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Sep. 6—NARY — Brian Ingmire’s mission to help reforest northern Minnesota with trees from south of here became a lot more important after the June 21 storm that leveled millions of trees in the Bemidji area.
Ingmire and his wife, Trina, own the 10-acre New North Farm southeast of Bemidji in Hubbard County. They sell Certified Naturally Grown produce at Bemidji’s Natural Choice Farmers Market on Saturdays. They also raise sheep and chickens.
Brian is a member of the Farm & Forest Growers Cooperative, a network of small farms and nurseries that grow climate-adaptive tree seeds into seedlings, and then sell the seedlings to reforestation agencies and individuals.
The program is headed by Dr. Julie Etterson, Distinguished McKnight Professor at the University of Minnesota Duluth’s Swenson College of Science and Engineering.
“Minnesota has a massive need for tree seedlings,” Ingmire said. “Something like 10 million trees are needed every year at a minimum. And we have a lot of forest disturbance, whether it’s fires or wind events.”
Ingmire figures he has about 30,000 tree seedlings on his farm, and about two-thirds of them will be available for purchase this fall. Online orders can be placed at
. He’s also been selling seedlings at his Bemidji Natural Choice Farmers Market booth, and says having them there gives him an opportunity to talk about the project.
New North Farm is one of 24 members of the cooperative. Ingmire is growing several varieties, including red oak, burr oak, yellow birch and silver maple. All are collected from about 200 miles south and then started up north.
“I can tell you where their parent tree came from,” Ingmire said. “They should be able to handle the changes in temperature extremes. We’ve got different insect pests and fungal pests that are putting stressors on trees just because of the temperature extremes. These trees should have the genetic ability to deal with that kind of extreme.”
The need for reforestation was certainly exacerbated in the Bemidji area after the June storm. It is estimated that Beltrami County lost nine million trees, and many were also downed in parts of Hubbard and Cass counties.
“That number exceeds a lot of the nursery capacity that we have,” Ingmire said.
Trees that are purchased this fall should be planted right away to ensure their survival.
“Most of our sales will be done for spring planting,” Ingmire said, “but I would like to see as many available in the fall as possible. I think the trees do better when they’re planted in the fall. But you’ve got a very narrow window here in northern Minnesota between when trees drop their leaves and when the ground freezes. Some years you’ve got a month to get all that done, and some years you’ve got two weeks.”
He said trees that are not sold this fall will be kept in cold storage at UMD and will be available in the spring.
Listening to Ingmire talk about the seedling program, his gardens and forest ecology, it’s clear to see his passion for science and the environment.
“In a lot of ways it’s a spiritual thing for me,” he said. “You either set everything aside and you take a preservationist mindset where nature’s best left without man touching it, or you recognize that we as humans have a unique role and responsibility to participate and be part of the natural world. There’s really no separation between the two of them.”
He noted that the impacts humans have are global, but that these impacts start on a local level.
“One tree at a time, or one farm that’s growing vegetables that feed people. So you can choose to participate in a lot of different ways,” Ingmire said. “The way that I choose to participate is to imagine and envision what it could be, and then work to model that and make it happen. And help other people do the same.”
Ingmire’s full-time job is with the Minnesota Department of Agriculture as a water certification specialist. It’s a position that allows for flexibility, especially during the growing season, and it also allows him to visit with farmers throughout the region.
He has a degree in natural resources and environmental maintenance from Ball State University in his native Indiana. He did graduate work at Western Kentucky University and Indiana University before becoming a science teacher at the junior college and high school level.
After that, he managed water quality programs for the Environmental Protection Agency and spent 13 years as a conservation planner and trainer with the United States Department of Agriculture.
The Ingmires moved to Minnesota nearly four years ago after he started his current position with the MDA. But finding the right place to live was a bit of a challenge for Brian and Trina.
“It was right in the middle of COVID,” Brian said. “Interest rates were starting to go up. Everybody was racing to get a place.”
The couple had planned to visit five properties in the Bemidji area, but by the time they arrived, three of them had been sold.
“The first one we looked at was just a nightmare,” Brian said. Even the farm they bought didn’t look right when they pulled into the snow-covered driveway.
“It looked horrible,” Brian said. “We didn’t have any photos of the inside of the house. The doors were open on the sheds when we pulled in. It hadn’t been plowed. But then we got into the house and it had a bank of south-facing windows and all the sun was shining through. We thought, ‘This is it. We can do this.’”
Fast forward four years, and Brian and Trina have created a pristine and productive farm, with a lot of sweat equity and a little help from their hungry sheep.
“I was looking at soil maps and thought it should be good,” Brian said. “It’s prime agricultural land. We had a lot of little surprises when everything thawed. There were piles of trash, it was all grown over and full of boxelder. Kind of daunting, but I was ready for it. I was just ready to have my own piece of land, and I had ideas I wanted to try out.”
More information about Ingmire’s operation can be found online at
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