Lambs, family and garlic help this couple build a new life in rural Minnesota
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In every corner of Minnesota, there are good stories waiting to be told of places that make our state great and people who in Walt Whitman’s words “contribute a verse” each day. MPR News sent longtime reporter Dan Gunderson on a mission to capture those stories as part of a series called “Wander & Wonder: Exploring Minnesota’s unexpected places.”
Mark Anema and Kate Ritger met at a garlic harvest party. He was looking for land to realize a dream. She was running a community supported agriculture venture for the Sisters of St. Benedict in St. Joseph.
Together they started a small farm near Watkins growing produce and garlic. That partnership has worked pretty well, growing over seven years into marriage, a baby and now lots of lambs on the way.
The transformation has come easier to Ritger, 44, who grew up around animals on a hobby farm in Wisconsin. Anema, 64, was raised in Detroit and Chicago and spent much of his professional life in investment finance and consulting but couldn’t shake the dream of working a farm in the country.
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He concedes life now isn’t easier or more profitable than the one he left, but he’s finding it more rewarding and says changing his life has changed him for the better.
‘They bounce, they hop sideways and jump around’
Garlic is the main crop on their farm, but the lambs provide the show.
Four years ago, a friend texted the couple to say some Icelandic sheep were for sale. “So, we jumped in and bought our first seven ewes,” said Ritger. The flock is now about two dozen ewes and this year they expect 40-50 lambs.
Sheep are a growing part of the farm finances. Spring is a busy time with new lambs being born and sheep needing to be shorn of their thick winter wool.
Icelandic sheep are known as resilient and they generally birth lambs with little trouble.
“Lambing is very exciting, and what's really exciting is when it's all done and then you’ve got a bunch of little lambs running around,” said Anema. “That's really fun, because the lambs are fun to watch. It's kind of endearing.”
“They bounce, they hop sideways and jump around. And it's really exciting,” said Ritger.
But it's also stressful, especially when a lamb isn’t able to feed from their mother.
“We did have one reject a lamb, so now it's a bottle lamb,” said Anema. “Bottle lambs are really a bummer. I got up at 3:30 this morning to go give a lamb a bottle, and it's not fun.”
While the lambs are cute and entertaining, they are a key part of the farm balance sheet and will be sold for slaughter within a year, a reality Anema calls bittersweet. “You can't have livestock without getting paid somehow, and I can't afford just to graze sheep and keep them as pets.”
In addition to the meat, the couple sells sheepskins, and skull mounts with impressive curled horns. Ritger is developing a market for woven rugs and tapestries from the wool.
In Minnesota, 2,137 farms collectively had 109,592 sheep and lambs in 2022, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. Most of those farms had fewer than 25 sheep.
Garlic is an increasingly popular crop to farm, with some 115 garlic producers in the state growing more than 100 different varieties, according to the Minnesota Grown Program.
‘I don’t worry about what’s going to happen’
Anema’s successful career provided the seed money to start the farm. Ritger works as a hospital chaplain in St. Cloud when she’s not raising sheep. Together, they raise their 4-year-old daughter.
Despite his expertise in finance, making a living off the land isn’t easy. Garlic is their big crop, but last year disease spread by a leaf hopper insect destroyed nearly one-quarter of the crop.
“This year I'm growing garlic again, and I've just got my fingers crossed that the weather will be different, that the conditions for leaf hoppers will be different. You just don't know. But that's farming, right?” he said.
“There's not a paycheck, and it's really hard to make a living. Often, when I tote up the cost of all the feed I bought and all the lambs I've sold, I'm only a little bit ahead and so I can't recommend this as a money-making proposition.”
But Anema is not deterred by the financial challenges.
“I'm a lot more relaxed. I don't think I was always very nice when I was working in an office,” he said with a rueful chuckle.
“There's a lot of competition; there's always quite a bit of conflict. I think you learn to deal with that, and that changes your personality,” he said of his past life.
“Out here, I don't really have conflict. I do have a certain anxiety about lambs coming out properly, but I sleep like a log every night, and I don't worry about what’s going to happen at work the next day,” he said.
“I think it's not for everybody, but it is for me. I don't think I'm ever going to leave this place.”
