@JDeRusha wants you to join Team Hunger, @France44Cheese revives the apple-honey-cheese sandwich (so good!), @TroutCaviar finds sheep sorrel at a new location, @AsherBMiller reminds of the last Open Field event this summer, @GrovelandTap welcomes its soon-to-be neighbor, Scusi, and @CTKitchenTable seeks volunteers to pick veggies this weekend for the next @TourdeFarm event.
Katie Cannon / Heavy Table
Though you wouldn’t guess it by the muggy heat, the calendar proves that summertime in Minnesota is coming to an end. This transitional period is perceived differently by different residents. It might mean one last drive up north to the cabin, the number of boat rides on your lake of choice dwindling to fewer than you can count on one hand, or even dreams of a welcome reunion with sweaters and boots. For Bob Guthrie, kiwifruit enthusiast and longtime volunteer at the University of Minnesota’s Horticultural Research Center in Victoria, it means harvest time for his cold hardy kiwifruit.
Katie Cannon / Heavy Table
Harvest season typically spans late July to October. The steps are simple. Walk around the rows of vines, supported by trellises and wires, and keep your eyes on the ground to find the berry drop. Kiwifruits aren’t like apples or pears. Their fruit is blanketed by a thick canopy of leaves, sheltering it from invaders: birds interested in a sweet nibble, some insects, or even the chill of an early frost. Thanks to the blanket of leaves covering the fruit, they’re able to withstand one frost. However, considering this is Minnesota — and that last year’s first frost occurred Oct. 8 — it isn’t unheard of to have multiple frosts take place during one harvest season. So, Guthrie has grown accustomed to not relying on an abundance of fruit as November approaches.
Guthrie tends two small kiwi orchards at the HRC. One lies at the slanted base of a small hill, lined on one side by a thick mass of trees and on the other by other fruits being bred for research by the University. The second orchard is up the slope, covered by less shade and planted on even ground. To get to both, one travels by foot through a mass of fruit plants: grape vines, apple trees, a row of pear trees. It’s almost like you’ve stepped into Willy Wonka’s factory, but the candy has been replaced with a healthier alternative. Many of these plants have been rooted for decades. (It can take this long for fruit experts to breed plants in hopes of finding the perfect fruit for market.)
Katie Cannon / Heavy Table
These cold hardy kiwifruits look and feel much different compared to their better known relative, the fuzz-covered Hayward varietal. Their skin is smooth and perfectly edible. (Though the Hayward skin is considered edible as well, the fuzzy, bland exterior certainly wouldn’t be appealing to your taste buds or your tongue.) They are much like grapes, bite-size and easy to pop in your mouth. Their taste is nearly identical to Hayward kiwis; however, they are pleasantly juicier and sweeter tasting. Succulent, in fact. They’re fit to be sprinkled atop ice cream, baked into a tart, fermented into wine, or just devoured plain.
For the time being, cold hardy kiwifruits are just like many of the other fruits undergoing study at this site: delicious, market-worthy, and on the brink of becoming available for purchase. Don’t be surprised if you happen upon them at your grocer in the next few years. Guthrie hopefully anticipates they’ll appear at market sometime soon. If you’re interested in seeing them before then, however, consider a stop by the Ag-Hor building at the Minnesota State Fair, where Guthrie will once again submit these kiwifruits into competition. Last year he left a winner. His kiwifruits took first place in the “any other fruit” category.
Katie Cannon / Heavy Table
by Elizabeth Millard on August 4, 2010
Becca Dilley / Heavy Table
Some people come away from the Minnesota State Fair with fresh ideas about canning, cooking, or butter sculpting, but Tom and Mary Lakner might be the only people who’ve ever left the fairgrounds thinking, “Let’s start an emu farm.”
Just before getting married 14 years ago, the pair saw the ostrich-type birds at the fair, and chatted with a farmer there about the varied uses of emus. Not only is the meat healthy — leaner than turkey, and 97 percent fat-free — but the birds also provide a source of oil that’s anti-inflammatory and deeply moisturizing.
Becca Dilley / Heavy Table
The more the Lakners heard, the better it sounded, and less than a year later, they were caring for a breeding pair at their little ranch in Forest Lake, after obtaining the birds from another Minnesota ranch that’s since closed.
They connected with other emu ranchers across the state and the country, and read as much as they could on the topic; mainly, everyone swapped stories about their mistakes, and Tom and Mary listened. Many ranches closed because they invested too much in elaborate, automated watering systems or large enclosures, so the Lakners kept is simple and used what they had instead.
Becca Dilley / Heavy Table
They named the place Hassu Lintu, which means “crazy bird” in Finnish; the term stuck after the couple discovered that younger birds would do a kooky kind of dance if they whistled. When the birds get older, the female uses her hollow chest cavity to produce an amazing drumming sound that must make a good accompaniment to all that teenage-emu dancing.
Crazy Birds
As they walk through the spacious outdoor pens, Tom and Mary coo to the birds, from the tiny, frantic three-week-old who’s just been put outside for the first time, to the incredibly curious three-month-olds that love to try and bite gently at Mary’s rings. They tug at her like kids wanting attention, and she’s happy to oblige. “They’re like cats, in many ways,” she says, with obvious affection. “They either really warm up to you, or they’re a bit standoffish.” Continue reading The Emus of Hassu Lintu in Forest Lake, MN »
by Angelique Chao on June 23, 2010
Becca Dilley / Heavy Table
In their efforts to sell to a public increasingly exposed to and repelled by stories of the inhumane treatment of farm animals, meat and dairy companies are fighting back with a kinder, gentler picture of how their animals are raised. Their marketing endeavors run the gamut from from applying product labels like “free-range” and “pasture-raised” to enrolling in certification programs that purportedly monitor and approve the way they treat their animals.
Becca Dilley / Heavy Table
For the consumer, this barrage of efforts is a mixed blessing. How are you supposed to know the difference between chickens that are “free range” and “cage free” anyway? Relying on certifications doesn’t clear up anything either, unless you know what they mean and who stands behind them. Some certifications are no more than internal industry guidelines, like those offered by the United Egg Producers association and the National Pork Board. Under these programs, the very industries which are accused of abuse do the certifying, which smacks a bit of the fox guarding the henhouse.
Then there are certifications that come from third-party nonprofits, like Animal Welfare Approved and Food Alliance. These have more credibility, since they rely on the judgment of independent outsiders. However, getting familiar with their actual standards requires research, research, research. And then there are programs run by individual companies themselves, like Organic Valley’s Pasture Policy and Chipotle’s Food With Integrity program.
In April, Meister Cheese, a cheesemaker in Southwestern Wisconsin whose biggest customer happens to be Chipotle, jumped into the fray with a version of this last option, an animal welfare certification program that it’s running on its own. It’s called the “A Triple F” program, which stands for “Animal Friendly Family Farms.”
Under its guidelines, Meister is partnering with one of its suppliers, local dairy co-op Scenic Central Milk Producers, to ensure that all the milk that the co-op sends Meister is humanely produced. According to Meister’s CFO, Jeff Jump, animal-friendly practices aren’t anything new for the members of Scenic Central; they’re all small farms for whom humane animal care is a family tradition. The A Triple F program simply recognizes the good work these farmers have already been doing.
The A Triple F program sounds great, but let’s look at it from the standpoint of a skeptical consumer who’s tired of corporate whitewashing about animal welfare. “Humane” and “animal friendly” are pretty general terms. How exactly do the A Triple F guidelines define them? And just as importantly, how do we, the consumers, know that the farms covered by the certification are really following its rules? After all, the advantage of third-party certification programs is that the people auditing and certifying farms are part of an organization whose income doesn’t depend on how much cheese (or milk, or any animal product) they can sell. Thus they have no financial incentive to let farms slide by with inhumane practices.
Becca Dilley / Heavy Table
Meister and Scenic Central, on the other hand, can’t pay the bills unless they hit their sales targets. This doesn’t imply that they aren’t genuinely trying to promote humane treatment; it just means that the possibility of a conflict of interest is one that the consumer has to take seriously. Continue reading Meister Cheese’s New Animal Welfare Certification »
by Angelique Chao on June 9, 2010
George Chao / Heavy Table
Is the US regulatory system on the brink of putting small, local meat producers out of business? Some local farms are sounding the alarm, including Fischer Family Farms of Waseca, MN.
Meat from Fischer Family Farms, including their signature applewood bacon and maple sausage, graces the menus of Twin Cities restaurants from Craftsman to Muffuletta to newcomer HauteDish. According to Tim Fischer, who runs the small pig farm with his wife, Marijo, when he visits a potential new account he just leaves a sample of these two favorites with the chef. “Chefs start out saying they’re perfectly happy with the guy who’s been supplying them for five years,” Tim says, “so I just drop off a couple samples and tell them to give me a call if they’re interested.” It’s rare that they don’t call.
Of course, chefs don’t choose Fischer Farms pork just because they personally enjoy it; they choose it because they know their customers will love it. And discriminating diners love more than just its taste; they appreciate its humane, local credentials. Based in Waseca, just an hour and a half from the Twin Cities, the Fischers feed and care for their pigs personally and give them plenty of room to move around. Then Tim brings them to nearby New Prague for slaughter and processing. From that point, Tim drives his pork products the remaining hour into town personally twice a week. Most of his distribution is within the Twin Cities; 100 percent of it is within the state of Minnesota.
As happy as the Fischers are raising their pigs, and as happy as we are eating them, Tim is worried that the whole mutually beneficial arrangement is on the point of unraveling. Why? Because the USDA is under the gun to do something, anything, about meat safety to calm the public’s nerves. Beef recalls, E. coli contamination, swine flu – you name it, and it’s gotten the public on edge about the safety of its typical main course. The USDA needs to up its game. But what the agency has chosen to do might put small farm families like Tim’s out of business.
To understand why, you first have to understand how Fischer Farms pork gets from pigs’ backs to the frying pan.
George Chao / Heavy Table
Once their pigs have grown to a market weight of about 270 pounds, Tim takes them to the slaughterhouse. A business like his can’t use just any slaughter facility – first of all, the big meat packers wouldn’t be interested in Tim’s small quantities. Second, shipping his pigs to a far-flung corner of the state where they would become part of a grim assembly line of thousands of carcasses doesn’t really square with Tim’s commitment to local, humane production. So Tim, like many small family-run livestock farmers, needs a small processor who will give the same personal attention to his pigs that he does. To meet this need, Tim works with Odenthal Meats of New Prague.
Odenthal is run by Randy and Laura, a young couple who decided to get into the processing business in 1999. Small plants like theirs are often the last remainders of a formerly robust family business, but in this case Randy and Laura have reversed that downward spiral. They started from scratch, building a plant on their own, and have had enough business from local farmers that they’ve expanded four times in the mere decade they’ve been open. Tim can’t say enough about working with the Odenthals: “Randy is an absolute magician with the meat and its preparation, and he’s very open and willing to try new things.”
Continue reading The USDA Challenge to Fischer Family Farms »
Becca Dilley / The Master Cheesemakers of Wisconsin
Among those who closely follow Wisconsin cheesemakers, a few names stand out: Sid Cook, the Mad Genius of Carr Valley. Myron Olson, the Limburger Guy of Chalet Cheese. Joe Widmer, Mr. Old School of Widmer’s Cheese Cellars.
But many talented makers don’t get much press. Among them are Master Cheesemaker David Metzig of Union Star in Zittau, WI. He works in a little artisanal plant with living quarters above the make room, a throwback to the state’s original model of cheesemaking. Beyond making some of the best cheddar in a state famed for the stuff, Metzig makes a string cheese that is unlike anything else bearing the name — light years from the dour stringy lumps that you buy wrapped in plastic, it’s ineffably light and has a lactic purity that makes it taste like fresh milk made solid.
Cheese Underground, Wisconsin’s preeminent cheese blog, has a long post about Metzig’s son, Jon, who has returned home to make cheese with his father and is developing a semi-soft washed ring cheese called St. Jeanne. The blog’s author, Jeanne Carpenter, writes:
“Jon ages it for six weeks and is selling it now as a fairly young, mild stinky cheese. However, he’s thinking about starting to wash and cure some batches with beer, resulting in a heartier, stinkier cheese. He’s trying to figure out if there’s a market for such a cheese (I vote yes).”
Enjoy some shots of David Metzig and Union Star here, and read the story of the next generation over on Cheese Underground. And if you’re ever passing through the Green Bay area, take a detour to Zittau.
Becca Dilley / The Master Cheesemakers of Wisconsin
Katie Cannon / Heavy Table
Since we were young, we were told to drink our milk to build strong bones. A cold glass of milk was always there at the dinner table, in our cereal bowls, and served alongside a gooey chocolate chip cookie popped right out of the oven. But besides the bit of trivia that a glass of milk can cool off a spicy mouth (FYI — beer also does the trick) and the generalities of the milk processing cycle from cow to processor to store, I’m willing to bet that most of us don’t really know much about the milk industry, milk pricing, or the farmers who keep our Cheerios and Lucky Charms in such good company.
The Heavy Table visited Zweber Farms, a Minnesota organic dairy farm that’s a member of Organic Valley, the second largest dairy cooperative in the US, to get an inside look at some aspects of the modern dairy industry.
First, a bit of an overview on the milk industry. The US dairy industry has grown over the past 20 years, and its success is hugely important to the economy of the Upper Midwest; with more than 22,000 million pounds produced annually, Wisconsin is the nation’s second biggest milk producer after California, and Minnesota is ranked sixth.
The milk industry has followed natural industry cycles, including dramatic increases in wholesale prices due to high demand and low supply of product. With the advent of the recession, the industry took a dive in late 2008 and early 2009. A drastic decrease in global demand for dairy products due to the recession left the US industry with a milk surplus. In milk pricing terms, which is measured by price per hundred pound weight (cwt), the price dropped from $17.10 cwt in November 2009 to $11.60 cwt in February 2010. The industry did not see an increase above $12 cwt until August of last year.
With prices dropping and a surplus in supply, many farmers were forced out of the market. Although no one can escape such industry changes, those who were receiving conventional pricing for their milk were most typically affected more. Conventional milk pricing follows the unpredictable market as a whole, while organic pricing is driven by generally more stable negotiated contracts.
Dairy cooperatives, economic units composed of numerous individual dairy farmers, can provide additional stability in a volatile business. Organic Valley Chief Marketing Officer Theresa Marquez explains, “The cooperative is a vehicle in which all the members say, ‘Let’s share the wealth.’”
Marquez explains how Organic Valley got its start: “The co-op was birthed in 1988 when there was a tremendous crisis in the farming community where farmers were going out of business.” At that point in time, milk prices had fallen to $10 for 100 pounds of milk, or 10 cents a pound.
“At that point in time, the farmers said, ‘Wow, what are we going to do…?’ So they decided to form [an organic] cooperative, because they knew that selling in the conventional way was not going to bring about a fair pay price.”
Katie Cannon / Heavy Table
Zweber Farms
Zweber Farms dates back to 1906 with a history that includes raising cattle and pigs, as well as cropping until they turned their focus to grazing. “Early 90s we started grazing cows,” says Tim Zweber. “We needed to have more cows to support our family so it was either add on to the barn or do something different. So we just kicked the cows out of the barn and put them in the pasture and it’s been that way since.” Zweber and his wife Emily run the 98-cow farm today, partnering with his parents Jon and Lisa.
As far as Zweber can remember, the farm has been part of a dairy cooperative — recently it was Hastings Cooperative, a conventional cooperative run out of Hastings, MN. In 2006, the Zweber farm decided to make the change to organic dairy farming, which necessitated a change in dairy cooperatives.
In explaining their desire to stay within the cooperative system, Zweber explains: “There are plenty of organic farmers that aren’t in co-ops. Some of them have lost their contracts to ship milk and if you have no contract you have nowhere to go with your milk. Then you have to try to go to a conventional co-op or another organic co-op to take it. It’s not like you can hold onto it, like grain. It has to go out every other day, minimum.”
“There were lots of choices at the time we went organic,” says Emily. “Organic Valley seemed like the least risky company to go with. [They have] been around for 20 plus years. They have a good reputation; we had lots of friends, and a lot of people in our county, who had really positive things to say. And there was infrastructure (a milk truck already coming this way).”
“You don’t want to be the last guy on the milk truck route way far away,” Zweber chimes in, “because you’d be the first one that they’d be looking at to dump off if times got a little hard.”
Katie Cannon / Heavy Table
The Zwebers also found comfort in Organic Valley’s pricing structure, which pays a set price regardless of whether the farm’s milk is used for fluid milk (the highest paying commodity), dry milk, or other less perishable items like yogurt and cottage cheese. “With Organic Valley, everyone is working together. You don’t look at [it as], ‘My milk goes into this, so I should get paid more.’ Any given person’s milk can be turned into whatever depending on what kind of plant you’re closest to. If you’re close to a cheese plant or a fluid milk plant, then that’s where you’re milk’s going.”
Continue reading Zweber Farms and the Power of Cooperatives »
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