By Garrick Moritz, Gazette
To say that Dan Paulson of the rural Sherman/Garretson area has a passion for agriculture is to woefully understate the reality.
Dan Paulson and his Farm 484 have been selected as the 2024 SD Specialty Crop Producer of the year. He and Fred Fast Horse, of Rick’s Micro Farm, Mission S.D were the two finalists and Paulson received the top award at Oacoma at the Cedar Shore Resort on Feb. 7, 2025.
“I’d never actually been to Oacoma on the river there, and it was very nice,” Paulson said. “So, right after Christmas my daughter Lisa called me. She said, ‘I hope you’re not mad, but a couple months ago I put your name in for the South Dakota Specialty Producers producer of the year, and now you’re a finalist.’ I wasn’t mad, I was very pleased and humbled of course. It was something very nice, and I didn’t expect it, and now that I’ve won of course I’m very pleased and very honored.”
Paulson is a CPA who lived and worked in Sioux Falls until 2013. Though he’s semi-retired, he might be busier now than he’s ever been, and he likes it that way. He still works during tax time as a CPA, but his retirement dream was to have a farm where all his immediate family could live around him. In 2013, he purchased 280 acres to settle with all of his immediate family and started hobby farming. Paulson is certainly the kind of fella that doesn’t do things by halves, and he quickly began producing some interesting specialty crops and produce.
“It was back in 2016 that we started participating in the Farmers Market over in Dell Rapids,” he said. “We were pretty successful there, but it was a lot of work for everybody. I didn’t want to wear out my volunteer pool, and my girls and kids were tired of spending every other weekend out there doing that so we made the decision to stop in 2020. About the same time, Garretson had started up their farmers market again out at Split Rock Park, and that was just perfect for us, so that’s the one we do exclusively.”
Paulson is known for a lot of quality produce but his signature item is the Farm 484 Maple Syrup. This is the genuine article, from his own copse of maple trees. On the tour of the farm he gave this newspaper, he showed off the tools of the trade, described the tapping the trees and harvesting process for the sap, and how the syrup is made in the iron stove and smoker. If you’ve not sampled real maple syrup before, it’s different than stuff people typically buy, and much better for you than flavored high-fructose corn syrup.
“We’re pretty proud of it, and people seem to really like it,” he said.
Paulson has a variety of other products he makes as well. Tomatoes of course, and a wide variety of gourds.
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