Farm-to-counter may not be a thing for most of us, but it is a service that Bolyard’s Meats delivers all the time. Bolyard’s is a butcher shop that works directly with farmers on the beef, pork, lamb, poultry and more. And in a really unique spin, you not only buy fresh from the farm meats at the meat counter, but you can get a great meal too. And you can eat that while watching the butchers at work in the cutting room from a lunch counter!

In this episode, we talk with chef and butcher Chris Bolyard who shares his passion for whole-animal butchery, sustainable practices, and providing high-quality meats to his customers.

A transcript made via Castmagic’s AI is available.

I was so surprised to see a former colleague coming in to pick up lunch for the office. I’m sure the folks at the office were happy!

A Unique Butcher Shop & Restaurant

Bolyard’s is the only whole animal butcher shop in the St. Louis area and that makes it unique in and of itself but you really have to dig into the place to understand its uniqueness, because that’s what draws a person in!

Chris opened Bolyard’s at a nearby location some time back and eventually was able to move to this larger shop. As they looked at the new space, he knew he wanted to be even more transparent with the services they offered and do more to connect people with the foods they buy. They even offer classes on butchering, making sausage and more.

Chris emphasizes the importance of understanding where your food comes from and quality and taste. Knowing how animals are fed, treated, etc impacts the meat, he’s forged strong relationships with local farmers. There are farms on point for beef, pork, lamb and poultry. And the team at Bolyard’s spend time visiting their farms to learn about the animals’ upbringing, diet, and living conditions.

With that push for responsible sourcing, minimizing waste and utilizing all parts of the animal is central to the services Bolyard’s offers. The team creates some incredible value-added items like charcuterie, deli meats, sausages, and more. I was so drawn into the process of making one of the dried meats that I went from having lunch with a friend at the counter to tasting one in the case to begging them to be on the podcast.

 

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Different Cuts & Flavors too

One of the pieces of the butcher shop that is striking is what is meant when they say they are whole animal butchery. There are some cuts of meat that take more work to get and so sometimes people see things in the case or on the menu board they aren’t familiar with or in my case, watching work and asking questions.

The team here are all happy to offer tips for preparing cuts you may be less familiar with and you’ll be surprised how much you can learn just by looking at the display case and asking a few questions. Since so much of the staff has restaurant backgrounds — Chris went to the Culinary Institute of America — they have great tips on trying something new if you like. If you have a specific cut in mind and they happen to sell out of it before you ask, they are experts at helping you find something else that will be perfect! I’ve got a few cuts on my list to try now.

And if you can listen to Chris talking about making different sausages and cured meats and not want to make a run on the place, you are more disciplined than me by far!

And I’ll admit to sometime taking the easy way out and picking up a few things that will be a fast fix for hunger. Not only do they have amazing sandwiches and brunch to eat, they have provisions in the case too. Stock, broth, some prepared foods, and on the counters they have a range of spices, sauces, etc. I’m not sure what drove me to buy a pound of pimento cheese on one visit, because I’m so picky I usually just make my own, but it’s amazing. And look at this marinated chicken I brought home!

Learning how to Break Down Beef

Even though I used to watch butchers work at the grocery store I worked out throughout high school and college, I hadn’t had a chance to really have someone walk me through whole-animal butchery. Bob Komenetsky manages the cutting room and leads some of the classes at Bolyard’s, he did a great walkthrough!

They practice seam butchery, which means they find seams that naturally come between muscle to separate cuts. As I watched, it was clear it was a job that requires a lot of strength as well as finesse.  Bob points out various cuts as well as the techniques he uses, like letting the weight of the quarter he’s working on help him separate cuts. But he kept saying it’s whatever works for you as others in the shop have some other techniques and preferences but they all end up with the same end cuts which is what matters. 

Farmer Deliveries every Week

Chris and Bob both spoke to some of the ways they can insure the meat is fresh. It starts with regular deliveries from each of the farms they work with and I was there on beef day so I met David Price of Price Family Farms. I was able to get him to sit down for a minute to talk to me about the farm and producing beef.

The Holidays are Coming!

As we discuss in the episode, Chris and the team are getting ready for the holidays. His mind and culinary skills were focusing on some of the things they will be offering along with turkeys for Thanksgiving. He was testing various stuffing recipes as I waited for my lunch after we wrapped up the podcast in fact!

But the charcuterie meats they make and age, definitely will be making appearances on some of the boards I make this year — probably alongside some good aged cheddar from Hemme Bros! The flavor profiles are just so unique that they really are perfect for that special evening (but I’m not gonna lie they work well for girl dinner too).

Check them out online, visit and you will love it.

• Bolyard’s Meats website
• Price Family Farms website (beef source we talked with)
• Buttonwood Farms (poultry source)

And if you haven’t  listened to some of our holiday food episodes, taken this chance to get caught up!

The post Deliciously Responsible: From Farm-to-Counter at Bolyard’s Meats appeared first on Grounded by the Farm.

Janice Person [0000:02]:

Food is more than just what’s on our plate. It’s the places where it’s grown. It’s the people who grow it and so much more. Join me, Janice Person, your host on Grounded by The Farm every other week as we talk about the foods we love. Hey, everybody, this is Janice, and today I’m in Maplewood, Missouri. For people in St. Louis, we think of that as part of the St. Louis Metro.

Janice Person [00:00:26]:

It’s a neighborhood that I get to a lot. And the place we’re visiting, I’ve come here for lunch so many times. Friends and I have picked up meat and things over different times. It’s Bolyard’s meats. It’s right off of the historic Route 66, and we’re talking to Chris Bolyard. Thank you so much for coming.

Chris Bolyard [00:00:46]:

Thanks for having me.

Janice Person [00:00:47]:

This is pretty cool. So I’m going to confess to people. I’m like the nerdy girl that sits here at the window, because you can look in and see the butchers working. So I can be having, like, the best burger or the best French dip or something like that, and watching people cut meat, and it is a nerdy thing. I think my friends are all like, I need to do that. How did you figure this place out?

Chris Bolyard [00:01:13]:

So we’ve been in this space that we’re in now for a little over two years, just shy of two and a half years. And since we opened in 2014, a common theme has always been transparency.

Janice Person [00:01:26]:

Got it.

Chris Bolyard [00:01:27]:

So even at the old shop, it was a third of the size of this shop, there was still a window that people could see into the cut room and see what we were doing. There’s nothing to hide. It’s the opposite. We want people to see exactly what’s going on, kind of connected the dots, and just have a stronger awareness of where their food is coming from.

Janice Person [00:01:53]:

Right, right.

Chris Bolyard [00:01:54]:

When we moved in the spring of 2021 into a much bigger space, we had the opportunity to build the space out ourselves. It was previously several restaurants, and so we more or less gutted it and design it in the way that we wanted it to be. So that means it’s a much larger cut room, more windows, and it’s butted up right against the dining area. So there’s actually counter seating that’s right against the window. There’s many vantage points to see what’s going on. And for people like yourself, who are very much interested in that, I think it’s a fun experience to be eating your sandwich and knowing that it started out as a four legged animal in the other side of the window.

Janice Person [00:02:41]:

So when I was here the last time, they were working on some meat that had been marinating for months or months, and they were packing it into the nice skins.

Chris Bolyard [00:02:57]:

Yeah, they were natural casings. Yeah, they were making brassola and another cured meat called bastoma, which is like an Armenian dried beef. And they were taking eye rounds, which is a muscle in the hind leg that had been curing or marinating for several weeks. And then they were putting them in these natural casings, which are intestines of the animal to dry.

Janice Person [00:03:21]:

Yeah. And so we had to taste it. And then I had to ask, who owns this place? And then next thing I knew, I go, would you be on the podcast with me? Because I think it’s so unique. I grew up in a neighborhood where my grocery store had real butchers, right? So I remember seeing like, sides of meat come in and things like that. I think today that’s not a common experience, right? And so you’re doing something really uncommon and you guys go for the whole animal, right? You’re doing it all. So tell me how that all works.

Chris Bolyard [00:03:52]:

So that is common here, and you’re going to see that that’s the backbone of our business, is buying whole animals directly from the farm. We’ve got very great relationships with all the farms that we buy animals from. We’ve been to all these farms. We know a lot about their practices, their diet, how they spend their lives, how they spend their last day at the slaughterhouse. All those things are very important to us for many reasons. I mean, it’s out of respect for the animal, the way the animals are raised. It’s respectful for the land. And how the animal spends its last day is very important, too, in regards to the quality of the meat.

Chris Bolyard [00:04:35]:

All the practices leading up to that have a lot to do with the quality of the meat. But all that can be ruined if the kill is done incorrectly. That’s pretty much the idea around Bolyard’s is most of the meat comes in as a whole animal. We’ll supplement depending on the time of the year, like the holidays, when big rib roast and tenderloins are in demand. We’ll work with another farm that has similar practices that can supply us with a lot of those two particular cuts.

Janice Person [00:05:07]:

Right.

Chris Bolyard [00:05:08]:

But outside of that, it’s typically about two whole beefs a week, three hogs. We’ll get a whole lamb, about 60 or 70 chickens, and we just work with that.

Janice Person [00:05:18]:

Yeah.

Chris Bolyard [00:05:18]:

So with that being said, first off, we can offer a variety of cuts that you’re never going to see in a grocery store.

Janice Person [00:05:24]:

Right.

Chris Bolyard [00:05:24]:

Which is a lot of fun for us because we get to turn people on to new cuts. There’s just so much variety. It does take more time to butcher an animal that way. It’s called seam butchery. So we are very familiar with the anatomy of the animal, so we understand how the muscles relate to one another, how they’re connected on the animal.

Janice Person [00:05:48]:

Bob was so good at showing me and explaining some of that. It was awesome. We’ve got some video we’ll share with everybody.

Chris Bolyard [00:05:56]:

Yeah. It allows us to offer a lot more variety. So if we’re out of a particular cut, which happens every week because there’s only so much of each cut on the animal and there’s particular cuts that become very popular, but we can always offer a comparable substitute. And it’s fun to turn people on to new things that maybe someone they’ve always been a ribeye person or a tenderloin person. It’s like, well, those are great, but have you tried a bavette or have you tried a flat iron? So there’s that aspect of it. And there’s always been an education part of it, too. I mean, educating the public on what kind of a place we are. Not so much anymore.

Chris Bolyard [00:06:37]:

It used to happen a lot when we first opened, people would come in and they were kind of confused about how the place worked. Right. Because they’re used to seeing everything laid out and explained to them. And there isn’t much human interaction in a grocery store experience, but with us, it’s polarizing.

Janice Person [00:06:54]:

Every single choice is out on a case in a grocery store. And here Bob was breaking down things, but he only broke them down to a certain level because you’ll make the final cuts later as people want.

Chris Bolyard [00:07:09]:

Yeah, it’s to preserve the integrity of the meat and the freshness of it. It extends the shelf life. I mean, if we were to just take the entire animal as it came in, clean it up from beginning to end and put all the cuts in the case, but at the end of the week, they wouldn’t look very nice. So we do keep the case full of cuts, but then a lot but.

Janice Person [00:07:28]:

You don’t have five cases, right?

Chris Bolyard [00:07:30]:

No, it’s one eight foot long deli case. It’s relatively small and it always gets.

Janice Person [00:07:36]:

My mind pumping when I’m in there, like going, OOH, maybe I need what do I want? Yeah, if you come in wanting something specific that’s very different, the case is there to encourage you if you yeah.

Chris Bolyard [00:07:46]:

And that ties into the other aspect of our business, butchering whole animals. We are able to offer a large variety of things, but the other end of that is there’s always going to be a lot of leftovers that need to be used from a cost standpoint and also to respect the animal, that we do our best to not waste anything that’s when added value items come in. Like, we have a pretty extensive charcuterie program, so that could include salamis, whole mussel, cures, pates, terrines, things of that nature. And then we smoke a variety of meats like ham, bacon, pastrami. We make almost every deli meat under the sun and then tons of fresh sausages. That’s probably one of my favorite things to make next to charcuterie, because sausage is like a blank slate. It’s like a vehicle for flavor. If you can imagine, it.

Janice Person [00:08:46]:

Lost a sauce with sausage last night and was so happy with it. Yeah.

Chris Bolyard [00:08:50]:

I mean, if you can seam it up, you can put it into a sausage form. It’s a lot of fun doing that. You take the weight of an animal and the percentage of bone and fat and skin is relatively high. The yield is not great, so we have to charge accordingly for various things. But so when it comes to the bone and fat make a lot of stocks. We make a lot of broths, which is just a seasoned stock. We render a lot of fats, which are great to cook with, and they’re chock full of nutritional value because of the animal’s diet and how it’s raised. It’s going to be a much healthier fat.

Janice Person [00:09:31]:

That gets me to those tallow fries that I’m addicted to. Right.

Chris Bolyard [00:09:34]:

That’s what makes them so delicious, because it’s fried and beef fat.

Janice Person [00:09:38]:

And you can get tallow in the case here too, right. Like you have a stand up case for some of those kind of pieces, like the broths and stocks.

Chris Bolyard [00:09:45]:

Right? Yeah. So those are our provisions, the provisions aspect of our business. So there’s rendered fats, there’s stocks in there. And then we have a pretty extensive vegetable fermentation program. So we have several crocs that are always full of things like kimchi sauerkraut. When pickling cucumbers are in season, we pickle a ton like crazy cauliflower, green beans, you name it. In addition to getting animals in the cooler. Yeah, it’s a lot of fun.

Chris Bolyard [00:10:14]:

I’ve always been a big fan of fermenting anything. I’m fascinated by the process. To me, it makes things taste better. It increases the nutritional value of them, too. It allows you to absorb more of what it has to offer.

Janice Person [00:10:28]:

Yeah, it unlocks some of the nutrients. Yeah. There’s a restaurant component. There’s the butchery shop, which is really the central piece. Everything works around the butchery shop, I guess. Is that right?

Chris Bolyard [00:10:40]:

That’s the majority of our business.

Janice Person [00:10:41]:

How many butchers do you have?

Chris Bolyard [00:10:43]:

So Bob Komonetsky, he manages our cut room. He’s our lead butchery and he manages everything that has to do with the cut room, which is tied to every aspect of the business. So we’ve got Bob, and there is three other butchers. So Faith, Micah and Derek. And they’re all full time.

Janice Person [00:11:04]:

Okay.

Chris Bolyard [00:11:05]:

So we’re only closed on Mondays and Mondays. It’s Bob and another butchery and they’ll spend that time mostly breaking beef.

Janice Person [00:11:13]:

Yeah, that’s what I was able to capture when David Price delivered them. Talked to him a little bit on the video. So that’ll all be on the website. People have to check that out. Yeah, go ahead.

Chris Bolyard [00:11:24]:

Yeah, so we use that day to get ahead for the week because as you saw, it takes a lot of time to take a side of beef and break it down into subrimals and then trim it further down into steaks and roasts and grind. It’s a process. So they use that day to get ahead on that. And they’ll also spend that time gathering ingredients for sausages. Other housemade items. It kind of sets the production schedule for the week, and then that way when we open for business Tuesday through Sunday, the meat is in a position where it’s not going to take super long to get it to its final stage, where it’s case ready. Or if someone comes in and they’re asking for something specific, it’s not going to take 25 minutes to get it for them.

Janice Person [00:12:10]:

Suddenly wanted to get a flatiron steak out of it or something. It takes a little while to do.

Chris Bolyard [00:12:15]:

That, 15 or 20 minutes to get that out. So if we have those already out and untrimmed so you can get the size they want. Yeah, exactly. It just takes a few minutes to trim it up so it’s ready to go.

Janice Person [00:12:27]:

Yeah. So you also do a little bit of catering. Is it your passion or somebody else?

Chris Bolyard [00:12:32]:

Well, I would say it’s probably my passion. So my background is in cooking. I’ve been doing that my whole life. I went to the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park.

Janice Person [00:12:42]:

I loved it. Ice plains, and I used to go up there so often.

Chris Bolyard [00:12:46]:

It’s an amazing place. I look forward to going back there sometime and possibly doing a demonstration or just the tour of the campus because I know it’s changed a lot since I was there. It was 20 something years ago, so yeah, right out of high school, went to culinary school and then moved back to St. Louis. And I mean, I’ve been cooking. That’s all I’ve ever done is cook, so I was the chef cuisine at Sydney Street Cafe for ten and a half years. And that’s kind of where butchering started for me. Early on in my time there, we started getting whole hogs from local farms.

Chris Bolyard [00:13:21]:

We kind of taught ourselves how to butcher. We didn’t really know what we were doing, taught ourselves how to make sausage. And then we started experimenting with preserving meats like charcuterie and everything that’s under that giant umbrella. And so it evolved into this butcher shop idea. My wife and she has a restaurant background, and we just know this is what we’re going to do, we’re going to go for it there’s a St. Louis needs something like this. I think it’ll work. And the rest is history.

Chris Bolyard [00:13:49]:

Fortunately, we’re still here and people are still coming and supporting us. The neighborhood is amazing. That we’re in Maplewood is incredible.

Janice Person [00:13:56]:

It was one of the very few neighborhoods that I really checked out hard when I was moving to St. Louis because there’s such great food. People seem really friendly and accessible and things, and it’s walkable. It’s a really neat area.

Chris Bolyard [00:14:12]:

Yeah, it has a lot to offer.

Janice Person [00:14:18]:

I would love to ask you, though, is now you’re doing some classes. I understood, like, Bob was doing a class on Sunday. When I came in on Monday, he had told me they had done a class. So how did you start doing those, because to me, that’s something that really helps build the expertise of everybody in the community. It’s part of that transparency, I guess.

Chris Bolyard [00:14:40]:

Yeah. We love doing the classes. We’ve been doing the classes for many years now. I’d have to think about it. I’d say at least three or four years we’ve been doing those. We try to host them once a month. We’ve, over the years, kind of expanded our offerings in terms of the type of classes we’re doing. We have a beef class and a hog class, which are demonstration.

Chris Bolyard [00:15:04]:

And then we this year just started offering sausage making classes. And those are hands on.

Janice Person [00:15:09]:

Take one.

Chris Bolyard [00:15:10]:

Yeah. They’re great. So the reason we enjoy them so much is because the type of people that sign up for a class like that are obviously interested in what we’re doing. They’re super engaged. Right.

Janice Person [00:15:21]:

They’re probably great customers.

Chris Bolyard [00:15:23]:

Some of them are. And then yeah, surprisingly, some of them are not. Maybe it was a gift that was bought for them. So that’s helpful in kind of spreading the word of mouth.

Janice Person [00:15:34]:

Yeah.

Chris Bolyard [00:15:35]:

But they’re always a lot of fun. People ask good questions, and we get to talk about what we love to do all day long. I mean, it’s pretty easy for us to run our mouths for two and a half hours about what we’re doing.

Janice Person [00:15:49]:

When you really love it.

Chris Bolyard [00:15:50]:

Yeah. It’s great. And some people are there for different reasons. I mean, some people might be hunters, and they’re looking for a way to seam yeah, exactly. To hone their skills. If they’re butchering a kill, some people might be interested in as a hobby at home, and then some people are just curious, and they have no intentions of ever cutting up a side of pork or beef. But they’re there for the experience, and that’s all right, too.

Janice Person [00:16:19]:

Right. One of the things you mentioned that you guys are starting, and I guess it’ll probably build after the holidays because you’re pretty busy right now, but you’re doing a little bit more of sort of bulk purchasing and things. And that’s something I know since I talk to a lot of farmers. A lot of them sell a quarter or a half directly to people, and you have to have big freezers and all that kind of stuff. You’re doing it on a large level like that, but also on much smaller basis. How are you working it out?

Chris Bolyard [00:16:50]:

So we started out offering bulk bundles of ground beef. So the way it works is the more you buy, the more you save. And we sell them in 1020 or 30 pound increments.

Janice Person [00:17:03]:

Okay.

Chris Bolyard [00:17:03]:

And they’re all freezer packed in one pound packs, so they’re very accessible. It doesn’t take very long at all to thaw out a pound of ground beef and the way that they’re packaged.

Janice Person [00:17:13]:

And if you need two pounds, you put two pounds.

Chris Bolyard [00:17:15]:

Yeah. And they’re packaged in a way that they’re very flat. They don’t take up a lot of space. So you can fit ten pounds of ground beef in a very small space in a freezer.

Janice Person [00:17:25]:

I saw them packing that. I hope I’ve got video of it, because I saw them packing it one day and I thought, what are they doing for a while? But then we finally figured out that.

Chris Bolyard [00:17:33]:

That’S how we do all of our ground beef. We sell it out of the case like that. That’s how we sell them in our bulk bundles, and that’s going over really well. And then we just started offering an actual beef bundle, which is a variety of things. And essentially what you’re getting is like an 8th of a cow, if you want to look at it like that. What we did was we took a side of beef and we split that in four. So you’re getting an 8th of an entire cow, and depending on the size of the side that we’re cutting, you’re going to get somewhere around 55 pounds of meat.

Janice Person [00:18:05]:

Okay.

Chris Bolyard [00:18:06]:

And the cost is $12 a pound, which sounds like a lot. But if you think about what you’re getting, I mean, you’re not saving a ton of money on the ground beef in that bundle, because our ground beef is 1250 a pound. But you’re getting about 25 pounds of ground beef at $12 a pound, and then everything else you’re getting for that same price. So strips, ribeyes, tenderloin.

Janice Person [00:18:29]:

Yeah.

Chris Bolyard [00:18:30]:

And then the fun part about the bundles that we offer is the variety. Right. So we spoke of earlier, we practice seam butchery, so we’re able to offer a variety of cuts. So we have a section of the bundle that we call Butcher’s Choice, and you’re going to get six or seven pounds of our choice of all these. And all this information is on our website, but there is quite a few different cuts that we’ll choose from that selection. So you’ll get steaks, ground beef, braising cuts, you’ll get soup bones, we render fat, and we give about four or five pints of render tal to you. We prepare stock that’ll be included in the bottle, and we even get a little bit of beef liver, which surprisingly, has become very popular over the years. We sell a lot of beef liver.

Janice Person [00:19:25]:

Funny how meats do those fads, almost, where they become so popular, and then they fade and stuff, and then a whole butchery. Yeah, you need to make use of all of it.

Chris Bolyard [00:19:37]:

Yeah, I think we’ve done pretty good at that. I think the thing with the liver is people have become more aware of how good it is for you, how to make it taste good, and just like the nutritional value of it, the health benefits, it’s probably one of the most nutrient dense foods on the planet. We haven’t had a hard time in recent years finding an outlet for the beef liver, whether it’s a dog treat or it goes into a.

Janice Person [00:20:08]:

Yeah, yeah. I love the idea of doing boxes. And I mentioned to you, my niece and nephew in Asheville, North Carolina, were getting boxes during COVID He was a restaurant employee that was suddenly sent home. And the place he worked also had a whole animal butchery. So they occasionally got boxes and they took it as a challenge to figure out new ways to cook new cuts of meat. So it’s a little more fun than just always doing the same meal planning.

Chris Bolyard [00:20:36]:

Oh, yeah.

Janice Person [00:20:36]:

I mean, I love my go to items, but to do something neat and new, it’s kind of a challenge. It may not be on Tuesday when you’ve had a really shitty day and just need to get people fed.

Chris Bolyard [00:20:50]:

Yeah, I know what that’s like.

Janice Person [00:20:52]:

But on other days, that’s the fun part of cooking.

Chris Bolyard [00:20:56]:

There’s so many different textures and flavors when it comes to beef and the steaks that are possible out of there. So it is fun to switch it up. I love beef just as much as the next person, but what makes it interesting to me is just the variety. And people always ask me, what’s your favorite steak? It’s always different. I don’t know. I switch it up. I’ll be stuck on a particular cut for a while and then I’ll bounce around. It’s a lot of fun to eat.

Janice Person [00:21:31]:

It’s funny because I asked Bob the same kinds of questions. What’s your favorite cut? And he looked at me like, well, that’s such a silly question. Right. Like, how do you pick a yeah, there’s so many different things you could do. And then when I asked him, what’s, like, an overlooked cut of meat that most people don’t know about, it was the same kind of thing. Like, oh, there’s so many things you can do with every cut. And learning some of those things is really where it’s kind of fun.

Chris Bolyard [00:21:58]:

Yeah, absolutely.

Janice Person [00:22:00]:

Well, did I miss something really important?

Chris Bolyard [00:22:06]:

Well, the holidays are coming up. I mean, that’s probably the most important time of the year for us as a business. If it wasn’t for the holidays, it would be very difficult to make this whole right. People, this whole circus work, really cutting.

Janice Person [00:22:20]:

Things down to the first year. Right. Like a lot of people’s household budgets, they tighten up really quickly. So what do the holidays look like?

Chris Bolyard [00:22:30]:

Yeah, I think that’s partly due because people are splurging during the holidays. They’re celebrating, they’re spending time with family, they’re not as tied to their budget, and they’re buying big centerpieces for their holiday gatherings. So what that looks like for us is it starts off with Thanksgiving. It’s just kind of a whirlwind. I mean, we blank and it’s over. So our busiest time is from Thanksgiving all the way through, like, the first week of January. It stays pretty busy through New Year’s. So we work with Buttonwood Farms out of California missouri, and we get all of our poultry and eggs from them.

Chris Bolyard [00:23:06]:

So what Matt does, Matt tie from brun, he raises the turkeys as chicks and they’re on the ground now. He starts, I think sometime in July or early August.

Janice Person [00:23:19]:

Yeah, get those pulps.

Chris Bolyard [00:23:20]:

And it’s usually about, I think it’s about a 16 week process, if I’m not mistaken. And he’ll raise several thousand and that’s basically what he raises for the year. So for about a month maybe like, well, it’s more like a three week period during November, all the turkeys are fresh, right. The turkey that you buy for your Thanksgiving dinner is going to be fresh. And then what he does afterwards is they will process the remainder of them that didn’t sell fresh. And he’ll freeze x amount of whole turkeys, x amount of breast parts and things like that. Ideally that’s supposed to last the whole year. It doesn’t always.

Chris Bolyard [00:24:05]:

So like, for example, we’re his biggest customer in terms of whole turkeys and turkey breasts, right. And he just ran out of turkey breast a couple of weeks ago. So we don’t have any turkey until Thanksgiving.

Janice Person [00:24:18]:

So he’s happy to be harvesting soon.

Chris Bolyard [00:24:20]:

Yeah. So it works out. If we don’t have turkey sandwich or turkey breasts out of the case for a month, it’s okay because we know that we’ve got fresh ones coming right around the corner. So Thanksgiving is big for us. We sell a dry brine kit, okay. And it’s already measured out for you, so it’s real easy to apply. And I found that makes a huge difference with turkey. Turkey is very lean, it’s very easy to dry out.

Chris Bolyard [00:24:48]:

So we sell brine kits with the turkeys, and there’s a range of sizes depending on the size you’re gathering. In addition to that, we offer a lot of provisions. So we make amazing buttermilk and lard biscuits and you can buy those frozen.

Janice Person [00:25:02]:

I keep hearing about the brunch and I haven’t made it yet. And I kick myself every time I think like, oh, this weekend I can’t.

Chris Bolyard [00:25:09]:

Go, yeah, no, we’re here, we’re here every weekend doing it, dude.

Janice Person [00:25:13]:

Looking at the Instagram or Facebook and stuff for those brunch photos, y’all, slay the biscuits. Nobody’s ever had a.

Chris Bolyard [00:25:22]:

You know, I think the secret is we use lard as the only fat in there and we use a whole fat buttermilk from one of our farms and it just makes for a delicious biscuit. So you can buy those frozen and bake them from frozen for the holidays. And then we offer a variety of different provisions, like a few different sides. We’re doing stuffing and I think green bean casserole. This year we offer quarts of giblet gravy stock. And then moving into Christmas time, everybody’s kind of focused on big roasts, so we sell a lot of standing rib roasts, a lot of tenderloin roasts. We sell a variety of other things too, but those are our two main sellers and all of this stuff you can purchase off our website. For the most part, we try to make it a pretty streamlined process.

Chris Bolyard [00:26:08]:

It gets a little every year. We do a little bit more, a little bit more, and we always learn from our mistakes. Sometimes it can be you want to pull your hair out because it’s just hard to manage a lot of these things, which is a great problem to have, but I think we get a little bit better at dialing in it every year and try to make it as smooth as possible. It’s always going to be a mad rush, though. I mean, I think it’s kind of hard to avoid a line and we thought to ourselves, well, this is crazy. Is this how it is everywhere? And it kind of is. I think people expect to wait a little bit if they’re picking up their turkey or their holiday roast from a butcher shop or a grocery store. I mean, there’s going to be a little bit of a wait if you.

Janice Person [00:26:48]:

Come in and there’s nobody else here. Long term, it’s a bad sign for that business.

Chris Bolyard [00:26:53]:

That’s sad for everybody involved.

Janice Person [00:26:55]:

You have to be willing to stand in line for a little bit and.

Chris Bolyard [00:26:58]:

I think it’s worth the wait. The meat that we offer I think is exceptional.

Janice Person [00:27:04]:

Every cut, very proud of it. I’ve never heard anybody have a ho hum word about what comes out of here as long as the cook treats it well.

Chris Bolyard [00:27:15]:

Yeah, there’s a lot of variables if it’s a problem with the cooking, but that’s up to us too, to educate people to the best of our ability, set them up for success. So whether that means what to do, trimming something properly so you shouldn’t have to take anything home and further trim it. We will cut you the piece to your specifications so you shouldn’t have to do anything further to it. And if you need any cooking advice, we’re always happy to offer that. That’s kind of part of the experience. I mean, with the variety that we offer, there’s a lot of unknowns and new things for people to try. So it’s up to us to educate people and set them up for success when they take that meat home.

Janice Person [00:27:57]:

I love it. Well, I’m going to remind people with it’s. Bolyard’s com.

Chris Bolyard [00:28:03]:

Yeah, bollardsmeet.com.

Janice Person [00:28:05]:

And then your instagram is great. There’s some neat things. I don’t know, is it Faith or somebody in the shop that does that?

Chris Bolyard [00:28:13]:

Faith has recently taken more responsibility on it. Yeah, but it’s myself and Faith right now. Yeah. Basically the two of us, we kind of take charge of that.

Janice Person [00:28:24]:

I love it. Well, we’ll make sure we direct people to that and I love that we talked about the holiday foods and things because I’ve talked to a cranberry farmer in the past and turkey farmer and some of those. So I’ll make sure. People know how to get back to those, too, if they’re interested.

Chris Bolyard [00:28:39]:

Yeah, absolutely.

Janice Person [00:28:40]:

Thanks so much.

Chris Bolyard [00:28:41]:

Thanks, Janice. I appreciate it. Seam here’s.

The post Episode 413 Transcript Chris Bolyard of Bolyard’s Meats appeared first on Grounded by the Farm.

This year I’ve had a chance to learn a lot about the first people who were at home in the lands we now call North America. These Native Americans had amazing civilizations where agriculture thrived and community was a focal point. I encourage you to take some time to listen to these episodes, watch the videos on them as well.

Digging Up Ancient Desert Farming Practices

So often when I travel abroad I am mesmerized by ancient history, so I was totally into getting this interview on ancient desert farming practices. Seeing a Smithsonian article on the Gila River Indian Community led to my finding connections in the US who could talk about the way water was used in prehistoric times, as well as well known times in US history. So in this episode, archaeologists Kyle Woodson and Wesley Miles talk to us about the native peoples who have called this land home, water use and other pieces of the community. The following episode is a conversation with farmer Terry Button who’s family grows a number of traditional crops on the rez.  (See the video from my visit with Wesley where we talked about ancient desert farming practices.)

Revitalizing Native Foods & Farming at Ramona Farms

We continue discussions about native foods and farm on the Gila Indian Community in Arizona (hope you caught part 1 talking the culture, history & water of the Pima people). In this episode we talk with Terry Button about the work he and his wife Ramona are doing at Ramona Farms. Terry shares some of the foods the Pima people have eaten for generations, sharing the roles of corn and tepary beans and some of the foods that can be foraged in the desert. (See video from my visit with Terry on revitalizing native foods.)

Uncovering Cahokia’s Food History & Forgotten Farmscapes

With Cahokia’s food history on our minds after our last episode, we turn to my backyard of St. Louis and are digging into more Native American food and farming history. Joined by Dr. Gayle Fritz, anthropologist and professor emeritus from Washington University, we uncover the mysteries of this once-thriving metropolis and its food and farming footprint. (See the full blog post and photos on Cahokia’s Food History).

The post Indigenous People and the Foods of the Ancestors appeared first on Grounded by the Farm.

As we change seasons, we’re talking seasonal foods with chef Zane Dearien at a unique restaurant in St. Louis’ Central West End — Bowood by Niche. The restaurant is paired with a garden center, providing a perfect patio environment to enjoy a relaxed meal with friends and family. Our conversation focuses on the importance of utilizing seasonal foods and the on-site herb garden at the restaurant, and ways home cooks can up their game too.

A full transcript created by Castmagic AI is available.

Chef Zane Dearien fanning the flames at Bowood by Niche. Photo by Matthew Holleran.

Infusing Food & Seasonality

Zane acknowledges that the farm-to-table buzz may not be the same as it was years ago, but the philosophy and practice of having respect for how food is produced and stewarding it is still near and dear to the heart of many.

And if you are there to enjoy a meal, you can’t help but feel it too, especially if you sit in the patio area. As Zane says, it feels more old world thanks to the abundance of plants in the nursery and the community feel.

Look at the view from my side of the microphone during our interview.

Looking at the menu, the first thing that catches your attention is their unwavering commitment to working with seasonal ingredients. The menu is a reflection of the incredible flavors that each season brings, and it’s awe-inspiring to see how dishes are crafted dishes that truly capture the essence of each ingredient’s peak freshness.

From vibrant spring salads to hearty fall stews (and Zane is looking forward to comfort foods that come with cooler weather & live fire seasonal cooking!), the creativity that emerges from Bowood’s kitchen is nothing short of spectacular.

The view of the outdoor kitchen is also pretty spectacular.

Raising Herbs on the Roof

One aspect of cooking that I’ve always been intrigued by is the use of fresh herbs. Whether it’s a sprinkle of basil on a caprese salad or a pinch of rosemary in a hearty stew, herbs have the power to elevate flavors and add a touch of freshness to any dish. I’ve even been known to have a planter right out the front door so it’s just a few steps from my kitchen.

Zane shared with me his passion for growing herbs right at the restaurant. He explained that having a herb garden is not only practical but also allows them to provide the freshest ingredients to their customers. There are huge planters of herbs on the patio and a much larger herb garden on the roof. 

When it comes to using herbs in the kitchen, Zane believes in the power of simplicity. He emphasized that a sprinkle or a small handful of freshly chopped herbs can completely transform a dish. Whether you’re adding them at the beginning of the cooking process or using them as a final garnish, herbs have the ability to provide a burst of aromatics and bring life to any meal.

I asked Zane about the herbs that he thinks are a must have and he gave a list: basil, mint, chives, parsley and thyme with two additions that stood out. He added chevril which is closely related to parsley but adds in some complexity that he tends to choose over cilantro. And one that we’ve talked about a lot — lavender which is especially good at attracting pollinators that help keep that herb garden thriving outdoors. As the temps drop, indoor growing means a bit of additional light. 

Speaking of indoors and light… the indoor dining rooms are pretty awesome too!

A Culinary Niche in St. Louis

Is it wrong to feel like I need to confess a love of all foods Niche-related before I sign off on the blog post? I moved to St. Louis around the time Gerard Craft, the chef who started Niche more than a decade ago began to get noticed. I started going to his restaurants there and am a forever fan. Absolutely every meal has been fantastically prepared at each and every place in the Niche Food Group, deserving each and every accolade from James Beard and everywhere else.

But there is a lot more than great food whenever you visit Niche restaurants, you feel welcomed in & comfortable. The staff is friendly but some how senses whether this is a day to chat much or let you focus on the guests you are with. Everyone seems to enjoy the work they do and want you to really enjoy your meal. You get that in the restaurants but it also is felt throughout social media too. I have well over a decade of proof in blog posts and social media shares!

Give them a follow and you will see what I mean! You can find Bowood by Niche on their website bowoodbyniche.com, Instagram at @bowoodbyniche and Zane’s chef account @zdearien. You can also check out the other locations, including: @pastariastl, @brasseriestl, @pastariadeliwine, @fordoskillerpizza,
@brasswellstl, @cinderhousestl and for those visiting Tennessee, check out @pastarianashville.

The post Tapping into Fresh & Seasonal Cooking: A Convo with Chef Zane Dearien appeared first on Grounded by the Farm.

Interview is 42:44 long

Janice Person [00:00:02]:

Food is more than just what’s on our plate. It’s the places where it’s grown. It’s the people who grow it, and so much more. Join me, Janice Person, your host on Grounded by the Farm every other week as we talk about the foods we love. Hey, everybody, this is Janice, and we’re in St. Louis again. I love doing shows locally. I sometimes have problems connecting them directly to farming. So, you know, I get creative. Today we are at a place that I don’t know how many St. Louisans knew about. It’s in the central west end. It’s called Bowood, and it is a strange property, I gotta say. It’s not very many places like this in this part of the world. Maybe out west, I don’t know. But we’re going to be talking to Zane Darren, and Zane is the executive chef here at Bowood by Niche. Bowood and Bowood by Niche are two separate things intertwined in weird ways. So he’s the executive chef. We’re going to be talking all about food and fresh and seasonal and all those great things. So why don’t we explain why I say Bowood and Bowood by Niche is a strange experience compared to most restaurants or most garden centers.

Zane Dearien [00:01:16]:

Yeah, I would say probably a little bit of both. So here we have Bowood by Niche within Bowood nursery. I think Gerard acquired it in 2020 when it used to be Cafe Osage. So the parents of the current owners, or the dad of the current owners now had a little cafe in here and all that jazz. But now we’ve acquired it, and it’s Bowood by Niche. We are located inside of a nursery. We have the inside kitchen and restaurant. You dine inside of the greenhouse where you buy plants and all that stuff. And now we have this beautiful outdoor patio that’s literally inside of the nursery of the outer walls where you’re amongst the birds, the bees, the flies, the plants, the gravel, the smells, the textures.

Janice Person [00:02:00]:

People are going to want to watch the video, I’m going to tell you.

Zane Dearien [00:02:02]:

Yeah, it’s absolutely wild. One of the driving forces of me moving up to St. Louis to continue my working with Gerard and Niche food group was to work at this location. Yeah, so it’s a unique spot once you’re in these four walls. Honestly, I don’t think that I’m in, you know, I compare it to more like an Italian villa or the French countryside or something like that. It doesn’t feel like you’re in the middle of a major city more or less inside of, I don’t know, a restaurant at all, to be honest with you, in the best way possible.

Janice Person [00:02:34]:

Yeah. A chef who doesn’t want to work in a restaurant, it’s an interesting dilemma. So let me provide a little background on my view of Gerard and the Niche group, because I’ve really seen it grow from what was like, one restaurant. I remember Niche in Benton Park it was a pretty high end restaurant. I would say he was still relatively undiscovered. He’s now won multiple James Beard Awards. Like, it seems unbelievable how often he’s in it. And he has an incredible group of people that are all together working on different specific things. Here in St. Louis. Is it six, eight restaurants? Eight.

Zane Dearien [00:03:14]:

I think he’s at eight. Probably going on a little more.

Janice Person [00:03:16]:

Yeah, yeah. And each of them are very accessible to regular people. Niche has lived through its lifespan as a restaurant. It might come. Was there’s a couple of dishes I’ll put on the list? If we get know at some point, Gerard, call me. But really, it is one of those amazing things where the right chef found the right city, and he’s found ways to grow that very much fit this area and also grow our culinary scene significantly. Is that what you’ve seen?

Zane Dearien [00:03:49]:

Very accurate.

Janice Person [00:03:50]:

Okay.

Zane Dearien [00:03:51]:

Yeah.

Janice Person [00:03:51]:

All right, so tell me, how did you get started in food? Like, your early beginnings? What made you think, I really love food. This is a place for me. This is the way I like to engage with food or whatever it is.

Zane Dearien [00:04:04]:

So for me, like, the beginning parts of what drives me to want to be in the culinary industry or hospitality would definitely stem from my immediate family. So my mom’s side of the family is Italian. So this little town called Tiny Town in Northwest Arkansas, right outside of Springdale in Bentonville, Arkansas, that most people know now, or Fayetteville. It was all about, like, on the weekends gathering. So our family was 30, 35 people with the cousins. Everybody included. A lot of weekends where we would spend out there on the farm.

Janice Person [00:04:35]:

Grandma’s.

Zane Dearien [00:04:36]:

Yeah, at Bobby is what we call her. Grandma sent out there cooking all day long. We would usually start the day before. So the pasta or the polenta, whatever gravy or red sauce we were making.

Janice Person [00:04:47]:

Glad you’re calling it.

Zane Dearien [00:04:49]:

Absolutely. So, you know, if it was the squirrels that we hunted, the rabbit, or if it was beef or chicken, whatever we had laying around that we could make into it is what we did. But the camaraderie and the loudness of everybody there, the energy that you felt as soon as you showed up was astronomical. And it was something that I always looked forward to as a kid and something that, as I got older and as the family grew, we stopped doing a lot of and we missed a lot of it. I started missing that. And so growing up and then starting to think about what I was going to do the rest of my life, it kind of was like, I had to sit and think, what do I want to do? What makes me happy? And all the time, every single time every thought ended well, I was always happiest at these moments. So lead myself to here. Like, how do I get those.

Janice Person [00:05:34]:

How do I get can you make that happen on a weekly basis?

Zane Dearien [00:05:37]:

Yes. And so it was being a chef, didn’t know that’s what I wanted to do. I for sure couldn’t boil water before I started cooking. Kraft macaroni cheese was the pinnacle of my culinary existence. Before culinary school. Besides stirring the pot of polenta or.

Janice Person [00:05:52]:

The gravy and anything somebody else had cooked, you could stir it.

Zane Dearien [00:05:55]:

Oh, I could nail that. Yeah. I was the stirrer in the family. You give me a big pot of polenta, I’d stir that sucker for 8 hours nonstop if I had to. Yeah. Became mechanical.

Janice Person [00:06:04]:

The reward of the polenta meant you could stir.

Zane Dearien [00:06:07]:

Exactly. So I knew I got to eat it at the other end of the tunnel. And the homemade ice cream machines. I was the guy that had to sit there and crank it.

Janice Person [00:06:13]:

Yeah.

Zane Dearien [00:06:14]:

I was just a little workhorse. That’s okay.

Janice Person [00:06:16]:

Yeah. So one of the things that really surprised me, you said you went and were fishing for the summer in Alaska when you were a teenager.

Zane Dearien [00:06:23]:

Yes. So as a birthday gift, one of my dad’s business partners, Howard Sanders, he went up there in the 70s, acquired property, fishing rights and all that stuff that he had to do. So growing up, he always told me or my dad, hey, when Zane turns 16, I’m going to take him up here that summer. We’re going to get him a license, we’re going to get him the permit, all that stuff, set him up, and he’s going to go. He passed right before that summer, but his son Brian took me up there, and it was instant love. Right. Hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. Scariest thing for my mother to let her 16 year old go up to Alaska and start fishing with some grown men in stranger things. Nobody goes to Alaska because we’ve watched the deadliest. Yeah, it’s full of some unwanted people. But it was awesome. It was a life experience. So that kind of set in stone, like what it meant to be a part of food greater than the grocery store.

Janice Person [00:07:20]:

Okay.

Zane Dearien [00:07:21]:

That started my love and my affection for farming, food production, production as a whole. What does it mean? Because it’s easy to go to a store and buy something in a plastic wrapper, open it and not know where it came from. Not even know that it has a head, that it has gills that had a heartbeat or whatever you’re into. It was in soil and it had roots, all that stuff. Like, I didn’t understand that growing up because I just knew it was around. Right, right. But knowing that the hard work and the lives, the danger, the amount of money, the effort that people put into this stuff was a reward for me to understand what that meant to bring the food to the table. And that was kind of like the first stepping stone of my career.

Janice Person [00:08:00]:

I mean, it’s hard work.

Zane Dearien [00:08:02]:

Oh, absolutely. Staying up for four or five, six days at a time, no sleep. You’re out there in big waves. You’re out there getting chased down by grizzlies. That did happen one time. Unreal stuff. Like, you can’t write a book about it. You see the deadliest sketch. That’s pretty spot on. It is not for the weary, it’s not for the faint heart. But it’s one of those things once you commit to it, you have to do it. If not, you’re going to be eaten up by something. If it’s your people on the boat with you, a bear, whatever, like, something’s going to happen and it ain’t going to be good. Mom’s going to be upset.

Janice Person [00:08:30]:

You carry your weight.

Zane Dearien [00:08:31]:

Yeah, exactly. Absolutely.

Janice Person [00:08:33]:

I love it. So your culinary tour got out of, like, a quick version. We don’t have to go in detail, but what are some of the things after you finally went to culinary school, you finally figured, maybe this is it?

Zane Dearien [00:08:47]:

Yeah. So culinary school in Seattle kind of solidified. All right, this is the no going back now. You spent some money on it.

Janice Person [00:08:53]:

You spent time you bought the right knives.

Zane Dearien [00:08:55]:

Yeah, that was all things I learned. But what I realized after that was like, all right, I wanted to do Live Fire. I wanted to do something that involved Live Fire cooking like a caveman, Renaissance esque, because I believe in working with your hands to quiet your mind kind of thing. And then what also was important was, to be honest, was the farming. Like, where is my food coming from that I’m about to feed people, even from a line cook? Although I wasn’t in charge of the menu, I wasn’t in charge of anything besides my station. It was very important to know what was being on my station and where we’re getting it from. Do I cut it the right way? Do I make sure that I’m not serving something that’s old or expired or making sure that we’re using the product before it gets to that point, so that way the time is not lost on these farmers? Yeah, we paid for the product. It’s ours now.

Janice Person [00:09:41]:

They don’t have to worry about it.

Zane Dearien [00:09:42]:

But it’s also, like, treating with respect to what they do. It was important for me to find those restaurants. So that would be the Hive in Bentonville at 21 C. Gray and Dudley at 21 C in Nashville. Husk Nashville for Sean Brock and then finally to now, I think, is my last hurrah with the restaurant group before I open something on my own. Who knows? But I hope it lasts for a lot longer is what Gerard crafted. Niche food group, honestly, is the pinnacle of that. Bringing proof is in. The pudding here in St. Louis wasn’t on the map, but he knew that there was something here. He knew that the food was here. He knew the farming was here. He just had to get people excited about it. And to see somebody do that is like, what I want to do with my story in my life. So what better way to learn than from him?

Janice Person [00:10:27]:

So the next step after Bowood, you think, or somewhere else in the niche group, maybe you’re going to open something yourself. You have that vision already.

Zane Dearien [00:10:37]:

The plan and the motions are there. As far as my thinking process, writing down this stuff, taking all the goods and bads I’ve learned from all the restaurants know it’d be amazing if Gerard is a part of it, but that’s not always the case. He has his own plan and his own things, and I hope I’m around to see a lot of his plans through and help him succeed, because it’s amazing to see. But, yeah, I definitely have something in mind and I would love for it to be in Arkansas back home with my family so they can kind of reap the rewards of my hard work and see what’s going on and be a part of that farming.

Janice Person [00:11:11]:

Do that Sunday dinner again?

Zane Dearien [00:11:13]:

Yeah, absolutely. Bring that.

Janice Person [00:11:15]:

That’s a pretty cool idea.

Zane Dearien [00:11:16]:

Share that love and that feeling you get smelling the food and hearing all the loud conversation going on.

Janice Person [00:11:22]:

Yeah, I love it. I love it. So help me understand how you connect the food production side and stuff here at Bowood.

Zane Dearien [00:11:30]:

The connection as far as, like, food and what we do is on a weekly basis, talking to our farmers that we have access to that are growing things for us, making sure that so right now, we’re using, like farmstead and eat here and a few other farms that we have single handed growing, like okra and peppers for continuing the conversations with them so that they aren’t growing things that nobody’s using. They’re growing stuff that we need. We use Black Hawk Farms out of Kentucky for our beef solely. They’re black angus and a five American wagyu. Only ones in the country doing that. So we have access to that, understanding what cuts they’re available, like making sure we’re using that just overall the availability and doing what’s in season for the farmers and not going out of their realm.

Janice Person [00:12:19]:

Right.

Zane Dearien [00:12:19]:

So the seasonality, like, if they’re not able to grow tomatoes, then we’re not using tomatoes. If they’re growing really gorgeous. Okra.

Janice Person [00:12:25]:

We’re going to find a way to use it.

Zane Dearien [00:12:27]:

Yeah, it’s understanding where they’re at and what’s best for them and their land and then being able to translate that into our menu. And so far it seemed to be going over very well.

Janice Person [00:12:37]:

So does that sometimes get complicated, though, because summers don’t always go as expected. Right. Like weather and people can’t get anything planted.

Zane Dearien [00:12:47]:

Yeah. So, I mean, this past year, this is my first, basically farming season in the Midwest. We had the drought, we had a bit of a flooding so the crops were very high and low, high and low, high and low. So the consistency factors always is the main factor. What are we going to be able to get on a consistent basis? Because that is the goal at the end of the day in a restaurant, is consistency. And I believe that to be true with farming as well. They’re trying to grow the most consistent crops day after day and harvest week after week. So that being flexible in that it’s like if their harvest isn’t great at that point. All right, where are we going outside of them to subsidize some of the product that we’re getting? Because you don’t necessarily want to turn your menu over every single day, as awesome as that sounds, because you may not have the guest return or you may not have the satisfaction every day.

Janice Person [00:13:41]:

The consistency, doing a seasonal menu, what all goes into that then?

Zane Dearien [00:13:46]:

Seasonality is well, I mean, obviously within certain month periods of growing seasons, it goes into discussion with the farmers. So what we’re doing now, we’re not really talking about now. We’re talking about what are they about to start growing and harvesting in November?

Janice Person [00:14:00]:

You’re talking to people like me on social media about what you’re doing now.

Zane Dearien [00:14:04]:

Honestly, it’s a team effort. It’s not just the farmers. It’s like, what are you experiencing out there in the real world? What is the next person experience? Who are they visiting? Who are they talking to? So it’s about a group collective conversation about where we’re at, how do we get there? Constant revolving door of ingredients, but making sure. So say if we’re having trout on the dish, what’s the next step versus what our trout set is now? How do we incorporate the same farmers and what they’re going to go to next? How do we stay relevant in that?

Janice Person [00:14:36]:

I have to tell you, the tomato season was blowing up at Bowood yes. This year.

Zane Dearien [00:14:41]:

Yeah, it did. It came in hard and it came in fast. I think one of the biggest takeaways was most people had never had a tomato sandwich up here, which blew my.

Janice Person [00:14:50]:

Mind, which is so weird to me.

Zane Dearien [00:14:52]:

Right. Just plain brioche, white bread, dukes, mayonnaise, tomatoes, salt and pepper, and you’re done. And it literally took it west end by storm. And I liked it getting a little.

Janice Person [00:15:03]:

Southern in the house. Right. Far from south.

Zane Dearien [00:15:07]:

No, it’s not. We’re just very minuscule taken away from it. But, yeah, it was great to see and just the simplicity of that. Right. So the farmers growing a really great tomato, putting all the effort into the seeds that they are planting, the variety of their planting, where it’s planted, what’s growing next to it, taking that and putting it on a plate with nothing more than some maldon salt, vinegar and oil. And the herbs that we’re growing here at the nursery or at the restaurant, that’s all we’re doing. To it. It’s nothing crazy, but it’s taking what people at the perfect time, at the perfect place and putting it in the perfect moment for people to enjoy. It’s easy to overcomplicate things, but it’s very hard to keep things simple and delicious.

Janice Person [00:15:54]:

So when you bring something in seasonally, how long does the season usually like? Is there a typical two?

Zane Dearien [00:16:06]:

That would be a good that would be nice. Yeah, that would be niche. But it’s wild up here. The tomato season that happens in the Midwest is much longer and later than it is in the south. Like the south, you get about June, July, and that’s about it here.

Janice Person [00:16:21]:

Then it’s too hot.

Zane Dearien [00:16:22]:

Yeah. And all of a sudden up here, it’s like we had them in June and we still have them. Which has faded off our menu now because we’re coming into later part of the season. But like, for peaches up here, peaches down there were a lot earlier, but they’re a lot later up here. But the window up here was very short for peaches because we had the cold, the wind, the rain, the hail, and it destroyed the crop. So now you build this peach waffle, the peach desserts, all these things with peaches on it, peach vinegars, peach panzanella. Like, you’re planting all these things around.

Janice Person [00:16:54]:

Crazy.

Zane Dearien [00:16:54]:

Yeah. And then it’s like, all right, a storm comes through. Hail damage. All right, now what are we doing? Instead of know that was a short window. Now we’re into plums and stone like nectarines, and now we’re already on the butt end of that. So now we’re thinking about apples. Apples. Right now we just got a good load of Gala apples. Jonathan apples from Eckerts and then Farmstead Foods next across the river. Squash, fall squash. We’re getting in the Cinderellas delicatas. Butternut, acorn, all those sweet sugary, roastable, pureeable, raw applications that you can have with that. That’s where we’re headed to. Now, plums grapes are still we have a few weeks left of grapes. Purple seedless grapes.

Janice Person [00:17:35]:

Yeah. So people who’ve never been to this restaurant, what are some of the kinds of offerings you guys have? I mean, I can tell you what I eat here, but I think the.

Zane Dearien [00:17:47]:

Biggest surprise and the most welcoming thing that we do is our variety of vegetarian and vegan options. I am a Southern guy at heart, born and raised. Will cook the crap out of chicken, pigs and all.

Janice Person [00:18:01]:

I could see you eating some bacon.

Zane Dearien [00:18:03]:

Yeah, like all that. I love that. I adore it. But the idea of we’re in the middle of flowers and plants and all these things that you can buy. So to take that aspect of things and put it onto the menu in vegetable form has been the greatest accomplishment.

Janice Person [00:18:20]:

Not every meal has to be meat centered.

Zane Dearien [00:18:22]:

No, absolutely not. Right now, one of our biggest sellers and people that are excited about is our vegan cauliflower entree at night. It’s just a simple white bean hummus, a whole half a head of cauliflower that’s been roasted in African spices topped with pickled raisins, salsa verde, and some fried chickpeas. It’s meaty, it’s vegetarian, it’s vegan, it hits all the spots. It’s spicy.

Janice Person [00:18:46]:

I was going to say it’s got good flavor to it.

Zane Dearien [00:18:48]:

Yeah. So things like that that we operate on and do on a daily basis is kind of like the surprise factor, I think, here, because you can go anywhere right now and get a steak. You can go anywhere and get a chicken breast. You can go anywhere and get this stuff, but you can’t go everywhere and get a good vegan or vegetarian dish.

Janice Person [00:19:05]:

That’S completely you have a few things on the menu. Folks could get other places. So if somebody’s not as food adventurous, they could certainly find things. Like today, I just had a burger because I was really hungry and I needed the meat. I think I needed red meat, maybe.

Zane Dearien [00:19:21]:

Absolutely.

Janice Person [00:19:21]:

Because something just really stung me on it.

Zane Dearien [00:19:24]:

It’s not an overly done burger either.

Janice Person [00:19:26]:

It’s really well, it’s put together just with the right proportions of things. But I think it is this great mixture of things. So it can pull you out of your food comfort zone if you’re willing to go.

Zane Dearien [00:19:40]:

Yeah, absolutely. That’s one thing that we talked about with the chef team here and with Gerard. It’s like, what can we build that is people that they know that they are safe with, that they are welcome. All right, I can go there, I can get a chicken breast, and I know it’s going to be good every time, but if I’m feeling adventurous, they have those options.

Janice Person [00:20:03]:

The brunch menu really gets exciting.

Zane Dearien [00:20:06]:

Oh, it is. It’s one of the things that we’ve kind of toned back a little bit on to focus on the consistency part of things. But we’ve hit our stride, and I think that with fall coming up, we’re going to have a lot of fun new additions to the menu. Yeah, that’s another thing. Like, you can get cacho, pepe eggs, scrambled eggs with some black pepper pecorino. Great every time. But then you have this overly gluttonous Joe Beef esque French bread pudding or French toast style bread pudding that you can’t I mean, it’s almost two pounds in itself. Mountain of whipped cream, beautiful Canadian maple syrup. It’s gluttony to the tea. And then you have something as delicate as a local trout riet with some ritz crackers and a lemon or a good killed lettuce. We’re hitting all the marks of the hey, I want to be rambunctious and live life to its fullest. And you get the French toast, the pancakes, the waffles, or you’re like, hey, I’m just feeling low key and dainty, and I just want to have a few scrambled eggs and some salad. Like all that stuff you can do here. And we do it well. We’re happy about it and everything. We’re still sourcing. All that stuff local too. You eating here or us cooking this food is ultimately putting the money back into the ecosystem and the economy for the farms and stuff here, which is that is important. That is what we’re about.

Janice Person [00:21:26]:

Yeah.

Zane Dearien [00:21:26]:

Without them, we don’t have a good restaurant.

Janice Person [00:21:28]:

Right. So how would you determine a new like, if you needed something new, how would you find the right farmer for it?

Zane Dearien [00:21:40]:

Well, there’s a lot of ways. A people like yourself yeah, well, I mean, honestly, that’s an easy way to start.

Janice Person [00:21:45]:

Right. I can get you to low down on some horseradish across the river all day long. All day long. Right.

Zane Dearien [00:21:51]:

But not oddly enough. I think something that most people don’t understand is that farmers are a close knit community. Even though they’re competing against one another, they’re also right there next to each other to help each other out. So if I need a specific pepper, like, I’m just thinking of something random, a specific pepper grown. And I know that the farmer that I use grows, like, bell peppers, banana peppers, Anaheims, but I’m wanting something off kilt. But he may not have the space in his farm or his mix or that particular varietal might need to take something else that they don’t have, but they know a farmer down the road that can do it that’s also looking for something to plant.

Janice Person [00:22:28]:

Yeah.

Zane Dearien [00:22:29]:

So it’s like that kind of availability and knowledge that they carry. And honestly, nowadays with social media, you throw something out there, people are willing to give you their opinion on things. Yeah, exactly. So the information is there at your fingertips. You just got to know how to find it. But the best way is to start, like start with the farmers.

Janice Person [00:22:49]:

The network that you currently have, the.

Zane Dearien [00:22:51]:

Local farmers market, Tower Grove is I live over there by that going are there. All that information is there. It’s just you got to ask.

Janice Person [00:22:58]:

Yeah.

Zane Dearien [00:22:58]:

And they’re willing to do it, especially if it gets them in the community, in the spotlight, because their publicity helps us.

Janice Person [00:23:06]:

So do you feature the farmers on the menu sometimes?

Zane Dearien [00:23:09]:

Yeah, absolutely. That’s something that we do, looking around.

Janice Person [00:23:14]:

We’re out on the patio, and it’s pretty quiet, which is why we’re here. We will louden up the entire restaurant. If the two of us were inside, it would just be bouncing off the wall.

Zane Dearien [00:23:25]:

Just sit around and watch.

Janice Person [00:23:26]:

But entertainment next time we’ll sell.

Zane Dearien [00:23:29]:

Exactly. But yeah, like the main important part. So we’re about to start back up with Hawthorne honey. They grow local. His name’s scott. We just talked to him yesterday. We’re actually going to bring on the Tower Grove area code of his honey, something that I’d never put in perspective of honey. Right. So he taught me yesterday.

Janice Person [00:23:48]:

Learned the zip code?

Zane Dearien [00:23:49]:

Yeah. So he brought in five different zip codes, and we landed on the Tower Grove one specifically, 63110, because the amount of flowers and floral, you can literally smell what it is like walking through Tower Grove, walking through the botanical gardens. You smell it in the honey. Right.

Janice Person [00:24:08]:

And Tower Grove smells nice for people who haven’t been there.

Zane Dearien [00:24:10]:

Yeah. I mean, it is actually very lovely. I walk out there at night.

Janice Person [00:24:13]:

It’s a great park in that area and all that.

Zane Dearien [00:24:15]:

Yeah. So, like little things like that. So on the menu to be know, whatever the menu description with Hawthorne honey. So it gets them out there. So then next time when people come in like, oh, that was really good, where do I get it?

Janice Person [00:24:26]:

Well, hawthorne honey.

Zane Dearien [00:24:28]:

Yeah, hawthorne honey or beef or farmstead eat here or any one off farmers that we use, double star farms or Eckerts apples. We’re happy to promote them because they’re the reason why we have such good flavors, such good dishes, and we’re even.

Janice Person [00:24:45]:

Open and you’re always having these conversations with them because farmers are supplying you on a regular basis anyway, right? Three, four times a I noticed. You know, not that I creeped your social media or anything, but you may have gone to Eckards recently to check out Eckards.

Zane Dearien [00:25:01]:

Yeah. Went out there. They asked us out, and we did a little pop up for their hard side of pressing, I guess. First time I’ve been to Eckerd’s, heard about it. It’s like an orchard disneyland. It’s got everything you could want to do at an know, they got their tap room, they got their tasting room, they got their grocery store, they got their pumpkin picking, they got their apple picking. They got all sorts of stuff.

Janice Person [00:25:22]:

Yeah.

Zane Dearien [00:25:22]:

Clothes if you want it.

Janice Person [00:25:23]:

You missed strawberry picking then, because that was way early in I know. That’s the thing.

Zane Dearien [00:25:27]:

I didn’t know about that. And then they have pig races. Come to find out. So I will be attending a pig race out there at some time. Why not, right?

Janice Person [00:25:34]:

He’s got this dreamy look in his eye as he talked about pig races.

Zane Dearien [00:25:38]:

What if I was like the chairperson? That got to be the pig know.

Janice Person [00:25:42]:

The honorary calling of the you’re from Arkansas.

Zane Dearien [00:25:49]:

I know how this goes.

Janice Person [00:25:50]:

All right, let’s turn a totally different direction because you and I could talk pretty much all day. It’s clear. Tell me about the must haves. If you’re going to put together herbs, like, behind you, I’m going to take a picture and put it on the website. Behind you are herbs growing so that I could have fresh herbs in my meal.

Zane Dearien [00:26:11]:

The ones that personally, that I would pick Sherville mint or not cilantro? Sherville mint, chives, parsley and thyme. And if you really feeling wild, lemon balm. Yeah, I think.

Janice Person [00:26:26]:

No, Basil. You didn’t use the word basil.

Zane Dearien [00:26:28]:

Okay. Yes, basil is just a given. Yes, I use too much basil, probably.

Janice Person [00:26:35]:

I’m like passing.

Zane Dearien [00:26:36]:

Sorry, Gerard. I. Meant basil. I promise. I promise you. Basil’s in there. We have literally half the garden up top is all basil. Thai, purple, opal, all that stuff.

Janice Person [00:26:47]:

All the different kinds of basil.

Zane Dearien [00:26:48]:

Yeah, that’s just a given. I try to stay away from rosemary just personally, just because it carries such a punch. It has its applications. It does smell good.

Janice Person [00:26:58]:

Smaller amounts, yeah.

Zane Dearien [00:26:59]:

But like thyme, that gives you your woodiness, but it also can be delicate. Chives. It gives you that garnishing flavor. It gives you the raw onion flavor. Parsley. Well, it can go on everything, livens things up. It gives you the freshness mint. Has its I literally will tear mint on everything.

Janice Person [00:27:17]:

And it works well, the bojito.

Zane Dearien [00:27:20]:

Yeah, it really does. I’m not going to lie. Just a little fresh mint goes a long way on everything. Basil again, basil, thyme, parsley, chives, and Sherville are literally in everything that I cook.

Janice Person [00:27:31]:

Okay.

Zane Dearien [00:27:32]:

Shervel brings that delicate Annie’s flavor that most people are unfamiliar with. It’s beautiful to look at. Little bunches of curly little pods of we don’t actually grow it up here yet. That’s our new next iteration of the garden we’ll have.

Janice Person [00:27:49]:

You weren’t here when enough of the planning was done for the yeah, I.

Zane Dearien [00:27:53]:

Received what was planted up there now, but I promise you, next planting is going to be epic of herb proportions. But, yeah, that’s what I would do. Also think of lavender. Lavender is good to have out there. A for color. That’s a good pollinator. So you attract a lot of good bees and other butterflies that pollinate as well. That, to me, is a perfect well.

Janice Person [00:28:16]:

And lavender lives on year after year. Yes, some of those do, some don’t.

Zane Dearien [00:28:21]:

Some are some don’t.

Janice Person [00:28:22]:

Yeah, I need to plant every year.

Zane Dearien [00:28:24]:

But think of that whenever you’re planting something. That’s what I always try to think is, like, how can I pollinate have something that’s aromatic to also smell if I’m not using it, but also help grow the other herbs that I’m using a lot of.

Janice Person [00:28:37]:

Right.

Zane Dearien [00:28:37]:

Because when you’re cutting and growing, you need them to keep continuing, but if you don’t have any kind of pollination happening around it, you’re only going to use them as far as you can.

Janice Person [00:28:46]:

I think fresh herbs is such an easy way to up your home cooking game.

Zane Dearien [00:28:50]:

100% away all the dried stuff, far.

Janice Person [00:28:54]:

Too many people overlook it. I mean, dried cinnamon is a good way to go. You’re going to want dried cinnamon, right? Like, there’s some of them you’re not going to be able to grow depending on where you are. But, man, I mean, it makes such a difference if you use fresh spices.

Zane Dearien [00:29:08]:

How often is it and I’m guilty myself. I’m like, all right, I’m making something at home. I don’t have a garden yet, but I’m going to go to the store and buy a whole bunch of parsley or one of those little plastic things of basil or mint or sage or something, and I use one out of it, and then it just sits in.

Janice Person [00:29:25]:

The drawer until it goes bad.

Zane Dearien [00:29:27]:

And then I’m like, oh, yeah, I forgot that was in there. But if you’re growing this stuff, you can take what you need, but you’re also providing something to the ecosystem as far as bees goes.

Janice Person [00:29:37]:

And in the winter, you can bring some of them indoors just with a little light. Yeah, just a little light on it.

Zane Dearien [00:29:43]:

Yeah. I mean, honestly, I do I don’t hate having plants, especially good smelling herbs in my house. That does not hurt me.

Janice Person [00:29:50]:

Pollinators won’t come in the house, hopefully, but you’ll be fine.

Zane Dearien [00:29:55]:

Set them outside on the warmer days.

Janice Person [00:29:57]:

Exactly. What about must haves in the kitchen? Like for cooking and things?

Zane Dearien [00:30:03]:

As far as cooking things go, olive oil is a must for me. Extra virgin olive oil, really good. Buy the best you can, but honestly.

Janice Person [00:30:11]:

You can also use some other stuff just whenever.

Zane Dearien [00:30:14]:

The California olive oil that you get at the store is really good. Good kosher salt, but really good sea flaky salt. Maldon is the one I use. JD’s out of Oregon is a really good one. They do make a really good product. Fresh cracked pepper. I don’t use a lot of pepper, but I only finish dishes with Mean.

Janice Person [00:30:35]:

How do you not use a lot of one of my nieces is like turning the podcast off. Keep it on Georgia, you’ll get better.

Zane Dearien [00:30:41]:

I think that stemmed from my time with Matt McClure. He was one of those that was like, hey, pepper is a garnish, not a seasoning attribute. Because in culinary school, people would really throw that pepper in there and then all of a sudden, that’s all you taste.

Janice Person [00:30:56]:

You can use it at the end.

Zane Dearien [00:30:57]:

Yes. That finishes the dish with it. It’s not something I just keep in there. Everything mushroom pellets, if you don’t know what that is, it’s an Asian you can get at PanAsia. It’s like mushroom season you get on Amazon.

Janice Person [00:31:10]:

Yeah.

Zane Dearien [00:31:10]:

For, umami and that’s it. Poultry, vegetables, it doesn’t matter. Throw a little bit of that in there and it’s wow. Green chili flakes are always in my staples. Vinegar. I make my own vinegar, so I have a lot of that around. But if you’re going to buy vinegar, like apple cider vinegar is easy to have it’s cross. You can use it on all sorts of things. Rice wine vinegar, use it on all sorts of things. Balsamic. If you’re going to buy balsamic, buy.

Janice Person [00:31:38]:

The buy Modina splurge.

Zane Dearien [00:31:40]:

Just yeah, do yourself a favor. Actually, Diatalia here in town, they have a good supply of it. You can walk in there and grab it or get it on there online. Not a sponsor, but little things like that, like acid, lemons, limes. Always have those around.

Janice Person [00:31:59]:

Yeah.

Zane Dearien [00:31:59]:

And if you can have a lime tree, citrus trees in your backyard. Good for you. I don’t have a spot for that, or I would now.

Janice Person [00:32:07]:

I’m thinking about the deck. I could roll it out there on back end. Yeah, they do really good thinking. Yeah.

Zane Dearien [00:32:14]:

And one food for thought, I learned this last year. Citrus trees like to grow in pears, like swans. They like to touch. They like to excite each other and grow. I didn’t know that because I tried to grow a lemon tree one year, buy itself a Meyer lemon tree. And then a guy that I knocks Finale out of Birmingham, Alabama, he owns foods like which is a purveyor. He was like, he went out to California, learned from lemons. He learned from an old bonsai tree guy from Japan. He came over to California and started doing all this stuff and he’s like, they want to grow in couples. They want to grow. They want to touch, they want to feel.

Janice Person [00:32:50]:

They want to know somebody else is out there.

Zane Dearien [00:32:52]:

And they said they grow. And next thing I knew I bought a yeah, put them side by side, flourished there. You yeah, but I don’t have those trees anymore.

Janice Person [00:33:01]:

But moved too many times.

Zane Dearien [00:33:03]:

Yeah. Wherever they go, they stay wherever I’m at. So I just haven’t had time to get them going here in St. Louis.

Janice Person [00:33:09]:

All right, so what about tools in the kitchen that you also think everybody needs?

Zane Dearien [00:33:14]:

Everybody needs a good chef’s knife. If you don’t know what that means, it’s the longer, like eight to twelve inch, one of those a bread knife and you’re good. I truly don’t think that you need good for you. If you want to buy the whole box set knife block thing, that’s great. But you’ll find that you don’t use them all, they look awesome. But just buy a really good knife. Try to buy it from local, if you can, somebody that’s hand making them support that. So that way you can spend $300 on a knife and get one good one versus spending a lot of money on other things. So bread knife, a chef’s knife, a paring knife to do a little small work, a good set of pans. And you really need probably one stockpot, like a pasta pot. So you can cook pastas or make stock in it. A good twelve inch saute pan and an air fryer. Get an air fryer.

Janice Person [00:34:07]:

I would not have expected a chef to tell me I need an air fryer. But I got one.

Zane Dearien [00:34:13]:

I have a Ninja Foodie. So it’s a pressure cooker, air fryer, sear and all that. I don’t hardly cook in pans anymore. I literally solely cook out of an air fryer.

Janice Person [00:34:22]:

That’s at home. As a home cook.

Zane Dearien [00:34:24]:

As a home cook.

Janice Person [00:34:24]:

Here, you cook in the kitchen.

Zane Dearien [00:34:26]:

There’s lots fire. Yeah. It’s too much cast irons. On that note, I truly believe you need a good set of cast irons. Buy what you can. If you can afford a really good one, buy one. They are heirlooms. They will never go back. I have my some. Like, my grandma hasn’t given me mine.

Janice Person [00:34:44]:

Yet, because she’s like, well, my grandmother’s.

Zane Dearien [00:34:46]:

No longer with So, but I’m happily counting down the days that she stays alive, but also the days that I get the cast iron. I’m really looking forward to that. If those could talk.

Janice Person [00:34:56]:

I have some video and photos of Peter Mickelson who works here. He taught a class on cast iron cooking over an open flame next door.

Zane Dearien [00:35:05]:

There’s a the original nonstick.

Janice Person [00:35:07]:

Yeah, it’s so good. It’s so good. And so many people had so many questions for him on, like, really, you just wipe it out and then cook something else? And he’s like, I do.

Zane Dearien [00:35:17]:

I was only about to say that. I can’t tell you how many cast irons I own personally from finding on the sidewalk or people letting go because it rusted or they had gunk on it, and they’re like, oh, it’s ruined. Yeah, I’m glad you think it’s ruined, because now I get a free cast iron. All it takes is a little TLC, just a little salt, rub it with some oil, and then bake it. Keep cleaning it. Yeah. It’s the original nonstick. So when you’re done cooking something, wipe it out and keep going. Yeah, I mean, sauces searing, everything baking in it. I love cast iron.

Janice Person [00:35:49]:

Oh, like a pineapple upside down cake in a cast iron skillet.

Zane Dearien [00:35:54]:

So I have a wood fired grill in my backyard along with a little pizza oven, but I will literally cook out. If I’m not in the air fryer, I cook outside. Like, if I’m off and I’m home all day, I’ll cook. I’ll light a fire out there, and I literally will cook all day long.

Janice Person [00:36:07]:

Niche, invite me over. I’ll be happy to come.

Zane Dearien [00:36:09]:

Absolutely. Theodore’s out there.

Janice Person [00:36:11]:

All right.

Zane Dearien [00:36:11]:

Mountain dog.

Janice Person [00:36:13]:

I’ve seen the dog on Instagram, too.

Zane Dearien [00:36:15]:

Famous in Nashville.

Janice Person [00:36:16]:

Did I forget to ask you something really important about what you’re doing here?

Zane Dearien [00:36:20]:

One of the most important things I think that we’re doing here at Bowood by Niche specifically, as you mentioned, Gerard’s got a lot of people doing a lot of good things in the group. But the one thing that we’re really trying to do here at Bowood specifically is reintroduce what neighborhood dining is. Right. What is a neighborhood what does that collective mean?

Janice Person [00:36:41]:

If I lived down the street, I would be here every day.

Zane Dearien [00:36:44]:

What does that mean to you? What is a neighborhood restaurant? That’s what we’re trying to encompass right now. We have brossery. Just a few streets.

Janice Person [00:36:51]:

I love brossery.

Zane Dearien [00:36:53]:

Last 13 years right. Or something like that, that they’ve been.

Janice Person [00:36:57]:

Going, it doesn’t matter what I order there. I’m always so freaking happy.

Zane Dearien [00:37:00]:

You always feel like your family, like you feel like you belong there. It doesn’t matter what time of day, who you are. You get treated with respect, you get treated well. The food’s amazing. I literally walk out of there too full all the time. Like, I need to start getting a wheelchair or a wheelbarrow. Somebody pushed me around. But we’re really trying to bring the focus of farm to table, if that’s still what people talk about. But celebrating the farmers, celebrating the neighborhood, like, what do people want here?

Janice Person [00:37:29]:

There’s a feeling of community when it comes to the group.

Zane Dearien [00:37:33]:

Yeah, that’s what we’re really trying to strive for. And then as far as the kitchen and staffing goes, we’re trying to teach them, what does it mean to be a neighborhood restaurant, what does it mean to be farm to table? Why do we support the people? We support these younger cooks. Nowadays, you have the Instagram, you have the Food Network, you have all that stuff. They see it as, I’m going to be a chef and I’m going to be on TV, and nothing’s horrible and ugly and nasty about the restaurant world, but in reality, it’s all ugly and nasty. But it’s a beautiful thing. Nobody wants to see how the sausage is made, they just want to eat the sausage. So teaching that and teaching the respect of the ingredients in each other, that’s important too. It’s like nowadays, this world that we live in, and it’s important to be there for one another. And there’s no really better way to do that than over a food, over a table, over a drink.

Janice Person [00:38:24]:

That’s how people, that creation of community is so easy. And I love that you guys also do some neat pairings with other chefs.

Zane Dearien [00:38:34]:

Yeah. So that’s another thing.

Janice Person [00:38:35]:

Lauren Malik and them at Balkan tree box. Yes, love that.

Zane Dearien [00:38:39]:

We’re looking forward to doing a big so that’s another trying. Once October happens and we get settled some more, we’re going to start trying to do a lot more chef collaborations out here on the patio, literally. As you see, this is the perfect venue for Chef Collab kitchen’s right there. You’re smelling the aromas. So we’re looking forward to doing one with them and a few other restaurants that we’ve kind of gotten. We’re in the talks about the dates haven’t been set yet, but it’s like celebrating again, celebrating St. Louis, celebrating the community, celebrating what we’re doing. Because we all, at the end of the day, we’re all buying from the same farmers, we’re all doing somewhat the same thing, but our own style. But when you get to come together and meld that we’re supporting each other, they’re all the way out there in Webster Grove.

Janice Person [00:39:23]:

We’re out here all the way out there in Webster.

Zane Dearien [00:39:25]:

It seems like forever, but it’s really not that far. But for me, it seems like forever. But we’re here, but we’re two different places, but we’re in it for the same reasons.

Janice Person [00:39:34]:

Yeah.

Zane Dearien [00:39:35]:

Happiness, food farmers.

Janice Person [00:39:37]:

What more could you ask? Fresh food served in incredible ways. Yes, it’s perfect.

Zane Dearien [00:39:43]:

Every day always changing and like the positive. Yeah, it’s like we’re growing. Wintertime is right on the corner. You’re going to be braised meats. Comfort food. What makes you happy?

Janice Person [00:39:53]:

Comfort food.

Zane Dearien [00:39:54]:

Right now we have the Sunday part.

Janice Person [00:39:57]:

Of the Sunday fried chicken. Yeah, I get the emails, Zane. I read them all.

Zane Dearien [00:40:01]:

That stems from my family. That was the Sunday supper. We did fried chicken and spaghetti every Sunday. That was it. You got a leg and a thigh and a big mountain pile of red sauce or gravy or whatever we cooked up and you ate it. So that was like my contribution to this is like bringing that like, again, bringing that neighborhood atmosphere. Like, where do you go for Sundays?

Janice Person [00:40:22]:

Yeah.

Zane Dearien [00:40:22]:

Bunch of strangers coming together, eating some fried chicken and mashed potatoes. Ain’t nothing wrong with that. If you’re not happy, then are you ever going to be happy? What is wrong with yeah, I just don’t get it.

Janice Person [00:40:34]:

I love it. I can’t be friends at that if that’s the case. Well, before we go, I want to tell people, look you up online. Bowood by Niche is the overall for the restaurant. You have your own Instagram, your own Instagram. But the photos and stuff, if people look at either, if they’re in St. Louis, they’re going to suddenly want to get themselves motivated and get up. Come have brunch. Come have happy hour now?

Zane Dearien [00:41:00]:

Yeah, happy hour. Two to five.

Janice Person [00:41:01]:

Dinner, lunch.

Zane Dearien [00:41:02]:

We’re finally open seven days a week for dinner. So we’re open nine to nine every day. For your needs of brunch, happy hour or dinner.

Janice Person [00:41:11]:

Get it all figured out. This is the place.

Zane Dearien [00:41:13]:

We’re just getting started, too. Like, I finally got my feet wet. We’re grounded. The team’s excited. There’s a lot to come, and we’re just excited to share it with everybody. It means a lot.

Janice Person [00:41:24]:

No, it really does. I can absolutely feel the sensation coming out of here.

Zane Dearien [00:41:31]:

Oh, man. Just in the smiles. We’re lucky again. Outdoor kitchen. Everybody walks by us to come out here to sit on the patio. You don’t know what they’re going to expect when they walk out, like, for the first time seeing them, but when they’re rubbing their bellies on the way out and giving you the thumbs up or high fiving you I can’t tell you how many hugs these line cooks have been getting this week. Just from people coming here like, this is the best thing I’ve ever had, whether they mean it or not. And seeing that hug, and it’s like total strangers hugging another total stranger. I love it because of a bite of food that you cook for them. That is what we’re doing it for. That is why we live.

Janice Person [00:42:06]:

That’s what you find at Bowood by Niche. Absolutely. Thanks so much.

Zane Dearien [00:42:10]:

Absolutely. Thank you.

Janice Person [00:42:11]:

I can’t wait to now we got to get this stuff put away so I can come check out all the plants.

Zane Dearien [00:42:17]:

Yeah. Here for it.

Janice Person [00:42:19]:

As you heard right there at the end, Zane and I took a chance to go see what they were growing in terms of herbs there on the property, what they we’re using them for, even what he has plans for next. So I hope you check that out. It’ll be on the website, groundedbythefarm.com. And we’ll also put it out on social channels. Talk to you again in two weeks. Bye.

The post Transcript for Episode 412 — Interview with Chef Zane Dearien appeared first on Grounded by the Farm.

Cheese farmer made be a made up term but when you make artisan cheddar cheese from the dairy cows you milk, it seems fitting so it’s what I called David Hemme as I visited the family’s Missouri farmstead creamery!

The Hemmes are committed to “better from the beginning” and the result is incredibly tasty products with an eye on the future.  We cover all the topics from cheese curds to regenerative farming techniques being used on the farm.

(An AI-generated transcript for the episode is available as is a post on some cheese-related vocabulary.)

A History of Dairy, A New Tradition in Cheesemaking

As I talked to David, I though about the family’s rich history in dairy farming and what a major turn it was to decide to start making cheese. He shared that his family has been dairy farming for generations, both here in the US and in Germany. The Hemme family’s commitment to dairy farming had been passed down through generations, with a strong emphasis on quality and tradition.

But as his dad aged, he got out of the dairy business because of the toll it takes on a person. Eventually David got back into it later and as his children became adults, decided he had to find a way to be more profitable.

That’s where the cheesemaking came in. In a really ironic twist, David points out, that though he hadn’t tasted artisan cheese, they decided they would invest and borrow money to do it! David points out that most rural grocery stores have tended to carry the basics over the years. But with the big cities of Kansas City, Columbia and St. Louis all nearby, there were lots of speciality shops and higher-end grocers offering a range of products. Through consulting with various experts, they decided to focus on cheddar first. They have grown from there.

Now David’s sons — the Hemme Brothers — all have roles with the business and are looking forward to future generations getting involved too. Jon focuses on the crop work, Michael on the dairy cows and Nathan on the cheesemaking.

Cheddar & The Love of Curds

Since Americans love a great cheddar cheese, thats where the Hemme’s focused first. They developed a good cheddar and since then have added a range of flavors to go on top. They now have an applewood smoked, rubbed & smoked that has an unique eye appeal, black pepper chedder, espresso cheddar, spicy ghost cheddar, a mild cheddar and aged cheddar that has more of a sharp flavor.

One thing David didn’t expect, was how much people love cheese curds — the fresh curds left over after cheddar curds are pressed to become blocks. He remembers historically how creameries would sell those at the end of the day and how it wasn’t seen as desirable as it is now. Great protein source for sure and lower income people prioritized getting some at their local creamery as shifts ended. Over the years, there were fewer small producers, so fewer cheese curds available. Now, people love the convenience of a zip top bag and small pieces you can grab on the go, no knife needed. And the abundance of choices in flavors means everyone gets something to enjoy.

I was headed to Kansas City after my visit to the Hemmes’ so I loaded up my cooler (David was nice enough to gift me some incredible samples!) and with a group of friends can attest to loving all the flavors. The espresso was probably the most surprising for me in part because I’m not a coffee drinker. But the cheeses were so fantastic, one friend followed up on a tip going to The Better Cheddar and getting some of the reserve they make with the Hemmes’ cheddar!

Adding Other Cheeses & More to the Mix

Once the Hemmes got their cheddar game on point, they started adding other cheese to the mix.

Since I was there during the height of tomato season, I was excited to learn they make some amazing fresh mozzarella. I became addicted to it when I was living in New York and renting from a large Italian family who often used fresh mozzarella in whatever was coming to the table. David told me that the cows were milked Wednesday, the Mozzarella was made Thursday and was hitting farmers markets on Saturday! We had an amazing caprese platter while I was visiting friends.

There is also a German cheese called quark the Hemmes make. It’s also a fresh product which packs in the protein but takes on the flavors of whatever you mix or serve it with. It’s more of a consistency of ricotta or something so it’s sold by the jar. David tells us it’s great in the kitchen — he says it makes incredible desserts like cheesecake and with the high protein content it is very filling. He also recommends mixing in some honey and blueberry in and says you can’t help yourself. You’ll eat it by the spoonful or on ciabatta bread, crackers, whatever! That Hemme Quark has won awards among the American Cheese Society.

They also make feta cheese in both blocks and as crumbles. It’s a big hit with scrambled eggs and on that perfect spinach salad in my world!

Last year was the first year the family made a melting cheese they have been calling a pizza cheese. David says that members of the Hispanic community in Kansas City tell them it’s what they grew up with in Mexico and other Central American countries so the name may be changing but the stretchability and that great melt that holds together, those will be sticking he says!

David also has been working on smoked meats to round out those charcuterie offerings. They have a sopressesa and sweet bologna.

A Tour of the Creamery

My tour led me around the creamery and we saw the place where the cheese is made, the aging cave, and more!

Where to Find Hemme Brothers

The family focuses on Missouri primarily with them handling some distribution and working with others some too. You can find the family at two big farmers’ markets — David goes to the Overland Park farmers market in the KC metro and Nathan handles the farmers’ market in Columbia. There are specialty shops of various kinds throughout the state selling Hemme Brothers and here in St. Louis where I live, I can pick it up at my local Schnuck’s and Dierberg’s grocery stores. And as weather cools down, they will return to e-commerce too — no doubt a purchase to consider for the holiday cheeseboard you want to make!

• If you find any of the words in this episode new to you, we have a list of some cheese vocabulary and definitions in this other post.
• The Hemme Brothers website hemmebrothers.com
• Hemme Brothers on Instagram
• Hemme Brother on Facebook

Castmagic is the AI tool (link to Castmagic & give me a referral fee that doesn’t impact your cost) that helps with some of the content shared here and on social channels. It helps me do more faster since I don’t stare at a blank screen. 

The post Artisan Cheddar from the Farm: Cheese Curds & Conservation appeared first on Grounded by the Farm.

Love that we get to talk about so many different ideas in the world of cheese with our conversation with artisan cheddar cheesemaker and dairy farmer David Hemme with this episode!

1. Curds: The solid part of milk that forms during the cheesemaking process when an acid or enzyme is added.
2. Hoop: A device used in cheesemaking to shape and press the curds into a solid block.
3. Creamery: A place where milk is processed into various dairy products, such as cheese, butter, and cream.
4. Artisan cheese: High-quality cheese, typically handcrafted by skilled cheesemakers using traditional methods and often made in small batches.
5. Cheese curds: Fresh or young cheese that hasn’t matured fully and still retains a slight squeak when bitten into. These are more common with artisan batches.
6. Ciabatta: A type of bread, also known as ciabatta, with a soft and chewy texture. Oh so good too.
7. Soprasada: A type of Italian dry-cured sausage, typically made from pork.
8. Artisan pizza: A traditional, high-quality pizza made with carefully chosen ingredients and often baked in a wood-fired oven.
9. Hispanic cheese: Cheese varieties commonly consumed in Hispanic cuisines, such as queso fresco or queso blanco. They have a different type of stretch and melt qualities than cheddar.
10. Shelf-stable cheese: Cheese that is preserved using chemicals to prevent spoilage and allow for a longer shelf life without refrigeration.
11. Cereal rye: A type of grain used for cover cropping, which helps improve soil health and reduce erosion during the winter months.
12. Carbon capture: The process of capturing and storing carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere to mitigate climate change.
13. Cattle manure compost: Decomposed or partially decomposed cow manure that is used as a soil amendment to enhance fertility and nutrient content.
14. American Cheese Society: An organization dedicated to promoting and supporting the artisan and specialty cheese industry in the United States through education, networking, and advocacy.
15. Young cheddar: Cheddar cheese that hasn’t matured for an extended period, resulting in a milder flavor and softer texture.

These concepts and their definitions provide insight into the various aspects of cheesemaking, dairy farming, and food production discussed in episode 411 of Grounded by the Farm.

Castmagic is the AI tool (link to Castmagic & give me a referral fee that doesn’t impact your cost) that helps with some of the content shared here and on social channels. It helps me do more faster since I don’t stare at a blank screen. 

The post Cheese Making & Enjoyment: A Great Cheese Vocabulary List appeared first on Grounded by the Farm.

50:07

Janice Person [00:00:02]:

Food is more than just what’s on our plate. It’s the places where it’s grown. It’s the people who grow it and so much more. Join me, Janice Person, your host on Grounded by the Farm every other week as we talk about the foods we love. Everybody, I am so excited. Do you remember I went to dairy farms and then I went to a cheese shop? Well, in my world, those two things have come together, and I’m in one glorious place in the middle of Missouri. Hemme brothers, they have a dairy. They have a creamery. So I can see calves and cows and also see cheese in the same place. I’m talking to David Hemme today. Thank you so much. This is the first cheese farmer I’ve met.

David Hemme [00:00:47]:

Cheese farmer. I’ve been called a lot of things. Some I can’t repeat, but I’ve never been called a cheese farmer.

Janice Person [00:00:53]:

Really?

David Hemme [00:00:54]:

But that’s okay.

Janice Person [00:00:54]:

That’s all right. Well, I think in the space where people are wanting to go from farm to table, all they got to do.

David Hemme [00:01:00]:

Is call David Well and we’ll fix it right up. The cheese is obviously a really big part of what we do here because we’re trying to put as much value that we have on this farm and sell it as cheese instead of just base commodities.

Janice Person [00:01:19]:

Yeah.

David Hemme [00:01:19]:

And our philosophy is very simple. We’re sit just a few miles off I 70. We’re an hour away from the Kansas City metro, an hour away from Columbia, and 3 hours away from St. Louis metro.

Janice Person [00:01:35]:

Yeah.

David Hemme [00:01:35]:

And so you don’t have to be a rocket scientist, know, looking at a map of the Midwest, very few people will have the advantages that we have of having so many people. Yes. And it’s the demographic that we appeal to in those three markets. And it’s not that we want to ignore the small towns or whatnot, but they look at piece of artisan cheese and they think, why in the hell would you buy that when I could go to Aldi’s and buy it for $3.50?

Janice Person [00:02:13]:

They aren’t like me. They don’t go, I’m going to meet the guy from the cheese that I bought at my local schnooks. I’m going to meet those guys. So you can buy it sometimes at grocery stores, you can buy it at the farmers markets. You can buy it at some of the specialty shops in all of those cities.

David Hemme [00:02:31]:

But it’s an artisan product.

Janice Person [00:02:33]:

Right.

David Hemme [00:02:34]:

The term foodie isn’t new by any means.

Janice Person [00:02:37]:

Right.

David Hemme [00:02:37]:

But that really is a demographic, the foodies and people that having that face with their food, because there’s a mistrust in society, in the food chain of what are being put in, what are the ingredients?

Janice Person [00:02:58]:

Well, people don’t know, and they don’t know the process. And I called and you said, yeah, we can go through and we’ll show you what we’re doing. And sad that I’m on Friday afternoon because you’re not making cheese right now, but we saw everything else.

David Hemme [00:03:14]:

That’s true.

Janice Person [00:03:16]:

I’m one of those people. Like my family is all those people. We love good food. Right. And we’re willing to pay extra for good food. That’s a special thing for us or whatever. Right. So there’s some cheeses where I’m making grilled cheeses for my lunch. And sometimes I’m okay with a Kraft single or something, but usually I want something else because it’s like my lunch and I’m going to really get a nice sourdough bread.

David Hemme [00:03:44]:

There’s nothing wrong with just making it once a week or once a month. I’m going to spoil myself a little bit and I’m going to spend that extra $2 for a nice piece of cheese instead of just a commodity cheese. We take a lot of pride in the fact that, A, we do not dye any of our cheese. We’ve been approached by numerous retailers that want us to do a shelf stable. Well, that’s a really nice way of saying that you pump it full of chemicals that won’t go bad. Yeah, that’s what shelf stable cheese is.

Janice Person [00:04:23]:

Yeah. Those little packets that I could put in my lunchbox when I was a kid, with the cheese on one side and the crackers on the other side and the little plastic knife.

David Hemme [00:04:31]:

And there’s some brands out there also, which I’m not going to point at, but they’ve made a killing at it. They’ve done very well with shelf stable.

Janice Person [00:04:39]:

Right. So tell me, what cheeses do you do? How did you decide what cheeses?

David Hemme [00:04:45]:

Well, when we started this, we went out and we borrowed every dime for this creamery and hadn’t done so much as made one batch of cheese in the kitchen.

Janice Person [00:04:56]:

Did you take classes somewhere?

David Hemme [00:04:58]:

No, we had it.

Janice Person [00:05:00]:

That’s what you call a leap of faith.

David Hemme [00:05:03]:

Well, there’s ways to get around it. And as far as the types of cheeses, our first cheese, Ron, is a guy that owns Better Cheddar on the Plaza downtown, at the Plaza in Kansas City. And I went in there one day before he made any decision on what cheese is. And I said, Ron, if you had to put every dime that you have into making one cheese and it had to be successful, what would it be? And he thought about it for a minute and he said, there’s a lot of really good cheddars out there, but Americans love cheddar. You make a good cheddar and you’ll have a market. And he was right, because the byproduct of making cheddar is very flexible. And you have cheese curds. Yeah, we’ll make an entire our vats are 3000 pounds of milk, so they’ll make around 350 pounds of cheese curds, which is roughly equates to a lot of people 700 bags of cheese curds of that. And we will put the whole dang that because in the bags. In the bags, yeah.

Janice Person [00:06:20]:

So explain in the process what the curds are, because a lot of people have never seen cheese made. And it was mind blowing to me the first time I saw it, and I was away behind glass and everything. And I’m like, that’s what a cheese curd is. Because quite frankly, I thought maybe they were just soft pieces of cheese.

David Hemme [00:06:38]:

Well, see, there’s a lot of misconception about what it is, okay, cheese curds, if it wouldn’t be for artisan producers, there would be no cheese curds because big plants don’t make it. It started way back, 70, 80 years ago, small little cheese plants in your local town. And every little town had a little.

Janice Person [00:07:06]:

Cheddar plant in the south. Nobody knew what cheese no, because you.

David Hemme [00:07:11]:

Don’T make cheese there. Well, Missouri, Illinois, Minnesota, iowa.

Janice Person [00:07:15]:

I’m from Memphis, Tennessee. We didn’t have cheese curds for a long time.

David Hemme [00:07:19]:

You don’t because when you’re making cheese, you put to 46, 47 pounds into a quote unquote hoop. Then you press it overnight and then you have like a 42 pound block the next morning. And that’s how you sell that is how cheddar is sold is 42 pound block. Well, when you’re making cheese and you press these curds to make that block, but at the end of the day, that’s a lot. You have 27 pounds of curds left and won’t make a block. So what are you going to do with it? You discount it and working class families would come to the creameries at the end of the day.

Janice Person [00:08:03]:

That would be a beautiful way to have cheese. And it’s not aged, it’s not cheese.

David Hemme [00:08:07]:

It’s very green. And for working class families, that was a very low cost protein source for their diets. So that’s how the culture was. And then that kind of has disappeared as these cheese plants are so huge today. But there’s always been that underlying I just love cheese. Yeah, I just love cheese. And so, like I say, we just make a whole batch of cheese curds, which is fine.

Janice Person [00:08:37]:

It’s funny because a few years ago I was doing something with a group in Wisconsin and they wanted to send me a cheese package and I was going to be at my mom’s, so I said send it to my mom’s in Memphis. And cheese curds were among the things in the package. Right. And so we had to have this conversation because she doesn’t ever see them in her grocery store, hardly. Now they’re beginning to pop up a little bit here and there in different places because I think people are learning, hey, this is kind of a neat thing and people are into sustainability. They love that. You’re not wasting anything too. That’s an extra reason to buy them.

David Hemme [00:09:14]:

Well, at the end of the day, it has to be 10oz because that’s what our packaging says. So if there may be four or 5oz left over, we’ll ziploc those. You make a lot of friends when can’t sell them, so you give them away. And I see my retailers looking at me like, wonder if he has any samples. He’s given away extra. And that’s going back to why we started with cheddar. That’s why because of the versatility. And since then we’ve added a spreadable, German cheese. Nobody knows what it is.

Janice Person [00:09:52]:

It sounds like there was a computer program or something called.

David Hemme [00:09:58]:

You know, and most people don’t realize that over half the cheese consumed in Germany, Poland and Austria is cork.

Janice Person [00:10:07]:

Okay.

David Hemme [00:10:08]:

But it can be anything. Ours is actually on the dry side, which is meant for baking. You can have you’ve had it though.

Janice Person [00:10:16]:

I haven’t I’m going to have to take some with me when I go.

David Hemme [00:10:19]:

There’s really no taste. Think of what we have. There’s no taste. Think of a dry plain yogurt. Plain yogurt has no taste. Yeah, it just has the yogurty tang and then you add things to it.

Janice Person [00:10:33]:

Yeah. It’ll pick up the flavor of whatever.

David Hemme [00:10:35]:

You put in whatever you put in it. And that’s why most of what we sell goes into food service, because chefs love that component because they can do all the flavoring and go 1000 different ways.

Janice Person [00:10:47]:

Yeah. One of the ways you were telling me you do something with honey and blueberries.

David Hemme [00:10:51]:

Honey and blueberries, yeah. So you have this smooth creaminess. Think of all the different types of chevs and what they do is it’s the same principle. Chev really has no taste. So what do they do? They put this and that and whatever topping on it.

Janice Person [00:11:11]:

Pistachios and all those kind of things.

David Hemme [00:11:14]:

And all that sort of neat stuff. Now we do sell the only flavored one that we have is honey cork. And in Germany that is a thing add because well, just think of it. Okay, so what do you have there? You have pasteurized, milk and honey. And you give you the flavor profile of it’s like as decadent as cake icing.

Janice Person [00:11:42]:

Just sit there eating cake.

David Hemme [00:11:43]:

Yeah, but there’s no guilt. There’s no guilt. I mean, it’s pasteurized, milk, honey, got.

Janice Person [00:11:48]:

Some sugar, but it’s honey.

David Hemme [00:11:49]:

It’s honey? Yeah, it’s honey. You don’t really have to feel guilty about eating that. And that’s really what the arts and food is.

Janice Person [00:12:00]:

Your family got a German background or something?

David Hemme [00:12:03]:

I’m 100% German.

Janice Person [00:12:04]:

Okay.

David Hemme [00:12:04]:

Yeah. All my family tree and actually we visited seven years ago, 17, my wife and I visited the Hemme farm in Germany, their dairy farm. That does value added nice. And it’s just like just unbelievable. I mean, we walked in there and I could have a conversation with them. That farm has been in the oldest son always got the farm.

Janice Person [00:12:32]:

I love it.

David Hemme [00:12:33]:

It’s been in the farm since 15 or the farm has been in the family since 1589.

Janice Person [00:12:38]:

Wow.

David Hemme [00:12:38]:

Right now it’s 18th consecutive generation and 11 September, he’ll be here and I get to show him my dairy farm.

Janice Person [00:12:47]:

That’s really cool.

David Hemme [00:12:49]:

Yes, I’m really looking forward to it.

Janice Person [00:12:51]:

That’s really cool. I’m sure he is really looking forward.

David Hemme [00:12:54]:

He and his two oldest kids are coming over. He’s going to spend about ten days touring dairies in the United States, and this is his last stop before he goes home. But, yeah, that’s going to be super cool.

Janice Person [00:13:06]:

Oh, wow. I love it. Okay, so you do the cheddar was where he started and then you did this quart, and now what all have you done to the cheddar and what else are you doing?

David Hemme [00:13:18]:

Well, the cheddar is basically having got seven flavors of block and probably adding a couple more there because we don’t have a retail of our own yet. A couple of years we do have blueprint. I don’t know when we build that. But then this past winter, we did add a melting cheese.

Janice Person [00:13:38]:

Oh, yeah, you showed me that in there.

David Hemme [00:13:42]:

Yeah. And we didn’t know what to call it. It melts well, great stretch, good flavor. So we decided to call it pizza cheese. Well, it works great for the Italians.

Janice Person [00:13:54]:

Love that.

David Hemme [00:13:55]:

Don’t make a difference. When we thought we would at least find some artisan pizza places that would use it. And we were wrong. Not one. Not one. Because cheese to any pizza is just the low grade cheese you can buy. It is fat free, every one of them, because they’ll do the flavoring with their sauce and their toppings and all they have cheese there for is yeah. So that has been a bust as far as pizza. But we’re finding that, for instance, like Kansas City, look at the census. There’s 400,001st generation Hispanics that live in the Kansas City metro and they hate American version of Hispanic cheese.

Janice Person [00:14:53]:

Because I go to a Hispanic market myself for things, right?

David Hemme [00:14:58]:

Yeah. Because they pull the fat and then they add just enough fat to where they can sell it. But it’s just not the same because they don’t have the separation capabilities in the Hispanic countries. It’s all full fat.

Janice Person [00:15:14]:

Right.

David Hemme [00:15:15]:

And that’s what they used to. That’s what they like. And so we’re having we thought it was going to be a piece of cheese is probably going to wind up being a quesadilla. Quesadilla. Queso. Which is fine.

Janice Person [00:15:28]:

Honey, I can tell you listening to this podcast, there are crazed queso fans. Like when you’re a queso fan, you’re one for life. It’s a special space.

David Hemme [00:15:41]:

So we’ll see what road that takes us. And then this time of year, we start about the 1 May this year, and we’ll go through probably Labor Day weekend with fresh mozzarella.

Janice Person [00:15:55]:

Okay.

David Hemme [00:15:56]:

Fresh mozzarella. People ask why is the season?

Janice Person [00:15:59]:

Oh, my God.

David Hemme [00:16:01]:

And it is unbelievable. The American mindset is summer ends Labor Day weekend.

Janice Person [00:16:11]:

Yeah.

David Hemme [00:16:12]:

Capraze salads. Also end Labor Day weekend.

Janice Person [00:16:16]:

Not mine. Not in my house. Never in my house.

David Hemme [00:16:20]:

But our savory.

Janice Person [00:16:21]:

I know.

David Hemme [00:16:22]:

Absolutely. And we’re tying up an entire VAT.

Janice Person [00:16:25]:

To make a fresh mozzarella is my favorite grilled cheese.

David Hemme [00:16:29]:

Oh, yeah, it’s wonderful.

Janice Person [00:16:31]:

With, like, some pesto in there, maybe. Oh, my gosh. It’s like a savory one. Then if I put some BlackBerry jam in there, it’s a sweet. Mm. I’m all over the fresh mozzarella, but I lived in New York for years, and I was used to being able to get it all year long. And you found different things to do with mozzarella because you could always get it right out of the water.

David Hemme [00:16:52]:

Well, here, I’m guessing maybe 70%.

Janice Person [00:17:00]:

And it’s fresh product, so you can’t just carry it over forever.

David Hemme [00:17:03]:

Well, you stick it in freezer. Yeah, it does freeze halfway is decent, but we’re not set up to freeze a whole set up to freeze huge amounts.

Janice Person [00:17:15]:

Yeah. And it stays around. That’s interesting. So do you have something else that’s currently a seasonal product?

David Hemme [00:17:23]:

Well, actually, artisan cheese, to some degree is seasonal.

Janice Person [00:17:29]:

Okay.

David Hemme [00:17:30]:

In that we have burgers, smokehouse, and I think they took this year right. At 60,000 blocks. And that is for the gift boxes.

Janice Person [00:17:43]:

Okay.

David Hemme [00:17:44]:

So that’s seasonal.

Janice Person [00:17:46]:

Like a heavier smoked might be more popular in the winter. No.

David Hemme [00:17:50]:

Well, I can’t say that actually our brother’s keeper, our sharp cheddar. Yeah.

Janice Person [00:17:56]:

It’s year round.

David Hemme [00:17:57]:

Year round.

Janice Person [00:17:58]:

Okay.

David Hemme [00:17:59]:

Yeah. But we’ll sell more of it because people will spend more money on an artisan project for Thanksgiving, Christmas.

Janice Person [00:18:08]:

They want to have all the nipples around the house. Yeah.

David Hemme [00:18:10]:

They want to make it something special.

Janice Person [00:18:12]:

Right.

David Hemme [00:18:13]:

And then come January, February, March, it’s a desert around here. Their credit cards are maxed out, and Heather went back to Velveeta.

Janice Person [00:18:32]:

When you go back to Velveeta, and.

David Hemme [00:18:35]:

Then reality sets into all the sin that you committed for the last eight days.

Janice Person [00:18:46]:

You eat all the things you were supposed to have been eating all year long. You suddenly remember it in January and February, and you start eating the way you were supposed to a little bit more often and having those special days a little less often.

David Hemme [00:19:00]:

Well, unfortunately, yeah.

Janice Person [00:19:02]:

You said that your family in Germany has been at it for 15 generations or something. 18. Okay. So how long have you guys been in the dairy business?

David Hemme [00:19:13]:

The first weekend of Missouri State fair seven years ago. That was the first day that we sold cheese.

Janice Person [00:19:24]:

So you’ve been doing cheese for seven years. How long have you been doing cows? Dairy.

David Hemme [00:19:29]:

Dairy cows. My dad milk, and he sold them, and I got back into them.

Janice Person [00:19:33]:

So your dad had cows?

David Hemme [00:19:36]:

Every generation has had cows, but dairy cows are something that that’s a lot of work. You have to be a grinder, people say. I just don’t know how you stand doing that every day.

Janice Person [00:19:50]:

The hustle no, you got it.

David Hemme [00:19:51]:

No, it’s not every day. It’s every 12 hours. Every time that 05:00 rolls around, you know where you’re at. So if you’re not a grinder, you’ll hate your life. I love cows, and so that’s one problem for me.

Janice Person [00:20:11]:

And you have family that love cows. Like, you’ve got sons and all in.

David Hemme [00:20:18]:

The mean, I would I would say that, like, Michael right now is the cow manager, the milking herd. You’ll have to go a long way to find somebody better than he is in regards to managing the cows. A dairy cow demands the same type of work that your marriage does. You can’t take a day off. You can’t let it slide. You have to work at it every day.

Janice Person [00:20:53]:

Surely somebody gives him a vacation every now and then, but otherwise, he’s on it every day.

David Hemme [00:20:58]:

Well, not very often. Shannon and I for years, we didn’t take a vacation.

Janice Person [00:21:06]:

Yeah. So you have a son that does cows. You have a son that does crops.

David Hemme [00:21:13]:

He does crops because you got to feed the cows. Yeah. And he does the replacement.

Janice Person [00:21:18]:

Heifers okay.

David Hemme [00:21:19]:

And then Nathan does cheesemaker, manages the creamery, and he has bees for the honey. For the honey, yeah, to put in our cheese. And then we take the whey from the cheese production, and then we feed it to Berkshires, and then I take that’s where the charcuterie comes from.

Janice Person [00:21:44]:

Oh, my gosh.

David Hemme [00:21:45]:

Well, yeah, because it’s way fed Berkshires. I mean, how exclusive is that?

Janice Person [00:21:50]:

So I do know a few people who have Berkshires, and I do know people who have done things like walnut fed and stuff, but in California, but whey fed pigs.

David Hemme [00:22:05]:

So you can make that is like summer sausages. Oh, no.

Janice Person [00:22:10]:

All the things what do you make?

David Hemme [00:22:12]:

And everybody has summer sausage.

Janice Person [00:22:15]:

I did not mean to offend.

David Hemme [00:22:18]:

Well, when you’re in the business we’re in, people want to go up a.

Janice Person [00:22:24]:

Little bit higher every time.

David Hemme [00:22:25]:

That’s why we have soprasada we have finiciona. We have capacola. We have Spanish chorizo. We have sweet bologna. We have the things that are really nice, because if we go to the St. Louis side of the state, those folks over there really do a great job.

Janice Person [00:22:45]:

The hill section, we really like good Italian food.

David Hemme [00:22:48]:

You can go from know, you have volpe down there. You have salumi bedou, which are killer. And then every little meat shop down all the way down to Jefferson City, they all do a great job.

Janice Person [00:23:05]:

Yeah.

David Hemme [00:23:06]:

You go to, you know, they’re all wonderful. And so we go there. And one thing that we haven’t done yet, we’re waiting for certification, but it’s a lawn yager.

Janice Person [00:23:23]:

Tell me more.

David Hemme [00:23:24]:

Yager is a German word for hunter. It’s a hunter’s sausage, and it was a precursor to the snack stick. And so what you would do when you go out to hunt, you would go to the smokehouse and tear off a piece of sausage, and you wrap it up in a cloth, and you stick in your pocket for a snack.

Janice Person [00:23:44]:

Yeah.

David Hemme [00:23:46]:

Has really good flavor.

Janice Person [00:23:50]:

All right, now, I’m looking for that. When you get it done, go to Herman.

David Hemme [00:23:55]:

Oh, no. Go to the variant smokehouse in new melee. Yeah, you can go these little German shops all over the place and you can find line.

Janice Person [00:24:04]:

Yagger, nice. Okay.

David Hemme [00:24:06]:

But that’s kind of stuff that we want to do, we want to do the stuff that you’re not going to go into your local grocery store yet because we want to separate ourselves from the average, ordinary from the standard. If you want something that’s really nice, it’s really good. Highest quality, don’t pay more for it. But we can’t go out here and compete with Kraft and Tyson.

Janice Person [00:24:36]:

Right.

David Hemme [00:24:36]:

The only thing that we can do is have a much higher quality product and then charge more for.

Janice Person [00:24:42]:

Right.

David Hemme [00:24:43]:

That’s the only way we can survive. And we keep a very close eye that our quality is where it needs to be or else I’m a bit.

Janice Person [00:24:50]:

Of a cheese snob. I’ve been willing to accept that title for a long time. I still eat block cheeses that are in the grocery store and stuff too. I mean, I like cheese, it’s not a problem. But I do always have some nicer cheese that I’m trying or tasting or doing something different with. Now one of the things I asked you is like how do you decide what flavors to offer because besides cheddar then how do you start deciding? You want to smoke it with this kind of wood or that kind of flavor.

David Hemme [00:25:28]:

Like I was telling you earlier when we went to the American Cheese Society, people don’t even realize there is one of those but it’s a big deal. Any event, artisan cheesemakers from all over the western hemisphere talking about South America, central North America, they all come together in one spot and one night they have what they call meet the cheesemaker and then they open it up to the public. Public can go in there and sample, I need there’s 3000 cheeses, artisan cheeses that are out there and they’re cut toothpicks, go and you try all these cheeses. That’s how we decided what we wanted to make is we would go through there and that’s how we wound up making an espresso.

Janice Person [00:26:19]:

Cheddar, that’s a weird one. I just have to say espresso. I get it. Cheddar. It sounds different.

David Hemme [00:26:28]:

Well, it does. It sounds weird and people are kind of taken back. But nobody’s taken back by putting cream in their coffee.

Janice Person [00:26:36]:

Not at all.

David Hemme [00:26:36]:

No, see that’s normal. It’s the same thing. It’s only the other way around.

Janice Person [00:26:43]:

I love it. I’m going to have to try it.

David Hemme [00:26:47]:

People that try it love it. And if you look at it, you think you’re going to be sucking on coffee grounds. It looks awful. I think the look probably has more to turn people off than the sound.

Janice Person [00:27:04]:

It’s it’s kind of hard to imagine how many different cheeses there are at a thing like the American Cheese Society. But the girls from Sweet Freedom Cheese down in Fayetteville Bentonville area, they said that’s like going to.

David Hemme [00:27:24]:

You know, I’m not a huge fan of goat cheese. That you will find just commodity goat cheese. Now, if you go there, they have goat cheese. That is absolutely the most wonderful cheese you’ll ever have.

Janice Person [00:27:41]:

Now, you told me there was a really good goat cheese near St. Louis.

David Hemme [00:27:44]:

Oh, yeah. 2 hours south. Beige Farms.

Janice Person [00:27:47]:

See, I’m getting that recorded now because I did not write it down.

David Hemme [00:27:50]:

Okay. Yep. Baji Farms is 2 hours south, Bloomsdale, Missouri.

Janice Person [00:27:55]:

Okay.

David Hemme [00:27:55]:

And they compete on a world stage, their cheeses. And they should, because they do an outstanding job. But you have to do an outstanding job with your goats, and you have.

Janice Person [00:28:06]:

To do it on a consistent basis. Like, you can’t have any.

David Hemme [00:28:12]:

It’S it’s harder than Cheddar. Cheddar is much more forgiving.

Janice Person [00:28:17]:

So where else in the like, what other cheeses do you really love? I mean, obviously, we’ve already told everybody, go get the Hemme brothers. And they can get that at the Columbia Farmers Market. The one in Oberlin Park. They can get it where else?

David Hemme [00:28:35]:

Well, you can go on the St. Louis side of the state. We’re in 95 snooks. We’re in Deerburg’s, I think with five or seven cheeses in Deerburgs now. And then you look around between myself being a distributor on that side of the state, taking little wineries and whatnot, and our distributor there, Fox River, you can find a lot of smaller shops. Whatnot then?

Janice Person [00:29:02]:

I love a good cheese shop. Seriously, there’s like, the thing about shopping for groceries versus shopping for cheese. I want it to be like a special area of the store, not just like the little shelf like when I was a kid and I’d go to pick up cheese, I want an area where I can see all kinds of different things and taste them preferably. And that’s why a cheese shop comes in so handy.

David Hemme [00:29:27]:

I see. We started making artisan cheese seven years ago, nine years ago when we first started this process. Start the planning of it when you.

Janice Person [00:29:36]:

Started asking for money from the bank.

David Hemme [00:29:40]:

I had never had what I would consider to be a decent piece of cheese in my life because out here in rural Missouri, it’s just not offered. There’s not a deli section that has nice cheeses. You just have the dairy section that has your commodity cheeses. And that’s just what we had. We didn’t have access to it. And then we were using a consultant, and they took us to the better Cheddar, and they don’t do it anymore, but at that time, they could sample.

Janice Person [00:30:13]:

Yeah.

David Hemme [00:30:13]:

And then, oh, my gosh, you can.

Janice Person [00:30:15]:

Still at the Sweet Freedom in Bentonville. And I may have worn her out while I was.

David Hemme [00:30:23]:

You know every health department looks at that a little different. We’ve been finding that out.

Janice Person [00:30:28]:

Depends on states, depends on cities, depends on all those things. Yeah. Okay.

David Hemme [00:30:34]:

And then there’s just some unbelievably good cheeses.

Janice Person [00:30:37]:

So where are some of the other names that we should look for when we’re in these really good cheeses? Like other farms? That do.

David Hemme [00:30:44]:

Okay. We’ve already mentioned beige.

Janice Person [00:30:46]:

Yeah.

David Hemme [00:30:46]:

Now, up here at Weston, there’s green dirt farms.

Janice Person [00:30:51]:

Green dirt farms.

David Hemme [00:30:53]:

Unbelievably good.

Janice Person [00:30:55]:

What are they making?

David Hemme [00:30:56]:

They make sheep cheese. They milk sheep.

Janice Person [00:30:59]:

Okay.

David Hemme [00:31:01]:

And they will sell this in little bitty, I don’t know, maybe four ounce containers.

Janice Person [00:31:06]:

The little round ones.

David Hemme [00:31:08]:

Yes. It is just the best cheese you’ve ever had. The problem that they have with it, I wouldn’t say this is a great business model in that they struggle with shelf life.

Janice Person [00:31:22]:

Oh, yeah.

David Hemme [00:31:23]:

And so they make it. First thing they got to do is take this up to Kansas International in dry ice and fly it to one of the coast.

Janice Person [00:31:31]:

Oh, okay.

David Hemme [00:31:32]:

Well, that’s expensive. And so Tommy gets to this little cheese shop in Boston or San Francisco. Well, it’s already pretty darlic on pricey.

Janice Person [00:31:43]:

Yeah.

David Hemme [00:31:43]:

And so they struggle with that. But as far as you want to.

Janice Person [00:31:47]:

Have, whereas you’ve got lots of people for cheddar’s right here in your backyard.

David Hemme [00:31:51]:

And they know what it is. But as far as great cheese, they have great cheese. The best blue that I’ve ever had came out of Oregon.

Janice Person [00:31:59]:

Rogue. I’ve been there.

David Hemme [00:32:00]:

Rogue river blue.

Janice Person [00:32:02]:

Been there. I’ve got my cheese snob roots showing clearly.

David Hemme [00:32:09]:

Oh, my gosh. The French did not take it well when they took that Rogue River blue to international competition and won. And the French think they’re the only ones that can actually make cheese.

Janice Person [00:32:22]:

Yeah.

David Hemme [00:32:22]:

And they went in there, and they kicked butt. But we were there last I guess it’s been about 18 months ago we were there, and we went through the plant near Ashland, Oregon.

Janice Person [00:32:35]:

I can’t remember which town. I can’t remember either, but it’s southern Oregon.

David Hemme [00:32:39]:

Yeah. We went to see the cows, and then it’s actually quite a drive to the creamery. And then they went through the process of they’ll taste and see if it qualifies in their mind to be good enough to go ahead and put the robe name on the grape leaves, the brandy’s grape leaves on it to really enhance that flavor, because that is expensive.

Janice Person [00:33:07]:

Yeah.

David Hemme [00:33:08]:

And some of them that aren’t very good with smoke.

Janice Person [00:33:12]:

Yeah, well, you guys don’t use grape leaves. You use wood boxes, though.

David Hemme [00:33:17]:

Well, when cryovac now, if you want to have our cheese that is killer, go to the I don’t have one. I need to get one from him anyway. His name is Lincoln Broad Books. He’s a manager there. To better cheddar, he will buy one of our 40 pound blocks, and he will do an old world aging on it. Down in the basement, they have a walk in cooler down there. So what he does is he takes this, and he wants a young cheddar. Hopefully, it’s less than a day old. Then he. Takes down there, he melts lard, and then he’ll get his glove on and he’ll take this lard and he’ll cover this 40 pound block of cheese and lard, and then set it on a shelf for a year and let it make its own rind.

Janice Person [00:34:15]:

Get out.

David Hemme [00:34:16]:

No. Go down to the Better Cheddar and look for 40 Eigth Street Reserve.

Janice Person [00:34:22]:

Okay.

David Hemme [00:34:22]:

And it has our name right on it, but there’s a hard rind. But outside of that thing is the most multicolored mold you’ve ever seen in your life. And you open up the door to that.

Janice Person [00:34:36]:

You smile so much when you say, oh, my gosh, this mold the way if only people could see the stars in your eyes. Most people don’t think of mold that way.

David Hemme [00:34:46]:

It is the coolest. It’s like, for instance, like Volpe or they purposely spray these spores on that salami. Mold grow and it just enhances these flavors.

Janice Person [00:35:02]:

And that’s the same thing for really good country ham.

David Hemme [00:35:05]:

Yeah, absolutely. A smoked ham is going to be just a moldy mess. And I’ve done capacola here just for me. And I’ve bought the spores and let it turn green for six weeks at 60 degrees. Cut it off vinegar and water and a rag, and I just washed it off and cut into it. But in American culture, mold is everything. Moldy goes to the dumpster.

Janice Person [00:35:37]:

Yeah.

David Hemme [00:35:38]:

But when we build our retail, we are going to have a walk in cooler with glass on the retail side where people can come in and see what you’re doing to develop it. Old World aging process is we take for granted that gets well, there’s always been refrigeration.

Janice Person [00:35:59]:

Yeah.

David Hemme [00:36:00]:

Well, no, refrigeration is very new.

Janice Person [00:36:03]:

Yeah. Ice boxes.

David Hemme [00:36:04]:

Yes. And so what did the English and the Irish do for the Cheddars way back when? They would either do that or what they call bandage wrap cheddar. And it’s kind of like a gunny sack, and you wrap it up in a gunny sack, and then you soak the gunny sack with lard, and then you would set it in a cave.

Janice Person [00:36:23]:

Yeah.

David Hemme [00:36:25]:

And you’d let it age in there. Then whenever you needed cheese, you go in there and then you clean it off the best you wanted to. There’s your cheese.

Janice Person [00:36:35]:

Yeah. I’m glad we’re not just doing it in the caves anymore.

David Hemme [00:36:42]:

Well, FDA wasn’t around back, I guess.

Janice Person [00:36:47]:

Right, right. And if you wanted to do that for yourself, that’s fine for you to do at home, but not for sale in the market.

David Hemme [00:36:56]:

Lincoln at the Better Cheddar, it’s not just our cheese. He’s trying several other cheesemakers, and he’s doing that down there in his basement, and it’s available for sale. And it’s 40 Eigth Street Reserve. His Old World aged cheddar is his best selling cheese in the whole shop.

Janice Person [00:37:15]:

And it’s all value added to him, too, like you value added? Well, let’s just say he added value.

David Hemme [00:37:21]:

There, but he’s in the higher rent district. And he doesn’t sell cheese by the pound. He sells by the ounce.

Janice Person [00:37:29]:

Yeah.

David Hemme [00:37:30]:

And so you go in there for your Rogue River Blue at $52 a pound. Well, no, you’re going to buy $17 worth because you’re buying 4oz.

Janice Person [00:37:40]:

Yeah.

David Hemme [00:37:42]:

So I don’t begrudge him farming for every dollar that he pays us, the consumer pays seven.

Janice Person [00:37:49]:

Yeah.

David Hemme [00:37:50]:

And I don’t begrudge him that because he’s earned every bit of it.

Janice Person [00:37:53]:

Yeah. It’s a process, and you’ve got to be willing to do it.

David Hemme [00:37:56]:

Yeah. And you’re cutting this stuff down.

Janice Person [00:37:58]:

Yeah.

David Hemme [00:38:00]:

Like I say, the rent on the plaza, I know what those rents are, and it’ll scare the oh, my gosh.

Janice Person [00:38:08]:

So tell me, what are your favorite ways to enjoy cheese? How do you eat cheese the most, or, like, as a special thing? What would you do?

David Hemme [00:38:19]:

Well, for instance, this Sunday, we take turns. Our Bible class takes turns with snacks.

Janice Person [00:38:27]:

Okay.

David Hemme [00:38:27]:

And so it’s Caprizi season, obviously, tomatoes are beautiful. Yeah. And so I’m going to do that, and I’m going to go the baker there and pick up a couple of chabadas, and then I have my soprasada, and then I’ll have some grapes, and I’ll have kind of an Italian theme Sunday. That’ll be great. And then later in the year, I’ll probably pick out three or four cheeses and some meats, and then I’ll probably add honey to the cork, and I’ll get some really thin wafer crackers that really don’t have any flavor, just something to carry the cork. And we always have some fruit with it, too.

Janice Person [00:39:08]:

Yeah.

David Hemme [00:39:09]:

It just depends on the season. We want to do something more seasonal.

Janice Person [00:39:14]:

Yeah. And at home, how should I be treating my cheese?

David Hemme [00:39:21]:

How should you be what?

Janice Person [00:39:22]:

Treating my cheese. Like, what should I be doing with cheese when I buy it? Should I just eat it right then?

David Hemme [00:39:28]:

Eat it. When we were visiting my seven years, when we were visiting my very distant German relative, we have butter on our counter. Always have.

Janice Person [00:39:41]:

Yeah. We’ve never have a butter dish.

David Hemme [00:39:43]:

Butter dish. They have a cheese dish. So they buy a piece of cheese, they put it in their dish, and they eat it. Novel concept to most Americans is just go ahead and eat it.

Janice Person [00:39:59]:

Yeah.

David Hemme [00:39:59]:

Because they don’t.

Janice Person [00:40:00]:

When you come through the kitchen, have another snack, cut a piece off.

David Hemme [00:40:04]:

Yeah, but.

Janice Person [00:40:07]:

It’S different culturally. Very different. Yeah.

David Hemme [00:40:09]:

Yes.

Janice Person [00:40:11]:

Okay.

David Hemme [00:40:12]:

For instance, like our brother’s keeper aged cheddar grilling season for an appetizer, we’ll snap the stem out of a Portobella and put just a little piece of the Brother’s Keeper in it and then just melt. It just a killer appetizer. It’s really simple. I saved the stems for a salad, and yeah, you’re not looking at Betty Crocker.

Janice Person [00:40:46]:

That’s okay.

David Hemme [00:40:48]:

No, you don’t have to.

Janice Person [00:40:53]:

You have cheese on your mind. How many hours of the day every day?

David Hemme [00:40:57]:

Well, the problem is I’m around it maybe too much.

Janice Person [00:41:00]:

Yeah. But you end up knowing different things than other people. Other people can come at it with a creative lens and say, well, for.

David Hemme [00:41:07]:

Instance, we have one of our distributors, budwood Farms, out of California, Missouri, and they do free range chickens, wonderful poultry. I mean, we’re talking about, oh, my gosh, I didn’t know chicken could taste like this. It’s that good. But then we had our melting cheese and so chicken marsala.

Janice Person [00:41:26]:

Yeah.

David Hemme [00:41:28]:

Which we would have never without getting into the artisan food business, we wouldn’t have been exposed to all these things. I’ve got a chef right now that’s using our melting cheese, our pizza cheese, and he’s using a potato pasta.

Janice Person [00:41:45]:

Yeah. Like noki.

David Hemme [00:41:47]:

And then putting that cheese on the inside of it and then melting it.

Janice Person [00:41:54]:

People in Sweet Springs, Missouri, don’t usually know about those things unless they get into artisan cheese.

David Hemme [00:42:01]:

They don’t. And like I say, when we do build our retail, it’s going to have a retail store, and then it will have a cafe.

Janice Person [00:42:11]:

Yeah.

David Hemme [00:42:11]:

We’re going to have a seasonal cafe. And then your bulletin boards, long I 70, are going to look a little different because in the summertime, we’ll have Capra salad or then we’ll have gourmet.

Janice Person [00:42:23]:

When is this retail store supposed to open?

David Hemme [00:42:26]:

Well, you tell me what the Federal Reserve is going to do with interest rates. We are concerned about interest rates as far as costing it’s more to borrow money.

Janice Person [00:42:35]:

Yeah.

David Hemme [00:42:35]:

But I need a strong consumer.

Janice Person [00:42:37]:

Yeah.

David Hemme [00:42:37]:

And what they’re trying to do is weaken the consumer. And so I’m old enough that I remember the 80s, which were bloodbath in agriculture. And I’m going to wait.

Janice Person [00:42:52]:

I do, too.

David Hemme [00:42:53]:

I don’t need another bloodbath.

Janice Person [00:42:56]:

None of us do. Let’s change the subject because that is really sad.

David Hemme [00:43:02]:

On the back of all of our T shirts.

Janice Person [00:43:05]:

Oh, yeah.

David Hemme [00:43:06]:

On the back, it says better from the beginning.

Janice Person [00:43:09]:

Says it on your hat, says it on your T shirt.

David Hemme [00:43:12]:

Yeah. And really that is the theme, because we start from the ground up. And so with my son John, that does the agronomy, we’re doing the regenerative AG. And so we are actually Mars Candy Company sent us a check last year because we have an excess of carbon credit.

Janice Person [00:43:35]:

Yeah. You’re storing so much carbon because they can’t.

David Hemme [00:43:39]:

So they send us a check and that away. It’s like Google. Every once in a while, you’ll see Google stuff will pop up, says carbon neutral since whatever year. Well, that’s what they’re doing, is buying carbon credits. And that’s what we’re doing, is we’re not doing it for the check. We’re doing it because it’s the right thing to do. We want to take the carbon out of the air and then turn that into organic matter in the soil.

Janice Person [00:44:03]:

It does so much better when there are things actively growing, because plants can then sequester carbon. So the summer, we typically have a lot of things being sequestered. Are you guys able to do, like, cover crops or something so that you can sequester more of the year?

David Hemme [00:44:23]:

Okay. I’ll take a farm that Nathan bought for an example. Not a farm. It’s acreage, 20 acres. So we had wheat this past year. We combined the wheat and got a wheat crop. Right now, it’s buckwheat, some different snow peas, sunflowers, Sudan, you name. There’s just a cornucopia of different things growing. And right now, it’s probably about neck high on us.

Janice Person [00:44:55]:

Okay.

David Hemme [00:44:56]:

Neck high on mean.

Janice Person [00:44:58]:

And so you’ve let it grow up so that it almost looks like nature, even though it’s a cover crop of things.

David Hemme [00:45:05]:

Yeah. And there’s this blend because we’re trying to, like, buckwheat. It’s really good as far as taking phosphorus out of the air and put it in the ground.

Janice Person [00:45:15]:

Okay. Buckwheat is better at that than other.

David Hemme [00:45:18]:

Things than, say, sunflowers.

Janice Person [00:45:20]:

Like soybeans pull more things and put nitrogen in.

David Hemme [00:45:24]:

Yeah, that’s legume so it can put nitrogen in. And so we have this mix. So we’ll let this thing just grow, and then the frost will come, and all these things are going to die because frost kill them all. Then we’ll go in with a winter annual, which will be like rye.

Janice Person [00:45:42]:

Okay.

David Hemme [00:45:43]:

Cereal rye. And it’ll grow anytime. It’s over freezing. Cereal rye will grow. So by February, that field will be green again, even though it’s the middle of winter. It will be capturing carbon, putting carbon in the soil. And then when it warms up, well, man, she really gets going. Then we’ll go ahead and kill it. And then we’ll plant the soybeans. Right. And in between all that, we will take some composted dairy manure that we have here and hit it with that. And the first thing you know, we’ll have that place turned around, but we have to do these steps as far as getting the air cleaned up. And the irony is, if we took all the carbon that’s put in the air from the United States, the entire European Union and Japan is less carbon put in the air than China is putting in their air.

Janice Person [00:46:41]:

Yeah.

David Hemme [00:46:42]:

And you know what? We all have to share that air.

Janice Person [00:46:45]:

It’s a collective air. We don’t get to claim we can’t.

David Hemme [00:46:50]:

Say, okay, well, we did our part, so we have clean air.

Janice Person [00:46:53]:

Well, you can see that when this age of wildfires that happen in Canada and then turn our it’s everybody’s air. So we all have some responsibility to take action.

David Hemme [00:47:05]:

So this is something that’s going to be ongoing for a long time.

Janice Person [00:47:09]:

That’s just a new farm that you’ve taken over a field of.

David Hemme [00:47:12]:

Yeah, well, Nathan had bought and off of an estate, and unfortunately, a lot of branded farms are that know, the landowners don’t want to spend any money. And so when you get a new ownership, though, then we’re starting you got.

Janice Person [00:47:28]:

To make up for it.

David Hemme [00:47:29]:

So it’ll take us 15 years to get it to where we need it to be. But we’ve been here since 1838 by.

Janice Person [00:47:37]:

The time Nathan’s kids or somebody’s nephews.

David Hemme [00:47:41]:

My grandkids, are 8th generation and they look like they’re going to want to farm. So that is the part that probably is the most rewarding is that I see my sons with the attitude, that legacy. If you go through life and all you do is take and go through it with a narcissistic attitude, it’s all about me. I’m going to take, I’m going to enjoy, I’m going to do blah, blah, blah. At the end of the day, it’s a real shallow existence.

Janice Person [00:48:22]:

Yeah.

David Hemme [00:48:23]:

You should be measured by what you give, not by what you take.

Janice Person [00:48:27]:

The power is definitely in the give.

David Hemme [00:48:30]:

Yeah, that’s right. My grandfather, way back in the day, he was one of the first that terrorist. And my dad’s always been conservation minded. I have been and now my kids are. And it’s always that we want to preserve what we have because maybe our kids will do it and if they don’t, somebody will be using that to produce food.

Janice Person [00:48:55]:

There’s always a need for food.

David Hemme [00:48:57]:

There’s always going to be a need for food. That’s an everyday thing. And so we want to make sure that we are good stewards of what we have been put in charge of from the time that we have here on this earth.

Janice Person [00:49:08]:

That’s a much better finale. So now I should ask you if people want to find you, it’s hemmebrothers.com.

David Hemme [00:49:16]:

Hemmebrothers.com, that’s right.

Janice Person [00:49:18]:

Aria on all the social media channels.

David Hemme [00:49:21]:

Heck, I don’t know that’s for somebody else. I know they do Instagram, okay? I know that much.

Janice Person [00:49:27]:

I know they do Instagram. All right, well, we are going to.

David Hemme [00:49:30]:

Show him on Facebook and Facebook, okay.

Janice Person [00:49:33]:

He’s slowly getting it all together.

David Hemme [00:49:35]:

Yeah, I forget about Facebook.

Janice Person [00:49:38]:

I’ll go ahead and I’ll share some photos and some video we took as we walked through the place because you’re going to want to see this. It’s really kind of neat to get to go in and see how they make the cheese. Some of it that was being pressed today, that’ll be wrapped tomorrow to be aged for the next however long, probably. So hope you guys enjoyed this episode. David, thank you so much for having me out.

David Hemme [00:50:04]:

Glad you came out.

The post Transcript for Episode 411 — David Hemme Cheesemaker & Dairy Farmer appeared first on Grounded by the Farm.

With Cahokia’s food history on our minds after our last episode, we turn to my backyard of St. Louis and are digging into more Native American food and farming history. Joined by Dr. Gayle Fritz, anthropologist and professor emeritus from Washington University, we uncover the mysteries of this once-thriving metropolis and its food and farming footprint.

(An AI created transcript is available for episode 410. It was created via Castmagic.)

Dr. Gayle Fritz

Get ready to have your mind blown as Gayle delves into the incredible discoveries and hidden histories of Cahokia. It was major city and the largest metropolitan area long before Europeans arrived here. It was the largest city north of Mesoamerica between 1000-1400 CE. And today, it is surrounded by corn and soybean fields as well as small towns — it’s in the horseradish capital of Collinsville!

Did you know that the original residents of Cahokia cultivated crops we still grow like corn, squash and nuts? They also grew so-called “lost crops” as they are no longer in production? They even had their own version of quinoa! Plus, we’ll explore the various purposes of the mounds found in Cahokia, from ceremonial rituals to burial grounds.

A Look at Cahokia

Cahokia is an UNESCO World Heritage site because of the significance the site has to the cultural history of the Americas. During the episode we discuss that this city of more than 10,000 people was a focal point for the region in the Mississippian period. And keep this piece of trivia handy — Cahokia was a larger city than London in 1250!

Cahokia was somewhat of a capital of the intricate network of mounds scattered throughout the region. These mounds served various purposes, from being platforms for buildings and ceremonial sites to housing graves and acting as charnel houses. As Gayle explained, the shape, size, and purpose of the mounds were diverse, and they held significant cultural and spiritual meaning for the people of Cahokia.

Today, the site hosts a range of programs including solstice observances. The most visually awe-inspiring sight is the multi-tiered Monk’s Mound (European monks settled here for some time, hence the name). This is the mound from across the road. Look closely and you will see tiny dots that are people climbing it. I can only imagine how massive these would have been when first built more a thousand years ago.

It’s definitely a hike up as each tier takes you up a lot of elevation. Looking up, even one layer is daunting but look how small the vehicles on the road below are when I looked down from the top of the stairs!

While the current site is a park of more than 3 square miles, it was a sprawling city with large farms for miles in every direction. When I went with family years ago, I zoomed in on the horizon with my iPhone… the St. Louis skyline is definitely clear on a good day even if it pixelates.

Cahokia’s Food History

I was luckily enough to be put in touch with Gayle by reaching out to the site manager who works for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

Cahokia, being a bustling metropolis, was undoubtedly a hub for trade. And the demand for food and farming with such a large population would lead to a focused effort. And of course, food was likely a valuable commodity in Cahokia’s trading.

Knowing about the three sisters, I asked about what specific crops were grown and exchanged, along with the methods used in farming during that era. How did the people of Cahokia cultivate their land, and what did they introduce to the region?

Corn was definitely a staple…. it started as the grass teosinte and the MesoAmericans kept selecting for more of the edible grain. I took this photo of teosinte years ago but can’t picture where we were on the development curve to today’s corn cobs.

There was a lot of squash, pumpkins, sunflowers, nuts and more. And of course, deer and other animals were hunted for meat. The last time I was in the museum at Cahokia, I snapped this shot on one of the food oriented exhibits.

Lost Crops of Cahokia

One of the most intriguing aspects of Cahokia’s food and agriculture is the exploration of the crops that have been lost to history. Gayle shed light on these ancient treasures, talking about some that were rich in protein and others that provided important oils.

Gayle brought up the following crops:

• Kinopodium: A relative of quinoa called lambsquarter that was likely a lost crop in the region around Cahokia. It is a high-protein grain.
• Sumpweed: A native crop related to sunflower that was selected for larger seeds and high lipid content.
• Maygrass: A native grass that was found to have high protein content and was likely an important food source at Cahokia.
• Little barley: Another native grass with high protein content that was likely used as a food source.
• Erect knotweed: A plant related to Japanese buckwheat that was mentioned for its potential as a protein-rich crop.

But just imagine, how did these forgotten crops taste and how did they fit into the daily diet of Cahokia’s inhabitants?  Is there someone out there like Ramona and Terry Button who may bring these crops back into cultivation? Gayle’s colleague Dr. Natalie Mueller hopes that some of these lost crops can be reestablished in the future. She discusses it with St. Louis Public Radio in this interview.

Farming Advances in Cahokia

Finding, sorting, focusing in on growing some of the seeds that were most desirable was likely one aspect of Cahokian agriculture. The scale of production needed to sustain a city of that size would require significant organization. It may surprise someone — and yet not at all surprise others — that women were the ones who focused on this part of the food puzzle. The commitment to build from seed to large fields of production and then finding the right ways to store them for winter was something that amazed Europeans once in the area.

There were also major advances in farm tools with various types of rock or stone as well as animal antlers and bones alongside hardwoods like hickory to cut through the earth’s crust for planting. Rice farmer Blake Gerard said the stone work and sharpening remains impressive today!

Whereas much of the work of the native people of the Gila River Valley was in irrigation, the people of Cahokia had an abundance of water with the Mississippi River and so many other rivers and creeks in the area.

Links Mentioned

The book on Cahokia’s food Dr. Gayle Fritz has written is (affiliate link to Amazon) Feeding Cahokia: Early Agriculture in the North American Heartland (Archaeology of Food).

Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site

Interview with Dr. Natalie Mueller on lost crops 

Castmagic is the AI tool (link to Castmagic & give me a referral fee that doesn’t impact your cost) that helps with some of the content shared here and on social channels. It helps me do more faster since I don’t stare at a blank screen. 

The post Uncovering Cahokia’s Food History & Forgotten Farmscapes appeared first on Grounded by the Farm.

37:09

Janice Person [00:00:01]:

Food is more than just what’s on our plate. It’s the places where it’s grown. It’s the people who grow it and so much more. Join me, Janice Person, your host on Grounded by the Farm every other week as we talk about the foods we love.

Everybody, this is Janice, and today I have a different conversation. You know, the last episode was about Cahokia Rice, and that name was something. It’s a brand, it’s something unique to that farm. But it really got me thinking about doing something on part of the history in the area where I live, which is St. Louis. And earlier this year, we went out to the Gila River Indian community and learned about that history. Well, I felt a little bit like I was denying my own local area, because in St. Louis, you look out and there’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site. There is a place outside of St. Louis where native peoples had such incredible things going on. I’ve learned about it a little bit, but I was able to convince somebody. Gail Fritz, she was a professor at the university in St. Louis. It’s called Washington University. She’s an anthropologist, and she has studied deeply in on this piece of Cahokia and what it means for food and agriculture. Is that kind of a decent introduction for you?

Gayle Fritz [00:01:25]:

Yeah, perfect.

Janice Person [00:01:26]:

Okay, so what I wanted to talk to her about, a lot of people are not really familiar with the native peoples in their area. And here it’s different than in Arizona, where we have a reservation and it’s tribal grounds, and it’s very clearly from a certain group of people. Cahokia Mounds is a state historical project and a UNESCO site, is that right?

Gayle Fritz [00:01:51]:

It is. It’s a state historic site that’s administered by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

Janice Person [00:01:59]:

That’s right.

Gayle Fritz [00:02:00]:

And it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. But that’s a sort of a ceremonial it’s a wonderful thing to be part of, and they’re very helpful, but they.

Janice Person [00:02:12]:

Don’T manage the funding and all that kind of stuff is one of the things. Right. So Cahokia and the Mississippian, the native peoples to this area, what time period are we talking in history? Because it’s well before Columbus and stuff were coming over.

Gayle Fritz [00:02:28]:

Yes. Cahokia was a major concern. We call it a city, the largest metropolitan and urban area north of Mesoamerica of its day, between about 10, 13, 50 or 1400 Ce. The name Cahokia came from a member, a tribal group affiliated with the Illinois Confederacy, and they were here much more recently at European contact. But the original population of Cahokia, when it was a big, major concern much earlier, we’re not exactly sure who those people were. And that could have included descendants who eventually belonged to the Illinois Confederacy because people came from all over. And when Cahokia dispersed, when the population became much, much smaller after 1350 Ce, they probably went away in different directions and are represented today by many different tribes, but especially probably by Siouan speakers and possibly some Muskogian speakers, along with the possibility of the Algonquian speakers, such as the historic Cahokia here.

Janice Person [00:03:38]:

Really? East, I think, is mound building peoples, right? I’ve heard weird things about mound building and why they were built and stuff at different times, but never from anybody I thought had any credentials in the topic. Is it something for ceremonial purposes? Is it for the housing of the rulers?

Gayle Fritz [00:03:59]:

The earliest mounds in North America are actually now in Louisiana, in Florida, and those are 5000, 6000 years old.

Janice Person [00:04:08]:

Oh my God.

Gayle Fritz [00:04:08]:

And so those were for probably completely different purposes than the ones that we see now at Cahokia and other sites at that time period, which we lump into Mississippian, mississippian mound builders. And then in between the 5000, 6000 earliest mounds and the ones that were still being built in European contact, but not that late at what is now Cahokia mounds. But there were many different purposes and many different sizes and shapes and functions of mounds in between. And even as late as the Cahokia mounds, they were multipurpose different functions. Some were platforms for buildings that could have been the houses of some of the leaders. Some of them were probably more like meeting houses, very large meeting houses. Some of the flat top mounds are called temple mounds because we think that the buildings on top of them were ceremonial ritual. Some of them were used for burials. There are many of them that have burials and those tend to be conical and we call them burial mounds. Some of the ones nearby, the burial mounds might have had structures on them, but not domestic. Well, they would have been probably more like charnel houses for the processing of the deceased before they were interred. Some of them are marker mounds. They might have had there’s a million.

Janice Person [00:05:41]:

Kinds of mounds, basically many different kinds of it. Part of what I think is so interesting is, you know, locally, wherever you are, if there’s something in your state so many parts of the US. We actually do have great resources and they’re coming on all the time. I’ve seen a number of things being built in Oklahoma to represent the various tribes and peoples that ended up living in Oklahoma. And I’m from Memphis. I told you I’ve got Chuckalissa back on my list. I told people the other day I was going to sign back up for another field trip to go out there. And it’s been a university run property for as long as I know, which means it’s always been involved in research. So I think people ought to figure out where they’re from, go and find what the native peoples in that area were up to and sort of learn about that because that’s part of the history we don’t get in our books sometimes in the US. So now let’s talk about what you’re really good at and what you really know, food and farming. So we’re talking about cahokia. A friend and I were talking about it somewhat like a metropolis or something where people might come in, do trading, whatever, and may return home. Is that part of what was Cahokia? And if so, farming and food would be the first thing people would want to trade is my assumption.

Gayle Fritz [00:07:05]:

Yes. We know that there was a great deal of long distance trade at Cahokia, but also there were over 10,000 people, as many as 15 or 20,000 people, who seemed to have been permanent residents at the height. So they had to also eat daily in addition to probably think in terms of having something extra to trade for outside types of goods when that opportunity arose, which probably was often.

Janice Person [00:07:31]:

Well, and in this area, things grow so well. So I know some of the local, like the native plants to the Americas. Tell me about those. Like, the Three Sisters is the big one everybody talks about, but you help me understand what I should know about the food grown in Cahokia.

Gayle Fritz [00:07:49]:

Well, the Three Sisters is used primarily to describe the iroquoian system of intercropping maize or corn. I think usually I call it go ahead and just call it corn, but it’s the maize and beans, the common beans and squash. And corn was big at Cahokia as well. That was shared with the Iroquois and Three Sisters, but beans were not one of the staples. In fact, they’re fine, almost no beans.

Janice Person [00:08:21]:

They’re huge in Arizona with the people we were talking to.

Gayle Fritz [00:08:24]:

Yes. And it turns out it was such a surprise to archaeologists when we started being able to really precisely date small individual seeds that the beans seemed to right here in this area, seemed to post date 1251, 200 or 1250. And Cahokia was biggest between 1001, 300. So you get a few beans at.

Janice Person [00:08:47]:

The very end of the cahokia.

Gayle Fritz [00:08:49]:

At the very end. But you do get the corn, definitely, and you get the squash. And the big surprise about squash is that the major species that we find was actually domesticated in eastern North America, whereas corn was domesticated in Mesoamerica, as were beans, which weren’t here yet. The type of squash they grew was domesticated thousands of years before corn came in. Really? Yeah, and it was native to the Southeast.

Janice Person [00:09:21]:

Okay.

Gayle Fritz [00:09:22]:

And it was represented today by the yellow crookneck summer squash that people the.

Janice Person [00:09:28]:

One that people have in every garden everywhere, that zucchini is what we have everywhere. But that crooked yellow squash is really common.

Gayle Fritz [00:09:37]:

It’s the yellow squash. But the Halloween pumpkin, the orange ones, and the other non crookneck type things that they grow in the Southwest that also came from Mesoamerica was not the most popular squash, although we think it might have come in like beans at the very end. But we’re not sure about that because the seeds are so similar. But work needs to be done on that.

Janice Person [00:09:59]:

Well, part of that is that technology to let us know things. Like, my guess is when I was in elementary school, if they’d tried to teach me this, they wouldn’t have known enough of the science to get it right. And the people who should have caught history and written it down weren’t capturing things. Is that the case? Is history just getting so much better by the tools that science gives us?

Gayle Fritz [00:10:21]:

The tools, the genetic tools are a big they play a big part in this. But also there was some sort of I would call it a prejudice against giving the North American, especially the eastern North American Native Americans credit for that kind of domestication. And it would have been the Mesoamericans. They had the big civilization and they were the master farmers.

Janice Person [00:10:45]:

Is that what we would call, like, the Aztec people as Mesoamerica?

Gayle Fritz [00:10:50]:

Yes. Aztec and their predecessors. Maya. The other Mesoameric. But here it turns out that the eastern North American natives did, in fact domesticate not only this type of squash, which is a different subspecies, but very, very distinct genetically and could have been distinct even morphologically, but people weren’t paying enough attention to it. And sunflowers. Sunflowers were domesticated here in eastern North America, possibly in Missouri or Tennessee.

Janice Person [00:11:20]:

We need really big credit for that.

Gayle Fritz [00:11:22]:

Big credit, yeah. And then a whole suite of others that have not survived the test of time that we refer to as the Eastern agricultural complex or the lost crops.

Janice Person [00:11:35]:

So that one’s really interesting to me. And I told you I had talked to Terry Button and his family. Ramona has been bringing back temporary beans and they have all the different colors of temporary beans now. And they’ve gotten know, sometimes it was just a small handful that one family still had somewhere. They were slowly able to work it up. So what are those other foods that we’ve maybe lost and would love to find again? And what did they offer? The diet, I think, is a really important question because corn is a great starch. You can eat that. And it gives you a lot of the things that we’re familiar with. But if we didn’t have beans in this part of the world, that protein is lacking. So was that covered in different ways?

Gayle Fritz [00:12:22]:

I think protein in eastern North America was covered a lot by the deer and the fish. Yeah. But several of these lost crops are very high in protein. One of them is closely related to quinoa and which everybody reveres as being so high protein. It’s in the same genus. It looks like a lamb’s quarter that people might find. But the lamb’s quarter that is growing in most of our gardens and on our sidewalks, we think is a European. But there are native cousins in the same genus, Kinopodium. And one of them was domesticated independently here in the Midwest. River in the heartland all around St. Louis several thousand years ago and was still being eaten in large quantities at Cahokia when corn, it looks like it was intensified along with corn. Not that corn came in and replaced it, but that it became they were complementary or something. Well, it would have certainly had a lot more protein than maize. And then there’s a relative of the sunflower, a close relative that we call marshalder or sumpweed. And it also, like sunflower, was selected for larger seeds, larger and larger seeds or fruits. And it also is high in lipids like sunflower. So we find quite a bit of that. And then there were two native grasses that we call may grass and a little barley. And especially the maygrass turns out to have a high protein content. And then there’s Erect knotweed, which is related to the Japanese buckwheat. Have you ever eaten buckwheat pancakes?

Janice Person [00:14:05]:

My family loves Japanese food.

Gayle Fritz [00:14:07]:

The erect, knotweed seeds that we find at Cahokia and other archaeological sites, sometimes hundreds of thousands of them, in burned caches where they had been stored in pits and something went wrong, and they just end up in these. Black lenses that when you excavate them and do the proper flotation techniques to separate the seas from the soil that some of them are caches of buckwheat looking a relative of that. And so it’s like triangular, it’s got sharp sides. All of those are found in quantity at Cahokia. And they had been domesticated here and grown in quantity for centuries, if not thousands of years.

Janice Person [00:14:47]:

Wow. Wow. Mind blowing. Most of us haven’t really learned our history from the northern parts of Americas other than US. History. To think about the things that were here long before. What else in terms of the dynamics of this community and things, could you tell me? That would blow my mind, because I will say I understand they were incredibly advanced in terms of the tools that they developed and things along that line.

Gayle Fritz [00:15:20]:

They were just master farmers, and agriculture was the foundation of the economy. And the other thing that a lot of people don’t realize is that there was a division of labor in terms of farming versus hunting. And the agriculture and the gathering of wild plants was done primarily by women.

Janice Person [00:15:44]:

Okay?

Gayle Fritz [00:15:44]:

So that is something to really give the women credit for.

Janice Person [00:15:49]:

It’s still done that way in a lot of Africa and places and the Iroquois too.

Gayle Fritz [00:15:54]:

Not so much the Southwest. It’s interesting that the Southwest had become both men and women doing a lot of the farming, but at Contact, and we have really no reason to believe that it would have been different at Cahokia or Chuckalissa or the other Mississippian societies. The women would have been the farmers producing massive amounts of produce of corn and then here at and, storing it.

Janice Person [00:16:22]:

For the winter, storing it for the.

Gayle Fritz [00:16:24]:

Winter, building big pits. And we know from the hadatsa in Mandan up at the Missouri River at Contact these pits that they lived in big earth lodge villages. And as described by Lewis and Clark and others who followed them, huge amounts of corn and other crops were being grown and stored in these huge bell shaped pits that had boats in the bottom of them to really to line them.

Janice Person [00:16:51]:

Yeah, because you have to kind of cool it and stuff so that the airflow is there’s a lot to storing food and keeping it.

Gayle Fritz [00:17:00]:

The technology is complicated. Yes. Okay.

Janice Person [00:17:05]:

I still have trouble with canning so I’m not going to go there. But seriously, to think that they were able to make it through winter yes. With that kind of storage of things I’m sure they were still hunting as well. But a lot of those things also hibernate.

Gayle Fritz [00:17:22]:

We think that the cold winters this far north were one of the reasons why those now lost crops along with sunflower and squat were originally domesticated because they had relied before that happened, they had relied heavily on the nuts and they still did the nuts. And you can, of course, store nuts and process nuts into storable products. But it looks as if these somewhat weedy plants themselves that were being harvested and brought back and deposited in the more nitrogen rich soils of the villages were starting to become more attractive to the people who could see. Their potential and then started saving the seeds and planting them and then having small garden plots and having larger and larger plots that we might buy. Certainly before Cahokia was a city that we might call fields.

Janice Person [00:18:25]:

Well, you had to if you have 10,000 people there right? I’m sure it builds over time or something but you have to have a really organized system of food for a crowd that big no matter what it is.

Gayle Fritz [00:18:38]:

Exactly. And the other thing that I might say would be somewhat surprising, and that is also debatable, is that assuming with very good reason that the farmers were women, I would also say that they were the organizational powers, the organizational leaders. And that’s something that has not been assumed or given really serious thought to when we talk about the hierarchy, because we know it was a complex society. We know that everybody was not equal, it was hierarchical. But people have even depicted it in exhibits at museums that the individuals at the top were men and that it’s not until you get down to the lower rungs where you have the actual food producers.

Janice Person [00:19:28]:

I’m thinking that’s because most of the men put together those exhibits but go ahead.

Gayle Fritz [00:19:35]:

Could well be. I predict backwards that for the whole thing to work organizationally people who had the actual expert knowledge of the soils and the crops and everything else were the ones who were making the decisions about where to grow them and how much to grow and how to because.

Janice Person [00:19:54]:

They would have had the time and the space in that space specifically. Whereas the hunters, their job is to go off and do other things and come back. Right. So they wouldn’t necessarily see what was growing. Where you’re talking nitrogen rich. Right. So you’re getting from the waste of animals and humans.

Gayle Fritz [00:20:13]:

Yeah. There probably were not animals back then. The dog was domesticated, the only domesticated animal, and I don’t know that they were pinning any of it was all hunting.

Janice Person [00:20:24]:

Okay.

Gayle Fritz [00:20:25]:

But women would have had the skills, the knowledge, and if that knowledge had been removed from them, I think there would have been trouble.

Janice Person [00:20:38]:

I love it. We mentioned nuts a minute ago, and I told you before we started the recording that I had been listening to a book, braiding sweetgrass. And one of the things she had talked about was how nuts would be carried with people when they were moving, because they knew that this was a way that they could sustain their family and their future generations. So pecans are somewhat at that time, what kind of nuts did they have in cahokia?

Gayle Fritz [00:21:08]:

Archaeologically, we find the thick hickory nuts. Pecans are a thin shelled member of that family and genus, but it’s surprising that we don’t find more pecan shell, and it’s very distinctive. What we find is the thick hickory nuts, and there are several species in this area that could be. It’s hard to tell from a little burned fragment what species it is. The cherokee today and some of the other native groups process hickory nuts. They eat pecans. Everybody loves pecans, but they process more of the thick shelled hickory nuts because you can pound it into a well today. They make balls that they call Kanuji out of it. In fact, I think there’s a picture it lends itself to mass processing and trading.

Janice Person [00:21:59]:

Okay.

Gayle Fritz [00:21:59]:

And I think one of the reasons we don’t find more hickory nutshell, we find lots of it up in the uplands and at earlier sites. But once you get to Cahokia with ten to 20,000 or 15 to 20,000 people, permanent residents and more close by when you get into what we call Greater Cahokia, I think probably then a lot of the gathering and processing of the nuts, primarily hickory nuts, was going.

Janice Person [00:22:25]:

On outside in one of the satellite.

Gayle Fritz [00:22:27]:

Areas, and they were trading it in after they had already removed most of the nutshell. And that later, when the population of cahokia declines, we start finding more sites with more of the hickory nutshell and acorn. We don’t think of acorn as being a big, wonderful food, but they certainly knew how to process it and were.

Janice Person [00:22:50]:

Eating, I think, further to the east. It’s like chestnuts were a big thing in the appalachian area. Right. So I was trying to translate in my mind what else would be in this area, and I totally had forgotten acorns.

Gayle Fritz [00:23:03]:

Acorns were important in general. I’m not sure about right here all of the time, but they were important. And we certainly find the nutshell and walnuts as well.

Janice Person [00:23:14]:

So do you know much about the farming methodologies that were used in this part, or is that outside your purview, really?

Gayle Fritz [00:23:21]:

We’re pretty sure about the tools.

Janice Person [00:23:23]:

Okay.

Gayle Fritz [00:23:23]:

And you mentioned the rice farmer finding.

Janice Person [00:23:26]:

The hose, the blade part of the hoe and stuff. Right.

Gayle Fritz [00:23:30]:

So we find those here, too. And there’s a type of church called Mill Creek Church that’s from south of here in Illinois that was being traded up. And we find the whole hose, and they’re beautiful.

Janice Person [00:23:43]:

Oh, wow.

Gayle Fritz [00:23:44]:

And they have this silica polish on them. Some of them are so big, are so massive, that I think they had multiple purposes. I don’t think they were just being used.

Janice Person [00:23:54]:

They may have been used in other ways.

Gayle Fritz [00:23:56]:

Again, at European contact, the primary digging tool was a stick, and it would have been especially fashioned and fire hardened with, like, hickory, nice hard wood. It didn’t have an attached blade, but it was used to form the hills and to dig the holes to deposit the seeds. And women produced a lot of food, corn and other crops.

Janice Person [00:24:25]:

I’m just going to say you’re talking about using hand tools to produce food for like 10,000 people. Yes.

Gayle Fritz [00:24:33]:

And some of mind blowing to me there were other types of ho blades other than church. There was deer antler or elk antler or scapula or bison. Even though we don’t think of there being a lot of bison around here, it wasn’t that far away. And then we know that there were.

Janice Person [00:24:55]:

The open plains are really pretty close. Yeah, that’s amazing. Part of what sounds so wild to me is how much they would be able to sharpen stones and stuff to fashion something that would allow them to then either cut open the soil or even take the skin off of an animal that they were going to prepare for food and to be able to use the leather and stuff like that. It’s impressive how many different kinds of tools they had to have that many years ago.

Gayle Fritz [00:25:29]:

Absolutely. Master flint, nampers, and tool fashioners. And that doesn’t even include the textiles that have almost all vanished. There aren’t that many from open sites like Cahokia. In special contexts, we get little fragments of textiles, and sometimes we get the textile impressions on pottery. But that would have been the weaving would have been another incredible skill and one that would have been important for the women in terms of carrying and storing.

Janice Person [00:26:04]:

I knew cotton very well. And so you think about those kind of fibers that you’re using realistically, that stuff breaks down when it’s in the soil. And that degradation that we don’t get with polyester is why we don’t have fabrics from places like Cahokia, because the kinds of fabrics they had were biologically based. Either plant, animal in some shore, some of those fibers for baskets are a lot harder to break down river cane, things like that. And so that’s why we have maybe a little bit more of the basket type of weaving and stuff that we can occasionally find. Is that right?

Gayle Fritz [00:26:41]:

I think, the mats and the baskets. Yes, but you’ve brought up clothing, and I should have included that with the bags, because, again, the museum exhibits tend to show the people wearing skins, and yet at European contact, they are described as we have examples on artwork on statuary of, like, shawls that look like lace shawls that the women are wearing. I think they probably had some we know that they had some really well crafted woven dresses and skirts and shoes and other items of apparel.

Janice Person [00:27:21]:

Amazing. Yeah. I think you fail to think about how amazing people could have been that long ago when you’ve just not had exposure to it for so long. And to think about the native peoples that were here and the things that they did all those years ago before Columbus came. And we still have them, like the mounds. So when you go to Cahokia, there are these amazing mounds that take you a long time to climb up. This is not some tiny little rise. It is serious space, like the elevation is serious. And to think that that has worn for thousands of years now.

Gayle Fritz [00:28:07]:

Yes. When there were 110 mounds, all within a very short walking distance with a palisade around some of them and courtyards.

Janice Person [00:28:18]:

And tall, and they were created with, like hand tools and things like that.

Gayle Fritz [00:28:24]:

So it would have been when you arrived, know, upstream or downstream or whatever and came into this ceremonial and domestic environment, it would have been just awe.

Janice Person [00:28:37]:

I was going to say awestruck. Right. Like when people go to New York and see Times Square or something for the first time, it would be similarly high impact because who would have thought? I mean, the mounds here were similar to the kinds of things we have in other parts of the world that we’ve heard about.

Gayle Fritz [00:28:57]:

Yes. And all around then, this precinct, urban and ceremonial precinct, there would have been fields, and those would have been impressive, too, because they would have been big. And the soil here is so rich. I think people would have there’s a higher concentration of primate agricultural soil even today, as you know, from the horseradish and all the corn and soybeans that they grow and occasionally some sunflowers wheat. Then it would have been I think visitors would have thought, wow, this is just a lot of food.

Janice Person [00:29:34]:

It would be striking to the eye, I’m sure. Well, is there anything that I really missed that you’re like, Janice? I can’t believe you didn’t ask me about this, because I know one of the things when we talked about those lost crops, I understand some people are still doing some work in that area. If I wanted to find out more information about that. Where might I look?

Gayle Fritz [00:29:56]:

My colleague at Washington University, Dr. Natalie Mueller, has some wonderful videos on her website at the university and she has been involved with a group called the Lost Crops Network. But if you google Natalie Mueller, Mueller and Lost Crops, you will find these great videos and links to her publications and to I’ll make sure I put.

Janice Person [00:30:27]:

Some of that in the notes for this. I also want to mention you have a book that I picked up. I haven’t gotten to read it yet, so I’ll put that in the notes as well. And I think we’re going to be able to go over to Cahokia and maybe take some photos and some video.

Gayle Fritz [00:30:40]:

Yes, I was actually going to show you one of the sites that’s not on the state historic I’m going to get back, but it’s called the Spooniman site. And it’s where some of these figurines, some of these flint clay figurines that were probably associated with a fertility ritual.

Janice Person [00:30:59]:

Well, I assume there has to be quite a bit of space that maybe isn’t protected as part of the state historic site. Knowing that you said this is something that’s off of the map normally. So how big do you think Cahokia was?

Gayle Fritz [00:31:14]:

I think people that were connected with Cahokia were living as far away as a day and a half walk away. We know that, for example, right now in downtown St. Louis, where there were 24 mounds that have been all destroyed and they’re just north of the arch, that those people had the same pottery and they were very closely connected. They were part of the greater Cahokia area. And then as you go up to like Scott Air Force Base east of here and you get up onto the higher elevations, there’s still a lot of corn fields there today, lots and lots. It’s more prairie soil, so it might have been a little bit harder to work. But there are sites up there, dozens of sites, and some of them with mounds that looked like they were part of this big bang, this explosion of when 1000 to 1050 Ad, when thousands of people were living, came and then were living here for generations. So how many miles is that? It just got airport based.

Janice Person [00:32:22]:

That’s a long way.

Gayle Fritz [00:32:23]:

And then all the way to the north end, almost near Alton there are sites and then all the way down to where the bottom land.

Janice Person [00:32:34]:

I think this is part of the reason why it’s hard to just say, here’s what we find at Cahokia, right? The mounds part that is protected. We know what we found here. But then, quite frankly, when you’re talking big metropolitan area, major area, not all of it has been searched by archaeologists. I mean, people have been farming it, people have been ranching it, people have been building houses on it, whatever it is, right. Chances are. There’s a lot of history that’s still to be discovered, and I know some of it washes up sometimes because the land is eroding in a bad storm and you just happen to find some extra things. If people found artifacts that they would like to provide to someone, do you know, is there, like, a center at Cahokia or something? I do know that they’re taking some donations and things as they try and get more artifacts together and the museum space improved and some things like that.

Gayle Fritz [00:33:38]:

Yes. The museum is being massively redone. A new roof has just been put on it, and now it is awaiting a new HVAC system. So, unfortunately, it’s closed, but the staff is still there. Laurie Belnap, the site superintendent, would be a person to call. When you call the main number for Cahokia Mounds Visitor Center, someone will answer. And there are very dedicated volunteers and state employees, staff members who would be happy to talk to you about any artifacts you found. They used to have, every year, an artifact identification day, and that’s one of the things that they won’t be having until it reopens. But they are having a kids day on October the 7th, and I expect that to be a huge event. It always was in the past. They haven’t had one for a couple of well, since COVID but now that’s something to go, and people can bring things there, and there will be lots of staff members and volunteers. And as you said, they’re now asking for donations of money to help with this.

Janice Person [00:34:51]:

Something like that takes real support, right?

Gayle Fritz [00:34:54]:

Yes.

Janice Person [00:34:54]:

You can’t capture our history if you don’t have the money to help make the machine work.

Gayle Fritz [00:35:00]:

And because the gift shop has been closed, there has been less money coming in. You can shop online still, and they have had I can’t remember when the next one is, but they have had some Saturdays where the gift shop has, in fact, been open.

Janice Person [00:35:15]:

And I know they do like events for the solstice, different pieces of nature and the environment.

Gayle Fritz [00:35:22]:

They’re still doing a solstice and Equinox for a year. Bill Eisenger, who was the chief interpreter at Cahokia Mounds for 40 years or more, I think is still doing a great job at those observances various lectures. In fact, tomorrow, the Cahokia Archaeological Society is having a meeting at the Collinsville Public Library, and he will be speaking.

Janice Person [00:35:47]:

Oh, neat. All right, well, thank you very much for this. I so appreciate your time. I know this is an odd way to spend your day, but I appreciate your having me over. And it’s so nice that I could just get some more information because I really am so impressed with the way our history formed, but I didn’t always know it. So, to me, finding some of these missing blocks that come before what we considered our history, it’s really important for me to get the big picture and to show people appreciation for the things their ancestors brought us. I mean, I knew squash, but I did not realize sunflower and some of those other things were quite in the same space.

Gayle Fritz [00:36:31]:

So it’s a significant part of American history and it’s been a pleasure to talk to you about it. Thank you.

Janice Person [00:36:37]:

Thank you. As always, I want to thank you for listening. If you’re sharing it with friends and family who also like this space of food and farming and always interested in learning more, sharing that, I really appreciate it. We’re going to go ahead and we’ll talk to you again in two weeks. You can always find us on social media in the meantime. Thanks.

The post Transcript — Episode 410 Talking Cahokia with Dr. Gayle Fritz appeared first on Grounded by the Farm.