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What can be more iconic than an image of a farmer holding soil? But when I took the photo featured below, it was more than a symbol—it was visual proof that a good farmer can be as passionate about all that hidden life beneath our feet as some people are about art, science, sports or politics.

Those hands belong to southeast Minnesota crop and livestock farmer Duane Hager, and I snapped that photo 15 years ago. When I came upon the image recently while doing some filing, I was reminded of how fun it is to spend time with someone who takes  an intense interest in something, then through observation and experimentation learns every last detail about it. And finally, they use that acquired knowledge to protect and improve the object of their passion.

I can’t count how many times over the past decade and a half  I’ve had a double handful of soil held up to me by a farmer who’s proud of its smell, look and feel. But Duane Hager was the first. I remember we were driving around his farm on a summer day while I interviewed him about soil quality for the Land Stewardship Letter. Suddenly, he stopped in one of those fields that wraps itself around the hilly southeast Minnesota landscape. It was clear he was saving this stop for last, and like a showman putting a climatic exclamation point on a performance, he dug up a spadeful of rich loam and held it up to the camera. Nothing more needed to be said—the interview was done.

So what a delight it was to catch up with Hager recently and discover that he was just as excited as ever about what we philistines dare to call “dirt.”

When I gave Hager a call, he repeated in so many words what he had first told me during my 1995 interview: It all starts and ends with the soil. That philosophy has allowed him to use the soil’s own defenses to ward off that bane of crop farmers in the Upper Midwest: weeds. In his quarter-century of farming just three miles from the Mississippi River, Hager has never used herbicides. Yet his corn yields are competitive with his neighbors’. In fact, the soft-spoken farmer is a bit of a legend among producers in the region who are trying to figure out how to raise row crops without chemical weed control.

Hager and his wife Susie milk 40 cows and raise 30 beef brood cows. They farm 200 acres of corn, soybeans, alfalfa hay and small grains such as wheat, oats and barley. Hager is not certified organic, and he doesn’t strike me as being adamantly opposed to any and all chemicals. But he says he’s never been tempted to utilize herbicides to control weeds simply because, well, he doesn’t see them as necessary when the soil is healthy.

“When you don’t use chemicals you don’t have the cost,” Hager said. “Also, I feel if you can maintain the health of the soil you shouldn’t need the crutch of chemicals.”

Hager is working constantly to build his soil using diverse rotations and natural mineral amendments. He doesn’t see his soil as simply a plant stand for the corn and other crops, but as a living environment that affects everything from what weeds are present to how the finished product influences the health of his livestock.

Soil tests are important to Hager, and he’s learned over the years that such tests can show not only that fields differ from each other, but also that soil characteristics can vary within the same field. For example, he’s recently been having a problem with jimson weed. (“It’s nasty, real nasty,” he says.) It tends to cluster on only certain parts of his fields, although Hager knows the seed bank for that pest plant is probably spread throughout his farm.

“We tested the soil last week where jimson weed really likes to grow, and then tested where it’s not a problem at all,” the farmer said. “I’m going to compare those soil samples to see what minerals are different. I’ve read it could be a calcium deficiency that jimson thrives on. I guess jimson doesn’t like calcium.”

Hager monitors his soil’s health in less scientific ways as well. He knows it’s healthy and not compacted when it’s crumbly and implements pull easily during fieldwork. He also looks for signs of life.

“I watch what’s going on in this soil pretty hard. When I check the planter, I can always see earthworms. Once I walked no more than six feet into my neighbor’s field and I couldn’t find any earthworms. It was amazing I could walk that short a distance and it made that much of a difference.”

Of course, even the healthiest soil produces weeds. Hager controls weeds during the growing season by, among other things, planting later in the spring than many of his neighbors. This means the soil is warmer and the corn plants get a jump on the weeds, providing a healthy canopy that can shade out the plant pests.

Hager feels he can farm the way he does without herbicides because of his relatively small scale—it allows him to manage each field individually and to adjust his methods accordingly. It also allows him to ask the kinds of questions that are moot when the answer is pre-determined by a chemical company.

“I’m always tweaking things and learning,” the farmer told me, making it clear yet again that he enjoys the pursuit of knowledge as much as what it actually leads to. “When I have a weed problem, my first question is, ‘What’s wrong with the soil?’ ”

John Tuma’s Capitol Update – Summer Edition, July 16, 2010

“We heard the water coming down the drift, we didn’t know if we were going to make it.  We just ran and ran for our lives.”
- Frank Hrvatin, February 5, 1924*

What seems to be all but forgotten in Minnesota history is that we were home to one of the nation’s most tragic underground mining disasters in the first quarter of the 20th century.  Frank Hrvatin was a 14-year-old boy from a Croatian immigrant family who worked with his father in the mine at Milford, Minnesota, during the winter of 1924.  You’ll not find Milford on Minnesota’s official state map.  It is a long lost ghost town whose story holds the graves of 41 miners.

In 1917, Minnesota mining magnate George H. Crosby and the Whitemarsh Mining Company opened up the Milford mine on the west end of the Cuyuna Range to extract high grade manganese ore lying 135 to 300 feet below the surface.  Unfortunately, this highly valued mineral lay below a bog and Foley Lake.  In some places in the mine the workers actually had to wear rain gear while extracting the ore.  On the afternoon of February 5, 1924, young Frank Hrvatin was performing the duties of a trammer, the miner who transports ore out on carts.  At approximately 3:45 in the afternoon, some 200 feet under the earth, the miners felt a sudden wet wind blast through the mine shafts. 

The young Croatian, whose family had a long lineage in mining, immediately knew something was wrong and called out a warning.  Most of the miners ignored him except for a handful who raced for the surface like the hounds of hell were at their heels.  As the seven miners who survived the disaster were scrambling up the ladder to the open air above, water was slapping at their heels only a few minutes after feeling the blast of air.  The shock of the fact that Foley Lake had collapsed into the mining shafts gripped the seven survivors.  The young Hrvatin boy sat in shock for several hours at the rim of the mine opening, staring at the water only 15 feet down the shaft and dreading the painful walk home to tell his mother that his dad was dead.

Rescue workers found that the tunnels were filled with muck and quick sand from Lake Foley and its surrounding bogs, encasing the 41 victims.  Amongst the bodies of the dead workers were also dead fish, turtles and muskrats.  The smell confronting the rescue workers after the water in the mine was pumped out was so hideous and toxic that most could only survive about 15 minutes in the shafts before needing fresh air.

The mining industry and their politicians soon circled the wagons to protect their industry from the bad publicity arising from the disaster.  A government commission was hastily formed without subpoena power to investigate the mining disaster.  Several of the miners and their families would later tell stories of how they were met on the streets of Milford by individuals who made it clear to them that if they were to testify, severe harm would come to them.  Not wanting to lose their jobs or be blacklisted in the industry, they were very wary of testifying against the mining companies.  The hastily assembled government commission soon cleared the mining companies of any wrongdoing or negligence.

The dead miners left behind 38 widows and 96 orphaned children who received little assistance from the state or the mining company.  The mining company spent significant money reopening the mine only to see it closed during the Great Depression after shipping 1.3 million tons of ore over its lifetime.  Many of the miners continued in the industry.  Despite his experience from that horrific day, Frank Hrvatin stayed with mining for several years, saying “I was with my kind of people – miners.”

Miners and their relationship to the industry is something difficult for outsiders to really understand.  An important thing for those of us on the outside to grasp is that it’s important to heed the warnings of miners.  Many miners in Milford expressed their concern regarding the danger of collapse beforehand and several miners had even quit their jobs, warning of the danger of this wet mine.  Several would regret their silence during the investigation when speaking of the disaster years later but accepted the reality that there would have been little they could have done and few who would have listened back then.  In an oral history done for the Iron Range Interpretive Center, Frank Hrvatin was interviewed before his death in 1976.  When asked about the post-collapse investigation, he stated, “That farce they called an investigation?  They went in immediately and got their stories all conflicted and it was ‘an act of God’ – nobody at fault . . . how does a small person without any funds going [sic] to fight a guy with a lot of money or a group with a lot of money? … so they made it stick and that’s the way it was written off.”

Therefore, when a miner is courageous enough to sound a warning signal, it is worth taking a listen.  That is why Bob and Pat Tammen rank as some of our most courageous conservation champions of our present day.  Bob and Pat are an unassuming and delightful pair of retirees who live on the Iron Range near Soudan.  They are soft-spoken and extremely gracious, but passionate.  Bob worked in the mining industry for years and has worked tirelessly to clean up a mining disaster at the Dunka pit.  At that site, a taconite mining operation accidentally exposed sulfide rock 50 years ago and it has been leaching toxins into a nearby creek ever since.  From this experience he knew of the significant danger that would come from permitting new sulfide rock mining for copper and other substances like manganese – the very substance so coveted by mining magnate George H. Crosby at the Milford Mine in 1917.

Bob and Pat Tammen have been sounding a warning about future sulfide mining in Minnesota and the need to make sure we have strong laws to hold mining companies accountable.  They could be blissfully enjoying retirement at their cabin on the South Kawishiwi River, but they take their role as stewards of our Great Outdoors very seriously.  They’ve traveled the state in their small RV whenever they are needed to sound the warning about holding these penny stock corporations accountable.  They know the real danger from real experience.  They have been genuine and effective messengers regarding the significant wetland loss that would occur at the proposed Polymet project and the potential dangers of underground mining being proposed at the Franconia site – a site that would be tunneled under a lake that flows into the BWCAW.

It’s almost haunting to hear the words of Frank Hrvatin 50 years after the Milford mine disaster when he stated, “They were under the lake.  Directly under the lake.  The mining inspector’s report will probably say different, but they were under the lake . . . the mining engineer told the company many times about the danger, but they wouldn’t listen.  They just wanted that ore.” 

Certainly it is a different time in our history and the circumstances have changed.  Nonetheless, it is the same ore, it is the same mining mentality, and it would only be foolish not to heed the warning of a courageous miner.  Thanks to Bob and Pat Tammen for their courage to speak out.  Our state is forever in debt to you.
 
*The Frank Hrvatin quote in the background for this blog entry comes from the book It Happened in Minnesota, Darrell Ehrlick, Morris Book Publishing, LLC, 2008.

By Kara Cook, Minnesota Environmental Partnership Communications Intern

Minnesota Environmental Partnership is currently in phase two of our Nonpartisan Candidate Outreach program, which Ryan introduced here. Our polling data from 2009 and 2010 shows that Minnesotans strongly support expanding solar and wind power, building more public transit, moving Minnesota toward clean energy through other initiatives.

We want to make sure all candidates understand Minnesotans’ support for these initiatives -– and how we’ll all benefit from investments in clean energy. Besides the meetings Ryan and other staff are conducting with candidates’ campaigns (which he will discuss in an upcoming post), we’ve created a website – MN.2010CleanEnergy.org – that features stories from real Minnesotans who work in clean energy jobs.

We are talking with workers in various professions from across the state, showing candidates (and the public!) that clean energy jobs are already benefiting residents and Minnesota’s economy. Several of these clean energy companies are in the midst of expanding, which proves there is a growing need for more clean energy policies in Minnesota.

When we use these real examples of Minnesota workers who you and I can relate to, it makes “clean energy” more than an environmental crusade: Clean energy companies can provide good jobs for our family and friends, while also moving Minnesota toward a more sustainable future. It’s sensible business.

We’re still in the process of gathering more stories, especially those about minorities and/or people located outside the Twin Cities. If you know of a good person to feature, send us a message. All suggestions welcome! We will keep posting about this project as election day draws closer.

Published July 08 2010

A group of city officials and community leaders are asking residents and business owners to give their two cents on how to make downtown's intersections safer.

By: Jon Swedien, The Republican Eagle

Crossing Highway 61 in downtown Red Wing as a pedestrian can be a bit like playing the classic video game "Frogger" -- you try not to get squashed.

Now a group of city officials and community leaders, who are working to promote walking and biking, are asking residents and business owners to give their two cents on how to make downtown's intersections safer.

"Those intersections in our downtown have been a concern for a lot of people for a longtime," said Red Wing Planning Director Brian Peterson during a meeting held at City Hall Tuesday.

Tuesday's meeting was aimed at "kicking off" an effort to form conceptual ideas on ways to make downtown friendlier for walkers and bicyclists, Peterson said.

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