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Moving to the coutry
It all began in 1997 when we (Jim and Debbie Morrison) purchased a 172-acre, quarter section of land in East Central Minnesota, located between Mora and Pine City, about 70 miles north of the Twin Cities. The land was once a family farm, but all of the original buildings had long been removed. For the first few years, we lived in the Twin Cities and came up on the weekends. But in 2000, we decided to make Kanabec County our home and built a new house, in the same spot where the original farm house once stood.
Maple syrup
When a friend and former Vermonter came by for a visit, he pointed out the many sugar maple trees we had throughout the property and noticed they had never been tapped for maple syrup. So in the spring of 2002, we tapped our first 35 trees, and Sapsucker Farms was born. Each year, we added more taps, 2003 80 taps; 2004 100 taps; 2005 200 taps; 2006 400 taps; 2007 500 taps.
Honey
The property at Sapsucker Farms is a diverse mix of forest, wetlands and prairie. In 2001, we converted the old hayfields into native tall prairie grasses. With this abundant source of nectar and pollen, it seemed to be a natural fit to add honeybees, which is exactly what we did in 2006 honeybees.
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Apples
The combination of honeybees and native prairie grasses, turned out to be the ideal environment for an organic apple orchard, so in 2007, we planted 44 organic apple trees including 36 different varieties of apples.
Sausage
So, where does the sausage fit in? Each fall after deer hunting we would bring our trimmings of meat to a processor to have it made into sausage. Even though the final product was delicious, it always bothered us that our meat was mixed together with everyone elses meat to make the sausage. For this reason, we decided to learn how to make small batches of sausage using our own trimmings.
What's next?
We have a few more things up our sleeves. Keep checking back to see what is new at Sapsucker Farms.
Annual reports (download pdf)
2007 Annual report
2006 Annual report
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