Dayna Burtness of Laughing Loon Farm has Returned to Her Roots

Dayna Burtness comes from a long line of farmers, which is one reason her parents were worried when she first announced she wanted to grow food for a living.

“My dad grew up in southeastern Minnesota on a conventional farm and as soon as he was old enough, he left to go to the University of Minnesota, which I think is a common story,” she says.

For him, farming meant long hours of potentially dangerous work done on your own with few neighbors and uncertain profitability.

That’s not the farming Burtness does.

Instead, she rents 5 acres of a 50-acre parcel owned by Greg and Nancy Carlson, about a mile south of Northfield. The parcel also is home to the , a community garden, , and other individuals practicing small-scale agriculture. She shares a greenhouse and equipment with her fellow farmers.

Through her business, Laughing Loon Farm, Burtness sells produce to chefs at some of the Twin Cities’ most trend-setting restaurants, including The Local, Bachelor Farmer and The Corner Table, as well as food service operations at and Her customers help her decide what to plant, based on what they want to cook. It's a collaborative, community-oriented venture. 

“It’s not the farming that my grandparents and great-grandparents did,” she says.

Recently, Burtness’ enterprise received a boost when it won a $3,000 grant from the Raising Organic Family Farms program of Lundberg Family Farms, a California-based organic rice grower and marketer. Burtness will use the money to build caterpillar hoophouses—greenhouse-like structures that will allow her to harvest produce earlier and later in the season.

From student to farmer

Burtness’ interest in farming began after her first year at . She spent the next summer working at Foxtail Farm, a community-supported agriculture farm in Osceola, WI. In a blog post, she later wrote, “The internship on the farm was the most life-changing experience I’ve ever had. Not only did I discover my love of farming and living simply, but I experienced independence, the feeling of competency, and the satisfaction of hard, honest work.”

She wanted to quit school and go into farming immediately, but decided (with a little encouragement from her parents) to return to St. Olaf, where she and fellow student Dan Borek spearheaded efforts to start the St. Olaf Garden Research and Organic Works (STOGROW), a student farm that continues to provide produce to the St. Olaf food service.

Burtness graduated in 2007 and has worked in farming and nonprofits since.

Joining a community of farmers

This season will be her first time farming independently.

She will have three employees—two are St. Olaf students. She's already planted radishes in the freshly tilled fields and the greenhouse is filled with tiny broccoli and cabbage seedlings.  

Her biggest crop is tomatoes. She also grows grape, cherry, slicing, heirloom and hybrid varieties, including 16 heirloom types, which are especially popular with chefs. She also will grow squash, cucumbers, zucchini, peas, radishes, salad turnips and a Peruvian pepper called the rocoto, which she will sell to her sister-in-law’s food truck.

Burtness doesn’t grow potatoes or sweet corn because restaurants have other options for that. She also will not sell at local farmers markets or offer a community-supported agriculture (CSA) because there are so many other farmers in Northfield who do that.

One of the reasons Burtness was so excited to begin farming in Northfield again was the support for local produce and the community of young farmers. In addition to the SEEDS farm, other produce farms run by young people include Open Hands Farm and Spring Wind Farm, along with veteran producers such as Thorn Crest Farm, and Big Woods Farm.

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