And, believe it or not, this is wine country!  (It turns out that we also have a summer like that of the Burgundy region of France.)  In this podcast, Robin Partch, a third-generation wine maker, describes the challenges and successes of making wines from grapes especially created for the cold winters of Minnesota and Wisconsin.  Partch is one of over a dozen grape growers and wine makers who form the Minnesota Winegrowers Cooperative. The cooperative owns the Northern Vineyards Winery in Stillwater, Minnesota (a great tourist town just a half hour East of Minneapolis and St. Paul, MN).  

U.S. milk sales have remained fairly constant for many years, yet the demand for organic diary products continues to climb off the charts. In this podcast, we hear from Troy DeRosier, who with his wife Barb, operate Crystal Ball Farms, just outside of Osceola, Wisconsin, a small river town that sits along the St. Croix River.  This hard-working couple represents an important segment of today's young farmers - entrepreneurs who are new farming. DeRosier differentiates his products several ways: they are certified organic; though pasteurized, they are not homogenized, and so the cream rises to the top in a thick, luscious layer - a feature highlighted through the heavy glass bottles they use for their milk and cream products. The DeRosiers have also gained greater marketing control by bottling directly on premises.