“Your kale is so much better and lasts so much longer than kale from the other local producers.”

Martin Diffley started Gardens of Eagan in 1973 on five rented acres in Eagan, Minnesota; he was joined in 1985 by Atina as his wife and farming partner. In the mid-1990’s, Martin and Atina moved the operation to Farmington as the old land-base succumbed to suburbanization. In the fall of 2007, the farming business was sold to Minneapolis’ Wedge Community Co-op.

With over twenty years of experience in organic vegetable production on both large and small farms in Wisconsin and California, Linda Halley took over management of the 65 acres of vegetable production in January of 2008.

Gardens of Eagan has narrowed its focus over the years to selling only to retail stores and wholesale distributors in the Twin Cities, which has a large number of cooperative natural foods stores. Martin and Atina also focused their attention on a limited number of crops: cucumbers, tomatoes, broccoli, cabbage, kale, cauliflower, bell peppers, watermelons, and sweet corn. This has allowed Gardens of Eagan to develop very efficient systems for the production and handling of these crops.

Crops are delivered three days each week during the main part of the season, on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Most of the harvest, washing, packing take place on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, with the refrigerated truck loaded on the same night for early-morning departure on delivery mornings. In the peak of the season, Linda may choose to harvest an additional day ahead, making decisions based on how well things keep and the optimal time of day for harvesting; occasionally this is necessary because there is simply too much crop to harvest in a single day.

Gardens of Eagan has a very large crew to conduct and manage the entire operation. On the harvest-wash-and-pack side of the operation, farm manager Linda Halley is assisted by a production and harvest manager as well as a packing coordinator. Additional harvest labor is provided by a crew of five to eight persons. Three more employees work seasonally full time to cover other farm operations.

A converted farm shop provides an ample space for washing and packing the produce at Gardens of Eagan. High ceilings and large sliding doors on the south and the west sides make the forty-foot by forty-foot main packing area a pleasant and accessible space, with plenty of room for storage of boxes and harvest totes, a brush washer, a sorting table, and a break and organizational area.

A shed roof over the north side of the building provides a ten-foot wide by forty-foot long space for crisping tanks and pallet jack access to the sixteen-foot by twenty-foot walk-in cooler. Bird netting in the rafters prevents nesting in this open-air portion of the facility. A twelve-foot overhead door separates the shed area from the main packing area, leaving ample access for the flow of product and personnel from one space to the other.

The packing facility has a handwashing sink with hot and cold water, and a portable toilet with a handwash station about one hundred feet away.

Crops are harvested into a fleet of old U-Haul trucks, which provide easy shade and a convenient height during the harvest. Full trucks back up to the packing facility, and dirty product is washed prior to storage. Often, crops are put directly from the truck into crisping tanks or the brush washer, with no additional stacking or handling. Because of the large scale of the harvest, the harvest crew will frequently bring in half of the harvest, back the truck up to the packing facility, and take another truck out to the field as the packing process begins.

Gardens of Eagan uses two 180-gallon Rubbermaid-style stock tanks supported by welded steel frames for crisping their greens. Because of their large size, the tanks have been retrofitted with PVC drains on the bottom of the tank, rather than the standard side plugs positioned an inch above the bottom of a stock tank. Although Linda would prefer a stainless steel milk tank for the ease of cleaning it would provide, the two long, skinny tanks work very well in their location.

An ice machine provides flaked ice that can be added to the top of boxes for additional cooling for the kale, and also a topping for the broccoli, which does not get washed. Two wheeled bins provide storage for ice beyond that available in the machine itself. Crops are topped with ice prior to being moved into storage.

The crisped kale, combined with the ice treatment, lasts much longer than kale that hasn’t gone through a dunk tank, but it does have the disadvantage that it needs to be packed into a larger-than-standard box than it would if the ice was allowed to provide the humidity to firm up the leaves. In a smaller box, the kale would get shredded if it wasn’t slightly wilted.

A twenty-inch wide brush washer provides fast cleaning of peppers and cucumbers. Gardens of Eagan doesn’t have an in-feed belt, so overturned totes position a full tote of produce for manual movement into the washer. Drying donuts remove surface moisture at the outlet, and a circular sorting table rotates at the end of the drying donuts to provide easy access for sorting and packing, as well as a place for product to build up without overflowing.

A washable-laminate covered table, approximately four by eight feet, provides ample space for sorting, grading, and packing tomatoes. A shelf under the table stores tomato boxes for quick and easy access.