BARNUM — By farming just under 2 acres, Heather-Marie Bloom keeps Rising Phoenix Community Farm intentionally small to foster a connection between people and their food.
“It’s easy to have kind of a disconnect,” Bloom said. “When you just walk into the store and buy your veggies, you have no idea where they came from.”
is a small-scale farm in Barnum that grows flowers and vegetables. The word “community” in its name is central to the farm and its mission. Beyond offering community-supported agriculture subscriptions, where consumers purchase a seasonal share in a farm and partake in the farm’s harvest throughout the growing season, Bloom aims to create a sense of family among her members.
Contributed / Phoenix Community Farm
Bloom plays movies at the farm and hosts meetups in Duluth over ice cream. At the end of each season, she hosts a large celebration with dinner straight off the farm and live music.
“It’s a lot of fun to kind of include all of these people that have supported us and helped us get to where we are,” she said.
The farm also offers member discounts for people who agree to work six hours on the farm.
“If you’re weeding the carrots and a month later those carrots are in your boxes, you feel just a sense of pride and connection to that,” she said.
For Bloom, less is more. Instead of growing the farm to maximize revenue, Bloom focuses on how she harvests her food and builds a community among her members.
Though not a certified organic farm, the farm uses organic growing practices. They also utilize “low-till” and regenerative growing methods, like walk-behind tractors and cover crops.
After interning with
Northern Harvest Farm in Wrenshall,
Bloom started the farm with her husband, John Hatcher, in 2011. She didn’t own land for her first decade and worked as a tenant farmer before buying their current farm in Barnum in 2020.
Contributed / Phoenix Community Farm
The farm’s name comes from Bloom’s love of mythology and the symbolism of the phoenix as something with multiple lives that cyclically rises from the ashes — something she sees in herself.
“I’ve done a lot of different things in my life, and within the past 20 years, I just really wanted to grow my own food,” she said. “That has turned into wanting to be very community-minded, and so it rose from that.”
Bloom produces a consistent yield for fewer than 60 CSA members and doesn’t plan to expand production much beyond that.
“We want to keep it at a scale that this small group of people can run it,” she said, noting that she wants to keep the farm small enough to operate as she ages.
Bloom is finding new ways to create an even deeper sense of community among members. She is building a pavilion to use as a community space for events and classes.
Though the farm sold out of produce CSA shares for the season,
are still available. Get a weekly bouquet for $240 for 12 weeks or $138 for six weeks.
Rising Phoenix also will sell vegetables from its farm stand Friday afternoons from around the Fourth of July and through October. A fall CSA share also will be offered. The farm is located at 3399 County Road 6 in Barnum.
