Place-Based Food

This week on Nourish by MN350, volunteer host and architect of the Headwaters Community Food & Water Bill (HF1332/SF1580), Marita Bujold, welcomes  Lori Stern, the executive director of Midwest Organic Sustainable Educations Service (MOSES Organic) and the former owner and chef of Cow & Quince restaurant in New Glarus, Wisconsin and Stefan Meyers, General Project Coordinator of the Finland Food Chain in Finland, Minnesota.

Lori and Stefan live in very different landscapes, but their stories reveal a shared understanding of the value communities find in working in partnership with nature to cultivate, harvest and preserve the bounty she offers. 

In her role as chef and owner of Cow & Quince, Lori developed a seasonal menu in a kitchen designed to also preserve summer’s bounty and forged relationships with local farmers-relationships that continue to inform her role today directing MOSES Organic.

In northeastern Minnesota, partnership with nature presents a different set of challenges and opportunities. Stefan and colleagues operating the Finland Food Chain are creating a dynamic economy guided by local ecological knowledge and designed to maintain ecosystem health to cultivate food and to harvest the bounty of the local habitat.

As the conversation unfolds, questions emerge about the leadership we will need to create and maintain a just, sustainable food economy and how our experiences during the pandemic could provoke the systemic change we need. 

Tune in for an enlightening conversation.

Learn how the economy created by the Headwaters Community Food & Water Bill. (HF1332/SF1580) will yield abundant sources of food, clean water, capture carbon and nurture the health and well-being of all communities. 

https://www.justfoodandwater.org/video-just-food-and-water

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Transcript

Marita Bujold  0:05  

Hello and welcome to Nourish. We're coming to you from the original homeland of the Dakota and Anishinaabe peoples, or what is now known as Minnesota. I'm your host, Marita Bujold. I'm the architect of the Headwaters Community Food and Water Bill, and a member of MN350’s Food Systems team. Today, we welcome Lori Stern, the executive director of Midwest organic and sustainable education service, also known as MOSES Organic, and former chef and owner of Cow & Quince restaurant. We also welcome Stefan Meyers, who serves as the general project coordinator of the Finland Food Chain located in Finland in Minnesota. Welcome Lori, and Stefan. I've really been looking forward to this conversation.

Stefan Meyers  1:05  

Thank you.

Lori Stern  1:06

Thanks a lot. Glad to be here.

Marita Bujold  1:09  

So let's start with just some brief introductions. As I said, Lori, you're serving this position as the Executive Director for MOSES Organic, and you bring to this role a background of work related to community and environmental health, as well as social justice and food access. And then in 2014, you began a new venture, a community supported restaurant called Cow and Quince, located in New Glarus, Wisconsin. And the restaurant's website, which unfortunately due to the pandemic is closed now. has reformulated, but it tells us that Cow & Quince opened to provide local families and visitors access to the farm bounty that surrounds us in New Glarus. So Lori, can you tell us more about your role now? at MOSES Organic, but also how it is that you came to create Cow & Quince?

Lori Stern  3:01  

So in terms of my role at MOSES, I'm the executive director. I think that being in this role currently makes a lot of sense having come from running a locally-sourced restaurant. So I think, you know, you talked about my background, I was never a restauranteur, I've never worked in a restaurant before I owned one, which is sort of crazy. But ultimately, the restaurant grew out of this deep desire to demonstrate to folks that it is possible to eat local year round, even in the upper Midwest. We had a farm-stay, so we had a small farm. And we were really committed through that process to connecting folks with the food that they eat and where it comes from. And so a lot of our guests would kind of ask us, after breakfast, (which, for the most part, we would try and basically create a breakfast that happened out of what was growing on the farm and the animals we were raising), “where can we go to eat and have local food?” and there just really wasn't anywhere. And so that is sort of where the restaurant came from. One example, I think that's really clear is so we would have a BLT year round. But when tomatoes were in season, it was what you would think of as your regular BLT. But when they weren't in season, we didn't have tomatoes, because there weren't any growing anywhere. And so we made tomato jam, by putting up all the tomatoes that we could while tomatoes were in season. And so making those tweaks for folks to understand. There were a lot of people I think who still, even six years later, resisted coming in because they said: “what could you possibly eat in the Midwest in the winter?” So for me, the restaurant was very much a mission driven affair, most of our food, I think, when we did the datas, over 75% of what we put on people's plates came from within 35 miles of where the restaurant was located. Going into the role that I have at MOSES, which is an educational organization, my graduate degrees in adult learning and adult education and coming at it with that social justice, food access policy background, it just seemed like a really nice place to land where I could use the skills that I had gained over a longer career than the six years that I was, you know, chef owner of a restaurant, and kind of apply what I learned in working with farmers that came to my back door in sourcing the food and seeing the struggles of small, diverse, organic farms. It just came together. And I think the folks at MOSES who hired me were appreciative also of the fact that you know, within the context of the restaurant business, and certainly the pandemic, the ability to be flexible and pivot and meet the needs and kind of take the organization to the next place that it needs to go is very much kind of what I've been tasked with. But yeah, I mean, that's kind of how I ended up owning a restaurant. And then how I ended up here at MOSES.

Marita Bujold  5:58  

Well, there's a lot to unpack there. We'll come back to some of that. I'd like to hear from Stefan now. You're managing various projects within the Finland Food Chain. and you have very deep roots in farming. But your focus is clear: small scale diversified farming systems that blend into the regional environment to enhance the productivity and health of the land for all species, while maintaining a strong focus on the power of local farms as an economic base for communities. You know, I'm thinking that our listeners will have already heard some common themes in the work that you do. And I want to highlight these but let's first begin with some specifics. How is it that you ended up in Finland, Minnesota, a very tiny town, in a beautiful part of northeastern Minnesota, you know, what's happening in Finland?

Stefan Meyers  7:00

Surprisingly, there's a lot happening in Finland for this area. Yeah, I’m a bit of a bit of a nomadic farmer, but what actually pulled me up here, for those who know him, was David Abazs. He has long reaching fingers and he loves to really build community around farming and food. And he's always looking to pull new people up here. And yeah, I actually applied for a kind of a little side position up here. And he immediately said, Okay, I have a whole nother direction I'm going to take you so, like, come along for the ride. That's when I first jumped in and started working as the farm manager and director of the Northshore AgroEcology Center, which is a project of the Organic Consumers Association, which is based here in Finland. And then over the last couple years, I've gotten involved as well with the Finland Food Chain, which is another food system development project also happening here in Finland. So both of them kind of play off of each other—the Food Chain is more coordinating and bringing change through helping community members engaged around the food process, and the AgroEcology Center is more focused on the agricultural research, demonstration, trialing, teaching about soils, composts, and, you know, basically getting your hands dirty.

Marita Bujold  8:25  

There's so much that we can learn from the projects that you're working on there. Let's talk a little bit more about what that means—that research that's happening. Because I know from my conversations with David Abazs, I feel like we're just beginning to scratch the surface, that research about the local environment, just the ecosystem itself has played such a critical role in everything that's being done there. Can you tell us a little more about what that's about? 

Stefan Meyers  9:00  

Well, certainly, Finland, and Northeast Minnesota in general especially along the north shore, is a very unique environment in Minnesota, as you alluded to. And it's also very unique in terms of trying to approach agriculture. Unlike the southern portion of Minnesota, you know, I grew up on a farm in southwestern Minnesota where the soils are immensely deep and beautiful down there. And up here, the soils are very shallow. They're very rocky; we have lots of rock outcroppings, and very acidic soils basically not very conducive to what people oftentimes think of as agriculture. And so that's part of our approach up here. And part of my work around that research is working with what we have and how we incorporate different types of crops and we're also experimenting with lots of different perennial crops to see, okay, what does well in the soils, and how can we adjust those soils through organic means—your compost. And also with the reality that our climate is changing up here. And David Abazs is an amazing person to speak about that with because he has been a farmer up here for 30 years and is really in tune with that weather and tracking it. In the last 10-12 years, there have been some pretty significant temperature shifts in this region. And as we look down the road, even with best case scenarios, we're probably going to see some more temperature shifts up here. And so experimenting with different types of perennials, and starting to push that boundary of what used to be able to fit up here may or may not work up here, while at the same time trying to diversify that. We're working with several different varieties of hazelnuts, and also staying on track with a For Evergreen initiative through the U of M trying to track hazelnut production. Winter Camelina as an oil seed and beneficial insect crop, is another one that we're starting to experiment with. Small grain processing, very small batch processing up here. Again, we wouldn't have the big fields and tractors and combines as in other parts of Minnesota. So everything up here is very small scale intensive. And as we look at organizing producers, we have to think in those terms around lots of small diversified farms that we can kind of work together collectively and grow together, and produce together.

Marita Bujold  11:36  

So a lot of this really is because you need to understand what the ecosystem is to begin with, but also how it's changing, especially in light of climate.

Stefan Meyers  11:48  

Yes, especially how it's changing.

Marita Bujold  11:52  

But it's really fascinating to hear how diversifying, and making sure you have diversified sources within that environment built into it is so key to it. And I think that if you look at the history of food systems worldwide, diversity has always been the key. We know the kinds of seeds that have been used in different places that are locally adapted, understanding all the different plants. I've read some of the things written by some of your colleagues about going out into the forests and finding what sources of food are simply available in those environments. And that makes me think, too, about what you're doing, Lori, or what you did do with the restaurant because you talk about how you wanted people to understand the bounty of that environment. You know that here, located in this specific area, where New Glarus is and in the immediate surrounding area. What is that bounty? How do we bring that into the spaces where we're going to be eating? And how do we preserve it so that it's available during seasons when we're not actually growing  tomatoes as you described?

Lori Stern  13:13  

You know, one thing I love about really, eating seasonally and being tied to your ecosystem and climate is just the kind of the nature of the seasons and how you're eating changes with that. I have a bit of a yoga practice and have been thinking about Ayurveda and Ayurveda eating. We, as human beings, just do better actually eating seasonally with what's available. That is what our body needs at the time. I just love these connections with human health too. And I do remember, you know, normally if I were still in the restaurant as we come into these warmer days and the feel spring is just around the corner we start thinking about, you know, ramps and morels and most of what we would be bringing in fresh at this time of year would be foraged. Garlic mustards and making pesto with those and watercress I mean, just the things that you're going to be able to find as everything starts to green up but there are no crops yet. It's way too soon, you know,, and then yeah, pickling the ramp so that they're available to us year round for dressings and for different dishes. Because you want to taste spring, even as you move into some summer crops and just what that means to just really celebrate what is around you. And I think from what Stefan was saying, my dad's family's from Duluth, and David is amazing up there and what's done up there and where New Glarus is in Wisconsin, we have a lot of rolling hills—we’re right on the edge of the driftless. So we don't see as much monoculture. There are definitely lots of dairies here, but a lot of what is growing, people are still feeding their own animals and the animals are out on pasture. So that's nice to kind of ground people in that. We did a lot of celebration of cheese because Greene County, which is where New Glarus is, is known for cheese, kind of like Kentucky and bourbon go together. And so much of that is place based, right? you just taste that in the food. And so that was the fun part about being a chef is really highlighting that for folks that you know, where you eat and where the food comes from flavors the food and there's not a whole lot you have to do to it to really celebrate that. And hopefully have people appreciate why you want to have that tomato in season. you know, versus grown hydroponically and shipped across the land. And I think just being really aware of a carbon footprint and telling that story too, of the local experience. Now I feel like I've lost sight completely of your question Marita. is you know so here I am nested in this farmer education farmer-to-farmer organization. And, you know, I bring to it that sense of a food system and creating food for people and that connection from farmers in the other direction, right, you know, it's such a two way conversation, such a two way street you know, and helping farmers tell that story too.

Marita Bujold  16:20  

Well, I can't help but think that both of you are actually creating stories in the landscapes where you live. And very intentionally, you know, you've been painting a picture of what it's like to live in this part of southern Wisconsin and your desire to say this is a bountiful place. How is it that we bring that bounty to the table and it still started with your home, you know, your farm-stay guests saying, well, where can we eat? And I love that, but you know, part of our conversation today, as I said, I'm the architect for this Headwaters Community Food and Water Bill. And the reason I wrote the bill was largely because every conversation I ever had with people about food after doing my study of the global food system was, well, you know, if we're going to have a sustainable food system, then we have to have a different farm bill, we have to have a different vision for how we want our communities to have access to food, how we source it, how we preserve it, care for the land, all of those things, because the industrial food economy that we have right now, that is publicly funded and maintained by the Farm Bill, is just not designed to do that. It's not designed to care for ecosystems that way you, Lori, and you Stefan talk about. So it's really exciting to hear about the idea of, well, we grow a lot of tomatoes, and then we preserve them. Because we can still have tomatoes with that sandwich in, you know, December, it’s just going to come from our work of preserving them. And that's actually one of the features of this bill that I wrote is that we have a system that supports that. The first conversation we had you said that intention to preserve the bounty, at the time that it's available, and how you set up for that. So can you tell us a little more about making sure your space, your kitchen, was set up to preserve? Because that's going to be key moving forward for all of our communities.

Lori Stern  18:40  

So, I had to take a class on acidified foods and I had to have the recipes for this tomato jam, that's now become a topic of conversation in and of itself. You know, I had to have an approved recipe by my state person to be able to do that, jams are a little bit easier. There's kind of standard recipes that people that do food inspections look for, although blueberry lavender threw him for a loop a little bit. You have to know what your regulations are. We were doing a lot of fermenting, because that's healthy as well. And I had to go through the process of a HACCP plan; yes, it added flavor to our dishes. But ultimately, we were preserving food. And once you slide into that place, then there are a whole lot of food safety regulations that have to be paid attention to. We had a dehydrator that we purchased, we had an ice cream maker, which on some level doesn't seem very much like it would be a preserving thing. But when you can have strawberry ice cream in February, that tastes better than any strawberries, you're going to get shipped from California. The flavor that comes through is just, it's crazy. you can definitely taste the difference, you're never gonna want to get a conventionally grown, shipped across the country strawberry again. We froze a lot of fruit, I had a blast chiller, which enables you to freeze things quickly; bag them up. We had to be mindful of the way those things were bagged and frozen, so that we had access to those for soups, and for ice cream, and things going into dishes when they weren't in season. So we had a lot more freezer space, I guess, than a lot of restaurants that you would think of and a lot of restaurants too are ordering food from large companies and for those companies, you know, it's just one order sheet. And they'll come every day. I remember somebody from Madison, so a bigger city here in Wisconsin, came down and walked through my walk in and said oh my gosh, for a little restaurant, this walk-in is huge. It's like, yeah, because my farmers come once a week, I don't have that: “Oh, shoot, I forgot to order the asparagus”. The truck shows up the next day, it was one shot at it. And I think that that's, you know, that's part of winning more people, when we think about more people doing this in restaurants and in institutional settings, that's part of the training too, is kind of understanding when you're working with smaller scale, that you can't just: “Oh, I forgot it, the truck will come back tomorrow.” And teaching both directions of how that works is part of the setup and having a real clear tracking mechanism. And you know, looking at, you had mentioned the Farm Bill and some of what is out there currently, right now, there's some rules being written related to food safety that folks may want to pay attention to. Because we're looking at really elevating and leaning into smaller, diverse farms, which we at MOSES absolutely think would be critical. I mean, we certainly start with a pandemic, the lack of resilience that we have in our food system and the fragility of going corporate and big. But you know, then there are these rules about traceability and food safety concerns. And, here were no steps between the farm and my kitchen door. I mean, all of my farmers were organic. And so they already had robust record keeping systems so we don't want to be putting burden on small farms and small food operations. They're doing this sort of preservation, putting things up, canning things, making jams. When the traceability issue is almost non because they bring the food in from the farm, the farmer is certifying organic. In my case, they have all the records of where the seed came from, what they put on the crops, all of that already was there. And so we just need to be mindful that we don't build these systems that again, as you said Marita, are so focused on kind of big, large industrial ag at the cost of what we know we're going to need which is smaller, localized food systems. 

Marita Bujold  22:53

I want to go back to The Finland Food Chain and hear from you, Stephan, really why you’re doing this local system, what’s the purpose as far as the community is concerned for pursuing this and maintaining it, and growing it?

Stefan Meyers  23:11  

Well, certainly, you know, as I had kind of mentioned earlier, or I think you'd mentioned at the beginning of this that I do firmly believe having grown up in on a farm and farm country and just old enough to kind of remember back in the 80s, that the farms really were the economic backbone of our of our town. And of course, you know, a lot of that has kind of faded away in my home region, as farmers went out of business, or they retired and the kids didn't take over the farm, you know, but I do firmly believe from that experience that I do think farming is a very important economic component of small rural areas. That certainly feeds my passion. And that certainly feeds the passion, I think, of a lot of people around here on the producers end, recognizing that, you know, we do need to diversify the economy up here. We have logging and mining jobs, which are important economic reservoirs for this region, but we also need to have other types of work, because not everybody is capable or interested in those two particular pursuits. And so maybe they, you know, we do need food, we do want to feed people, we are kind of at the end of the road up here. So getting things is kind of difficult, you know, any kind of product and, you know, we don't even quite get those trucks that want to stop up here every day. That's a bit of a luxury up here. You know, so there's that part of it like looking at the economic impact of people being able to have diversified income streams, while at the same time that we are part of that growing awareness around wanting to know where our food comes from, and when it supports local farmers. You know, we've had a growing farmer’s market up here, and I agree with your assessment that farmers markets, from the farmer's point of view, can kind of not necessarily be the best in terms of an economic return. But at the same time, they are an important cultural component of the local food system. And that does bring people around. And we've seen a lot of the community supporting our small farmers market, which has been wonderful. The awareness around where our food comes from, I think, at the consumer end. There are more and more people wanting to find good, local, healthy food. And again, finding organic food up here in the local stores is very difficult. So I think that's another reason why there are people who are like, would they love being able to get more farmers and support the farmers up here that are growing food fresh and organic, and so it provides them access, which, you know, up here is a bit of an issue. So I'd say there are several reasons that I think spurred different people in the community towards wanting to support The Finland Food Chain and its efforts.

Marita Bujold  26:12  

I know that what's happening in northeastern Minnesota echoes what you just described only in their environment. So for instance, Stefan, I know that you're trying to process wild rice that can be harvested in northeastern Minnesota, and having a processing facility to be able to do that. That's one thing I'd love to hear more about. And then tell us more about how The Finland Food Chain is trying to create an environment to make sure all of this works, which is what I'm hearing Lori talk about, too.

Stefan Meyers  26:52  

Certainly Yes, and I think that at the core of what The Finland Food Chain is seeking to accomplish, and our process is community collaboration, which of course, has been very complicated over the past year because of the COVID pandemic. But you know, it is something that we're still striving for, and gives me a lot of community inputs about, like, okay, how do our consumers and end users look at the food system up here? How do they interact with it? We had a big community process at the beginning of this and grant work that we started a couple years ago, which was the birth of The Finland Food Chain, and loud and clear the community was like, we want to be able to process wild rice. There are a lot of avid ricers up in this area. And they've been decreasing a number because more and more of the processors are going out of business, or they're retiring, or passing on. And so lots of the ricers are having to travel three, four or five hours to get to a decent processor. We heard from the community: we want to find a way that we can start to process rice locally, defend the food chain, and decided to actually take that even a step further and apply for a grant that will allow us to actually train new young ricers to get more people interested in ricing to create apprenticeships with established rice processors, both indigenous and also non indigenous processors, learning different ways and techniques and belief systems of ways to approach it. And we managed through this process to acquire, from one regional processor who was retiring, a full set of processing equipment. And there's a bunch of that equipment that also can double in certain aspects of small grain processing. So that's the third part of that project is a group of local farmers are going to start experimenting once we get this all set up. Using that equipment to process small grains in small batches. With the idea of mostly, again, we're not going to have amber waves of grain, you know, across hundreds of acres up here. But there are small scale growers who may want to grow like an acre of wheat or some other grain. And maybe someday we could get to that place where we can process it locally and maybe a small bakery that has enough grain and flour to produce what they need for the year. Again, these are just hopes and dreams at this point. But we have gotten that grant to expand knowledge and experience around wild ricing. We've moved through a successful community granting process to get the facility kind of renovated and up and running. And our goal is to have that happening by this fall. You know, wild rice is a huge indicator of water health across lakes and streams in northern Minnesota. It obviously has a very long tradition, and cultural and spiritual connection, for many indigenous tribes and nations in northern Minnesota, stretching back way, aeons. And so we want to be collaborating with indigenous tribes and also with non indigenous people, and get more people interested in ricing; get more people interested in, like how important clean water and waterways are for this crop, and to support it. So it's kind of a multi-pronged approach, that we're kind of going down with this wild rice project. And again, it came out of a community collaboration process, which lies at the heart of what The Finland Food Chain really wants to be accomplishing.

Marita Bujold  30:50 

Well, again, I think this echoes what we heard from Lori is this whole commitment to communities being at the center of the food system, but also understanding how to maintain the health of the ecosystem itself. As you say, you end up with clean water, that also becomes that environment for the wild rice to thrive. There's a long history, of course, of indigenous communities, in these ecosystems and their dependence on the sacred value in which they hold these ecosystems and the wild rice that it generates. It's such a gift to us. It seems like now we're at this point where we're saying, we know we're not going to be able to rely on an industrial system that produces greenhouse gases, and the byproducts of this system are contamination of water. If we can focus, as you're doing there, on having those healthy ecosystems, we're going to have the clean water that comes with it. It’s really exciting to hear about the projects that you're doing, and, and how all of these things come together to really make it a wonderful, livable place, too, We started with this part of the conversation because it was about creating those environments where you can actually preserve the food. So that's part of your story, you know, being able to preserve the wild rice. Are there other things specifically, you want to tell us about The Food Chains work in that area, or farming projects, for instance.

Stefan Meyers  32:43 

But another one kind of in that area is maybe less about the preserving specifically, but certainly storing, is working towards a community root cellar. And we're right now working with a small neighborhood on the outskirts of Silver Bay. There's a single landowner there who has expressed interest in building, basically on his land, a community root cellar that can be used by multiple neighbors surrounding him. And we definitely are big advocates of you know, root cellar technology, which has been around for so long. And it's such a simple solution towards storing food. And our end goal is certainly as we kind of start exploring this idea of like a food hub in this area, and the food processing center that we would incorporate into that, a larger community root cellar, so that small scale producers who maybe don't have the funds to produce their own root cellar, or in Finland's case, oftentimes there they can get very snowed in and it’s very difficult to kind of come down off their hills in the middle of the winter. Being able to bring the food in the fall into a central location that's located close to the Finland Coop, which then can be used to supply Finland Coop with lots of these stored root crops throughout the winter. We see that as again a win win. It supports the small growers. It supports the local community to feed itself, and it supports the Finland Coop in town so it has access to purchase directly from like a small food hub with a root cellar. So storage is a huge thing as well. And then of course growing the right types of crops that store well over the winter.

Marita Bujold  34:31  

And of course there's great value in knowing that it's there and that you're not dependent then on, as Lori was talking about, something that's shipped from a long distance—you've managed to grow and then be able to store it right there and have it available. This reminds me of, you know, stories from decades ago when so many families actually had root cellars. One of the parts of the Headwaters Bill is to create this system, I'm calling it an energy management system where you would have storage facilities for the bounty from the seasons that are right in your communities and available. And actually, I was having a conversation with some leaders on the north side in Minneapolis last evening. And one of their projects is to do emergency prep and recovery, planning for their community, understanding that whether it's about food and water, or whether it's about losing power, whatever happens during an emergency, they know they're going to need to be prepared and they don't feel prepared. In this bill, there's actually resources for developing those emergency prep and recovery plans as well. Knowing that we always need to prepare for emergencies, but with climate, as some of the things we're seeing, it's going to be even more important that we know that our food sources are available in our communities when we need them. And having those root cellars you’re describing seems like a really key feature of that. I'm really curious about what Lori mentioned that they had a dehydrator for preserving some of the bounty in that part of Wisconsin. I'm curious if that's another part of the system that you're working on there with The Finland Food Chain, I have friends that go blueberry picking in the woods up there, it’s a popular thing, if you can get those berries before the bears.

Stefan Meyers  36:44  

Sometimes you have to push them out of the way.

Marita Bujold  36:50  

That competition is worth it. Right.

Stefan Meyers  36:59  

Yeah, certainly. The Friends of Finland is our parent organization. And they actually run our new community center, the Claire Nelson Community Center up here, which when they built it about 10 years ago, they incorporated a full scale commercial kitchen into it. And it's used as kind of a business incubator for food businesses, and a couple have actually come out of there in the past few years. And that certainly would have the capacity in there, if people wanted to, you know, rent it for an afternoon and bring in their berry harvest and do that kind of dehydrating and processing. Certainly The Finland Food Chain, you know, has visions down the road, once we kind of get our feet under us even more, is potentially helping local producers develop their own branding, and that could incorporate food processing, dehydrating, or branding our own local maple syrup, you know, etc. So yes, for sure.

Marita Bujold  37:57  

And of course, the woods in that part of Minnesota has for a number of decades now become more maple than it had been. I remember seeing 30 years ago, the tiny Maple seedlings that were starting to come in the forest floor, replacing the birch that had been prevalent, and that had begun to die out due to birch bore. So there's another potential source for food with the maple sugar harvest. I'm thinking Lori that you must be hearing, in the story of what's happening in Finland. Similar thoughts about you know, the picture that you created that your communities have been creating in southern Wisconsin, the idea of this being the norm. What if we normalize the source-to-table approach where communities actually generated local food in the way that you're doing? I'm curious, Lori, about the farmers that you connected with. Can you tell us more about their stories and how they felt about having a place they knew they could bring their food?

Lori Stern  39:13  

Yeah, that was definitely part of the heartbreak of the pandemic is that a lot of these farmers that source to restaurants that were, you know, trying to rely on locally sourced food, they had to pivot. Because those farmers that did a lot of work with restaurants, and wholesale markets, just everything shifted, as did those farmers that were selling direct to consumers at farmer's markets that suddenly didn't have the traffic. So I'm glad that they were able to find other places through the food box programs, and some of these larger companies that have basically, commissary kitchens, they're serving their staff who were all suddenly working from home, and they had the ability to just bring in large amounts of food, and get it out to, you know, low income housing, to food banks, which I loved, I love the fact that all of a sudden, you know, folks that don't necessarily have access to high quality organic, made from scratch food, were getting it through these kitchens. So that was just a real benefit. And some of what might grow up around what we learned from the pandemic and, and how food moves through our system. I think the other thing that I find really interesting, and I love the Finland model is, you know you and I have talked about it, too, is just a real forward thinking, really exciting thing that is happening, and what if that could be everywhere, for sure. And so now I have to kind of take that next step back as the executive director of MOSES, where we are really housed, as we'd like to think of ourselves regionally. So the entire upper Midwest and starting to think about what if we, who are farmers, work with farmers? What if we start to think about this as farmer-led? So the Finland model is community and farmer-led? And then because of who we are as MOSES, across so many communities, what are we looking at in terms of farmer-led efforts to do that. Stefan talked about it, collective organizing of smaller farms to create larger supply chains, rather than just trying to get bigger, bigger, bigger. What if we start working together? What if we start thinking about alternative economies, alternative ownership structures? How do we as farmers think about almost a, I mean, in shorthand, I would say almost a domestic fair trade system, where farmers are getting paid. I mean, that's what I loved about my role as a chef and restaurant owner is farmers set their price and that's what I gave them. There was no middle person there. No one else was, you know, making money. My margins were tight, their margins were tight, we were just in it together. and so what does that start to look like from field to processor, whether you know, it is small grain, whether it's somebody putting food up, whether it's somebody, harvesting protein, and then taking that all the way through the food chain in some sort of organized ecosystem of its own, in essence. And I think that's the direction that MOSES is going to start to move. So seeing examples like Finland, where the community is also so committed to that approach is really exciting. And then we start thinking about it in terms of farmer to farmer and,thinking about, in particular, like meat processing is one for sure; grain processing, absolutely. certain vegetables. I mean, I think that this model is going to be really useful across the food system as we start to think about being small instead of being focused on getting so big.

Marita Bujold  42:55  

Yeah, I think the pandemic really has highlighted so many of the issues with our dependence on this large scale, industrial system that, frankly, gets the public money. I mean, this is where the, is directed. I know that the story you told about families that otherwise haven't had that availability of the organic, fresh food, even cooked food, that's from these farms, happened here in the Twin Cities, too. Shared Ground Farmers’ Cooperative connected with some of the local neighborhoods here. We had a community kitchen with Shawn Sherman, and some of the other local chefs just have been doing marvelous work. And it really demonstrates what's possible, too. That's what I've really appreciated looking at how this pandemic has changed things, I feel like we need to build off that like you're talking about,

Lori Stern  44:02  

I know for us, and it just feeds into what we're thinking about at MOSES as well, is that ultimately, we are asking so much of our farmers in terms of saying to them “here's the answer, do direct-to-consumer, that way you'll get your fair price.” But when we ask that of farmers, what we're asking them to do is not only to be good stewards of the land and grow the food, but we're asking them to be marketers and you know, customer relations people and logistics managers and all of those things. And so many farmers, particularly as this pandemic shift happened, where they could just bring such a large quantity of food to one location, and that's all they had to do all of a sudden. They didn't have to stand at a farmers market for hours and no doubt there are farmers that love that interaction with people. love the fact that their customers returned for, you know, what they grow and what they're known for and talking to them about and educating, and why can I go to the store and get prime rib for this much a pound, but you're charging that much a pound for this organic beef, that's pasture. I mean, some of those education moments, I think farmers do enjoy. And sometimes that's just time away from the farm and all the other things you need to do. And so, I think one of the things that we were starting to hear loud and clear, and certainly the farmers that I dealt with through the restaurant and even through MOSES, is just let us grow the food if somebody else could take those pieces on, wouldn’t that be grand. So now you've got these collectives, potentially, where there is somebody that's doing marketing, and maybe, you know, as Stefan was saying, there's a brand that's developed, and we're marketing to that brand, but the farmer is not responsible for that. They can just grow the food. Unless they really like that, then that's great. But those are hours that you don't get back either. I mean, those are the things that take us down to $1 an hour as farmers, even if we're getting the prices that we asked because we're going direct-to-consumer. So I think really thinking about that, and I think we have a lot of young farmers, I mean, we're doing a lot of work at MOSES around land access and equity and what, even within the organic certification, what that means for land tenure and having control of land. And how equitable is that? I mean, asking those hard questions, and also recognizing we have young people coming in wanting to farm, passionate about it. And recognizing with all that we're asking of our farmers in that kind of model of agriculture is not sustainable, it’s exhausting. And so how do we get land farmed in a way that's sustainable and good for the environment and keeps folks farming because they're not burnt out, and feel like they're just in it alone. And that's just a lot to ask.

Marita Bujold  46:58  

So what I'm hearing you say is that we need to create an environment that actually works, like have the infrastructure in place to make sure that farmers can farm and that the food can be delivered to the places where it needs to be, and that it is available and affordable for everyone. And of course, we have to have land that is affordable for our newer younger farmers to join that cohort of farmers. And actually, this is what you're describing is exactly what is envisioned with this Headwaters Community Food and Water Bill. There are no farmers markets defined in this bill. And largely because they are not an efficient model for farmers. I mean, I like going to the market. It's kind of fun to see the kids dancing to the music there. And I do very much appreciate the farmers that come there. But I think this is such hard work to unpack and pack everything every time you come. This is crazy. So I really appreciate you describing what your experience was with the farmers during this pandemic. I think it's very revealing. Well, it looks like we're coming close to the end of our conversation, in fact, but it's been a wonderful conversation. I really appreciate it. I think we could revisit this in the future and because there's so much to learn from both of the Initiatives. I do want to thank you and on behalf of MN350 Nourish and the Food Systems Team. Both of our guests Lori Stern, Executive Director of MOSES organic and former owner of Cow & Quince restaurant, and Stefan Meyer is the project coordinator for The Finland Food Chain located in Finland, Minnesota. So MN350, of course, would really like to support the work that our guests are doing. Lori, can you tell us what listeners might do to support what you're endeavoring to do right now?

Lori Stern  49:13  

Yeah, thank you for that opportunity. So our website is mosesorganic.org. And there are lots of great programs you can donate to. We are really focused on farmer-to-farmer education. We have a mentor program, we have a women's farmer program. All of that is on the website. We're going to be hosting a series of field days this summer that folks might be interested in to get you out on the farm. It's looking like, with the pandemic, we know how to be socially distant and be outside together. So we're really looking forward to in-person field days this summer after virtual field days last summer. So all of that information is on our website mosesorganic.org.

Marita Bujold  49:59  

Wonderful. And, Stefan, could you tell us how we can support The Finland Food Chain?

Stefan Meyers  50:05  

Well, certainly you can find out about us and all the different projects we're working on at finlandfoodchain.org. There you can see all the different webinars that we've been putting on over the last year as well as kind of updates and all the individual projects that we're working on. Yeah, I guess in terms of supporting us, it's just stop in and say hello. Which is kind of again at the end of the road, but otherwise, I'd say if you just want to learn more about us and what's going on, just track us at finlandfoodchain.org.

Marita Bujold  50:40  

Oh, wonderful. And I will say that, as a Duluth native and someone who loves the North Shore, it's well worth going up to that part of Minnesota to enjoy the beauty of that region, and the friendly neighbors.

Stefan Meyers  50:55  

There you go. Thank you.

Marita Bujold  50:59  

I'd also like to thank our listeners and invite you all to learn more about our guests and their communities. MN350 Action invites you to support the Headwaters Community Food and Water Bill and you can do that by visiting their website. Nourish by MN350 is a production of the MN350 Food Systems Team. We are changing the way people think about food production, distribution, and consumption practices in the context of rapidly changing climate. The series is made possible by the hard work and passion of a group of dedicated volunteers, our executive producer, Sarah Riedl. This episode was produced by Ben Herrera and written by Marita Bujold. The sound editor for this episode was Dan Jaquette. Our logo was designed by Fizz Design Collective, and the music is by Ecuador Manta. You can learn more at MN350action.org/podcasts.