This podcast episode is a celebration of entrepreneurship, sustainability, and rural economic development, offering valuable insights into the agricultural sector. The dialogue provides a unique perspective on the sustainable food production process and highlights the potential for growth and development in rural economies. Podcast guests include Brett Olson, co-founder of Renewing the Countryside, Dani Dircks, founder of Sailor Mercy and Ben McAvoy, owner of Blue Fruit Farm.
FEAST Marketplace
Renewing the Countryside
Sailor Mercy Elderberry Syrup
Blue Fruit Farm
Experience Rochester, MN
This podcast episode is a celebration of entrepreneurship, sustainability, and rural economic development, offering valuable insights into the agricultural sector. The dialogue provides a unique perspective on the sustainable food production process and highlights the potential for growth and development in rural economies. Podcast guests include Brett Olson, co-founder of Renewing the Countryside, Dani Dircks, founder of Sailor Mercy and Ben McAvoy, owner of Blue Fruit Farm.
FEAST Marketplace
Renewing the Countryside
Sailor Mercy Elderberry Syrup
Blue Fruit Farm
Experience Rochester, MN
The Growing Destinations podcast is brought to you by Experience Rochester. Learn more about Minnesota's third largest city, which is home to Mayo Clinic and features wonderful recreational and entertainment opportunities, by visiting experiencerochestermncom.
Dani Dircks:I just found a recipe online and then I what I wanted as a mama for was I wanted something my kids begged for. I didn't want something I had to force down their throat, so I did play around with a few. I think I did about six different recipes till I came up with the one that we still bottle today.
Ben McAvoy:We're looking to expand the U-pick. We really want to try to offer fruit to people right here, local in Minnesota, really close to us. People who can drive 15 minutes away spend an afternoon picking blueberries and then know that those blueberries were grown in just an unbelievably clean little area.
Brett Olson:When we're talking about both of these spectrums right, the farmer and the food maker there's this messy middle, which is an actual term in food production. The messy middle which is how do we get raw fruit from his farm to a jar? And that's the messy middle like how does it become juice, how does it become powder?
Bill Von Bank:Welcome to the Growing Destinations podcast, where we take a deep dive into destination development and focus on a wide range of topics, from tourism and entertainment to economic development and entrepreneurism and much more. I'm your host, bill Vaughn Bank. Today we delve into the world of rural economic development and the vibrant agricultural scene in the Upper Midwest. Our featured guests include Brett Olson, co-founder of Renewing the Countryside. A passionate advocate for rural communities, brett is also the co-founder of Feast Marketplace, a consumer show highlighting the rich variety of food from farmers and producers in Minnesota, wisconsin and Iowa.
Bill Von Bank:Joining us are two remarkable individuals from the heart of this agricultural tapestry. Danny Dirks, the founder of Sailor Mercy Elderberry Syrup in Stowwater, minnesota, shares her journey of starting a business driven by the necessity to prioritize her family's health. Ben McAvoy, along with his wife, owns Blue Fruit Farm in Winona, minnesota, where they cultivate U-pick fruit, including blueberries and other healthy fruits. Our conversation unfolds against the backdrop of this year's Feast Marketplace, hosted at the Mayo Civic Center in Rochester, minnesota. Together with Brett, danny and Ben, we explore their enterprises, the sustainable initiatives shaping rural areas and the exciting cross-collaborations driving progress in their respective fields. Brett Olson, danny Dirks and Ben McAvoy welcome to the Growing Destinations podcast.
Dani Dircks:Hi, thanks.
Bill Von Bank:We're recording this podcast as you're all preparing for the 10th annual Feast Marketplace at Mayo Civic Center in Rochester, minnesota. A good starting point to this conversation is to learn more about Feast, and we have the co-founder with us, brett Olson from Renewing the Countryside. Brett, tell us more about yourself, your work with renewing the countryside and the creation of Feast.
Brett Olson:Thank you for having us. I mean this is really important. And it's important because Feast is really not just a show about food, it's about agriculture. One of the major drivers of the economic development in Minnesota is agriculture, and so there are plenty of food shows around the world, but very few of them are so focused on where the food actually comes from. That goes into, you know, blue Fruit Farm or Sailor Mercy, and we really try to focus on having food from some place and from a specific farmer. So a little background on renewing the countryside.
Brett Olson:I'm one of the co-founders of that organization and we've been around for 20 years. This is our 20th anniversary as well. Congratulations, yeah, thank you 10 years for Feast, but 20 years for Renewing the Countryside, and we've been working on rural economic development and really sharing stories of positive everything from artists to farmers, to activists, to main street businesses. So this fits right in our wheelhouse. And so 11 years ago I was lucky enough to go to maybe the mecca of food shows in Italy called the Salone del Gusto or the Terra Madre, and I was there and happened to be like out shopping for dinner with a famous chef and she said why can't we do something like Terra Madre in the United States. That's food from some place, a show about food from some place. And I'm like, well, we can. And we got great partners through the Department of Ag, the Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation and Compere who came together and said, yep, we can do that, we can do a show like that, and so we've got brought together these amazing farmers and vendors to put this on.
Bill Von Bank:So you brought a feast to the table 10 years ago, and with us today are Danny Dirks and Ben McAvoy. You're both participants in this year's Feast Marketplace. I want to learn more about each of you and how you became food entrepreneurs. Danny, let's start with you.
Dani Dircks:I started Sailor Mercy exactly six years ago, and how Sailor Mercy came about was I was a work-from-home mom and I had a five-year-old who had just started kindergarten and he was sick. He was home three days sick from school. And I also had three-year-old twins and a one-year-old and I was desperate for a way to keep my family healthy and to get him back to school and I sat down at the computer. I started researching how can I be proactive and start keeping my family healthy from home, and I came about this elderberry syrup. These crunchy moms, these hippie moms, were swearing by this elderberry syrup and I had never heard of it before. So I was desperate and I bought all the ingredients on Amazon a fast way to get everything to my house and I came up with a recipe and it worked. It worked and that's how Sailor Mercy was born.
Bill Von Bank:Did you use a recipe you found online, or did you just tweak it and tweak it until you founded that it worked for your family?
Dani Dircks:Originally, yes, I just found a recipe online and then what I wanted as a mama for was I wanted something my kids begged for. I didn't want something I had to force down their throat, so I did play around with a few. I think I did about six different recipes until I came up with the one that we still bottle today. It's very delicious and very kid-friendly.
Bill Von Bank:It's great. Ben McAvoy, you're the co-owner of Blue Fruit Farm in Winona, Minnesota. Tell us more about your business.
Ben McAvoy:Early 2000s, a gentleman by the name of Jack Hedin decided to build a deer fence and create a little CSA. He started by growing a couple of annual vegetables and fruit. The CSA became really, really popular. He has since moved to Rushford and now has a couple thousand acres and like a 2,500 person CSA. But when he left, he left the deer fence and about four acres of weeds. So at that point in time his farm was located on a intentional community and two members, jim Riddle and Joyce Ford, who are pioneers in the organic certification and organic standards, decided that they wanted to start growing some healthy fruit, something that isn't necessarily readily available or grown a lot in southeastern Minnesota. So in 2008, they decided to start planting their first blueberries. Now, after shepherding the land for over a decade, me and my wife had an opportunity to take over as managers at the Blue Fruit Farm. So not only were we moving to the farm, we were moving to the community, we were taking over their house, this beautiful, driftless region of Minnesota, and as of this year, we've become the proud new owners of Blue Fruit Farm. Besides having some little bit of experience just growing some organic raspberries, tomatoes, peppers in our backyard, we really didn't have any formal organic farming experience, but we were both in a part of our life where we were ready for a big change. I wasn't happy in the career that I was in. In fact, I was working for probably the least organic lawn care company in the United States and to transition into the organic field has just been absolutely wonderful.
Ben McAvoy:What fruits do you grow? We grow blueberries. This is our main crop, it's what brings people to the farm and then we grow several other fruits that people might not be so aware about. So we grow honeyberries, we grow elderberries, we grow aronia berries and black currants, as well as blueberries A lot of things people have never experienced, never heard of until they've come to our farm, and several of these products you really really can't find in the supermarket. For decades, black currants were actually illegal to grow in the United States. There was an issue with diseases being spread to white pines, and then the lumber industry got involved and basically said no, you can't grow black currants in the United States anymore, and in fact, there's still states in the United States that you can't grow. So when it comes to things like black currants, there's not a lot of information available, and that's one of the things we really strive for at blue fruit is to bring information, bring this knowledge of these wonderful, healthy, delicious fruits to people who maybe have never heard of them before.
Bill Von Bank:Danny, what sets sailor mercy elderberry syrup apart from other products on the market, and how has it contributed to the natural health and wellness of families?
Dani Dircks:sailor mercy. We are a still water Minnesota company and I now employ 18 local women. That is, to me, my thing I'm most proud of right now. I love it. I love my team so much I couldn't do it without them. Something about sailor mercy is, over the years, as we try to grow and scale, I really try to make an effort to stay true to the principles I've started with, including glass bottles, local raw honey, things that would I could. You know, as you grow as entrepreneur, you try to cheapen your product to, to get it to wholesale pricing, and I just there's things I won't compromise on. So that definitely sets us apart. Just this past year, for the first time so 2023 I have started to include Minnesota grown elderberries and do our product from blue fruit farm.
Bill Von Bank:That's great. Yeah, cross collaboration, yeah so, and you've also expanded into, if I have this right, 25 retail locations. Can you tell us more about that?
Dani Dircks:sure it's actually closer to 100 retail locations. I got the information wrong yeah, probably old bio, but we are on. We are in all the twin cities koalaske's markets and we are in all the twin cities, high V's and a lot of co-ops, chiropractors, a lot of chiropractor offices carry our product and then some like fair market. If you're familiar with that, we have other small businesses that buy our products and resell them. So it's amazing. It's amazing.
Ben McAvoy:Talk us through how people can purchase your product in the last couple of years we're actually have been establishing ourselves as a you pick farm. In the past, blue fruit never really did that much you pick, but in the last couple of years we've really opened ourselves up to the opportunity to Bring a lot of people out to the farm and that's been an amazing venue. We've had so many new faces, so many wonderful families come and just Be interested in coming. You know how much better is it, you know, to know where your food come from then to pick it off of the plant yourself. Besides you pick.
Ben McAvoy:We are a pretty small farm. We Do a lot of deliveries. We love to deliver to our locals in Winona, but we also set up schedule so people kind of around the state can get a little bit of our product, will do Deliveries to right here in Rochester, will even do some deliveries out to the cities. We actually have a Worked with some amazing people out in the cities, from restaurants to big CSAs to, of course, a sailor mercy and a little shout out. We swear by your Fire cider. Me and my family absolutely swear by that fire cider. I think it's what kept us healthy this last winter. So thank you very much. Of course, local pick up right at the farm.
Brett Olson:When we're talking about both of these spectrums right, the farmer and the food maker there's this messy middle, which is a Actual term in food production. The messy middle which is how do we get raw fruit from his farm to a jar? And that's the messy middle like how does it become juice, how does it become powder? How does it? And so, renewing the countryside, along with our partners at the food finance institute, are working right now on designing and building the Plans for A processing company in Minnesota that will do Aronia, black current and elderberry what are considered functional fruit, you would call that in order to to build out the Infrastructure. We can grow these. We're really good at growing these products but the messy middle of making it into juice or powder that's missing. And so, renewing the countryside and our partners are really working on trying to figure out how to get these two connected. Right now, it's difficult for you to buy fruit from blue fruit farm. If there was somebody in the middle making his fruit into juice, how easy would that make your life right.
Bill Von Bank:We're not talking about blueberries and other. We're talking about some of the more.
Brett Olson:It could be expanded into any of those, any of the fruit. We're just looking at those three to start with, because I don't like the word functional fruit. It's something that's used in the industry, but elderberry, erronea and blackcurrant have a lot of health benefits and so we've been focusing on those. But it could be that we could take blueberries, we could take raspberries, whatever, once we build a facility to do that, and we'll probably have the groundwork for that within a year.
Bill Von Bank:We're identifying fruits more. So food is medicine, fruit Correct. Let's stay on this topic a bit more, because you've addressed a challenge, and let's talk about both challenges and opportunities in the sustainable initiatives in rural America. Speak a little bit more to some of the additional challenges, but the opportunities you see for businesses like Danny and Ben and a bunch of others that will be exhibiting at feast.
Brett Olson:All of the food is made in Minnesota, wisconsin and Iowa that come to feast but there also should exhibit current purchases of agricultural products from those three states or a full willingness or desire to purchase from those states. The problem is that where do you, if you make pasta sauce, you can't just buy a truckload of tomatoes. You don't have the ability to turn that into pasta sauce. You need tomato paste or you need tomato sauce. So that's that messy middle where we really that's the big problem is that we don't have herb dehydrators, we don't have people making tomato sauce.
Brett Olson:You know, we've got, you know, great companies like up in Plainview, they've got a canning plant for sweet corn, but those kind of in the middle manufacturing is missing and we're hoping that by bringing this show and really trying to focus on not only making the food here but having the food come from here, that we can build out an infrastructure, create jobs, create new companies, create an economy in Southeast, because, man, we can grow great food. I mean, we're so good at growing food down here, how do we take it to that next level? How do we and not onesie, twosies, but you know into, like you said about scalability, right, you, you know, when you're trying to scale a product, it's easy for you to go and say, look, I can buy 5,000 gallons of honey from who knows where. It's really cheap, your product still tastes the same, but you're not supporting those local farmers. And so how do we get those kind of industries built around these food companies to really support it?
Bill Von Bank:So how do you do that? Is it? Is it legislative supported? Is it the Department of Ag? I mean, how do you get get that?
Brett Olson:It's going to be all of those right. Department of Ag has been a great supporter of the Feast Food Show and really does great things. I went to Expo West with them and they're just some really amazing food companies. But I think it's going to take private individuals and and investment into these production facilities right. So, like Frontier, the herb company, the state of Idaho didn't build them a di dehydrator right, they had private investment. But the demand was there and Idaho is, you know, high desert, so it's dry and so growing herbs there is great. But they're also based in Iowa. They're right, just right across the border from us.
Brett Olson:We could do that here if we can show the demand and the production. So I think you know we're just just a couple of tweaks away, and especially with this functional fruit plant that we're trying to develop, you know we've got a little bit of some seed funding to do that. But I was talking to an international ingredient supplier and I was talking about North American elderberry compared to the European elderberry and he's like, yeah, I'll buy it from you, but I need four metric tons a month of powder, not juice, four metric tons of powder. And I'm like you'll buy it. And he's like, yeah, build the plant. So there is a demand out there. We just need to, you know, stack the capital and figure out how to build it.
Bill Von Bank:Well, as we think about demand and Danny, I wanna ask you first what do you envision for the future of Sailor Mercy and how do you plan to continue aiding families nationwide with natural immune defense?
Dani Dircks:So for Sailor Mercy. I'd love to see us keep scaling and growing. I would love to be in whole foods and targets. I would love to be every family's go-to for elderberry syrup. I'm a big believer that every house in the United States should have a bottle of elderberry syrup in their medicine cabinet. I see us continuing to build partnerships with other local businesses. I love that. Our company now.
Dani Dircks:Now I can say hey, when you buy a bottle of elderberry syrup, not only are you supporting my family of four children, but you are supporting I think my company has. With the 18 women we have about 65 children under us, which is amazing. And then also, now that we are adding more and more Minnesota grown elements to our company, now you're supporting Ben's family. We get all of our honey currently from Bolton Bees. They're another small family. They live about a mile away from me a young couple with a small child. It's just amazing. It's amazing when the consumer takes a minute to say yes, I could go to Amazon and buy a bottle of elderberry syrup for $10 cheaper, but I'm going to make a conscious effort and choice to support my local community, my local schools.
Bill Von Bank:With local, made with local product.
Dani Dircks:Correct.
Bill Von Bank:Ben same question for you what does the future look like for Blue Fruit Farm?
Ben McAvoy:Looking at it from the other side of somebody who grows food, we don't have this big interest in scaling up up up. We are limited to our little four acres and, as it turns out, it's definitely. The future of our farm is still and always going to be a mom and pop operation, and we've talked to a lot of experienced farmers about growing food. And there's this you want to strive for kind of either one or two things you want to stay small, keep it a mom and pop operation or really really try to scale up. Now I feel like the difficulty with scaling up is you're really thinking about finances, you're thinking about profit, you're thinking about how to maximize and for us the issue is is you can get stuck into that little middle ground. For us, the future of Blue Fruit Farm will always remain in that little four acres and we're looking to expand the UPIC. We really want to try to offer fruit to people right here, local in Minnesota, really close to us. People who can drive 15 minutes away, spend an afternoon picking blueberries and then know that those blueberries were grown in just an unbelievably clean little area. We're on just this wonderful little island known as Whiskey Valley and it's always a delight having people come out to the farm. They can see us surrounded by 30 plus acres of maintained tall grass prairie and other side of us surrounded by hardwood forest. It's a pretty dream place to grow fruit. So future of Blue Fruit Farm we love the opportunity to work with companies like Sailor Mercy In fact you've mentioned it yourself that we really know how to grow food and getting information out there, getting these middlemen involved, because right now we have an immense amount of erronea berries and erronea is just starting to kind of hit the radar.
Ben McAvoy:I feel like 10 years ago, when Jim and Joyce originally put those erronea berry plantings in, there wasn't a market necessarily for it. Now we're starting to see a little bit of a market for it and we're starting to get the little bit of awareness out. So we would love to try to find some processors, some distributors. We have a couple thousand pounds of erronea and honestly we have a little bit of a difficult time figuring out where it all goes at the end of the year. We're sitting on about 700 pounds of frozen erronea right now because we can't find that juicer.
Ben McAvoy:We're looking for a company like I don't know if you can name drop big organizations. But Ocean Spray or something. Now, with the hint of erronea, to put that kind of advertising, that kind of awareness out there for something that people really haven't heard of, would probably just explode customers on our radar. So our little website, our little videos that we might post, we can reach a small amount of people. But to try to get the awareness out there where people are, it becomes a household name and when that happens, I think that's going to be the perfect opportunity for our farm to be growing these amazing fruits and then have people love them, know them, bring them home.
Bill Von Bank:We started this conversation talking about Feast in its 10th year and we have two participants here for Feast and we have the organizers. So one final question how important are events like Feast to grow businesses such as Sailor Mercy, blue Fruit Farm and Brett? How important is Feast to bring it all home?
Brett Olson:Feast the Marketplace which happens here in Rochester is about brand awareness and building community and getting 1,000, 1,500 people that just really embrace it and enjoy the greatest food makers that the Midwest has. The real secret sauce is we have a specific wholesale only trade show in March where you can sell a thousand dollars worth of elderberry juice on November 4th. That doesn't run the show. Right, and it doesn't run the show. But that wholesale marketplace that we do in March, that's where Kwaski's, that's where cub that's where.
Bill Von Bank:so the feast here? Yep, these marketplaces, business to consumer business to, and then the other one in March. B2b right.
Brett Olson:Yep, and that one's that happens up in a cannon falls, so not far away Yep. We try to keep renewing the countryside. It's a countryside organization. We try to keep things. You know we shoot ourselves in the foot. We could put it at the Minneapolis Convention Center, but we want the money to stay here in rural areas. That's where the food comes from.
Bill Von Bank:Danny, how about you? How important are feast events to your business?
Dani Dircks:I was really blessed to become part of feast in 2019. I wasn't in any retail locations yet. I just got in license in November, attended feast in December and the thing I love about feast is kind of like what I said about staying true to your principle. Is they, like Brent said, they could, they could blow up, they could grow, they could move to the Minneapolis where they have a thousand vendors, but they stay true to their principles of Connecting the maker with the grower and the consumer and how important that is I mean, it's so important and I really do feel that feast has helped me Stay true to that and how important networking is with the other entrepreneurs.
Ben McAvoy:For us, you won't find blue fruit products in any grocery store. We are under the Minnesota cottage food, so all of our jams and juices are made in-house, and Events like the feast are fantastic for us because it allows us to bring our product, sell it to the end, consumer direct to consumer cottage food. You're not going to be able to find our products in the grocery store. We also can't sell online. We also aren't able to ship through the mail. So in person, in-house events like this is, first of all, just a great way to help move some amazing product to our local Customers. But it also makes me think of their last question.
Ben McAvoy:Actually, as far as the future of blue fruit, we would really like to find some of these opportunities where we can work in commercial kitchens and then allow us to Make our products in a commercial kitchen, so then we can sell our jams to local grocery stores. We can sell our juices in local grocery stores as well as ship around the United States. So besides selling a lot of our jams and juices that we make the feast also, primarily we want to try to bring more people to our farm. We want to try to introduce more people to who we are and the getting those email Lists. You know, getting those customers talking to them, saying, yes, we're now a you pick operation, bringing those people to the farm, teaching people who we are having us become a household name, networking with other businesses who might be interested in our product as well. It's been, yeah, a fantastic tree.
Bill Von Bank:I want to thank my guests Brett Olson from renewing the countryside and feast, danny Dirks from Sailor Mercy and Ben McAvoy from Blue Fruit Farm. This has been a fantastic conversation. Just love the passion you have for what you do and thank you for being our guests on the growing destinations podcast.
Dani Dircks:Thank you, bell, absolutely Thank you.
Bill Von Bank:Thank you for tuning in to the growing destinations podcast and don't forget to subscribe. This podcast is brought to you by experience Rochester. Find out more about Rochester, minnesota, and its growing arts and culture scene, its international culinary flavors and award-winning craft beer by visiting experience Rochester, mncom.