The Farm
The Borden Farm features the best in locally grown fresh vegetables, herbs, and cut flowers. We also sell annual and perennial flowers and vegetable and herb plants. In addition we sell organic eggs and flash frozen organic chickens and locally produced jams, jellies, and salsa.
The farm is open during the growing season –Monday through Saturday from 10 AM to 6 PM and at other times by appointment.
The Borden family homesteaded here in the 1880′s and the family has been farming since then. The farm house still has a wood stove in the kitchen and a wood furnace in the basement.
The farm is located between Brainerd and Cross Lake just a half mile off Highway 3 at the end of Borden Road. The farm is nestled between three lakes and the entrance to it is laced with huge White and Norway Pines. From the parking area you take a path through about 100 feet of Pines. You will pass by more than a dozen varieties of Minnesota native trees and stacks of camp fire wood wrapped in birch bark. Along the path you will see the frame of an old cavalry saddle (the horse and rider are long gone), and historic potato, bean, and corn planters.
The path leads to a garden that has almost every vegetable, herb, and flower that can grow in Minnesota. More than a thousand feet of mulched paths in the garden can take you through the herb, flower, and vegetable gardens. You can sit at picnic tables or on tree stumps under shade or you can pick your own flower arrangement while your herbs and vegetables are being picked. If you want more than watching the birds, butterflies, trees, and flowers while you wait, you can pick up and read fliers on why Native Americans considered birch bark sacred and what you can learn from the tree stump you are sitting on.
If want even more reading, you can pick up a copy of Win Borden’s new book, Ruminations: Memories and Tales from a Furrowed Mind. It is about farming in the Brainerd Lakes Area, past and present, and how to live life with some nostalgia and a lot of home and optimism.