A place in the country

Page 6 • Country Acres South | Saturday, October 1, 2022 A place Couple builds farm business with room for creativity BY GRACE JEURISSEN | STAFF WRITER

inthecountry in the country

ORONOCO – Having a farm site just like grandma and grandpa has been a dream for Susan Waughtal from a young age. She found the farm a great place to grow creatively and enjoy some of the simpler things in life. Now, Waughtal and her husband, Roger Nelson, own a farm where local people can enjoy local things. Fifteen years after Squash Blossom Farm was a newly purchased site with many ideas to raise many products, they have honed in on what makes their home something they love to share with others. “Squash Blossom Farm is a place that promotes creativity, healthy living and nature,” Waughtal said. “It houses a variety of aspects that make for a fun evening or place to socialize. Local food, local art and local music.” The farm has a wide variety of aspects that offer something for everyone. The farm includes a mead wine tasting room, wood-fi red pizza nights and made-on-site artisan cholocates, with gardens grown in a permaculture envieorment.Everything on the farm has a symbiotic relationship. The animals each have their own job on the farm, except the Turkey, Dakota, who is just a pet. The donkey helps keep grasses under control and provides protection for other animals. The Cotton Patch Geese, and chickens provide eggs and eat weeds and bugs. The goats help control invasive species and help fertilize the gardens. Last, but certainly not least, are the bees. They help pollinate the gardens and provide honey for the mead wine that the family has begun expanding. Thirteen years after Waughtal and Nelson invested in 20,000 head of bees and became apiarists, the honey from their bees and other local apiaries serves an ever-fl owing purpose, to make a wine to serve on their farm. They make a variety of mead wines using fruits and spices to fl avor each batch. Some of their mead wines are bottled while others are offered on tap in the wine tasting room, which is a renovated part of their historic barn. The mead tasting room is lit with honey-colored lighting and the auburn fi nishes on furniture help emphasize the importance of honey in their fermented delicacy. “The wine tasting room was redone utilizing as much repurposed décor and furnishings as we could fi nd,” Waughtal said. “Doing that helped us lower the cost of putting this room in. We found the bar on Facebook Marketplace; the fl ooring is from an old bowling alley and I got the hexagon tiles on amazon for very cheap. I

thought they fi t nicely with the fact that bees are a huge part of our wines.” With Waughtal’s mind of an artist and eye for beautiful things and Nelson’s background in architecture, the couple have transformed rooms in their barn to be the center of Squash Blossom Farm. Waughtal-Nelson page 7

PHOTOS BY GRACE JEURISSEN Susan Waughtal and Roger Nelson stand in their wine tasting room Sept. 23 at Squash Blossom Farm near Oronoco. They started the farm 15 years ago.

The historic barn the Squash

Blossom kitchen and mead tasting room are in is a century old.

We have all your Fall attachments needs covered!

COMING SOON!

Snow Pusher • Stump Bucket Grapple Brush Mower

BRUSH GRAPPLE BALE SPEAR 3 PT. GOOSNECK TOWBAR TOWBAW

Bale extensions sions also available able

STUMP BUCKET WOOD SPLITTER/ TREE SHEAR TREE SHEAR HYDRAULIC PALLET FORK YDRAULIC PALLET FORK

Want to make a positive impact in agricultural & rural communities?

Seeking a Full-time GRAZING ORGANIZER

based in Western Wisconsin/ Southeast Minnesota for its SOIL HEALTH PROGRAM

Your role is to organize farmer-to-farmer education programming and build community engagement on agricultural and rural community issues.

Qualifi cations include strong communication and group facilitation skills with a background in rural organizing and/or regenerative grazing. Union-eligible position, robust benefi ts, starting salary $45,000 - $65,000. Remote work with regular travel within region. Deadline: October 16, 2022

Weekends during the summer at the farm are fi lled with art, music, comedy and good food. Pizza nights draw a large crowd of locals that often stick around the farm to enjoy the local musicians who take the stage just outside the farm kitchen. “We used to love going to wood-fi red pizza nights at different farms and venues, and that was something we wanted to incorporate from the beginning,” Waughtal said. “Roger is the expert on the pizzas. He truly is the sourdough master. He has also been the guy behind designing our renovations; he makes sure things are done the right way.” The family built a clay oven to start developing their woodfi red pizza nights. Now that the farm business has grown and absorbed different food varieties, they had to build a commercial kitchen and industrial wood-fi red oven, which was completed in 2015. The kitchen has helped Squash Blossom grow their baking business, become artisan chocolate makers and host larger events. “The kitchen is such a big part of our farm, it is the center of most of our products, from the bakery items for the farmer’s market to Sunday pizza nights,” Waughtal said. “And even now having our chocolate bars, the kitchen has been a place for us to experiment with different products and truly make something tasty to enjoy.” The pizza nights were something unique that Waughtal and Nelson wanted to bring to their farm business that would encourage a community of people to come out and enjoy food on the farm. Now they host around 150 people during Sunday pizza nights and make around 80 pizzas. “We love having people come out,” Waughtal said. On Fridays, the smell of baking cookies, scones and tarts waft through the air as they walk through the French doors to the kitchen, where most of the charm happens. Wauhg-

PHOTOS BY GRACE JEURISSEN Susan Waughtal pours mead wine from the tap behind the bar at Squash Blossom Farm. Mead wine is made from berries and fermented honey.

(Right) Fire burns in the woodfi red pizza oven Sept. 23 at Squash Blossom Farm. On Sunday pizza nights, around 80 pizzas are prepared for locals to enjoy.

tal, Nelson and some of their part-time helpers spend around 12 hours preparing baked goods to sell at the local farmers market. The couple are amazed to think back and realize what the farm use to be and what they transformed it into. Everything on the farm has a purpose, and when they drove past it on their many trips to fi nd a place to call home out in the country, Waughtal fell in love with it from a distance only imagining the potential the farm site would have.

Waughtal-Nelson page 8

Snowmobile Season

Call or stop in and see our selection! is Coming!

Your local residential and commercial experts since 1922

SERVICES:

• Jetting clogged or frozen parlor lines • Jetting clogged or frozen pump and gravity manure lines • Vacuuming out large settling tanks • Clearing trench drains • Hydro excavation • Televising of sewer lines We can clean anything from 2” to 60” 2840 Wilder Rd. NW Rochester, MN 55901 rochph.com