Some retirees turn to golf or bridge to fill their time when they leave the workaday grind behind. Not Northfield, Minn. dairy farmer Jerry Stanton.
After 41 years of milking cows, Stanton sold his herd and stumbled into canning.
"I got bored," he said. "I needed something to do."
Actually, the story starts a little earlier, when the industrious Stanton found himself faced with bumper crops of cucumbers, beets, tomatoes, cabbage and other vegetables from his garden. Out came the Kerr jars, and a new sideline was born.
Now Stanton is selling his snappy sweet-and sour pickles, tangy sauerkraut, marvelous pickled beets and hearty spaghetti sauce -- along with preserves he makes from his blackberry, raspberry and strawberry patches -- to farmers market customers, each jar proudly bearing the Hazelwood Creek Farm label. Canned peaches and pears are the stand's only imports, otherwise "it all comes right off the farm," he said.
RICK NELSON
Hazelwood Creek Farm, Midtown Farmers Market, Lake St. and 22nd Av. S., Minneapolis, 612-724-7457, www.midtownfarmersmarket.org. Open 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturdays. For a complete list of Twin Cities metro area farmers markets, go to www.startribune.com/taste.
