As the summer days begin to cool into fall, farms along the North Shore are facing the beginning of the end of their growing seasons. One of these farms is Farm Lande (pronounced Land-ee), located on Doe Road.
Farm Lande is owned by Claire and Pete Lande, who were both born and raised in the Arrowhead region. In 2020, the Landes purchased the farm from Kathy Jensen of Talmadge Farms.
Claire Lande’s interest in farming began when she was studying entomology in graduate school. “I was really interested in integrated pest management on farms,” Claire says. She began working on a farm during the summer in order to gain experience working with farmers. Later, Claire moved to Oregon to pursue entomology.
Claire says about her time in Oregon, “Most of my entomology work was conducting pollinator research on farms, so I was seeing all sorts of operations, meeting the farmers, and seeing the effect of their farm practices play out in the insect/pollinator communities I was studying.” She continued, “I was also going to the super vibrant farmers’ markets out there and thinking, ‘I should be the one selling this stuff.’”
When Claire and Pete moved back to the Arrowhead region in 2017, they began looking for somewhere to farm. In the interim, Claire started a “bee farm”, where she kept bees on other people’s farms and sold honey and beeswax products at farmers’ markets. “It’s been a process, but we made it,” Claire says.
Farm Lande grows more than 30 species of native perennials for pollinators, plus “lots of veggies.” The Landes also manage a couple honeybee hives and about 20 chickens. “We are heavily focused on the native plants in the spring (we take pre-orders on our website www.farmlande.com and have a couple sales on the farm), and we gradually switch gears as the veggies start coming in,” Claire explains. The farm grows “all the basics”: greens, cucumbers, squash, potatoes, broccoli, cabbage, peas, beans, tomatoes, beets, carrots, peppers, garlic, onions, and herbs.
“Our mission is to promote community and ecological resilience through food and plants. A healthy food system is very dependent on healthy insect communities, and we as a community can provide for those insects by increasing the biodiversity of our yards and gardens, providing habitat and food sources for them that in turn provide food for us through pollination and pest control. It really does make a difference!” Claire states.
Farm Lande can be found at the Duluth Farmers’ Market on Wednesdays from 2 p.m. – 5 p.m. and Saturdays from 8 a.m. – 12 p.m., and on the Clover Valley Farm Trail (2709 Doe Road) on Sundays from 12 p.m. – 5 p.m. In addition, Farm Lande also contributes to the North Shore Farmers’ Collective monthly boxes.
