Jenny Bredeken returns as fourth generation to farm south of Starbuck

By Kris Goracke

Reporter

According to Dictionary.com, “When something comes full circle, it completes a cycle, returns to its beginnings.” A more apt name for a business there never was. Full Circle Farm is a farm-to-table business owned by Roscoe Fowler and Jenny Bredeken. The term full circle has two meanings for this couple. For Jenny and Roscoe, it means continuing the cycle as the fourth generation of farmers on the Bredeken farm just south of Starbuck. And for a farmer, a full circle starts with a seed and ends at the table.

 Full Circle for Jenny. If you had asked Jenny, a 2009 Minnewaska Area High School graduate, if she ever thought she would come back to live on the family farm, her answer would have been no. And yet, here it is 2023, and Jenny and Roscoe happily call Starbuck their home and are proud to be the fourth generation farming the land. 

 Jenny met Roscoe, a native of Hawaii, in Honolulu in 2013 while practicing as a nurse. The couple had an instant connection and have been a team ever since. “One day, Roscoe mentioned he wanted to dabble in sourdough baking. It turned out he had a natural knack for it. By 2017, Roscoe was making sourdough bread. We saw the potential in Roscoe’s bread. He was baking daily and giving the bread to family and friends. Pretty soon, we had people asking if they could buy our bread. And so, we started going to the farmers market, and the bread-baking business boomed,” said Jenny. 

 In April 2019, Roscoe’s Sourdough was launched. Nine months later, a customer asked if she could do a write-up on their bread business. As it turns out, that writer was from Forbes Magazine. “That was an incredible experience and gave us some positive exposure,” said Jenny. 

 The couple would return to the family farm each summer to spend time with friends and family. During this time, Roscoe continued baking and selling bread. However, for Jenny, her passion lies in growing things. And so, in the spring of 2021, she decided to grow cut flowers. “We were just coming out of the pandemic, and I wanted a way to spread joy. Flowers are colorful and offer beauty and joy to others,” she said.  The experiment to grow cut flowers now yields over 20 varieties, including sunflowers, gladiolas, and zinnias. Once the flowers bloom, Full Circle Farm offers custom bouquets with local delivery once a week alongside their loaves of bread and freshly milled flour. They’ll also be hosting pick-your-own flowers where people can visit the farm on designated days, experience the flower field, and hand-pick their flowers.

Full circle in farming. For generations, the family farm has planted and harvested wheat. One day Jenny asked her grandfather, Richard Bredeken, if he had ever tasted the grain. “In his 60 years of farming, he told me he had never tasted the wheat. And so, we began experimenting with milling the wheat ourselves. We quickly saw the potential of using freshly milled flour in our breads and began shipping pallets of wheat from the family farm, grown by my dad, Jay Bredeken, to Hawaii to use in Roscoe’s Sourdough. We could not have done any of this without the support and help of my dad. As a farmer all of his life, he is our teacher in farming and a huge encouragement,” she said.

 And now, coming full circle at the farm, the two are growing grains, milling those grains into flour, and finally turning the freshly milled flour into various sourdough breads. Their whole grain flours are free from emulsifiers, fillers, and preservatives. Ultimately, Full Circle Farm’s goal is to produce 100% of the flour we use in our micro-bakery as well as provide the community with freshly milled flours and small grains

 Full Circle Farm offers farm-raised flour, a variety of fresh baked sourdough bread, and beautiful blooms at a variety of places this summer: Minnesota Olive Oil Company in Glenwood, every Thursday 3-5 p.m.; La Ferme Restaurant in Alexandria, every Friday noon – 2 p.m. and a variety of farmers markets/events on the weekends. For more information, go to the website: fullcirclefarmmn.com.