Friends of the Farm

View our Video

Friends of the Farm is a non-profit land stewardship organization staffed by volunteers, dedicated to cultivating an appreciation of 1940s farm life at Holz Farm.  Friends of the Farm is dedicated to preserving Eagan’s heritage and farm history, and sharing the importance of agriculture’s past and present. 

This year we celebrated providing our 17th College scholarship to a local student striving to pursue a post-secondary education focusing on agriculture! The Friends give 2, $1,000.00 scholarships annually, and we need you help to keep that going! Please think of us and join in supporting our scholarships for local students to help us keep our friends, neighbors and students stay well and stay rooted.

Friends of the Farm volunteers greet visitors at special events, show them around the farm and help interpret farm life as it was in the 1940s. From the kitchen, where you might find fresh bread baking in the wood stove and butter being churned, to the field where the soil is being turned to plant crops, Friends are hard at work reminding you of an earlier era.  Did you know that Historic Holz Farm is on the National Registry of Historic Places? This 1940’s era farm brings you back to yesteryear and what farming was like back in Eagan’s early days. 

HISTORY OF HOLZ FARM 

The Holz Farm, originally an 80‑acre parcel, was settled in the 1870s and remained in the family until 1993 with the passing of Otto and Ella Holz. The Holz family raised livestock and crops along with fruits and vegetables.  It was slotted to become a residential development in Eagan, until concerned residents initiated a grassroots campaign to save the site as a living history farm. The Eagan City Council purchased the farm in 1995 for that use.