Want to buy local for the holidays? Minnesota Grown has you covered.
The state-backed agricultural organization launched Wednesday a full gift guide on its e-commerce site to make it easier to support Minnesota’s local economy this Christmas season.
From its online directory of over 1,000 member farms, markets and producers, Minnesota Grown’s guide highlights its choices of agricultural entrepreneurs with a mass of handcrafted products. The guide is also meant as a resource for “stress-free gifting,” where all the products are available for online purchase, delivery or pick-up from the Minnesota Grown website.
"The Minnesota Grown gift guide provides a one-stop-shop for finding meaningful, local gifts this holiday season," Rachel Wandrei, marketing manager for Minnesota Grown at the Minnesota Department of Agriculture, said in a statement. "When Minnesotans choose local, they're choosing to make a difference by supporting farmers and makers right in their own communities."
The gift guide showcases goods including:
- Personal care items like goat milk soap, pure hazelnut oil, beeswax candles and hand-knit bath mitts.
- Kitchen items range across gourmet seasonings, wild rice, heirloom flour, pasture-raised pork, hard cider, spirits, a farm-to-table cookbook, a mushroom grow kit and community-supported agriculture memberships.
- Curated gift baskets with themes like honey, wine, award-winning cheese, grass-fed meat, sausage and soaps.
- While there are unique offerings such as hand-crafted wooden Viking gnomes and snowmen, there is more traditional holiday decorations such as spruce-top pots, wreaths and Christmas trees.
The Minnesota Grown program is a decades-old statewide partnership with farmers and the Minnesota Department of Agriculture. Its online directory opens up farm-to-table information for consumers such as listing farmers markets, community-supported farms, garden centers, pick-your-own farms, livestock producers and processor. It also features specialty producers such as wineries, Christmas tree growers, honey, wild rice and cheese makers. Besides the directory, the organization also helps its members with marketing tools and resources.
