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Bruce Manning / Heavy Table
“It seems like a 10-year period from last year to now,” Tom Smude says. But, rather than exhausted, he sounds energized and ready to tackle another 10 years squeezed into one.
In February 2010, Smude (you pronounce the “e” on the end) put his first bottles of Smude’s Sunflower Oil on the shelves of a handful of specialty stores. In that year, he sold 10,000 bottles of oil, ranging from 8 ounces to 2.5 gallons. In the first eight months of 2011, he sold 20,000 bottles. And, with interest still growing, it seems well within the realm of possibility that he will hit his small plant’s capacity of 40,000 gallons in 2012.
Chefs at Spoonriver, Birchwood Cafe, Common Roots, Grand Cafe, Heartland, and several other restaurants now cook with Smude’s Sunflower Oil. At this year’s Minnesota Cooks event at the State Fair, Tom Smude took the stage with the Chowgirls catering team. And Smude’s Sunflower Oil is now on the shelves at nearly 100 stores in Minnesota, including several Kowalski’s Markets.
Andy Pucko / Heavy Table
Smude is currently talking with the large grocery chain Coborn’s about stocking his oil, but he’s running up against one of the challenges of pioneering a new market: “They really like the product, but they’re telling me they have to figure out a marketing strategy. ‘If we just put it on the shelf, no one will buy it,’ they say.”
Marketing sunflower oil means talking it up as the new, improved olive oil. High-oleic oil like the kinds Smude produces have a higher percentage of monounsaturated fats (the “good” fats that decrease LDL cholesterol) and have a similarly high smoke point. The flavor is light and buttery, great for frying and a good neutral backdrop for vinaigrettes. (I made a batch of mayonnaise with Smude’s Sunflower Oil and loved it. I’ll never go back to Canola oil for that.)
Andy Pucko / Heavy Table
The year 2007 was a dry one in Central Minnesota. Tom Smude started thinking about alternatives to his soybean crop. Then 2008 was dry again. He started exploring biodiesel fuels in earnest, and then he discovered the food-grade oil market. He picked up a bottle of sunflower oil and fried some potatoes in it at home. One bite and he was hooked. “It tasted just like butter,” he remembers. “I said to my wife, ‘Jenny, we’ve got to do this.’ She looked at me like I was nuts: ‘We’re going backward as it is.’”
But Smude got some financial backers involved, including local banks and foundations and even some neighbors. He kept looking at processing setups and soon sketched out what would become his own small plant. “There was no blueprint to work off of. We built everything ourselves, figured it all out. It’s amazing what a beer, a napkin, and a pencil can do.” He now owns Minnesota’s first small-scale processor of sunflower oil.
Andy Pucko / Heavy Table
Kevyn Burger / Heavy Table
“Hey, Mom!” my daughter Becky said on the voicemail message. “What was the name of that blueberry picking place where we went that time? I want to take Eddy and Sophie.”
A student at the University of Minnesota, Becky returned in June from a study abroad year in Iceland.
Two of her dorm-mates in Reykjavik were arriving for a four-day visit. Becky planned a State Fair outing and hotcakes at Al’s Breakfast and had borrowed a canoe for skimming Lake Harriet. But she wanted them to see more than the urban attractions, and that’s when she remembered a family visit to a U-pick berry farm.
Depending on where you live in the Twin Cities, it’s a 60- to 90-minute drive to Maiden Rock, Wisconsin. Getting there takes you on a spectacular meander along the bluffs of the Mississippi. The water widens as the Great River Road approaches Pepin. A jog off the highway, then another turn or two, and the road dead ends at Rush River Produce, a sustainable farm featuring nine acres of blueberry bushes.
Kevyn Burger / Heavy Table
“Eat as much as you want,” said Terry Cuddy, as a way of welcoming my daughter and her friends.
Terry is the mom of this mom and pop operation; she and her husband John raised their family in a century-old farmhouse on the hilly property.
Handing out boxes, baskets, and colanders for the picking, she smiled almost conspiratorially. “Eventually some berries will get into the basket.” She waved her hands in a shooing motion. “Go, now. Go!”
On a late summer day, Rush River Produce is a paradox. The old red barn, the sonorous buzz of bees, and the scent of the fresh-cut grass combine to induce laziness. But the sight of the bushes dotted with fat berries creates a greedy itch to get down to work.
“Put this little basket under the branches and jiggle,” Terry instructed. “The ripe ones know when to let go. It’s easy!”
“I’ve never seen blueberries like this!” exclaimed my daughter’s friend, Eddy Paskevicius, as he strolled the shoulder-high rows and tugged off a few dusky orbs. “And so tangy!”
Now in their 24th year cultivating the crop, the Cuddys tend 10,000 bushes and raise 14 varieties of blueberries. The berries vary in taste, size, and when they ripen.
“If you laid out the rows, we would have nine miles of blueberries,” Terry said. “It sounds like a lot, and it is a lot. I know; I do the weeding.”
This summer, the July-ripening North Blue variety, developed at the University of Minnesota, put out an inexplicably puny crop. Many eager pickers who showed up last month went away empty-handed.
“I hated to disappoint them, but the cupboard was bare. It’s a mystery why it was so poor,” Terry said. Continue reading Rush River Produce of Maiden Rock, WI »
by Drew Kerr on August 24, 2011
Kate N.G. Sommers / Heavy Table
Mike Fogel is clearly a buffalo man.
His business, Buffalo Gal, is based at Money Creek Buffalo Ranch, his Houston, MN property 120 miles southeast of the Twin Cities. There a herd of 300 bison roam the rolling, bluff-lined acreage he has called home for the last 35 years. In the ranch’s gift shop, hundreds of bison statutes line the rafters, a Montana license plate that hangs on the wall reads MR BISON, and leather-scented lotion derived from bison fat sits among the sale display.
Kate N.G. Sommers / Heavy Table
In an adjacent barn, mounted on the wall, is an heirloom that provides much of the explanation for Fogel’s fixation: the skull of the 19-year-old buffalo named Cody who, quite literally, brought him back from the brink of losing his home and his livelihood nearly two decades earlier.
The bison helped save the ranch through his $1,000-a-day work on the film Dances With Wolves and later starred in commercials and as the stand-in for the launch of the US mint’s buffalo nickel — work that took he and Fogel around the country together.
As the 63-year-old Fogel talks about Cody now, four years after he passed of kidney failure, it’s clear a strong bond was formed.
“Cody was like a lightning rod in my life,” Fogel said as he recalled his longtime friend during a recent trip to the ranch. “He changed everything.”
Kate N.G. Sommers / Heavy Table
But if it was a buffalo that served as Fogel’s salvation during his early life, there is another animal that may prove equally vital in his later years. It’s not Cody II, a trained buffalo that now stands in for the original, but wild boar.
Today, Fogel and his partner of ten years Valerie Shannon run one of just two farms in the state that retain the right to raise the long-snouted swine. They are the only ones to offer its meat to restaurants and the public.
The other boar-owning farmer is Randy Tomberlin, who raises them for hunts on his Fort Ripley game farm and, like Fogel, is allowed to raise them because his operation predates a 1993 Minnesota law prohibiting the practice.
The law, passed amid concerns that the boars could escape, become feral, and wreak havoc on surrounding wildlife and domestic swine, still bothers both of the farmers, who together rallied against the legislation in St. Paul and describe it as the result of state bureaucrats run amuck.
Kate N.G. Sommers / Heavy Table
Even now, they maintain boars can be raised safely in the right environment, and that it is only misguided fear and a strong pork lobby, which sees any alternative to the “other white meat” as a threat to their bottom line, that prevents others from getting into the game.
As the only game in town, though, Fogel is doing quite well for himself.
Along with other rare breeds of heritage pigs raised and bred with the boars on the ranch, the swine at Buffalo Gal now account for a quarter of the businesses sales. It is welcome cushion in a buffalo market that has changed dramatically since Fogel bought his first two buffaloes in 1976.
Near extinction a century ago, there are now more than 400,000 buffalo raised for meat in the United States and Canada. Ted Turner, the media magnate, now owns the largest private herd in the world — some 55,000 head at last count.
“In a small industry like ours, a big guy like that has a huge impact,” says Fogel, who hides his faintly red hair underneath a cowboy hat and sports a trim white beard.
The wild boar kept at Fogel’s ranch look every bit the part: with coarse black hair, high backs, and inch-long tusks that protrude skyward, their appearance is anything like the potbellied variety most Americans are used to seeing now. They also retain some of their instinctively wild traits — protective of their young and vicious carnivores when any of their pen mates show signs of weakness. Continue reading The Wild Boar of Mike Fogel from Buffalo Gal »
by Elizabeth Millard on July 28, 2011
Natalie Champa Jennings / Heavy Table
The lot at 1515 Fremont in North Minneapolis looks like a remarkably well-tended garden, boasting neatly weeded rows of tomatoes, cabbage, lettuces and other mid-summer greens. This isn’t the work of an avid homeowner, though: the mini-farm is one of seven spaces in the neighborhood that are part of Project Sweetie Pie, an initiative with ambitious goals, and the green thumbs to back them up.
The project started as an offshoot of an after-school horticulture program out of North High. Students chose sweet potatoes as a starter plant in order to sell them to Rose McGee of Deep Roots Gourmet Foods, and from there the program blossomed.
Natalie Champa Jennings / Heavy Table
Helmed by Michael Chaney, a local artist and member of nonprofit group Afro Eco, Project Sweetie Pie is far more than an effort to teach young people how to grow food and learn some marketing along the way. It’s become a multi-partner community effort, bringing in 45 organizations that provide resources and support. A local homeowner, Robert Woods, provided his yard for the Fremont site, and a handful of young program participants work every day to farm the land.
“This is your next generation of young urban farmers,” says Chaney. “The plan is to take over some of the empty lots that are in North Minneapolis and turn them into spaces like these. There are many folks involved in this, we have many partners, but we all share the same goals in terms of using this program as a way to increase entrepreneurship among our young people and get more healthy food in the area.”
Natalie Champa Jennings / Heavy Table
As he talks, Chaney looks out across the little field, sometimes directing the participants who are weeding, but his gaze often seems to extend beyond the vegetables. You can almost hear the thoughts zipping through his mind about where to network next, who to approach for funding, what can happen to expand the program. He talks about using the project for change as if he’s watching that change sprout from the ground, and he’s a bit impatient for it to grow into full flower.
“This is the future of our community,” he says frequently, and it’s easy to see why he thinks so. The space draws an array of people, from a University of Minnesota professor who jumps into the weeding with enthusiasm, to a retired documentary filmmaker who acts like a gruff-but-loving mentor who reins in the younger kids with ease. The lot is vibrant, busy, and filled with conversation — it’s the most ideal of community gardens, because it fosters community in every sense of that word.
Organizational participants are just as passionate as Chaney, too. Collie Graddick, with Community Table Cooperative, is eager to see the project succeed, because he envisions it as a starting point for more economic drive in North Minneapolis. More lots that grow more food could lead to a processing plant in the area, bringing in jobs and market demand, he says. He foresees that more students could be involved, and grow the food that’s served at their schools, and sold at local corner stores. Graddick believes that eventually, there could even be meat production at some point, giving the residents of North Minneapolis the ability to grow and raise everything they need. “This is the start of something big, really big,” says Graddick. “This is designed to bring economic development to our community.”
Natalie Champa Jennings / Heavy Table
Finding land for all that urban farming could present difficulties in the future, though, believes Bud Markhart, a professor in the Department of Horticultural Science at the University of Minnesota. “The economic downturn makes it a little easier right now to find vacant lots for the short term, but if the economy turns around, I can see how that might become a challenge. This wouldn’t be the first urban center to have community gardens get taken over by developers. Hopefully, the city will work to put plans in place so that doesn’t happen.”
One challenge that would potentially hinder the project is lack of program participants, and many people initially warned Chaney that African-American youth had no interest in gardening. But he’s proven them all wrong by finding an array of helpers. One participant, 20 year-old Jordan Williams, says he joined because he wanted to learn how to grow healthy food, and to achieve a level of self-sustainability: “I think it’s a great thing, to be able to grow what you eat. It helps you be healthy, and to think in a healthy way.”
In the same way that the project is about way more than sweet potato pies, the future for Project Sweetie Pie is likely to be much richer and more expansive than it is now. Even with the challenges that may crop up with land availability, Chaney and his enthusiastic supporters and new farmers are ready.
Natalie Champa Jennings / Heavy Table
Becca Dilley / Heavy Table
On an overcast day in June, the Concrete Beet Farmers are hard at work. Scattered across a plot of land the size of a typical city lot, the farmers adjust tomato trellises, prepare soil for planting, and break up pieces of concrete to make a little patio at a vegetable washing station. The farm seems to pop out of nowhere on a South Minneapolis city block. Yet the plentiful plants, the neat signs labeling each crop, the tool shed, and even the stray cat wandering around seem right at home.
This group of six urban farmers, all in their 20s and two still in college, came together for the first time this year, both through college friendships and accidental connections. (Pictured, above from left to right: Eric Larsen, Emily Engel, and Emily Hanson). The Concrete Beet Farmers now farm about three quarters of an acre on three city plots in the Phillips neighborhood in Minneapolis. They practice sustainable, chemical-free farming, but are not certified organic, nor are they working towards certification (it is very difficult for a city lot to become certified). They have 17 CSA (community supported agriculture) members and supply vegetables to Common Roots, the St. Paul Cheese Shop, and the Midtown Bike Café (on the Midtown Greenway). They also set up shop at the Uptown Market every Sunday.
The farmers are all at once young, knowledgeable, articulate, and a little awed by what they have accomplished. They radiate a mixture of youthful enthusiasm, confidence, and shock. Most of all, they are simply excited about their success this first season – they started small and managed to accomplish their goals.
Becca Dilley / Heavy Table
As the eating local movement catches on and develops, the Concrete Beet Farmers have managed to be just about as local as possible. They bike their goods to the farmers market and to their wholesale customers. “It doesn’t get more fresh than that,” says Hanson. Of course, the Concrete Beet Farmers are not the only urban farmers in Minneapolis to deliver local crops to city dwellers. In fact, the Uptown Farmers (who have farmed in Minneapolis for four years) helped till land for the Concrete Beet Farmers.
The farmers are bursting with ideas about how we should be growing and consuming our food. Alex Liebman, another of the six farmers, talks easily about the politics behind the local food movement.
“I was totally turned on by what you can do through farming about all these big world problems – global warming and malnutrition, for example – that are so closely linked to growing food.”
Becca Dilley / Heavy Table
You would have to be pretty idealistic to have accomplished in a very short time what this young group has. And maybe a little lucky, too. Their luck came in the form of land: They heard about the availability of the land for all three of their plots through somewhat random connections and use some of it at no cost. They have also benefited from the help and advice of other urban farmers and from a grant.
But not everyone would know what to do with such luck and then how to put their noses to the grindstone. To get started, they purchased three truckloads of compost to add to the already-good soil, worked with neighbors to find a water source, and organized volunteer days to get some extra help.
Now they are growing crops bountifully; when The Heavy Table visited, Liebman showed us around the farm, pointing out kale, arugula, tomatoes as we walked. The plants themselves are beautiful – healthy, substantial, and simply good-looking. A few times he absently picked off a leafy green to snack on. Clearly this is the norm. He offered us a sample of peas from one part of the row, then from farther down the row, explaining they were better at that end. Continue reading The Concrete Beet Farmers in Minneapolis »
Becca Dilley / Heavy Table
Don Heinel (above, right) needs to call home and ask his wife to send out a tweet: “We’ve already sold out of spinach & parsnips.” It’s 10 am on opening day at the Minneapolis Farmers Market on Lyndale Avenue, and his Heinel Farm spinach and spring onions were pretty much the only locally grown green items available.
Up and down the rows there are potted plants and bricks of cheese and freezers of pastured beef and chicken. There are also, truth be told, plenty of empty stalls and tables covered with wholesale bananas, zucchini, and peppers. There aren’t many customers at those tables: In late April and early May those imported treats look especially out of place. Who would brave the steady drizzle and occasional pounding bursts of rain for the same selection you find at Cub?
The earliest days of a Minnesota farmers market are more about anticipation than fulfillment. While I came home from opening day with a bag of spinach and some mushrooms and ramps — one eclectic spring dinner’s worth of goods — what I really went to the market to find was a little taste of the summer to come, days when I would invariably realize I hadn’t brought enough bags — or enough cash — and would have to choose between the beautiful berries and the perfect tomatoes.
Well, okay, honestly, what I truly went to the market to find was some rhubarb, asparagus, fiddleheads — those unapologetically seasonal now-you-see-them-now-you-don’t joys. But that just tells you something about the irrational hope brought on by a Minnesota spring. I’ll need to haunt the market for a month or so before my efforts are rewarded.
So it’s no wonder that Don Heinel’s over-wintered vegetables were so popular. Planted in the fall, he said, they survive just fine in the cold ground, even getting a little tastier as they freeze and thaw. Farmer Heinel, we thank you for your foresight. Next up he says he’ll have spring lettuces, beets, and zucchini, grown in low plastic-covered tunnels — another smart way to extend the Upper Midwest growing season.
A fourth-generation farmer, Heinel says he enjoys the immediate feedback and appreciation he gets from customers at the farmers market. “I used to wholesale,” he says, “but it’s really ungrateful work. It’s all about price, not about a quality product.” And, on cue, a young woman steps up to his table, slips her iPhone into her bag, and tells Heinel she’s just used up the last of the squashes she bought from him in the fall. “The cat didn’t get them?” he asks. “No!” she laughs.
“See: This is a great place to sell,” Heinel tells me after she selects a couple of trays of spring onions.
All the same, he says, selling at a farmers market doesn’t fit easily into a farmer’s schedule. He and his wife staff market stalls three days in a row, “and then, on Monday, I’m burnt out.” It’s hard, he adds, to stand behind a market table while the sun shines, only to have the skies open up at noon, knowing he’ll have to go home to his 17 acres in Little Canada and work in wet fields.
But then another customer returns. “I don’t think my husband bought enough parsnips,” she says. Heinel agrees that he probably didn’t. “He likes the starchy ones and these are pretty sweet, but see what you can do with them,” he tells her. They both smile. She’ll be back.
Also at the Minneapolis Farmers Market
Becca Dilley / Heavy Table
Sunny Road Cheese
At the Sunny Road Cheese stall, Ben Lemke is pushing the uunijuusto, handing out tiny slices warmed on a griddle. Uunijuusto? Yes, please. You don’t have to ask diehard Midwestern cheese-lovers twice. “This one just took first place in the Upper Midwest Dairy Association [Awards] in November,” he says. Two easy sales.
Lemke explains that his parents started Morning Star Farm in Cokato about three and a half years ago, when his dad, an organic chemist with experience in the food industry, retired young. Now they make about 300 pounds of cheese every other day, from their herd of about 40 dairy cattle, including Gruyere and Parmesan.
St. Paul Farmers’ Market
Opening day at the St. Paul Farmers’ Market is like a subdued family reunion. Sellers who have been coming to the market for five, 10, 12 years and more greet each other by name and remark that, yes, the weather could be worse. Rain keeps the browsers down. People who come to the market in a downpour are there to buy.
Becca Dilley / Heavy Table
Carl Manthei (above, right) has been selling his handmade soaps at the market for 18 years. He first made an olive oil and melaleuca bar to help his son cope with eczema. Now he and his wife make about 1200 bars a day in the basement of their Shakopee home. They sell at craft fairs around the country and online, but it’s clear that St. Paul, where he first started selling commercially, is near to Manthei’s heart. Continue reading 2011 Farmers Market Preview »
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