ABOVE: Doug Abel, Jacob Meyerdirk and Joan Abel stand with their Abel Family Farm sign at the Fairmont Farmers’ Market.

FAIRMONT – The Abel Family Farm has been selected by the University of Minnesota as Martin County’s Farm Family of the Year for 2025.

The farm is run by Doug and his wife, Joan Abel. They cycle through around 12 different people, including their sons Tadd and Matt Abel, to help cultivate the 15 acres they currently use. The vegetables they grow are sold at the Fairmont Farmers’ Market, local grocery stores and are available for sale to customers.

While Doug and Joan Abel grew up on dairy farms, they did not return to farming until 2007. Even then, it was started only to fund a family trip.

“The wife and the kids, when they were little, wanted to go to Florida,” Doug said. “I said, what a good way to help fund the trip was to raise a few extra vegetables and sell them at the farmers market.”

They started with potatoes, onions, cucumbers and green beans. Since then, they have expanded greatly and today grow sweet corn, pumpkins, green beans, zucchinis, tomatoes, kohlrabi, pickling, slicing, and burpless cucumbers, watermelon, cantaloupe, winter squash, onions, pea pods and dill.

Having both grown up on farms, Doug said he and Joan were already very familiar with farming aspects going into it.

“It was something that you’d already had the experience and knew the basics of,” he said. “Anything you wanted to do to begin work, it would take a lot of work. There’s no doubt about that.”

As for why they grow what they do and how they choose, Doug said it all depends on what there’s a market for.

“You’ve got to make sure you can sell some of it,” he said. “Some things sell much better than others. If you got into the fall stuff, like your winter squash, pumpkins and gourds, it extended your season longer. You’d be done with a lot of the other things to reach a point where you have no more beans or zucchinis to pick. You move from one crop to the next.”

That is how they made the decision to add pea pods this year, which they said has gone over nicely.

To run a small farm like his, Doug said it takes hard work, consistency and good timing.

“You’re working with perishable goods,” he said. “You’re on a schedule. You can’t say, ‘No, I’m not going to do this today.’ Like today, picking sweet corn in the mud. You have orders to fill. You do what you have to do because it’s got to get done.”

The family first heard they were being considered from Billeye Rabbe, who wanted to know if they would accept it if they were chosen.

“It was nice to know that other people were thinking about the little operations,” Doug said.

When they did receive the nomination and were chosen, he said he was very honored to have the hard work they’ve gone through acknowledged.

“It feels nice that people know we’re out here and we’re working hard,” Doug said. “It’s an honor to have somebody know there are other types of farming besides grain farming. There are people out there doing things in the ag industry that aren’t just conventional.”

The award comes with recognition at FarmFest on August 7. While there’ll be plenty to check out there, Doug said they haven’t been able to look ahead due to the demands of their farm.

As they approach 20 years of farming, Doug said the biggest challenge is continuing to keep up as he and Joan age.

“I can’t do what I used to do,” he said. “We don’t know how much longer we’ll be doing this. For one thing, it’s hard to find help. We used to do just about all of it ourselves, and that’s gone by the wayside.”

Both Tadd and Matt have successful careers, and Doug said he doesn’t want them to abandon that to take over this small operation.

“This is too much work in today’s world,” he said. “There’s not many people willing to do this anymore on the scale that we do. The ones that do are either the home garden or they’re huge. We’re that in between. You really can’t spend all the money and the equipment to do a lot of this stuff, because it costs too much. It’s all hand-picked. A lot of stuff is hand planted.”

All in all, Doug said there’s nobody he knows who’s crazy enough to take over. But for now, they will continue to do as much as they can for as long as they can.

The Abels attend the Fairmont Farmers’ Market every Saturday from 9 a.m. to noon and Tuesday from 4 to 6 p.m. For more information or to place an order, call Doug Abel at 507-236-3129.