Night Owl Farm offers fresh produce and flowers through a Community Supported Agriculture program and at Minneapolis’s Midtown Farmer’s Market. You will also find our vegetable and flower seedlings at Mother Earth Gardens Nursery. We are proud to be doing our small part in reshaping the food system so that it is healthy and sustainable for plants, animals and humans.
Our farm encompasses 20 acres of oak savanna, wetlands, grassland and birch and aspen forests which is home to a multitude of species. In addition to a healthy population of harmless grass and garter snakes, we commonly see nine species of frogs, toads and tree frogs….. every species known to inhabit our area of Minnesota. These critters act as our resident pest control; a single toad can eat thousands of bugs and slugs in one season. We appreciate this biodiversity and work to protect it as we raise crops on the land.
Our main field has grass paths or living walkways between every row. The grass and clover and their roots feed the microorganisms in the soil even when no vegetables are growing in the bed next to them, creating and maintaining healthier soil. The roots of the living walkways stabilize the soil, reducing water and nutrient run- off, and by not having exposed or tilled soil in pathways, carbon is sequestered.
We follow USDA’s Organic Certification Guidelines in our farm practices and use drip irrigation in most of our fields to conserve water. For weed control we use a combination of landscape fabric, hay, cover crops and crop/fabric rotation.
The varieties of flowers we grow are chosen with consideration to their beauty, but also to their benefit to pollinators and monarch butterflies. We are continuing an ongoing project of naturalizing perennial native flowers on a large scale into our farm meadows, including cup plant, lupine, coneflower, joe pye weed, purple aster, butterfly weed, bee balm and milkweed.
Growing plants and running a farm is a process of continual learning and continual trial and error. In the face of failure, it requires a mind set of a shrug and …”Well, live and learn!” It requires patience, humility in the face of Mother Nature, and a desire to work with her, not against her. And most importantly, farming and gardening is an act of faith that yields hope, always.
As of 2025, we are entering our 12th year at Night Owl Farm.
