our Facebook page.

Each C&GI event is tailored to increase consumption of, and access to, locally and regionally produced agricultural products through a fun, on-farm experience. The events provide opportunities to develop or expand markets for farmers and food makers while building community around local food, and Sowing Seeds did just that! Read more HERE about the impacts this work can have.

The next C&GI event is Butcher's Dinner & Barn Dance in Finlayson on Sept. 7 at Medicine Creek Farm. Visit our  On Farm Food Event website to see all that's still to come this season!

Funding for Come & Get It was made possible by a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Marketing Service. For more about how the project got started, check out “Come and Get It! Food Fun on the Farm,” page 50 of Local FEAST! magazine, vol.7.

For questions, contact Maeve at [email protected].

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Farm to School & Early Care

It’s a great time start or grow your Farm to School and Early Care efforts! The Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) has three funding opportunities open right now for schools, early childhood education (ECE) centers, and family day care providers to increase their purchases of Minnesota grown and raised foods. No matter your size or location, there is a program for you!

Farm to School & Early Care Funding Opportunities

For K-12 schools/districts and ECE centers:

• First Bite Grants (Up to $5,000, no match required) help schools and ECE centers kickstart their local food purchasing through intentional, high-impact activities.
• Full Tray Grants (Up to $35,000 with a 1:1 match required) help schools and ECE centers with some Farm to School experience to increase or expand local food purchases.
• Equipment funding (Up to $25,000 with a 1:1 match required) is also available to help schools and ECE centers purchase kitchen equipment to support their Farm to School programs.

• For family day cares:

  • NEW! Local Tots Cost-Share (Up to $1,000, no match required) will reimburse family day care providers for purchases of Minnesota-grown and -raised foods for use in CACFP meals and snacks.

  Grant applications and Letters of Intent for the cost-share program are all due on October 24, 2024. Full program details and online applications are available here.

  Informational Sessions

  Want to learn more about these Farm to School and Early Care funding opportunities? The MDA and IATP are hosting two virtual information sessions: one for the Local Tots Cost-Share and another for the First Bite and Full Tray grants. Please join for the session that is most applicable to you. These sessions will provide an overview of who can apply, what funds can be spent on, and what the application process looks like.

  Local Tots Cost-Share Info Session
  September 12, 2024 | 1-2 p.m.
  Register here

• First Bite and Full Tray Grant Info Session
  September 17, 2024 | 2-3 p.m.
  Register here

For questions, contact [email protected].

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Farmers for Solar

Solar Tour Success!

We had a fabulous solar tour in the Black River Falls area on August 7th, with 45 participants joining us from across Wisconsin and Minnesota to visit two sites showcasing prairie, pollinator habitat, and sheep grazing among the solar panels. We especially loved watching the farmer's new sheepdog-in-training practice herding lambs and sheep and seeing beautiful August prairie natives in bloom.

Both sites are smaller utility-scale solar projects by local company OneEnergy, developed in partnership with local farmers. Participants were excited, curious, and engaged throughout the tour, and left feeling inspired and informed to support rural solar projects in the state and learn more about the potential for solar and agriculture to work together.

For questions on Farmers for Solar programs, contact [email protected].

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Wisconsin Women in Conservation

Fall is in the air and with that brings a sense of gratefulness for the abundance of food coming in from our gardens, but have you ever stopped to think about what is happening beneath the surface of the soil to allow this to happen? Soil health is an absolute wonder and tied directly to that is water quality.

At the WiWiC fall workshops, we will dive into how building healthy soil amidst an increasingly challenging environment remains a high priority for women landowners in Wisconsin and how soil health can directly impact the quality of water from your well. With water quality a key factor in soil health, we will be conducting a demonstration using a well-water simulator to showcase just how much our water is impacted by the land usage above it.

Join us for our West-Central region fall learning circle with the name full of puns:

(F)all's Well that Ends Well, Tuesday, Sept. 24, 10am-2pm in Galesville, WI 

Or click to discover more WiWiC events

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Farm Labor Dashboard

Women Farmers Aging Strong: 

A Special Learning Circle Series for Collaborative Learning

Are you a woman farmer (or hope to be) who wants to keep farming and ranching in a healthy manner for a long time? 

Join us for a unique, online series! Women Farmers Aging Strong kicked off Wed. Sept. 4 and runs monthly through May, covering a range of topics to help us preserve and protect our most important farming tool: our own bodies. Each month we will cover a different theme and topic, including both mental and physical health awareness along with a new movement exercise we’ll do together. 

Once you register you'll get reminders for each session. Come whenever you can or—better yet—come to all!  Free to attend. All sessions run on Wednesdays, 11-11:45 am Central Time, and the next one is October 2nd.

Topics will include:

• Improving balance
• Eating enough protein, fiber & healthy fats
• Managing stress
• Rest & recover
• Continuing to farm as we age

All women-identifying farmers are welcome, wherever you are on your agricultural journey. Pre-registration required and space is limited. 

This series is a part of the Farm Labor Dashboard, providing tools and strategies to help small and medium-sized produce and diversified livestock farms make informed labor decisions. Partners include the University of Vermont and Renewing the Countryside with funding support from Northeast Extension Risk Management.

 

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FEAST! Local Foods

Discount tickets are now available online for the 11th annual FEAST! Local Foods Marketplace happening Saturday, November 2, at Rochester's Mayo Civic Center, 10am-4pm. The local food extravaganza is a family-friendly, one-day festival filled with music, kids activities, cooking demos, giveaways and lots of local food and craft alcohol beverages to try before you buy! PRO TIP: Volunteers get free general admission, and we just opened the list of opportunities—check it out here.

Check out the growing list of fantastic food and beverage businesses signed up in our online Directory, with more signing up every week.

 

 

Learn more about the festival, other FEAST! programming, and the latest in local food in Vol 7 of Local FEAST! magazine, available online at local-feast.org/magazine.

 

If you're a Minnesota, Iowa or Wisconsin food maker looking to get your product in front of 1500+ foodies, get more info and register here.

For questions about FEAST! Local Foods Network programs, contact Elena at 608.712.8340 or [email protected].

 

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Renewing the Countryside has spent the last several years working alongside, and supporting the work of, the Midwest Elderberry Cooperative (MEC) along with the Food Finance Institute in trying to create a viable elderberry and functional fruit sector. We're focused on finding and developing markets, and identifying and addressing barriers—like lack of processing and infrastructure—and figuring out if these can be economically viable crops for farmers in the Upper Midwest.

Why? You’ve probably seen elderberries growing in backyards and farms across the Upper Midwest. Maybe you have seen farmers selling elderberry products at the local farmers market. But did you know that the vast majority of elderberry concentrates and powders used in the US, essential to creating everything from nutraceuticals to elderberry-flavored foods, are imported from Europe?

The issues are complex and range from new market development, to funding infrastructure, to providing technical support to elderberry farmers. However, there have been a number of promising developments over the last two years to accelerate opportunities for Midwest elderberry production.

 

Read the full article on our blog here.