by Michelle Sharp
On a gentle slope in southern Minnesota that Rachel Davis’ grandparents called Poverty Knob, Kalvin, Rachel and their children raise a myriad of mushrooms at their ten acre certified organic solar-powered farm. Now the fourth generation to steward the land, their innovations in sustainable practices make year round fresh produce feasible in a responsible fashion.
A LOVE STORY
Kalvin and Rachel fell in love with local food, and each other, while attending college at UW-Stevens Point. The thriving local farmers market scene and opportunities to volunteer provided real world inspiration of what smaller producers could do. In the western mountains of North Carolina, Kalvin started his first mushroom-growing enterprise as a part of a biodynamic and organic farm where he worked after college.
Rachel and Kalvin purchased Rachel’s grandparents’ farm when they moved back to Minnesota. Both originally from 
LeRoy, a town of approximately 900, coming home offered an opportunity to build their dream life within their community.
After returning to Minnesota in 2017 they began the work of updating the farm, which had sat idle for a number of years. Their love for foraging spring fiddleheads inspired the farm’s new name. Planting ferns creates an understory that shelters different kinds of logs for growing mushrooms outside.
“We have our own walking nature garden area. I keep planting everywhere to add to our forest farming capacity,” says Kalvin. They’re working section by section around the property to replace grass lawn with mulched raised beds. Currently about 1200 outdoor shiitake logs live nested in under the pines.
Both Kalvin and Rachel work full time on the farm, fulfilling a shared dream. “The big idea for our farm was to build this around our family. We could have our kids at home. We could homeschool. We’re both here every day,” reflects Kalvin. “We’ve been building our lifestyle around our family and good food, local food. We’re so excited to see where it’s going to take us. We’re kind of in awe every day that this is what we get to do as a family working together. It’s been hard sometimes, but building this business around our family is a total joy.”
CREATING SUSTAINABLE SPACES
Kalvin, a trained carpenter, converted the farm’s garage into an insulated production space for 150-200 pounds of mushrooms weekly. Their outdoor forest farming space provides fertile growing space for more mushrooms, ferns and art installations.
Sleek Blue Oysters and puffy Lion’s Mane balloon from their logs. Stacked several shelves high, this dense space produces about several hundred pounds of food a week, every week.
In the summer of 2023 Fiddlehead Knob secured a federal grant through the Rural Energy for America Program (REAP). When combined with a second grant through the American Farmland Trust, the old homestead leapt into the 21st century with their solar installation.
“When you cultivate mushrooms inside, in order to have them available year round, it is inherently not sustainable,” explains Kalvin. “You use lots of power. There are all sorts of filters and fans that run in addition to lighting the space.” The economic impact of installing solar changed their farm’s monthly expenses radically. “We used to have $800 electric bills each month. Now we apply those financial resources to grow our business in other ways.”
Fiddlehead Knob continues to double their annual production to better meet demand in southern Minnesota and northern Iowa. To continue their quest to do this sustainably, geothermal heating and cooling is part of the farm vision board. “This is super exciting,” shares Kalvin. “We could keep basically the entire grow space right around the 56 degree mark. We wouldn’t have to heat or cool much. That would be a pretty happy temperature for our mushrooms.”
ACCOUNTABILITY THROUGH COACHING
Fiddlehead Knob Farm is a graduate of the 2024 cohort of the Rural Business Innovation Lab. Established in 2022 by Community and Economic Development Associates (CEDA) RBIL is a cohort-based, entrepreneurial program that reverses the narrative of rural decline. Each cohort builds a peer network dense with ideas, expertise, and resources that help rural small businesses start and scale their work within their communities. Working in both Minnesota and Wisconsin, RBIL supports rural businesses in their growth to become sustainable drivers of economic health.
Accountability was a foundational asset of Kevin and Rachel’s work with RBIL. “We had the dreams and the means to build the things we wanted to build, but we were lacking in the business management side of things,” shares Rachel. 
“We were really excited about the prospect of having personalized coaches to help our business scale up. RBIL helped us to achieve so much more than we initially had thought we would get out of this experience.”
RBIL’s support made it possible for their farm to finalize their business plan, secure funding for their grow room expansion, achieve organic certification, increase their sales goals and undertake a rebranding to represent how their business has grown. “If you put in the work with RBIL, your business will be on a path to success. We can’t give them enough praise for all they have done for our business,” explains Kalvin.
TRY SOMETHING NEW
Kalvin’s personal favorite mushroom that they grow is their chestnut. Gently fried, it adds a delightful crunch on top of a Ramen bowl. “It gives a squid or calamari vibe,” says Kalvin. His favorite to forage is hen of the woods. Kalvin describes it as the chicken leg as opposed to the chicken breast-like flavor found in the colorful chicken of the woods mushroom. “The best way to prepare hen of the woods is deep fried in a beer batter with a side of garlic aioli. It may not be the healthiest, but it’s so good.”
Fiddlehead Knob sells mushrooms, both foraged and cultivated, at the Rochester, MN farmers market. Enjoy their products at Iowa Food Hub, Marrow, Juniper’s Restaurant, Bebap, Bleu Duck, Pittsburgh Blue, Taste, Blazing Star Eats, Luna Valley Farm, and their Etsy store
Not local? Fiddlehead has dried and powdered mushrooms available on their website. Countertop grow kits let you witness and taste the magic of mushroom growing at home. Each kit yields two to four pounds of mushrooms.
GET IN TOUCH
Visit fiddleheadknob.com for recipes, farmers market schedules, and to place an order.
Follow @fiddleheadknob on Facebook and Instagram for website specials and recipe inspiration.
Contact Cameron Payne cameron.payne@cedausa.com at CEDA to learn more about the RBIL program. Visit https://www.cedausa.com/ruralinnovation/ for a program overview.
Follow Meet the Minnesota Makers @meettheminnesotamakers on Ambit, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
This story was originally published to Meet the Minnesota Makers and is shared with permission. The link to the original article can be found here.
What happens when two friends—one a shepherd frustrated by seeing sheared wool treated
as a waste product and the other a teacher and librarian concerned by the decimation of the world’s peat bogs, a natural carbon sink—join forces?
The pellets themselves are one hundred percent wool. Sheared wool direct from a sheep goes into the shredding machine, nicknamed Wilma. Wilma, courtesy of her nine whirling blades of death, shreds the wool into little bits that resemble popcorn kernels. These kernels become pellets courtesy of Betty, the pellet mill. Betty compresses the kernels to create the pellets.
ght of 150-200 pounds. “There’s some entertaining wrestling that goes on as we wrangle the wool,” laughs Karen. “It’s taller than both of us! Sometimes I do wonder how we ended up here as we’re grunting and groaning to load the wool.”
moisture back to your plants. If the soil is too wet with the inundation of too much rainwater, the pellets can pull moisture away from the roots.”
Karen.
Purchase woollets wool pellets directly from Elaine and Karen at 
The MTRY & Co’s mission is simple, “It’s all about bringing the delicious world of small producers directly to you, making the farm-to-table experience accessible and delightful for everyone, and connecting an inspired community with access to top quality small producers,” explains Colette. “Our online marketplace looks to make it as easy as possible for people to connect with quality food that supports local producers.”
people and tasting the products themselves. “Trying new recipes, just experimenting with the same kind of meat through different forms of preparation is really the MTRY in a nutshell,” smiles MacKenzie. “We have some tried and true methods, but you rarely see the same meal twice with our crew.”
Starting from a “let’s figure it out together as we go” mentality is how the family navigated the world of USDA regulations, food safe shipping (involving BluTooth thermometers and compostable packaging), and how to best create a community among their producers and their consumers. “We come from a farm family,” reflects MacKenzie. “We understand the blood, sweat, and tears that go into raising these animals to certain standards. There’s a lot of pride and a lot of time that goes into it.”
Established in 2022 by Community and Economic Development Associates (CEDA) RBIL is a cohort-based, entrepreneurial program that reverses the narrative of rural decline. Each cohort builds a peer network dense with ideas, expertise, and resources that help rural small businesses start and scale their work within their communities. Working in both Minnesota and Wisconsin, RBIL supports rural businesses in their growth to become sustainable drivers of economic health.
Explore the producer collections and sign up for the MTRY’s newsletter at 
Supporting entrepreneurship growth is a strategy for rural resilience. With the right support, rural business owners stay rooted in their communities while creating jobs, building wealth and positively shaping the regional economy.
carry the burden of the financials, the location, the equipment and the customer experience. Being able to talk through your challenges is psychologically valuable and empowering. Having access to a sounding board and industry experts has measurable long-range impacts on the likely success of the business.”
and resources.
How do the RBIL alumni feel about their experience? Nick Revoir from Simple Cider Company shared the following feedback with Cameron after a coaching session, “Your push and motivation helped so much this week! You give me (and likely everyone else) so much energy to be rockstars (or evil knievels) on our businesses. There is no way I would have gotten close to this far without your help.”
$2,686,500 in Publicly Owned Housing Program (POHP) funding to the Jackson Housing and Redevelopment Authority (HRA). This funding will be used to replace windows, siding, and roofs on 24 housing units across 21 buildings in Jackson, Minnesota.