Farm Living

President — Alianna DuBois,Vice President — Nick Hunt,Secretary — Emily Thompson,Treasurer — Bode Fitch, Reporter — Alita Rinehart, Sentinel — Wyatt Sullivan, Historian — Emma Aarsvold, Officer at Large — Diego Espinoza. Advisor is Lori Pagel.

Local FFA chapters active in communities

FFA chapters throughout the country, including those in the Byron, Hayfield, Kasson-Mantorville, and Triton school districts, are getting ready to celebrate FFA Week. This year the event is February 18-25. The group was founded in 1928 as the Future Farmers of America as a way to prepare future...

Time for Butter

Photo by Wayne Hendrickson Dodge County Dairy Princess, Gabriola Espinoza, and her brother, Diego, were giving out a pound of free butter from Dodge County Dairy Farmers, to store customers at the Hy-Vee in Kasson who stopped by their display last Saturday. Gabriola is a second-year nursing student...

Three awards support agricultural mental health

Three new projects are joining the Minnesota Department of Agriculture’s (MDA) Bend, Don’t Break Initiative to help Minnesota farmers cope with adversity. “Agriculture can be a tough profession and Minnesota farmers experience a wide variety of physical, mental, and business stresses day-to-day and...

Celebrating the power of rural

Today, across Minnesota and nationwide, we’re celebrating National Rural Health Day. For the past 11 years, the National Organization of State Offices of Rural Health has led the effort — setting aside the third Thursday of every November (this year, on Nov. 17) to call attention to the selfless...

Kasson native achieves FFA American Degree

Kasson’s Mollie Allen received an exclusive FFA honor on Oct. 29 in Indianapolis. “It’s a national award you can receive,” Allen said of her FFA American degree, which only about 1 percent of all FFA members obtain. “I worked on it all through high school.” She graduated from Kasson-Mantorville...

Photo by Wayne Hendrickson A farmer was out in his field one evening last week picking corn. According to the USDA as of Monday, 80 percent of the corn in Minnesota was harvested.

Harvest Time

Submitted Photo A hog barn at the Toquam Family Farm.

Toquam Family Farm provides quality pork to consumers

Roger and Rhonda Toquam built their first hog barn in 1993. They added their second barn in 1998 and today Toquam Family Farm raises about 10,000 pigs a year, said Roger and Rhonda’s son Isaiah Toquam, who now oversees the hog raising portion of the farm. The farming operation includes Roger and...

Photo by Wayne Hendrickson Brett and Gary Henslin with the hops harvester they built.

Dodge County farmers adding hops to crop mix

Gary and Brett Henslin started growing hops in 2015 on their farm south of Dodge Center. They were able to obtain used poles from a utility company to support the trellis, which allows coconut fiber twine to be strung 18' high. The twine connects the top and bottom cables of the trellis and...

BRINGING BACK THE FUN IN SUMMER 2022

COVID-19 has limited our fun over the past two years. However, this summer most communities and groups are back to offering fun like we’ve been accustomed to enjoying for years! Have a happy and safe summer… packed with lots of fun activities throughout our region: All Summer Berne Wood-Fired...

STAFF PHOTO BY JONI HUBRED Pleasant Grove Pizza Farm owners Emily Knudsen and Bill Bartz are pictured at the window where customers pick up their pizzas. When an order is ready, staff signals by striking the triangle.

FUN ON THE FARM Blooming Grove couple finds recipe for success

The first time Emily Knudsen went to a pizza farm, she knew she had found something special. Knudsen, now a Blooming Grove Township resident, grew up in Hager City, Wis., just across the border from Red Wing, Minn. The visit was an outing with her girl cousins, and the longer she was there, the...