Waving in the breeze is the trellis which carries the birds nest squash plants, up one side and down the other. Tomatoes are barricading the pathway so you have to alter your stride. Rutabagas and turnips are growing larger. Uninvited invader Cabbage Lopper butterflies and their larvae have chewed up the kale and other brassica vegetables.

Peppers, cucumbers, beans, thyme, sage, oregano, dill, fennel, pumpkins, watermelon, kohlrabi, and lettuces are producing their feast of taste and fragrance.

This years harvest again goes to Dakota Woodlands. Including this week, we have donated over 95 pounds of fresh vegetables to enhance the Wednesday evening meals at Dakota Woodlands.

The plan is to keep up deliveries until the very end of the season, hopefully into October.

Stop by anytime and enjoy the growing greenery of the gardens at Valley Natural Foods.

What a wonderful sight! Several bird species have chosen our Valley Natural Foods outdoor patio and garden classroom area for a bird sanctuary. It’s also the location for a city wetland project (south side of the building) where baby ducks will soon receive their first swimming lesson. It happens every year, right on schedule. However, it’s the parking lot due west of that area where really cool bird business was recently witnessed.

Yes the parking lot! We learned that landscaped, rocky areas are a favorite place for those funny little killdeer birds to hide their eggs, in plain sight. Last week, Valley Natural Foods staff noticed speckled eggs nestled right out in the open over a bed of rocks above the curbside! If anyone got near, mother killdeer exercised a tactic by distracting possible predators away from her nest using a high-pitched sound of distress; “kill dee, kill dee!” the bird call it was named for. This was accompanied by an impressive ”broken-wing” display. When we followed her lead by turning away from the eggs and moving toward her, sure enough, she got up and lead us further away spreading herself right back down to display this incredible “act” of injury once again. So that’s how those exposed eggs go undisturbed during incubation time!

This week, we discovered tiny killdeer babies scuttling about, following adult killdeer behind the co-op in the west parking area. These adorable, fuzzy little ”puff balls on stilts” are quite hardy because they hatch with their eyes wide open, and they’re ready to run after pausing a couple of hours to dry off. We’ve been fortunate to catch some of the action with a telephoto camera lens and enjoy sharing them with you, our readers! Click here to learn more about this fascinating, intelligent bird.

You can enjoy all this bird fun too by simply hanging out at our outdoor patio. You are very welcome to walk through our garden classroom, even taking a moment if so inclined, to sit down on our large landscaping rocks with your lunch or a cup of coffee, to take in the sights and sounds of our little  bird sanctuary. You may even want to bring your camera because you might discover you have your own bird-watching story to share. And we would love to hear from you if you do! Please write us at info@valleynaturalfoods.com.

The garlic is, that’s what! Last fall, Gary Johnson, now serving as our community relations developer planted northern-hardy Chesnok and Krasnodar hardneck varieties of garlic last  November.  We noticed the garlic shoots poking up through the straw right after the snow receded!

Throughout the growing season, we will learn through this garlic demonstration how to harvest scapes (the flower stem that shoots up from the center of the plant before the plant matures), the final harvest of garlic bulbs and how to dry and store them.

The Valley Natural Foods garden classroom is located on the south side of our building and will serve as a teaching platform for various gardening techniques, styles and plantings. It ties into our Farm to Market education—a belief that we should know where our food comes from. The Garden Classroom also supports our mission of a healthy community.

What happens to a garden that contains rich soil, gets full sun from dawn to dusk  and receives tender-loving-care from a couple of member-owners? It produces an overwhelming abundance of veggies, that’s what!

Yes, our south-facing Valley Natural Foods Garden Classroom is in full swing now producing squash, cucumbers and hot peppers by the dozens, massive-sized zucchini, large heads of broccoli, kholrabi and cabbage, genereous bunches of bok choi, mustard greens, chard and lettuces, and basil plants that are almost hedges (in 4 varieties)!  Not to mention those 5 foot tall bushy tomato plants!

So you may be wondering what we do with all those fresh, nourishing veggies. Dakota Woodlands, the only short-term housing facility for homeless women and children in Dakota County, receives our fresh harvests. Dakota Woodlands is already a recipient of our usable perishable items, so we thought they would enjoy garden fresh produce too.

If you have an abundant garden yourself and end up with extra produce, consider donating to Dakota Woodlands too! Visit their current needs page for details.

The next time you enjoy a lunch or snack out on our patio, feel free to take a walk over to our Garden Classroom and enjoy the sights and sounds of birds, butterflys  and even our gardener darting about the beautiful veggie plants and flowers.

Our Valley Natural Foods Garden Classroom is coming along beautifully and Bobby Jensen and Belinda Jensen from KARE 11 were  here to see it! Our marketing and communications manager Charli Mills talked to them about what is fresh, local and seasonal here at our co-op. Then it was out to our garden classroom where member-owner and gardener Gary Johnson was interviewed about what the co-op has learned so far.

Click here to view the KARE 11 segment.

A big thank you goes out to member-owner Kara Loyd, who advises us on the process of setting up and planting the garden and to Gary Johnson, who has been planting, maintaining  and harvesting in the garden classroom.