Posts by SFA of MN
Tiffany Tripp of Graise Farm: SFA Beginning Farmer Training Gave Us Skills to Succeed
Editor’s Note: SFA board of directors member Tiffany Tripp wrote the following in the Faribault Daily News, where she writes an occasional column. We knew little to nothing about raising poultry or pigs when my partner Andy and I started farming three years ago. A fellow farmer suggested that we attend a local meeting for…
Read MoreIn Memoriam: Ralph Lentz
By Audrey Arner Founding SFA President Ralph Lentz, 88, of Lake City, Minn., passed away Sun., Oct. 1, at Lake City Care Center. Early in his career he taught high school Earth science in Henderson and in 1965 moved to Lake City and bought a farm outside of town. He was an agricultural teacher as…
Read MoreSolberg on Soil: Cover Crop Videos Worth Watching
By Kent Solberg • SFA Livestock & Grazing Specialist Innovation in cover crops and crop rotations in this video may be a stretch for much of Minnesota, but something along these lines may hold potential in southern part of the state under right conditions and variety selection. It’s worth watching just to get the creative…
Read MoreFrom the Executive Director: Soil Health Can Fix Modern Agriculture
Editor’s Note: This column appeared July 7, 2017, in the Mankato Free Press under the headline, “My View: Farming can be sustainable and profitable.” Scott Haase works on his family farm in Faribault County, where most farmers grow corn and soybeans using methods they’ve been encouraged to use for decades. It’s become conventional wisdom: government…
Read MoreFrom the Farm Transitions Network: Dividing Up the Assets Based on Contributions To the Farm
By Teresa Opheim • Senior Fellow, Renewing the Countryside If you own farmland and have both farming and non-farming heirs, which of the following goals comes first: 1. treating all your heirs financially equally; or 2. allowing your farming heir to continue farming? Given land prices and other factors, you may not be able to…
Read MoreDon’t Have a Farming Heir? Check Out These Resources
By Teresa Opheim • Executive Director, Climate Land Leaders There is no better way to keep rural communities vibrant than to provide land for a family to farm. At the same time, there is a surge of those wanting to farm, in SFA and elsewhere. If you don’t have a farming heir but want to…
Read MoreFrom the Farm Transitions Network: Don’t Have a Farming Heir?
By Teresa Opheim • Executive Director, Climate Land Leaders There is no better way to keep rural communities vibrant than to provide land for a family to farm. At the same time, there is a surge of those wanting to farm, in the Sustainable Farming Association and elsewhere. If you don’t have a farming heir…
Read MoreSolberg on Soil: New Cropland Grazing Exchange Website Links Producers to Build Soil Health
By Kent Solberg • SFA Livestock & Grazing Specialist One of the five tenets of soil health is incorporation of livestock, and recent data underlines the value of managed livestock integration into cropping systems. After hearing multiple requests from both livestock and crop producers interested in a method of connecting with other producers to incorporate…
Read MoreSolberg on Soil: Barn Raising for Pastured Poultry
SFA members and friends Lori Benson and Jim and Audra Chamberlin came together under the initiative of Mat Nix to help Linda and I remodel our winter chicken coop on Oct. 22. Pastured poultry have a number of benefits for pasture-based livestock operations (if you can manage the predators). A few benefits of poultry include…
Read MoreA View From the Field: ‘Everything Is Probably Going To Be All Right’
By Kasandra Brown Editor’s Note: Kasandra Brown attended SFA’s “Dirt Rich: Building Soil Health Experts” events held Aug. 16-17 in Redwood Falls and Marshall, Minn. She submitted this column in reaction to her experiences at those SFA events. Standing on the sweltering edge of a nearly full grown corn field, sweat bees relentlessly buzzing against…
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