Bringing farm-fresh food to urban families, the Catholic way

Dan Hartig, 40, is a Best Buy software engineer manager who founded a Catholic farm-to-table network called Fructus. His inspiration: an article he read in The Catholic Spirit about how farmers were suffering during the COVID-19 lockdown. Hartig lives in Northeast Minneapolis, where he and his wife, Darray, are raising three young children — Anna, 6; Edith, 5; and Henry, 3. They belong to St. Charles Borromeo in St. Anthony.

Q) How did Fructus come to be?

A) What prompted it was I was reading in The Catholic Spirit about the hog killings in Minnesota. You had an interview with a farm family that had to go kill off a half million hogs. I was thinking about how poorly the world is designed, that we’d come to this. At the same time, it was hard to find bacon in the store — those first couple months (of the pandemic). The idea was to connect farmers more directly to the market, with no middle men. We’ve got lots of pigs here in Minnesota and lots of people who like pork.

Q) What was the timeline?

A) I hadn’t really contemplated doing anything like this before, but we got the idea going in April and May, drove up to Bowlus, Minnesota, and met with five or six farmers and decided to kick it off, so we started doing it in June. I made a website (ourfructus.com), started advertising in my parish and some nearby parishes and got a core group of customers.

Q) Are you amazed it happened so quickly?

A) It’s really kind of easy to get things together if you just want to get it done! And with COVID, we were shut down and had a lot of free time. I had lots of time to figure out how to register a nonprofit, file with the Secretary of State, register the website and buy coolers. It would be harder to do now. My kids are older.

Q) It was a matter of fact — you saw that you could help these farmers.

A) That was it. We should do something. If they can’t sell stuff to people, why don’t we see if we can sell it? That’s something I’ve learned in my career, both in the Navy and especially doing software development. A lot of people spend a lot of time planning things that never happen. I’m very much, “Just do something! Get it done.”

We basically haven’t deviated from the initial plan. We drive once a week, picking up from the farmers and dropping them off at the customers’ homes. We’re like an Uber Eats or Door Dash.

Q) But with a quarter beef, a half pig or a whole rabbit! Or an egg subscription — a great idea. The farmers must be so grateful.

A) Minnesota has lost a ton of farmers, dairy in particular. Hopefully, one day we’ll be moving hundreds of thousands of goods a week — and then more people can commit to farming. Right now, we’re moving hundreds of dollars of goods.

Q) You deliver every Saturday morning.  

A) I do the driving, and I have three friends who routinely volunteer to drive. All our customers are closer together. We’re driving around Northeast Minneapolis and up to New Brighton and Roseville, occasionally western St. Paul. And the farmers are clustered around Little Falls, St. Cloud and Litchfield.

Q) Describe a delivery day. 

A) I wake up at 4 a.m., leave at 4:30 and on an average day, I’m done around 10 a.m. I have a little Tacoma pickup, which gets great mileage. I can do the whole run for about eight gallons of gas! We usually do six to 10 deliveries per week. We have about 40 active customers, and we’ve had close to 100 unique customers over the past two years.

Q) There’s an educational piece to your work. Is it tiresome to explain or justify the cost?

A) We’re letting farmers determine the price. When we advertise to people at church, some balk at the price, some get it. Many understand the concept of CSAs and farmers markets and why it’s priced the way it is.

Q) Are you making a profit?

A) Fructus makes enough money to cover gas, but I’m not paying the volunteers for their gas. For myself, I’ve put in more money than Fructus has made. But we’re starting to get charitable donations from people at our church. There’s a lot more to be done. We have grown. I have to make sure what we’re charging will cover the gas, and at some point we’ll pay drivers. I’ve gotten some investors.

Q) What have you learned about generosity?

A) Giving people the opportunity to be generous is what inspires me. I have a desire to connect people and demonstrate the benefits of this. I have to be patient. I’m doing it — I’m driving, I’m supporting it without taking money. I’m making it something that other people want to emulate.

Q) Your Catholic faith has informed this whole project, including the 1891 encyclical by Pope Leo XIII called “Rerum Novarum,” which promotes social justice, class harmony and workers’ rights.

A) A lot of what drives me is we need a reform of how things work in the United States — a new economy. My belief in that has been driven by the Catholic faith — things like G.K. Chesterton’s “distributism,” the points about fair treatment of workers in “Rerum Novarum,” the anti-consumerism in “Laudato si’.”

There is a Catholic economy out there that we can build to, and I think this is the time to do it. There’s a lot of unhappiness about the state of America, in general. There’s a reason a lot of younger people are interested in socialism and communism. There’s a feeling that things aren’t working out for people. I think the Catholic worldview provides an answer. This is an important time to make that real in a way they can see. This is my contribution to that.

Q) You’re a well-read Catholic!

A) I’m a recent convert. My conversion process led to a lot of reading.

Q) You became a dad in late 2017, became Catholic in 2019 and launched Fructus in 2020. You packed a lot into the span of two-and-a-half years!

A) It feels like the way my life should’ve been all along. It literally was 15 years of change got unleashed when I got out of the military. All of a sudden, I got out and was like: Now what do I do with my time?

Q) Are you hoping to move to a rural area at some point?

A) We’ve thought about it a lot, but decided — based on chasing a career and working downtown — to live in the city. The biggest advantage is the proximity to a lot of things. We walk with our kids to church and school, pretty much year-round, as long as it’s above zero. One of the goals of city life is it gives kids more independence.

Q) What do you know for sure?

A) I am driven by the parable of the talents. I know I was given a lot, so I know it’s my responsibility to God to try to pay that back. That’s what underlies all these things.