Our Farm

Our mission

Rising Phoenix Community Farm was born out of a desire to connect people and their food. We want to work outside and be in harmony with the land, the seasons and the soil. We want to grow vegetables. We want to grow community. We want to educate others about the importance of seeing the local, community connection to food systems. We want to dispel the myth that local, organically grown food is only for the affluent. This should be something anyone, regardless of race, class or background, can enjoy.

Background

After 10 years of leasing and moving to five different pieces of land, Rising Phoenix Community Farm now has a farm to call our own.

Our beautiful, 40-acre farm is a half hour south of Duluth in Barnum. It had been in the Johnson family for more than 100 years and four generations.

We are humbled by the task of becoming the new stewards and excited at the opportunity to grow food for our new community and CSA members who have stuck by us all this time.

We have plans to put in a pond, plant trees and seed for pollinators. We envision potlucks and bonfires and campouts and movies in the barn.

Currently, we grow vegetables and herbs and flowers for both our CSA, and our Friday afternoon farm stand on site.

RISING PHOENIX COMMUNITY FARM: HEATHER-MARIE’ STORY

Before it was a physical farm, it was a way of life, a statement, a goal and an aspiration. For the first decade of this farm’s existence, I was a traveling farmer!

I hadn’t set out to be a farmer but always wanted to live out of the city whether it was in the woods, mountains or in the country.  As long as I didn’t have any close neighbors, I could see the stars and not hear the hum of traffic. I travelled around the world trying to find a place and realized it was right here in northern Minnesota! I’ve lived in Duluth since 2005, and in that time I’ve gradually learned more about farming from friends in Dubuque, Iowa, at the New Hope Catholic Worker Farm; Northern Harvest Farm (where I interned in 2010) in Wrenshall, Minnesota; and finally from the Farm Beginnings course from which I graduated in 2010.

For years, I was a traveling farmer. For my first season in 2011, I farmed in Esko, Minnesota.  In 2012, I farmed alongside Catherine Conover at Stone’s Throw Farm in Wrenshall, Minnesota (right across the road from where I interned in 2010). From 2013 until 2017, I farmed on land in Saginaw, Minnesota. In the fall of 2017, the farm moved to land near Prairie Lake, between Cromwell and Floodwood.

You get the picture. It was a lot of work and a lot of starting and starting over again.

In 2018, I gained a partner both in my personal life and on the farm. Together, John and I operate a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) with the intention of forming a community of people around local food.

In the summer of 2020 we purchased a farm of our own: a 40-acre farm that had been in the same family since the early 1900s. They sold it to us, excited that we would carry on the farming tradition.

Looking ahead, we plan to keep an emphasis on building relationships with our customers and our local community. Our CSA members are a group of people that want to know their farmer and want fresh, organically grown local produce. Many of our members are Working Members and contribute their skills, gifts and labor to the farm by creating this website, planning events, planting seedlings in spring, weeding carrots, and washing veggies.

We would be lost without them! It is an amazing group of people. It’s a lot of work running a farm, but we go to bed tired and happy and wanting to do it all over again the next day. Not many people can say that about their jobs!

– Heather-Marie