By Mike Orso
While most McHenry County farmers focus on planting this time of year, a few will prepare to harvest one of the first crops to spring forth, nearly ready-to-eat, from northern Illinois soils. If you’re an asparagus lover you can look forward to fresh, local spears being cut from and coming out of some county farm fields soon.
“It is usually a little slow harvest in the beginning because it still is a little cooler, so they are not growing crazy at rapid rates,” said John Minalt, who grows 7 acres of asparagus on his rural Harvard-area farm. “But, as the temperature warms up and you get some rains in there, then they really start growing.”
In fact, when warm days become more of the norm in northern Illinois, Minalt and his employees could harvest asparagus spears twice in one day.
“Toward the warmer end of the season, you could see 10, 12 inches of growth in a day, he said. “It is truly amazing how fast that stuff will grow.”
Minalt, 59, owns and operates Spears to You, with its 50,000-plus planted crowns of asparagus, which has become the shorter-term crop of choice on his farm. He calls his other acreage Conifera Tree Farm, which consists of 7 varieties of more than 12,000 Christmas trees on 20 acres.
“Christmas trees are a 10-year cycle to get any kind of financial payback, said Minalt. “So, I started thinking we’ve got to do something other than that to get some income on the farm. We looked at a lot of different ideas and we settled on asparagus.”
You can start asparagus from seed, but Minalt said that it can take several years before the plant develops into crowns which can be purchased commercially. He built up to 1,000-foot furrows – or trenches in the ground – where asparagus crowns were placed in early spring over the last eight years.
“Crowns look like a Lions Mane mushroom, the size of half-a-baseball with a bunch of tentacles coming off of it,” said Minalt. “You lay ‘em in there, cover it up and let ‘em go. You don’t really do much with it for the first three years, you just really have to let them grow.”
Once the asparagus spears reach harvestable height, Minalt and his employees will use custom-made carts low-to-the ground and steered with their feet to hand cut the crop. They will harvest over six weeks, usually starting in early May.
“Last year we harvested about 10,000 pounds off that field,” said Minalt. “That’s o.k. I think my goal probably is about 14,000 pounds.”
A carousel-like processor imported from France washes, cuts and sorts the asparagus before bundles are placed in recyclable cartons.
“The way we process with our processing machine, everything is cut to a specific, 9.5-inch length,” said Minalt, who, along with his wife Diana, are certified in USDA-GAP (Good Agricultural Practices) food safety principles. “There is almost no woodiness in our asparagus at all.”
Once they start harvesting, asparagus bundles will be available on the Spears to You farm at 5810 Schultz Rd. near Harvard every day in a self-service refrigerator. You can pick your own at the farm on weekends. They also sell their asparagus at the downtown and Tractor Supply Co. farmers markets in Harvard and to vendors who sell it at farmers markets in Algonquin, Huntley and Woodstock. The asparagus will also be available at The FoodShed Co-op in Woodstock, and as part of the menus at local restaurants such as Duke’s Alehouse & Kitchen and 1776 in Crystal Lake.
“Seconds that may not meet standards for selling in a grocery store or restaurant end up going to a food bank,” said Minalt. “Any of the cutoffs we have go to cattle feed. There is no waste.”
If you hear someone in town or throughout the county refer to Minalt as “doctor,” that’s because he also is a dentist who practices in Harvard and has practiced in Barrington and Bloomingdale. He grew up in the Portage Park neighborhood on the northwest side of Chicago. He holds an undergraduate degree in biology from Loyola University and a dentistry degree from the University of Illinois-Chicago.
“Farming is biology, it really is,” said Minalt. “You got to think your way through, nutrient management, different genetics with varietals, things like that. That background has come in handy for me.”
As far as farming over the last decade, Minalt has found it is corporeal, intellectual and emotional.
“It is a labor of love, that’s for sure. It’s physical work. It’s also mind-work, you’ve got to think your way through it, he said. “It’s not like a ticket to financial freedom or anything like that. You do it because you love it. It’s a nice lifestyle.”
John Minalt of Harvard has been a pioneer or sorts when it comes to farming asparagus in McHenry County. "When I started, I didn’t have anybody to talk to really, there was nobody really to chit-chat with about asparagus. I started a Facebook group page called Midwest Asparagus Growers and now I have about 13,000 people to talk to anytime I want to.”
John Minalt plants cereal rye as a cover crop to keep soil in place, replenish nutrients and reduce weed problems on his 7 acres of asparagus. He'll use a propane-powered torch to knock off weeds during the asparagus growing season.
Employees of Spears to You in Harvard currently hand-cut asparagus spears. But like many farmers, John Minalt likes to tinker with equipment and is engaged in a multi-year project of perfecting a mechanical asparagus combine, or picker with a west coast asparagus farmer.
Jersey Supreme and Millennial varieties of asparagus spears have started to emerge on Spears to You located on Schultz Rd. near Harvard. One-pound bundles will be available in a self-serve, honor-refrigerator on the farm and will be sold wholesale in 10-and-30-pound boxes. When available, the farm allows you to pick asparagus on weekends.