DeRusha Eats: Gale Woods Farm Crops Aren't Just For Show
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Farm to table is a promise many restaurants make, but it's a promise a Minnetrista farm and Mound restaurant are living.
It is a typical summer day on this west suburban Minnesota farm: farmers in the fields pulling weeds; a crew washing carrots; another washing freshly-harvested greens. You see pigs in the grass, and chickens in their coops.
But Gale Woods Farm is no ordinary farm. The 410 acres were donated to the west-suburban Three Rivers Park District in 2000.
"We're a real operating farm, that's what the Gales wanted so people would understand where their food came from," Andi Anderson, programming director at Gale Woods Farm, said.
Anderson helps teach the 25,000 kids who visit each year, and helps train the dozens of young people who get their first jobs at the farm.
"We work with state workforce programs to hire kids," Anderson said. "We're teaching leadership skills, interview skills, things that are going to help them be successful later in life. Along with bridging that gap and making that connection to where their food is from," she explained.
All of the vegetables and fruits and meat raised on the farm go up for sale. The Westonka and Brooklyn Center schools buy some of the crops.
"They get into the garden, get dirty, dig, and the food ends up in their lunchroom. They even had culinary arts students learn knife skills on our carrots that were then served there. It's really great," Anderson said.
Some of the crops and the meat also end up in a restaurant, just 1.9 miles down the road: Dakota Junction in Mound.
"The taste is so much more colorful, it makes such a difference," Stephanie Bolles, co-owner and chef at Dakota Junction, said.
They use greens in a killer BLT sandwich; the grass-fed beef from Gale Woods Farm is in a knockout of a Maid-Rite sandwich.
"We had someone last week say they'll never have hamburger beef from anywhere else," Bolles said.
Stephanie and her husband Matt had been customers of Gale Woods Community Supported Agriculture program before they built Dakota Junction. They, along with about sixty other families, received a box of vegetables from the farm each week
"Everyone who works at the farm really seems to love it. That's the same environment we wanted to bring here to Dakota Junction," Bolles said.
Harvested in the morning and on the plate by lunch.
"It's fun when cyclists come here. We say 'You just passed Gale Woods Farm, you passed where you food came from,'" said said.
This Park District farm is a unique merger of culinary awesomeness, and educational enrichment It's a chance to give suburban kids, and restaurant customers, a taste of the farm life.
"When things are produced in season they taste better," Anderson said.
Gale Woods Farm is having a Summer-Bration fundraiser at the farm on Saturday, July 23.
Gale Woods Farm
7120 County Road 110 W, Minnetrista MN
Dakota Junction 2281 Commerce Blvd, Mound MN
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