Bike the Bounty, Touring Food Production in the Northfield Area

Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on August 22, 2009

I joined a group of bikers today as we toured Finca Mirasol Farm, a member of Hillside Farmers Cooperative, launched in 2009, Open Hands Farm, Faith Community Gardens, Greenvale Community Gardens, and Stogrow. Below is a slide show 30 pictures from the tour, it is amazing what a group of dedicated people can do to feed a town. At Faith Gardens over 50 families grow garden plots and two families grow extra produce for the food shelve and to sell at local stores.

The tour in numbers:
Finca Mirasol supplies 150 families with fresh free range poultry, Open Hands serves 80 members under their Community Supported Agriculture operation model (CSA), Greenvale Park Community Garden has 40 plots and Stogrow grows thousands of pounds of produce for St. Olaf cafeteria that is served fresh to students.

The Tour in Perspective:
Northfield is surrounded by great productive lands where we could easily grow most of the food for this town right here, and reduce the carbon footprint derived from transporting food across the country. What we saw today is just an example of what is going on in our area, it is clear that we have the knowledge, talent and resources right here to feed our small towns. All we need now is leadership, an increased community awareness, and transformation of corn and soybean fields into food production.