Most mornings, before the sun even rises, Ashley Bruner starts her day checking backpacks, making breakfast and mapping out the day before shuffling her four children off to elementary school. From there, she heads to a garage about 250 feet from her house. It’s a space her dad helped convert into a mini meat shop, complete with a walk-in freezer stocked with beef.
Routine, Bruner will tell you, is the last word to describe life on the ranch.
“No two days are the same,” she says.
Each spring, Thomas Hanna walked alongside his father and grandfather, surrounded by the sweet scent of clover and the hum of hundreds of hives. There, he learned the rhythms of beekeeping, watching, listening and gaining hands-on experience all through high school. By 2009, he became a full-time beekeeper. Today, Thomas and his family continue their grandfather’s legacy at Hanna Honey Farm.
When the pandemic hit in the spring of 2020, Quinn Renfandt saw how serious food shortages could be to a landlocked state like North Dakota. It created a sense of urgency he hadn’t felt before.
“I was fascinated – and honestly disturbed – by the fact that we have food deserts here in North Dakota,” he says.
A food desert is an underserved area with limited access to affordable, healthy, fresh food.
While farmers across the nation faced an economic collapse during the 1980s farm crisis, Brian Maddock studied.
As a legacy farmer, his family heritage runs deep. Maddock Ranch, located near the town of its namesake, traces back to Brian’s grandfather, who homesteaded in the area in 1889; the same year North Dakota gained statehood.
But it wasn’t until Brian attended a course on holistic resource management (HRM), that he put his faith into treating the ranch as one interconnected ecosystem. It worked.
With a mission to create healthier food options, three sisters – Annie (Sproule) Gorder, Mollie (Sproule) Ficocello and Grace (Sproule) Lunski – are transforming the way people think about pasta, one nutritious meal at a time.
After growing up with a deep passion for farming instilled by their family, the Sproule sisters ventured one-by-one to college at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minn. However, it wouldn’t take long until whispers from the Red River Valley beckoned them back to the fertile fields of home, Sproule Farms near Grand Forks.
If you’re a garden lover in North Dakota, the planting season may not be long enough to satisfy your yearning to connect to the earth.
However, you can extend the season by planning and preparing prior to planting.
Considering the season’s last frost usually happens between May 16 to 30, depending on where you live in North Dakota, you have some time over the next two months to get a few things ready to make your growing season more productive.
TAKING CARE OF YOUR TOOLS
As the sweet vanilla scent of the Bells of Ireland fills the air and the morning dew settles on the ranunculus blooming among many specialty flowers on their 11-acre farm, the Dessonvilles start each day deeply rooted in the glories of nature.
When you sign up to belong to an electric cooperative, know that members matter most. It’s a philosophy deeply held in the hearts and minds of both the directors who represent you and the employees who serve you.