Janaki Fisher-Merritt ’99 and Anne Dugan ’00 featured in Duluth Reader
Fisher-Merritt majored in sociology and anthropology and Dugan majored in art history at Carleton.
Janaki Fisher-Merritt ’99 and Anne Dugan ’00 were featured in the Duluth Reader for their Food Farm — and their rutabagas! The piece is titled, “Rutabaga propaganda: Spreading the gospel about the underappreciated root vegetable.”
I was reminded of all things rutabaga on Feb. 25 at the Denfeld Whole Foods Co-op when the Food Farm family spent the late afternoon giving away rutabagas grown last year on their Wrenshall farm.
“We’re doing propaganda,” joked Janaki Fisher-Merritt of Food Farm, smiling as a boy walked away clutching a rutabaga like a prized souvenir. “People don’t know what to do with them. But they’re delicious. Totally underappreciated.”
Fisher-Merritt and his wife, Anne Dugan, purchased Food Farm from his parents in 2010, but the roots of the operation run much deeper. His parents – John and Jane Fisher-Merritt – moved from Oregon to the Duluth area in 1975. A year later, John began working at the original Whole Foods Co-op on East Eighth Street. The farm has supplied produce to the co-op since 1976 — before it even had a full produce department.