The first 2025 Ag Experience Insider is The Cidery at Blackshire Farms. Get an ‘Insider’ look at what Blackshire Farms is all about!
Meet the Owners
Sean McFarland and Marcella Prokop have been involved with agriculture since they were young, but as owners of Blackshire Farms and the Cidery at Blackshire, they’ve taken the art and science of caring for the land in different directions than the farms they knew as kids.
Sean spent parts of his childhood watching his maternal grandpa, Ed, raise hogs, grow corn and beans, and even press apples on his farm near Windom, Minnesota. Marcella grew up south of Rapid City, just across the Nebraska border, on a farm that produced cattle, alfalfa, wheat, corn, and beans. In 4-H she showed everything from cats and chickens to beef and swine. They met over 20 years ago while Sean was attending SDSU for horticulture and Marcella was attending Augustana for journalism.
The Creation of the Farm
In 2017, they started Blackshire Farms in Beaver Creek, Minnesota, home to Sean’s paternal family acreage. On their 10 acres, they focused on growing produce for restaurants and grocery stores in Sioux Falls, a business Sean started when he was in college. But when Sean’s paternal grandma, Ernie, asked him to replant an orchard, he decided to move from dessert apples to cider apples and acquired an additional 10 acres to cultivate an orchard of fruit trees from France, England, and other far-flung locations. In May 2018, a week after their son Cedar was born, they planted their first 10,000 cider apple trees.
The farm boasts more than 50 varieties of cider apples, pollinated each year by the bees in Marcella’s apiary. Sean and Marcella run a simple family-style pick-your-own pumpkin patch each fall, and have recently finished construction on an event center, cider production facility and tasting room just down the road from the family farm in Beaver Creek.
They’ve hosted apprentice farmers from all around the world through the WWOOF program, and have held skill shares, pruning, grafting, beekeeping, and maple syrup workshops. With the completion of the event space, they are now hosting weddings and corporate events and plan to host more educational and fun community ag-centered events in the future. Their first community event takes place June 7 and is a rhubarb recipe contest.
Marcella and Sean are excited to share more about their operation this summer!