Making new friends in Minnesota.

"Humble Roots Heritage" is located 5 miles out of town in Madison, Minnesota. The proud owners are Jessi and Joe, and their two beautiful children, Azure and Aurelia.
There was plenty of space to park our trailer and the prairie skies kept on surprising us.
Jessi and Joe bought this farm a few years ago, did a lot of work on the house, but now they are selling it. 6 acres has become too little for Jessi's "birds business". She currently has around 300 meat chickens and laying eggs chickens, ducks, guinea hens and turkeys. Jessi's passion is birds and she has a dream of expending her free range meat production. But she needs more land for that.
So, they put a down payment on another farm that offers 17 acres. The house needs plenty of work, but the location, the land and better out buildings would make it worth it for Jessi.
The same evening we got a quick tour of the farm, visited the chicken coop, the turkey house, and the pigs. Jessi has some special pigs. The black hogs are a rare breed with only 200 of them in the world. http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/10/08/saving-farm-species/Unfortunately, breeding hasn't been going very well, so Joe has been trying to persuade Jessi that the hogs should become bacon.
There is no garden on the farm, since Joe works as a manager on a nearby 14 acres organic CSA farm and brings home as much fresh produce as they need. His work is seasonal, April though October. In the winter he picks up carpentry jobs.
Joe is a great cook and we got treated to a delicious homemade whole wheat pizza with all the fresh toppings. Next morning Joe's pancakes did not last too long on the table either. They were so fluffy and yummy that everybody kept on eating them even though they were full.
And our chicken dinner deserves a special post.