New venture rooted in faith

It was 10:30 a.m. on a cool, late-March morning, and Shane Dowell, 27, was hard at work, pushing a walking plow behind a pair of English Shire draft horses. With each go-around, a little more of the two-acre field was turned from hard dirt to soft soil as the plow’s metal wheel sliced the ground and its plowshare overturned the sod. Bothilde Dowell watches a plow go by, which is manned by her father, Shane. Shane and his wife, Chiara, own Little Flower Farm, a community-supported agriculture farm near Marine on St. Croix. The Dowells became farmers to work together as a family, they said. Photo by Dave Hrbacek / The Catholic Spirit -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By June, the field will be green with leafy spring vegetables, which Shane and his wife, Chiara, 28, plan to sell to the public through community-supported agriculture shares. The Dowells, who attend St. Agnes in St. Paul and St. Michael in Stillwater, have many reasons for farming — and the sustainable way they’re going about it — including their love of creation and desire to know where their food is coming from. But, more important, the farm is about their faith and family. “I want my daughters to know what their dad does,” Shane explained as he stood in the field wearing torn jeans and a knitted hat missing one tie. He was holding his oldest daughter, Bothilde, who is 3-and-a-half and named for a character in a Norwegian novel. Shane and Chiara also have a 1-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Una. “I believe this is my calling,” he said. From left, Shane Dowell pushes a walking plow behind a pair of English Shire horses with help from a neighbor, Ken Letourneau. Plowing with draft horses aerates the field and is good for the soil of their two-acre plot, Chiara said. Photo by Dave Hrbacek / The Catholic Spirit The Dowells’ farm — Little Flower Farm — is in its first year as a community-supported agriculture venture, or CSA. People who are interested in supporting farms like the Dowells’ purchase shares, thus becoming members or shareholders. In turn, they receive a weekly portion of the farm’s harvest. Several other CSA farms are located around the Twin Cities. A list can be found at landstewardshipproject.org/csa.html. Little Flower Farm is offering 60 shares this year at $500 each for the growing season. The membership also includes a discount on free-range eggs and first choice of pastured poultry, pork and lamb. One wall of the Dowells’ kitchen is covered with a hand-drawn calendar with their farm’s planting and harvest schedule from March to October. They expect to harvest more than 30 types of vegetables, including heirloom tomatoes, Maxibel green beans and English peas. Little Flower Farm CSA members will be able to pick up boxes containing their weekly produce at locations in Stillwater, St. Paul, Minneapolis and White Bear Lake. The farm is located four miles west of Marine on St. Croix, adjacent to land used by the Minnesota Food Association. The Dowells rent their house, and they have access to five acres for fields and pasture. In their old farmhouse, illustrations of vegetables line the cupboards over the counter, where Chiara’s afternoon project of shaping soil blocks for starting seeds was waiting. Through the door, in the porch-turned-greenhouse, lights hung low, urging seedlings to grow. With each week’s box of produce, Chiara plans to include a newsletter with farm-inspired illustrations and recipe ideas — especially for vege­tables a CSA member may not be familiar with, such as chard, a member of the beet family that is appreciated more for its leafy greens than its reddish roots. “Each week, I want each box to be a present that you open,” Chiara said. She was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea, her daughters napping upstairs. Although the Dowells expect their farm eventually to produce enough food for 100 shares, they never want it to be huge. They do want it to be self-sufficient, how­ever, Chiara said. “The whole purpose of this life isn’t to make money,” she added. “We’re not even doing this for the purpose of creating an agrarian revolution. Those things are happening, but they are still a side shoot of the real purpose, which is to create a way of life for our family.”