Brynden’s grandparents were founding members of the Grand Rapids Farmers Market. Their homestead is just down the road from Brynden and Will’s urban farm. And Brynden’s parents, right next door, had always gardened and maintained a large sugar bush. In 2010, her father put up a good-sized high tunnel just when she returned home from college. She started growing vegetables at her parents’ property and soon bought the house next door. It’s within the city limits of Grand Rapids, but, together with her parents and grandparents places, spans about 110 acres, mostly wooded. This has become Bryndlewood Gardens.
In 2012, Brynden started selling at the Grand Rapids Farmers Market, marketing her produce as “clean grown.” That means no chemicals, no synthetic fertilizers, and no pesticides. With the high tunnel, enclosed at each end and heated, she was able to extend her growing season substantially and offer greens early in the summer. This past winter, that high tunnel served as a chicken run with an insulated portable coop attached to the south end. The 80 or so ISA Browns scratched and fertilized the soil, eating up any remaining insects and insect eggs, while laying 50-60 eggs a day during the winter months. The chickens move from tunnel to tunnel, building soil and controlling potential pests. There are now three more tunnels and another frame ready to cover. The day I visited, the hens had just moved from their winter tunnel to a new one and were enjoying the sunshine in their temporary home while their summer run is being readied.
The plants move from tunnel to tunnel too, a sort of crop rotation throughout the season with multiple re-plantings. All of the hoop houses, ranging from 30x50 to 30x104, have double plastic covering, enclosed ends and heating sources, so they’re more like greenhouses. Some came from the Twin Cities, bought at a bargain from a business that was liquidating, disassembled and moved north and reassembled on site. The germination house is a repurposed institutional cooler from a local gas station. Its glass doors form the south side and take in sun and heat all day. It’s warm and damp, with a crushed rock floor and fans for circulation. It smells faintly of fish emulsion fertilizer and its color greens more each day as the 40-plus flats of new shoots come up in the March sun.
Along the way, Brynden met Will Lenius and Will jumped head first into the farming endeavor as well as renovating the house Brynden had bought. They were married in 2017 in one of the hoop houses planted with colorful flowers to form the side walls. The couple built 20 banquet tables, filling the high tunnel, and grew all the food for the wedding celebration meal. How cool is that?
While there are large outside gardens too, most of Bryndlewood Gardens’ produce is grown on less than an acre inside the greenhouses. And the produce is abundant! Brynden remembers her grandfather growing 2-pound onions and has matched that with hers. The summer offerings coming from Bryndlewood include many varieties of heirloom tomatoes, bell peppers, leeks and sweet onions, cucumbers, zucchini, loose-leaf lettuce, head lettuce, radishes, broccoli, kale/chard, celery, carrots, summer and winter squash, peas, green beans, rhubarb, and an amazing array of fresh cut flowers, bedding plants, and, of course, farm-fresh eggs.
Brynden spends full time on the farm in addition to caring for their young daughter and Will has a full-time off-farm job. That’s typical for northeastern Minnesota farms. And they have lots of help: both Brynden and Will’s families regularly pitch in to keep the operation going. From bleaching and sanitizing planting flats to cleaning out the chicken runs, there’s always something to do. All of the planting, harvesting, and weeding is done by hand. Drip irrigation keeps the greenhouses watered, but all the natural fertilizer is applied by hand. And every vegetable picked has to be washed and bundled for sale.
Winter chores are a bit less, but it takes a fair amount of effort to keep the heavy snow from collapsing the tunnels. And then there’s the buildup of snow around the sides that has to be removed in the spring. A free-standing array of 40 solar panels as well as 16 panels on the house helps offset the energy costs of this operation, especially during the winter. But the winter isn’t actually all that long when you’re extending the season in greenhouses. Planting starts in February and transplanting in March. Last spring, the first harvest was picked by May 7 and included all kinds of greens—spinach, chard, leaf broccoli—and radishes. Bedding plants galore were ready by May 10.
And the season extends all the way to October with high tunnel greenhouses, so “winter” when little grows is really only about 4 months. The chickens keep laying, though, and there’s a weekly pick-up to prepare for. But life is never dull. Brynden and Will are also active supporters of Grand Rapids’ new Free Range Food Coop. According to its Facebook page, “Free Range Food Co-op is a start-up food co-op currently being organized in the Grand Rapids area by community members who want better access to local, organic and natural foods and goods. Free Range Food Co-op will be a full service, community-owned grocery store that will provide affordable, healthy, local, organic and sustainable food and products. Free Range Food Co-op will be a place to shop for healthy food and products, as well as a welcoming and friendly community space for people to gather. The co-op will be a leader in socially responsible and sustainable business practices in all aspects of its operations and will collaborate with others in working toward positive environmental and social goals for our community.”
You can find more information about the Free Range Food Coop and the Grand Rapids Farmers Market on Facebook and at https://freerangefood.coop/ and http://www.grfarmersmarket.org/ . And you can visit Bryndlewood on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/Bryndlewood/ .