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.

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.

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.

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.

43 minutes

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. Today I’m in southern Illinois, and I think this is a part of the country a lot of people have overlooked somehow, and I’m still a little shaky on exactly how I got here. I was in Nashville this weekend and I came across to Paducah, Kentucky, and I just kind of kept going west and a little bit north, and I kept going through Kentucky for a long time. And then I got into Illinois. There were so many rivers and bridges, but eventually I landed on river Bend, cahokia farms. It’s all those great things. And I’m going to be talking to Blake Gerard about rice. Okay, so in Illinois, you’re growing rice. That’s not a common perception. Most people will know if they know much about rice. Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, California, Missouri, they may know because the boot hill is like Arkansas plus kind of Illinois. How can you grow rice here? Like, what makes this part of Illinois? Because Illinois also has Chicago. You can’t grow rice in Chicago.

Blake Gerard [00:01:19]:

That’s right. It’s a big state. It’s a long state.

Janice Person [00:01:22]:

It’s a really long state. I don’t think people think about yeah, yeah.

Blake Gerard [00:01:27]:

Chicago 6 hours away. Starkville, Mississippi, is five and a half hours away.

Janice Person [00:01:33]:

How close are you to Memphis then?

Blake Gerard [00:01:35]:

3 hours.

Janice Person [00:01:36]:

Yeah. That’s crazy.

Blake Gerard [00:01:38]:

We’re right between St. Louis. Halfway between St. Louis and Memphis.

Janice Person [00:01:41]:

Okay.

Blake Gerard [00:01:42]:

Interstate 55 over in Missouri. We’re right on the Mississippi river.

Janice Person [00:01:45]:

And it is a strange place. There is so much water. Like the roads, every time I turned, it was because there was water ahead of me. If I didn’t turn, I’d be in a river or something.

Blake Gerard [00:01:55]:

Yeah, well, we’re right at the confluence and actually coming through there, you drove by our southernmost fields right by Cairo at the confluence of the Mississippi and how. And then there’s a lot of other small rivers and tributaries that you came.

Janice Person [00:02:10]:

Know, water is a big thing for rice is why I brought it is.

Blake Gerard [00:02:14]:

A big thing for rice. And we’ve got almost too much, oftentimes.

Janice Person [00:02:20]:

Even this year because there’s been such drought issues for so many of us.

Blake Gerard [00:02:24]:

Right? Yeah. Droughts not our problem here.

Janice Person [00:02:30]:

It’s a water table. You have so much water.

Blake Gerard [00:02:32]:

Yeah. A lot of times I tell people, I farm in the bottom of the Mississippi river. We’re right on the river and it’s not so much different than anybody farming up and down this river all the time.

Janice Person [00:02:44]:

Where I was in Mississippi for years and years, it’s the same. You got river ground and you got other is.

Blake Gerard [00:02:52]:

Our delta here is very narrow compared to as you move know, the big delta starts just south of Cape Girardo. It opens up into southeast Missouri, and.

Janice Person [00:03:03]:

We’Re right across the river from Cape Girardo. So if people are trying to look for us on the map, McClure may not be on the right.

Blake Gerard [00:03:09]:

That’s right. Cape Girardeau is. We can look out the window and see Cape Girardeau on the other side of the river.

Janice Person [00:03:17]:

So how long has your family been growing rice? Because we talked about a lot of things before the mics got turned on, and I didn’t hear a lot of talk about rice.

Blake Gerard [00:03:26]:

Yeah, so no, this is my 24th year growing rice. 24th season. And so my father did not grow rice. His father, none of us, nobody in the family. I was the first one to start growing rice, and it was simply because of this river and how the river has kind of evolved over my lifetime. When my grandpa farmed here, he raised wheat, corn, alfalfa, more upland crops, and it was not an issue, but they flooded, but not constantly, and it’s kind of changed. The river has changed.

Janice Person [00:04:09]:

I think we started it’s going to do that.

Blake Gerard [00:04:11]:

From what I read, we’ve started manipulating the river when? In the early 19 hundreds. So 100 years later, it’s been fighting.

Janice Person [00:04:19]:

Back a little bit.

Blake Gerard [00:04:20]:

Yeah. So that’s what got me. So we had a big flood of 1993 and another one in 95, another one in 97.

Janice Person [00:04:34]:

You start going, wait a minute. Yeah, the farming thing. Maybe I should figure out how to farm in a place that gets flooding a lot.

Blake Gerard [00:04:42]:

Exactly right. Or quit. I was 23, 25, 27 in those three floods, and it’s like, man, this is going to be tough. Way to go.

Janice Person [00:04:50]:

I don’t want to farm insurance for a life.

Blake Gerard [00:04:53]:

Well, we really weren’t using insurance as a tool.

Janice Person [00:04:57]:

Yeah. No, I understand.

Blake Gerard [00:04:58]:

It was catastrophic, and it wasn’t what it is today. Crop insurance, from what I recall, it definitely wasn’t a profitable operation with that scenario happening. Too much water. It’s hard to grow corn. Corn is expensive to grow. And then you lose it, get it up, have ears on it, and get a flood, and water comes shooting out of the ground. Seep water and it dies.

Janice Person [00:05:24]:

Yeah.

Blake Gerard [00:05:25]:

I thought about raising fish, but they will swim off.

Janice Person [00:05:28]:

Yeah, they would. When they flood. They absolutely will. For my family, we’ve never met a starch we didn’t like, but rice is one of our favorites. So some of my nieces and nephews think they have to have rice every day at the very least, and probably won’t at every meal. And so I think it’s an interesting food because people don’t think of rice as a midwestern food. You’re kind of southern midwestern, but usually Illinois is considered the midwest. And people in St. Louis, when I said I wanted to make red beans and rice, didn’t know what that was, and they certainly didn’t understand that that’s a meal. That that’s not like I was just going to have some rice if they wanted to eat it or something. Like it’s a hearty meal when you make it with rice, red beans and sausage and all that stuff. So tell me, do you eat a lot of rice?

Blake Gerard [00:06:17]:

I do. We eat a lot of rice, yeah.

Janice Person [00:06:21]:

And you guys sell direct?

Blake Gerard [00:06:23]:

We do.

Janice Person [00:06:25]:

How do you go from, we haven’t grown any rice, to not only am I growing rice, but I’m not selling it through the mainstream markets, I’m selling it on my own.

Blake Gerard [00:06:36]:

Yeah. Well, I started out seed rice the first year, raising rice, cleaning it, having it cleaned, selling to other farmers because it’s a new territory. Right. Clean seed, no red rice, fewer weeds, et cetera, and have done that ever since. So we do that.

Janice Person [00:06:56]:

Okay.

Blake Gerard [00:06:57]:

And also gosh, we only started with this higher protein rice about I’ve been raising it probably for eight years.

Janice Person [00:07:06]:

Okay.

Blake Gerard [00:07:07]:

But we didn’t start marketing it till five years ago.

Janice Person [00:07:10]:

Okay. Higher protein rice just sounds not like a thing.

Blake Gerard [00:07:16]:

Right.

Janice Person [00:07:17]:

So I need you to explain it because I think people think of wheat the same way as protein is not a thing. But there is protein in all these grains depending on how you process it. Is that right?

Blake Gerard [00:07:29]:

Well, there’s protein in the rice no matter how you process.

Janice Person [00:07:33]:

Yeah. But how much is there?

Blake Gerard [00:07:34]:

That’s right. Yeah. How much is there? That’s correct. Yeah. So up until five years ago, we were not market. We were selling rice as seed rice and also delivering it onto the river and whoever buys it yeah. Right here. We’re very fortunate to be they load rice out at, you know, a lot of rice from Missouri loads out right there. So that’s 5 miles from my farm. So that’s pretty awesome. And have done that since the day we started raising rice. Pretty much. So that’s convenient. A friend of mine and who’s now a business partner obtained the higher protein rice from LSU. Louisiana State University developed it.

Janice Person [00:08:14]:

Yeah. A lot of people don’t know that state universities in some places have breeding programs, and it really is more focused on what’s local or state important. So the rice station at LSU is awesome.

Blake Gerard [00:08:28]:

Yeah. Their premier rice and in the Texas Arkansas University of Arkansas, mississippi State business partner obtained that and we grew it a couple of years. They didn’t have a direction they were going to go with it. I’d always wanted to have a product that differentiate itself to be vertically integrated, right. To grow it and market it. And this was an excellent opportunity.

Janice Person [00:08:55]:

Some people love that idea and some people hate that idea, to be vertically integrated. Right. But to be able I mean, like the people that listen to this podcast, like the idea of getting to know the farmers that are growing some of the foods that they like to eat. So it’s a perfect fit.

Blake Gerard [00:09:11]:

So at the point he’s like, hey, we’ve got this rice. We’re paying a royalty to have the marketing rights to this rice, to produce it, and let’s take it to market. And I’m like, Heck, yeah, let’s do it. Why not? This is a good opportunity, it’s a unique rice. Okay, so first I’ll tell you a little bit about it. The health properties, the carbohydrate and protein and the so, and it’s a non GMO rice. I’ll step back to LSU developing it and they crossed it when they found the higher protein rice, they crossed it with a variety that was grown. I grew it the first year I.

Janice Person [00:09:49]:

Raised rice like Cyprus.

Blake Gerard [00:09:52]:

Yeah. You know? Okay, so which is one of the it’s been around forever quality rice. It’s still a good rice the US has ever grown. Yeah, it’s still a good rice. It was like in high demand Central American market. They loved Cyprus. So anyway, things have evolved, right? And we’ve bred new varieties. Yields have increased because those state universities are funded through grower checkoff and decisions are made. We get paid on the bushel, not on quality. So yields have increased, quality has decreased. They crossed the higher protein rice with cypress. So it’s got excellent cooking characteristics, taste and texture.

Janice Person [00:10:31]:

Yeah.

Blake Gerard [00:10:31]:

And so it’s a premium quality rice that has higher protein content. So it’s 11% protein.

Janice Person [00:10:39]:

11% protein?

Blake Gerard [00:10:42]:

Yeah.

Janice Person [00:10:42]:

That sounds really high for rice. What’s a normal rice percent? Like five?

Blake Gerard [00:10:47]:

I’d have to do the math, but I can know the grams. So grams per serving, like, our brown rice is 6 grams per serving of protein, whereas typical rice is three to four and then closer to like three and a half. And then our white rice is 5 grams, where typical is around two. What that does the cool thing, the biggest thing? Well, a couple of things. One, that’s in a plant protein, that’s fairly high.

Janice Person [00:11:16]:

Yeah. I mean, chickpeas are a really good one, comparable to black beans are a good one.

Blake Gerard [00:11:25]:

It’s comparable for a plant protein, it’s decent. But what it also does, and most importantly in my opinion, is it lowers the Glycemic score of the rice.

Janice Person [00:11:37]:

Right, I was looking at that on your website.

Blake Gerard [00:11:40]:

Yeah. So the protein to carb ratio, I was at a small trade show, I think in Springfield, Illinois, three or four years ago, and marketing to all the people that came through and given my spiel and I’m stumbling through it and I get on and the little girl is standing across from me. You’re all done? I’m like, yeah, I’m all done, that’s it, that’s all I know about this rice. She’s like, you didn’t tell me the most important part. I’m like, well, what’s that? She’s like, this is going to be low glycemic rice. She’s like, Everything you’ve told me. If that’s all legit people who are.

Janice Person [00:12:20]:

Watching their blood sugar, yeah.

Blake Gerard [00:12:22]:

She’s like, you need to get it tested. That’s a market way better because she.

Janice Person [00:12:25]:

Was like a registered dietitian or something like that.

Blake Gerard [00:12:28]:

Yeah. And she’s like, you need to send this rice off and have it tested for Glycemic score, because I think you’ve got low Glycemic score rice, which opens the door to a whole market of people that everybody really needs to be watching their Glycemic, their sugars when they eat and not spike your blood sugar. It allows people that the doctors told them to stop, don’t eat rice anymore. You can maybe put some back on your plate because it’s comparable to other low Glycemic. It took it from a high Glycemic food. It now falls into the low glycemic category. It scores 41.

Janice Person [00:13:08]:

Wow.

Blake Gerard [00:13:08]:

So there’s no other rice out there like that?

Janice Person [00:13:11]:

Yeah, it makes it really easy for that to be a reason to vertically integrate and keep it all separate from all the other rice and all that kind of stuff.

Blake Gerard [00:13:21]:

Right. So we’re growing it. It’s in retail and also in food service. It’s been exciting.

Janice Person [00:13:33]:

It’s so funny to figure out how this all works. So obviously you can buy it through their website, but you say it’s available through retail. Is that locally or is that regionally? Because it’s hard to get a product, like, on every market shelf.

Blake Gerard [00:13:49]:

Tell me about it. I’m a farmer. I don’t even know what I’m doing with it. So we’ve enlisted some help and hired sales, but it’s still in a controlled fashion because we know we’re going to screw up.

Janice Person [00:14:04]:

You can take some risk knowing you’ll screw up if you’re taking small amounts of risk to start testing the waters versus going all in on something.

Blake Gerard [00:14:13]:

So it’s through distribution is kind of how we’re growing it. Somebody can want it, but you’ve got to be able to get it to them without being an inconvenience. Right. Is what I’ve learned. And if you’re not working with their distributor, it’s very difficult.

Janice Person [00:14:28]:

Right.

Blake Gerard [00:14:29]:

So now we’ve established distribution with several major I would call major distributors here in the US. And Midwest. Then that allows us to target their client base, their current right. Yeah, their current customers, and that’s we found the most effective way to grow, especially in the food service side.

Janice Person [00:14:50]:

Well, more and more food service places are being asked to provide nutritional information on the foods they’re doing. Right. So hospitals are being asked to produce better tasting foods because they always had highly nutritious. And then restaurants used to have really tasty but maybe hadn’t focused as much on nutrition. And I think folks are trying to get nutrition across the board so they get good health properties in general. So it’s probably a good time.

Blake Gerard [00:15:25]:

Yeah.

Janice Person [00:15:25]:

I like, all right. I like the sushi grade. I like all of it.

Blake Gerard [00:15:30]:

Absolutely. Me too. Me too.

Janice Person [00:15:33]:

When you started doing this as a business, it was you and your partner.

Blake Gerard [00:15:39]:

Correct.

Janice Person [00:15:40]:

Just kind of winging it.

Blake Gerard [00:15:43]:

Correct? Yes.

Janice Person [00:15:44]:

How did you come up with a name like Cahokia and the logo and the branding and all that kind of stuff, because for people who don’t know, maybe I should ask you, since the name is called since it’s called Cahokia Rice, maybe I should get you to explain what that is for people who don’t know.

Blake Gerard [00:16:01]:

Yes. Okay. So my partner came up with the name. He suggested it based on all the artifacts that we’ve found and he’s seen, and he was really impressed by them, I believe. And all these farmers, all my friends, especially about 10 miles north of here, have, like, tremendous collections, amazing collections, and mostly they’re farming tools, right? Yeah. Cahokia was what, the largest city in what are the statistics on that? It was huge.

Janice Person [00:16:33]:

I mean, it’s still considered it was one of the top civilizations in this part of the world. Yeah, it was like the first mega city, and it was native peoples just on this side of the river. Illinois.

Blake Gerard [00:16:52]:

Illinois side, right?

Janice Person [00:16:53]:

Yeah.

Blake Gerard [00:16:53]:

The Cahokia mounds.

Janice Person [00:16:55]:

And there are incredible mounds. You can still go to that site. I think it’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Cahokia has a specific connection to this area.

Blake Gerard [00:17:05]:

Right.

Janice Person [00:17:05]:

I assume that was part of it, yes.

Blake Gerard [00:17:07]:

In the name. Everyone around the Midwest knows is familiar with that story, and it’s in honor of it’s not really an Indian tribe. The Kokia was a community, not a tribe. It was multiple groups of Indians living together from what understand. And so it’s in honor of those folks that were farming here long before I was. Or my grandfather. Or my great grandfather.

Janice Person [00:17:32]:

Right. Yeah.

Blake Gerard [00:17:33]:

And we still finding their tools today, which is really cool.

Janice Person [00:17:37]:

I’m going to have to take pictures of some of those just to show people, because I always tell people if they’re interested in seeing the pictures, we’ll put them up on the website because podcast doesn’t go really well with Photos, but the website makes it work.

Blake Gerard [00:17:48]:

Right. There you go. Perfect.

Janice Person [00:17:50]:

Your favorite ways to cook rice or the favorite ways to eat rice. What do you do?

Blake Gerard [00:17:56]:

The most common is for breakfast in the morning with a little honey and either milk or preferably half and half, right?

Janice Person [00:18:11]:

Yeah.

Blake Gerard [00:18:12]:

Awesome.

Janice Person [00:18:13]:

I have never heard of anybody eating rice like that for breakfast with half and half and honey. So now I’m so intrigued.

Blake Gerard [00:18:20]:

I love it.

Janice Person [00:18:20]:

Is it almost like the so much.

Blake Gerard [00:18:23]:

For the Glycemic score.

Janice Person [00:18:25]:

Yeah, you’ve totally killed that. But it is protein. So do you fix it kind of like you would do like an oatmeal consistency or something like that?

Blake Gerard [00:18:34]:

Exactly.

Janice Person [00:18:34]:

Not a watery oatmeal. Nobody wants that. So do you have a rice cooker that you always have going in the house?

Blake Gerard [00:18:41]:

Yeah, exactly. Cook up a batch and throw it in the fridge. And then also my wife makes a rice salad a lot that I’ll bring for lunch.

Janice Person [00:18:53]:

Yeah. Other people bring orzo salads? Pasta salads. I love a good rice salad. So what does she put in it? Do you know?

Blake Gerard [00:19:00]:

Lots of vegetables.

Janice Person [00:19:02]:

Like pickled vegetables?

Blake Gerard [00:19:04]:

Not pick. I wouldn’t say pickled. No, fresh. Yeah, not pickled. Fresh vegetables. Lots of color. I’m not, like, identifying all of it.

Janice Person [00:19:12]:

I don’t know. I was thinking there’s one a friend of mine who lives in Italy taught me to make and it’s with the gardenia kind of I don’t know. It’s garden vegetables, like carrots and stuff that have all been pickled. It’s an Italian thing, so you can buy it on the hill and you can buy it in a lot of grocery stores and stuff. They put it out with charcuterie bars and stuff. But it’s really kind of nice. You also put a little mayo in it. So it does need to stay cool. But that makes it a great summer food because it’s cool. Right? So it’s like a really nice salad for summer when it’s so freaking hot you can’t right.

Blake Gerard [00:19:54]:

It’s a great lunch. I saw I throw it in Tupperware container and take it with me to lunch. Yeah, but we need to get that recipe because that sounds good. And of course, my wife doesn’t cook an A 2ft, but I love an A two FA a lot. And red beans and rice. She does cook red beans and rice, but probably the number one is just me cooking it myself and eating breakfast regularly. And I think watching your Glycemic score I like to ride bikes a lot. I don’t ride as much as I should, but like an endurance ride. You eat that brown rice, it hangs with you. You don’t get the spike in blood sugar. I use it a lot for, like we do gravel rides and stuff and races. And it’s a pre race meal.

Janice Person [00:20:39]:

It’s awesome, really.

Blake Gerard [00:20:41]:

Eggs and rice.

Janice Person [00:20:41]:

So many people talk about pasta and see, I love all my starches. So whether it’s whole wheat pasta or brown rice, right?

Blake Gerard [00:20:50]:

Yeah. And that’s where that Glycemic score comes kind of in play. Because it’s a longer burn instead of an instant hot fire, it’s a delayed, prolonged energy release.

Janice Person [00:21:04]:

Yeah. Which is hadn’t thought about that.

Blake Gerard [00:21:06]:

What you want?

Janice Person [00:21:07]:

Yeah. When you’re doing a race.

Blake Gerard [00:21:09]:

Yeah, right.

Janice Person [00:21:10]:

Not a sprint.

Blake Gerard [00:21:11]:

Right.

Janice Person [00:21:12]:

You want that nice kick you’re power.

Blake Gerard [00:21:13]:

Lifting or something like that. You want a fire, a hot fire. But if in an endurance event, a slow burn is what you want anyway.

Janice Person [00:21:24]:

So what are the goals with it? Where do you want to get it? You want it on the shelf at Kroger, right? On all those places, I assume.

Blake Gerard [00:21:32]:

Well, yeah. And to continue to increase our percentage, we’re not 100% of what we grow is not this high protein rice as we’re growing it. So to gradually increase the percentage of what we grow, rice that we’re actually marketing ourselves to the consumer, whether it be retail or food service.

Janice Person [00:21:54]:

Are the folks at LSU working on a follow up.

Blake Gerard [00:21:57]:

They are, yes, they sure are.

Janice Person [00:21:59]:

So what’s the next version? Because that’s the thing about plant breeding. I think a lot of people don’t realize how plant breeders are so competitive. They always want to get better and better. So are they trying to get higher on the protein levels? Are they trying to get better yields?

Blake Gerard [00:22:15]:

I think combination of the two, correct?

Janice Person [00:22:17]:

Right?

Blake Gerard [00:22:17]:

Yeah.

Janice Person [00:22:18]:

So what are the problems in growing rice, besides the fact that mosquitoes are the problem for me with rice? Because you got that much water just sitting there in fields, flooding. Mosquitoes used to kill me, really? When I lived in an area with a lot of rice fields. Mosquitoes like the taste of my blood, I guess. But what are the big problems for you growing rice? You talked about one of the weeds that’s like a lookalike, so it’s red rice.

Blake Gerard [00:22:45]:

Yeah. We still have done a pretty decent job of keeping once you keep it out here. Yeah, we’re really careful of what seed we bring in because that’s typically how it comes in. So that’s not really an issue here. Actually, we’re in a really good place to grow rice. Just it’s the far north. I mean, we get blast, which is a leaf disease caused by if you’re in a field surrounded by trees and the dew doesn’t burn off till, say, noon, that’s a disease that is a problem. And we get it up here just as we got to watch it and plant certain varieties. If you’ve got a susceptible variety, you need to put a fungicide on it at a certain time. But other diseases like that for folks.

Janice Person [00:23:29]:

Who haven’t ever seen how blast works, I mean, it basically just totally messes up the plant’s ability to do photosynthesis. Right. Because you have these big spots on the leaves that are burnt through kind of thing.

Blake Gerard [00:23:42]:

It does as leaf blast, but then neck blast, rotten neck blast, basically blanks the whole head. It’ll make zero. So you can have a field that was going to make 180 bushel acre. That will make 40. The leading indicator is leaf blast. And a lot of times, a lot of these fields where I get it, I don’t get it out in these fields that are wide open, you only get it in surrounded by trees and there’s no air. So it’s not like a major issue for me. I’ve just got two or three fields, but looking for problems for growing rice, we’re pretty lucky. We don’t have a whole heck of a lot of problems.

Janice Person [00:24:20]:

Hurricanes don’t come through here at harvest very often.

Blake Gerard [00:24:23]:

They sure aren’t as strong as they are in Louisiana. When the time they end up up here, they burn out a lot of energy. We’ll still get some wind and such, and then, fortunately, we get hot during the day.

Janice Person [00:24:39]:

Just like St. Louis gets 100 degrees all last week.

Blake Gerard [00:24:43]:

Yeah, exactly 98 to 100 all week, but we get 68 degrees at night, which is crucial for plant respiration. So that’s a big difference. You can look at nighttime temps up and down the delta, and we’re just darn lucky that we’ll hit 70 most nights, if not lower. So that’s a huge plus. But you asked about challenges.

Janice Person [00:25:10]:

Well, I was just wondering because it’s one of those things where it’s hard to figure out water was a problem here before, but now you change crops so that when water is a problem. Part of the thing with rice is you can get the water off of the field, too, right?

Blake Gerard [00:25:26]:

For the most part, yeah. I mean, to grow rice effectively and efficiently, you’ve got to be able to get water on and off the field when you need to. And so we are right in the middle of the river here. There’s a levee system around us, drainage district, a large drainage district around us. But I’ve built my own drainage district within the drainage district, so I’ve got levees around my own farm where I can pump water. I went to visit my friends in Louisiana that do this on a regular basis and saw how they had set up pump on, pump off system so I can put water on or off the crop and use there’s some years where we can utilize surface water. Depends on how we’re growing our rice. And water seeded rice will flood in early May.

Janice Person [00:26:18]:

And for folks that don’t know, water seeded means the water is already on the field and you go ahead and put the seed out and it’s usually by plane.

Blake Gerard [00:26:25]:

Yeah.

Janice Person [00:26:26]:

Okay.

Blake Gerard [00:26:27]:

So a lot of our lowest wettest fields get water seeded.

Janice Person [00:26:30]:

Yeah, because you can’t drive a tractor on a really wet field. You’ll just get stuck and then the seed won’t stay where you put it. Anyway, if you’re rutting the field all up.

Blake Gerard [00:26:43]:

And then our drill seeded fields go to flood about June 1 and we’ll hold our water till about 20 August. There’s a lot of years where we can go till mid July to late July using surface water, which is awesome because it’s warm, it’s ambient temperature. And so the rice field, the way I look at it well, not the way I look at the way it is, is it’s like a living biofilter. Right. So you can pick up the mud water that’s connected to the river and it’s muddy and nasty, these ditches, and put that up in the rice field. And if you pump too long and it comes out the bottom end, it’ll come out crystal clear like this bottle of water. So all the sediment and all the stuff you pump up in the field settles out in the field. It cleans that water up, which is really cool.

Janice Person [00:27:39]:

Yeah.

Blake Gerard [00:27:40]:

And it’s got to be good for your soil, builds your soil. Right.

Janice Person [00:27:44]:

That’s why they say all those Iowa farms are now on land in Mississippi and.

Blake Gerard [00:27:51]:

Know all the any water that leaves our farm has to go through a structure. Right. And that helps reduce the sediment load.

Janice Person [00:27:59]:

Keep it in place.

Blake Gerard [00:28:00]:

Exactly. And it’s all the goal. I’m what, fourth generation that I’m aware of, and then hopefully there’s more dirt there and it’s better than for the next generation.

Janice Person [00:28:14]:

Right. And make it always build for the next generation.

Blake Gerard [00:28:17]:

Yeah. Make it better, I hope. That’s what I’m trying to do. I’m sure. Spending a lot of money trying to do it the right way all the time, right? Yeah.

Janice Person [00:28:26]:

So can you tell me about the processing side of things? Because we haven’t talked about that, and processing is why we have brown rice and white rice.

Blake Gerard [00:28:35]:

Yeah. So brown rice is very little processing with brown rice, like, okay, so everybody’s peeled a banana. You peel the wrapper off the banana, and that’s it. Okay. That’s exactly what brown rice is. You peel the hull off of the rice, and that’s brown rice, that’s all the processing it goes through no different than a banana.

Janice Person [00:28:59]:

Do you peel it or do you polish it off?

Blake Gerard [00:29:02]:

A rubber huller takes it off.

Janice Person [00:29:04]:

Okay.

Blake Gerard [00:29:04]:

Two rubber wheels spinning different speeds and feed it through there, and it pops the hull right off.

Janice Person [00:29:09]:

Okay.

Blake Gerard [00:29:10]:

It’s very hard to peel. You got to have strong fingernails. That’s all the processing for brown rice, which so it’s pretty cool. It’s a raw food, basically. White rice is different than then that goes through, I guess, polishers, and that takes the brand layer off, which is to make white rice.

Janice Person [00:29:33]:

Do you guys do that somewhat locally, or do you have somebody do that?

Blake Gerard [00:29:37]:

I’m having somebody in Missouri do that for not it’s a major capital expenditure. When we started this, it was like I’ve done that before in the seed business and put in the facility, and you’re in it. There’s no getting out of it at that point.

Janice Person [00:29:57]:

You better make sure some of those college kids want to come back starting this venture.

Blake Gerard [00:30:04]:

It’s like, we can have this done custom until there’s enough volume there to justify that investment to do it ourselves. So we’re not taking it real far and having it done. It is local.

Janice Person [00:30:21]:

And they give it back to you. Packaged goods, or do you package it somewhere else?

Blake Gerard [00:30:26]:

No, it comes back to me packaged when we were in two pound bags and 25 pound bags, both white and brown. Yeah.

Janice Person [00:30:34]:

25 pound bags. For the more food service side of things.

Blake Gerard [00:30:39]:

Sure.

Janice Person [00:30:40]:

Although there’s a lot of individual I was going to say, although some of my family probably buys it, we’ve found bags. I know. I’ve bought similarly sized bags at times.

Blake Gerard [00:30:49]:

Absolutely. That’s what we do.

Janice Person [00:30:53]:

It works.

Blake Gerard [00:30:54]:

Yeah. It’s the most economic, most efficient way to eat rice. If you’re that much rice.

Janice Person [00:31:00]:

Yeah. If you’re going to keep some in the house warm almost all the. Time.

Blake Gerard [00:31:06]:

Yeah. Awesome.

Janice Person [00:31:07]:

Anything can be served over rice, is what we kind of figure.

Blake Gerard [00:31:12]:

Yeah, I agree. One of the things I really enjoy a lot just about the farming end of it, whether it’s the high protein rice or not, whatever, I really get into the production and the whole year round cycle of it and trying to do everything we can do to make it better.

Janice Person [00:31:35]:

So explain your cycle. Where do you start with yeah, let’s.

Blake Gerard [00:31:39]:

Say it starts at harvest. Really? So you harvest your crop that’s, like, in October. Yeah. September and October. Yeah. Hopefully we’re done by the middle of October with rice, and then we’ve also raised soybeans. But the new year starts with harvest. Right. It starts with how you manipulate the stubble to prepare for the next year.

Janice Person [00:31:59]:

Yeah. The rest of the plant, that’s not the rice seeds that we’re going to eat.

Blake Gerard [00:32:03]:

Right. And there’s a lot there, not only above ground, but below ground when the roots a lot, which is awesome because it does help build the soil, too.

Janice Person [00:32:15]:

It’s kind of like composting. I’ve tried to tell people, when you think about composting, a lot of people love doing that in their backyards for their garden. And what farmers are trying to do with managing all that plant matter out there is kind of like, wait, let’s get this to feed back to the soil some way. And those roots help bring the stuff down. The water filters down through the roots.

Blake Gerard [00:32:39]:

Yeah. Some of these fields are rotated with soybeans, about half, and then the other half are continuous rice. Just because they’re so low, it’s too risky. You’ll lose the soybean crop two out of three years.

Janice Person [00:32:51]:

Yeah.

Blake Gerard [00:32:52]:

So those are the most challenging. Typically, you got to be careful how we can prep that because you never know. The next spring, you may not be able to get on the field.

Janice Person [00:33:02]:

Yeah.

Blake Gerard [00:33:03]:

So it’s always still I’m still learning. And it’s never the same year after.

Janice Person [00:33:07]:

Year, 20 something years later, and you’re still learning.

Blake Gerard [00:33:10]:

Exactly. Yeah, I got to figure it out. But you never do. You think you do, and you don’t. So anyway, everything’s always different. But one of the most dependable ways that we get that stubble down on the ground, whether we lightly disc it or we roll it or we get it on the ground immediately and then flood back up. So after we’ve harvested, then we refloud. And if we can incorporate, what really works well is a light disc, and to get a little bit of soil up into that plant matter, and that will help dramatically decompose it and then put the water back on it as quick as we can. And we’ll hold that all the way till the end of February the following year.

Janice Person [00:33:52]:

That way you don’t get a bunch of weeds and grasses and stuff there.

Blake Gerard [00:33:55]:

No, that water will decompose the stubble. Like, amazing. And then, like, I say we’re right here in the flyway on the river. And so we’ve got all the ducks, lots of waterfowl ducks and geese and shorebirds and all that are flying through here all the time.

Janice Person [00:34:13]:

Wild.

Blake Gerard [00:34:13]:

Yeah, they love it.

Janice Person [00:34:16]:

Don’t eat anything else.

Blake Gerard [00:34:17]:

They come across these bottoms and there’s just sheetwater everywhere, right? Man, they get in there and we haven’t hunted them now for several years, and especially the geese, because the geese are like the most amazing tillage tool I’ve ever seen in my life. They go through there and they’ll go from one corner of the field all mow it down for they’ll go for a half mile in a line like an army eating and flipping it all over and just stirring it up like a tillage tool. And when they get done and you still got the water on it, the water is up and down because we’re not pumping all the time. It’s a lot of times it’s just rainwater, right. And man, you pull the water off at the end of February, 1 March and it’s all gone, it’s ready to go. You burned it. And I think the waterfowl have a lot to do with that and I think I like providing that habitat.

Janice Person [00:35:11]:

I agree.

Blake Gerard [00:35:11]:

Pretty amazing.

Janice Person [00:35:12]:

I’ve seen amazing, huge movements of birds when you’re in rice territory and stuff, because you’ll get like these amazing murmurations and stuff where the birds are, like, dancing and all those nature videos that you like to watch on YouTube where it just seems like the birds all know something all of a sudden and they all turn the other way or something. And it’s pretty amazing to watch. I’ve stopped on the side of the highway before just to stand there and watch take.

Blake Gerard [00:35:42]:

Yeah, yeah, people do. We used to hunt through here, but we’re so close to Cape Girardo that I think it’s probably been hundreds of years of pressure. Not hundreds of years, but I don’t you those big waves of waterfowl will leave really quick right here if you fire a gun.

Janice Person [00:36:00]:

It’s amazing.

Blake Gerard [00:36:05]:

And then now they just swarm, which is pretty cool.

Janice Person [00:36:12]:

Let them swarm here instead of like my backyard.

Blake Gerard [00:36:16]:

Well, they’re doing the job.

Janice Person [00:36:18]:

Yeah, I was going to say.

Blake Gerard [00:36:20]:

And they eat like all the leftover rice. They eat it up. So for volunteers, the next year they get rid of the majority of that. Okay, so the biggest challenge okay, now.

Janice Person [00:36:30]:

You figured out the answer.

Blake Gerard [00:36:31]:

Yeah, and I was going through the whole year, wasn’t I? Sorry, you get off on a tangent. But the biggest challenge is dealing with that river by far.

Janice Person [00:36:38]:

Yeah.

Blake Gerard [00:36:39]:

Okay, so when that river gets up, laid up on our levee, like at the flood stage, 32ft here, and it’ll start seeping, it starts coming out of the ground. And my lowest fields at like 28ft, it’s been to 50 before. And so then the pressure is unbelievable, pushing up out of the ground when there’s water coming, like my irrigation wells, we got to cap them off because they’re shooting water out. Like, if they’re turned on, that’s what makes it really challenging.

Janice Person [00:37:03]:

Well, and that works with the cycles, too. Right. When you talk about planting versus at planting time, you’ve still got snowmelt coming from Minnesota sometimes. And the river the river does different things on levels, but in the spring, it can be pretty here.

Blake Gerard [00:37:23]:

Okay, so we’ll pull the water off in February, and then we’ll do whatever we need to do as far as manipulate soil or whatever, prepare the field to plant. And if we can catch a dry spell in March, and then we’ll start planting April 1, no matter the temperatures, whatever the calendar, it’s time to plant. And especially because here, our river won’t necessarily like that spring melt isn’t here yet. It’s coming.

Janice Person [00:37:48]:

Yeah.

Blake Gerard [00:37:48]:

So we might end up with a not so big river. If we can get a dry week or two, we can plant a lot here, and then the river comes up. And that’s the ideal scenario.

Janice Person [00:37:55]:

If we can get it planted, then the water comes on after you’ve got the seed out.

Blake Gerard [00:37:59]:

Yes. And we are not having to drive on it.

Janice Person [00:38:02]:

Okay.

Blake Gerard [00:38:02]:

So if we can get it planted before the river comes up, that works awesome. Or at least get it totally prepared, like, get our water seeded, fields prepared, and then I’ll wait till about May 1 to plant them. But if the river is up, I don’t care. At that point, we’ve got them ready to plant. Yeah, we’ll disc them and rough them up and water seed into that. It works great. An early flood that starts in March is going to be a tough year for it’s. Going to be hard. That’s by far and away our biggest challenge. We didn’t flood at all this year. I don’t think we got over flood stage once this year, which was unheard of. Like, I can’t remember a year like that. Last year was pretty dry, but this year was really dry. It was so easy.

Janice Person [00:38:47]:

A dry year was so easy for you.

Blake Gerard [00:38:49]:

I made a plan, and you have.

Janice Person [00:38:51]:

Corn farmers and soybean farmers who are going, oh, my God, this is insane how dry it is. So it really does matter. Like, the weather really makes a big difference for one kind of farmer versus the other.

Blake Gerard [00:39:03]:

Yeah. And it’s awesome to go to different parts of the country and see how people do things. So I made my plan this year, which I always do. Right. Hopefully it goes this way. Never do you follow through with a plan A. You have to adapt because the river.

Janice Person [00:39:19]:

Not while you’re in July or we.

Blake Gerard [00:39:22]:

Followed Plan A and knocked it all out. It was unbelievable. I’ve never done that just because I’m like this. Farming is easy when it doesn’t rain.

Janice Person [00:39:29]:

Finally figured out.

Blake Gerard [00:39:33]:

It’Ll never happen again.

Janice Person [00:39:34]:

But I love it.

Blake Gerard [00:39:35]:

The big river is our number one challenge for sure. So the cycle is then we’ll plant in April or May. Cut off date of about the 20 May.

Janice Person [00:39:45]:

Yeah.

Blake Gerard [00:39:45]:

And then most rice goes to flood about June 1, no matter when you plant it. Because around here, you could plant April 1 or you can plant May 1. It’s all going to come up about May 5 because it doesn’t warm up enough. Right. There’s a little window in there. When it all comes up, what is.

Janice Person [00:40:02]:

The rest of the season? I mean, like, from May and June to harvest? You got a lot of time on your hands.

Blake Gerard [00:40:10]:

Oh, no, we’re killing it all day. It’s just now starting to slow down. And here we are, the end of July to get it to where it can go to flood. Now we’re starting June 1, going to flood and then trying to get it all flooded by July 1. We’ve got some zero grade fields that are flat, but with the majority of what we got are sloped fields that you got to put levees in. And so that’s a lot of work. We’ve got probably a couple of hundred levees out this year. And every one of those you have to put a tarp in, put a levee gate, and then control the water. And then when it doesn’t rain hard part about when it doesn’t rain is you’re gating nonstop. And we’re scattered from you drove by Carroll Airport. That’s our southernmost field, and we’re 25 miles from there. 20, yeah. And we’ve got fields scattered in between here and there. At Olive Branch, we’ve got farms, and then here, and then 20 miles north, we’ve got acres up there. So we’re strung out for 50 miles up and down the river here.

Janice Person [00:41:12]:

Putting water on and taking water off.

Blake Gerard [00:41:16]:

Keeping it all pumped.

Janice Person [00:41:16]:

Heck of a chore, right?

Blake Gerard [00:41:18]:

Yeah. And calling the right timing on fertility applications. And any, we’re really lucky here. Insects are not much of an issue here. Maybe we’re blessed with that. I think that’s part of the environment. Just common rice insect.

Janice Person [00:41:36]:

Yeah.

Blake Gerard [00:41:36]:

Rarely do we have to make an application. Water management, fertility management. I don’t know. It keeps us running, like there’s always something.

Janice Person [00:41:49]:

Yeah. Well, I love it. I really appreciate you spending this time with me. And now we’re going to go out and drive around a little bit.

Blake Gerard [00:41:56]:

Absolutely.

Janice Person [00:41:57]:

See a little bit of rice so I can grab some video and show people what this part of the world looks like.

Blake Gerard [00:42:03]:

Okay, that sounds great.

Janice Person [00:42:05]:

Thanks so much.

Blake Gerard [00:42:06]:

Thank you.

Janice Person [00:42:07]:

After we finished that episode and we’re talking and looking around the office and headed out in the field, it’s really funny. Blake asked me, oh, should I have talked about more of the ways I enjoy rice and things we eat and stuff? And I went, no, man, we’re good. To me, this episode really does highlight some of the pieces of enjoying rice. By the way, he frequently adds fresh fruit like peaches or blueberries or something to his rice. Loves it. And it made me think about mango sticky rice in Thailand and stuff. So it’s made with that creamy texture and mango. Oh, my God. So I had to have some of that soon after. Anyway, we’ll put up the video, some photos and all. Thanks, and we’ll talk to you guys again in two weeks.

The post Transcript for Episode 409 with Blake Gerard of Cahokia Rice – McClure, IL appeared first on Grounded by the Farm.

40 minutes

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 I am in middle Tennessee, on the northern, northern side, almost to Kentucky, almost, but in Adams, Tennessee. And I’m at the home of the Swanson family. And everybody is here with us. I’m going to talk to Jeff Swanson, but later I’m going to take a family photo so you get to meet everybody, because these boys are something. She may give me a family photo she’s taken because it’s 100 something degrees today. We’re here talking about wagyu beef. Wagyu cattle. First off, I love beef. I love Kobe beef. I love wagyu beef. I have a ex brother in law who’s Japanese, so we still have family in Japan. I’ve gone there with my nephew, who we visited his grandparents while we were there and stuff. Wagyu, it’s a breed of cattle, sort.

Jeff Swanson [00:01:09]:

Of wagyu is more of a broad term. It refers to any of four breeds found in Japan.

Janice Person [00:01:17]:

Okay?

Jeff Swanson [00:01:17]:

So you have the Japanese black, Japanese brown or red wagyu, japanese shorthorn, and Japanese pole. Okay, so all those because wagyu translates literally to Japanese cow or Japanese beef.

Janice Person [00:01:31]:

All right. That’s not the way we usually think of it, though. In the US. We usually think of something on my.

Jeff Swanson [00:01:36]:

Plate or on the menu, which is true. I mean, if it’s descended from the Japanese genetics that were brought in, either in they had an importation of four bulls in 1976, and those bulls came here to do a study for the Japanese on how they crossed on other breeds.

Janice Person [00:01:56]:

Okay.

Jeff Swanson [00:01:56]:

Because at the time, japan was looking at increasing their beef production, but the only other prominent breed in Japan other than their native wagyu was Holsteins. So they sent two reds and two blacks, four bulls over in 76 to do a study with Washington State University on how they would cross breed. And then that kind of got out, and other people got semen off those bulls. And from there all the way up until 92, 93, they developed what were considered purebred wagyu in this country.

Janice Person [00:02:33]:

Okay.

Jeff Swanson [00:02:34]:

Still very small, very localized. Didn’t get out a whole lot. And then a couple of investment groups found a loophole in the Japanese export system in the mid ninety s. Oh, nice. And they imported 100% wagu animals from 93 to 97, I believe. And then in 97, after the last shipment, the Japanese said, no more. We’re cutting it off.

Janice Person [00:02:56]:

Okay?

Jeff Swanson [00:02:57]:

These are a national treasure. No more. We’ll leave Japan.

Janice Person [00:03:01]:

Wow. Okay. So that’s got so many questions to me in it. So wagyu I’ve been to Japan, they truly treasure what they treasure. Like rice is like an incredibly glorious plant, and it means life, all these kind of things. So wagyu is like a treasured part of their country’s history, and they don’t want it just necessarily taken everywhere and things. But we had a time period where we could pull it out.

Jeff Swanson [00:03:30]:

Exactly.

Janice Person [00:03:31]:

So help me understand how it’s gotten growth in the US. Because it’s still high end. So help me understand how it’s such a premium.

Jeff Swanson [00:03:43]:

And that’s the thing is, up until even now, there’s more and more people getting into this breed every day. But if you go all the way back to the late 80s, early ninety s and all that, there’s very few people raising these animals. Yeah, I personally didn’t know about wagyu until right before, about a year before we started raising them. I had heard of Kobe beef.

Janice Person [00:04:09]:

Are they hard to raise or something?

Jeff Swanson [00:04:11]:

They’re not hard to raise. I don’t think they’re just like anything else. An unknown, I think would be the best way to put it.

Janice Person [00:04:20]:

People are very familiar with Angus. Charley exactly.

Jeff Swanson [00:04:24]:

And then because of the rarity of them several years ago, I think the total numbers of wagyu in the United States was roughly 50,000. And that sounds like a big number, but it’s not.

Janice Person [00:04:37]:

Not when I think how many people like beef.

Jeff Swanson [00:04:40]:

Well, you look at the Ames report on how many are processed each week under USD inspection, and it’s up over 500,000 every week.

Janice Person [00:04:49]:

Okay.

Jeff Swanson [00:04:50]:

So if everybody decided, hey, we only want wagyu beef, they’re all gone in a day.

Janice Person [00:04:57]:

So this is totally not what I wanted to talk about early, but I saw last night there’s like an Arby’s commercial where they’re selling wagyu beef, and then I saw in really small fine print, it’s like 51% wagyu and 49% other American beef.

Jeff Swanson [00:05:14]:

And I actually saw a little insight into that. And it’s a blended product. So they’re taking what I guess is an industry standard name of American wagyu, which is genetically the animal is half wagyu, half Angus.

Janice Person [00:05:30]:

Okay.

Jeff Swanson [00:05:31]:

They were taking the ground beef off of those animals and blending it with regular commercial ground beef. So that 51% is really not accurate.

Janice Person [00:05:42]:

Okay.

Jeff Swanson [00:05:42]:

You’re more about 25% or somewhere in that line. You’re still going to get some of the benefits from the wagyu, but not the benefits that you have with the floor.

Janice Person [00:05:52]:

So wagyu has such an amazing connotation. Your mouth starts watering when you think of it, but people who haven’t had it, how would you explain it as a beef product?

Jeff Swanson [00:06:07]:

You’re going to take the best steak you’ve ever eaten and just multiply it exponentially. Exactly. It has a rich, buttery taste to it because of the fat content, and it’s just literally melting your mouth.

Janice Person [00:06:21]:

It’s fork tender when you’re cutting it.

Jeff Swanson [00:06:23]:

Exactly. You can almost cut a steak with your fork. It’s just wonderful. And we had some steaks analyzed several years ago, and I think the melting point on the fat of the steaks was like 96 degrees.

Janice Person [00:06:37]:

Wow.

Jeff Swanson [00:06:37]:

At that point. So it literally melts in your mouth. So you get that really soft, buttery texture to it. And then the tenders on the Warner Bratzler shear force test, which is how they test tenderness of meat, I think a four is considered extremely tender. And the ribeyes we sent, I think they tested like 2.9.

Janice Person [00:07:01]:

Oh, wow. Which is insanely.

Jeff Swanson [00:07:03]:

Insanely. More tender than the most tender steak. Yes.

Janice Person [00:07:07]:

Yeah.

Jeff Swanson [00:07:08]:

It’s just mind boggling. These animals are just that inherently different from our continental breeds.

Janice Person [00:07:16]:

Yeah. So that’s part of the premium, is that kind of level of tenderness. And then part of the premium is that there’s not so many of them.

Jeff Swanson [00:07:24]:

A lot of you know, and that’s you mentioned Kobe beef earlier. And Kobe is a name brand. They’re all specifically a tajima strain of black wagyu raised in Hayogo perfection of Japan. And then they have to grade above a certain level to be basically trademarked as Kobe.

Janice Person [00:07:42]:

Kind of like Vidalia onions, champagne versus sparkling wine.

Jeff Swanson [00:07:47]:

Exactly.

Janice Person [00:07:47]:

All those things. Okay.

Jeff Swanson [00:07:49]:

And that’s what makes Kobe beef Kobe. It has to be from a specific lineage of Japanese black wagyu, and it has to be raised in that area and has to grade above a certain level. And of course, they’re going to have animals that do not grade there, so they get sold under other names, a different name.

Janice Person [00:08:06]:

It’s a Japanese beef that’s just yeah.

Jeff Swanson [00:08:08]:

And that Kobe is not a breed of animals. It’s a trademark, basically.

Janice Person [00:08:12]:

Yeah, like certified Angus in the US. Okay. So wagyu, though, part of what at least I think I’ve seen so you’re going to correct me if I’m wrong, is that the marbling of the steak looks a little bit different. So a lot of people are used to what a ribeye looks like.

Jeff Swanson [00:08:29]:

Yeah. And with the wagyu influence, you can get a very well dispersed marbling. And depending on the genetics of the.

Janice Person [00:08:38]:

Animal, you he’s obviously going to find me photos or something.

Jeff Swanson [00:08:41]:

You can get very fine marbling to where it looks like somebody just took a pen and started oh, really? Punching holes and putting marbling in there. And we’ll find some really pretty steaks.

Janice Person [00:08:56]:

Well, I’ll make sure I put these on the website. I’m going to get him to text those. Oh, wow. That almost looks like a salami or some kind of thing that you’ve mechanically gone.

Jeff Swanson [00:09:09]:

That’s all natural. This is literally a picture of when they first split the carcass.

Janice Person [00:09:15]:

Yeah.

Jeff Swanson [00:09:16]:

So that’s the initial. Once they split it open right there, you can see the rib. So that would be a ribeye once it’s all cut up, that’s the first impression we got of that beef.

Janice Person [00:09:27]:

Wow. Okay, so now tell me why that marbling really matters.

Jeff Swanson [00:09:32]:

Helps with increased tenderness and that rich buttery flavor. And that’s one thing with wagyu is our particular program. You have people that try to push the envelope and compare to Kobe and Mitsiyaki or whatever. The extreme a five japanese. We’re a little bit more, I guess, modest. I mean, too much of a good thing. But wagyu is so rich in flavor. It can be so rich in flavor that you really don’t want to eat huge portions. And I’ve always been a steak guy. I love a big, juicy steak. If we went to the Extreme, and that is actually right on the border of that would be considered in that a five scale. But that’s one of those you don’t.

Janice Person [00:10:15]:

Always get them away.

Jeff Swanson [00:10:16]:

We’ll take it. But that’s the thing, is one of our ribeyes is going to weigh 24oz on an average. They’re thick cut, inch and a quarter.

Janice Person [00:10:29]:

I’m sitting here eyes wide open. A 24 ounce ribeye, it’s something you.

Jeff Swanson [00:10:35]:

Would not typically want to sit down and eat by yourself.

Janice Person [00:10:38]:

No, I would not split it with.

Jeff Swanson [00:10:39]:

Your spouse or a friend or somebody.

Janice Person [00:10:42]:

And it’s a better way to cook it because that fat melts at such a low temperature, you don’t have to cook it as hard as some people like to cook.

Jeff Swanson [00:10:53]:

No. And most of your wagyu beef is going to be best eaten medium to medium rare. Yeah, I’m a medium guy. Some people like medium rare. To me, when it gets on the rare side, you almost get a little chewiness to it. Where? Right there at that perfect pink medium.

Janice Person [00:11:09]:

I get the exact experience at 24oz. I’m thinking how much thicker that steak is than a typical grocery store cut, right?

Jeff Swanson [00:11:20]:

Yeah, your typical grocery store cut is going to be half inch to three quarters.

Janice Person [00:11:24]:

Exactly. So cooking it through at medium rare or something is very different than well, just me personally.

Jeff Swanson [00:11:33]:

Everybody has their own way of cooking things. I started when we first started processing four years ago, experimenting on how to cook. That way I could relate to my customers what works for me okay.

Janice Person [00:11:44]:

And give them you do the cooking around here instead, Chris.

Jeff Swanson [00:11:47]:

I cook some of the meats. She does a lot of the cooking, but I usually cook the meats. But for me, what works best for us is the reverse sear method. So it’s low and slow, and then hit it with the heat at the end.

Janice Person [00:11:59]:

Okay.

Jeff Swanson [00:11:59]:

And our meat just works out really well that way because we can take just about anything. You can take a roast, reverse sear it, and it’s phenomenal. Just a simple thing like a sirloin.

Janice Person [00:12:13]:

Tip roast, because so often I hear about searing it first and then cooking it low. So the reverse sear is reverse of that.

Jeff Swanson [00:12:21]:

Exactly. And I’m going to show you. This is a picture from a customer.

Janice Person [00:12:25]:

He’s going to have to text me all of these so I can put them in.

Jeff Swanson [00:12:29]:

But you see how that is perfect throughout the whole steak with a thin crust around the outside.

Janice Person [00:12:35]:

Yeah. Gosh. I’m going to want steak now for lunch.

Jeff Swanson [00:12:39]:

And that’s what I love about the reverse sear versus hitting it with the heat first, because you hit it with, say, 400, 500 degrees first, you’re starting to overcook that outside layer.

Janice Person [00:12:51]:

Okay.

Jeff Swanson [00:12:51]:

And then as you put it in, you lower the temperature down. It minimizes that, but at the same time, that first quarter inch or whatever is going to be overcooked.

Janice Person [00:13:01]:

So do you cook it on a grill or do you cook it in the stove?

Jeff Swanson [00:13:05]:

Most of the time I do it in the oven and then sear it on the skillet.

Janice Person [00:13:09]:

Okay, but I’ve done cast iron skillet? Yes. Okay. So do you use any butter or anything? Because a lot of steaks I know people talk about using butter with usually.

Jeff Swanson [00:13:18]:

What I’ll use when I sear it is I’ll put some of our beef tallow in it. So we take look at that, keep some of the excess fat off the animals, and we sell it to people that want to make their own tallow or maybe mix it with venison or something like that. We usually render it down, make our own tallow, keep a jar in the refrigerator, and I throw a little bit of that in my skillet. I love it, and I’ll sear it in that.

Janice Person [00:13:42]:

So one of my favorite places to eat in St. Louis that has it’s a butcher shop and lunch place, and they make tallow fries, and the fries are just going to be differently. Right. But it’s a butcher shop skillet.

Jeff Swanson [00:13:56]:

Potatoes with beef tallow is.

Janice Person [00:14:00]:

Okay. So, wow. I’m learning a lot. And we’ve gone out and we’ve seen your herd. We saw you have bulls here. You have different ages every six months, right?

Jeff Swanson [00:14:13]:

Pretty much, yeah. We have everything from three years old here at our place down to some yearlings.

Janice Person [00:14:20]:

Okay. And so we went to one of your places that you lease. That’s where we saw the mamas and the babies. And so those were your brand new ones?

Jeff Swanson [00:14:30]:

Yes. They’re all 30 to 60 days old.

Janice Person [00:14:33]:

Okay. And so they’re just playing in the pasture, playing in the woods, whatever they want to do with their days. We saw them playing around. They ran like crazy towards us as we were driving up. And then at what point do you bring them over here to your home place?

Jeff Swanson [00:14:50]:

Usually, hopefully by that time, I’ve got another lot cleared out to move a group in. But we try to bring them here about 14 months old.

Janice Person [00:14:59]:

Okay. So they’ll stay out there playing until they’re 14 months old, and then you bring them here. It’s more of like a feedlot kind of.

Jeff Swanson [00:15:06]:

Yeah, concentrated feed environment. So we give them free choice hay once they come here, and then we give them a grain ration twice a day.

Janice Person [00:15:13]:

And you kind of keep them together by age. So they’re the other cows that they know, the other steers that they know.

Jeff Swanson [00:15:20]:

They just more comfortable that way. And you wouldn’t want to put a year old calf in with the three year old steer just because of the size difference. The bigger one is going to be the bully and push them around and they won’t get the opportunity to eat. So this keeps everything a little bit more even.

Janice Person [00:15:35]:

Well, we even saw with some of your mama cows, one of them pushing the other one, they can get kind of bossy, wanting to get to that feed or keep the other ones away from it. It’s so intriguing. And here you’ll feed them hay or grass or whatever it is, and then you also give them a little bit of corn or something.

Jeff Swanson [00:15:56]:

Yeah, we give them a mixture of corn, barley, soy meal, protein, pellet, and then we also feed spent brewers grain.

Janice Person [00:16:04]:

That’s right.

Jeff Swanson [00:16:05]:

We pick up the spent grains from a brewery right down the road in Nashville.

Janice Person [00:16:10]:

My listeners are very familiar with Tennessee Brew Works. Christian’s been on the show a couple of times.

Jeff Swanson [00:16:14]:

Matt’s been our friends for several years. And so we take all their waste product and utilize it. So instead of it going to a landfill and them getting charged a disposal fee, we bring it here and feed it to the cows.

Janice Person [00:16:27]:

So what kind of grains?

Jeff Swanson [00:16:28]:

They’re wheat and barley mostly.

Janice Person [00:16:30]:

Okay. Yeah. I was just thinking you think about which beers people are drinking, right? So there’s always barley, and we did an interview with one of their barley farmers, but also, wheat beers are pretty darn popular. And so they just as they process that stuff off to get the alcohol and parts they need. Then there’s this additional part.

Jeff Swanson [00:16:49]:

Yes. The solids that are left over, and it’s a lot of it. Each bin that we get weighs about 1000 pounds.

Janice Person [00:16:56]:

Okay.

Jeff Swanson [00:16:57]:

The bin itself doesn’t weigh 40 pounds, but then you’ve got roughly 1000 pounds of material inside it.

Janice Person [00:17:04]:

Oh, wow. And what do the cows get from that?

Jeff Swanson [00:17:08]:

They get a lot of nutrients. The biggest thing they do not get is calcium.

Janice Person [00:17:13]:

Okay.

Jeff Swanson [00:17:13]:

Or the sugars and starches, they get a little bit because there’s still a little bit of residual sugar in there after the brewing process, but it’s depleted in calcium is the biggest thing, but it’s a high energy commodity, steel. I mean, we had some analyzed a few years ago. It was 79% total digestible nutrients.

Janice Person [00:17:37]:

Wow.

Jeff Swanson [00:17:38]:

And that’s based on the dry matter, of course. It’s about 60% moisture.

Janice Person [00:17:44]:

Wow.

Jeff Swanson [00:17:45]:

Even though their particular program, it’s not big solids. It’s more of a fine cornmeal type mix.

Janice Person [00:17:53]:

Okay.

Jeff Swanson [00:17:53]:

They run it through a hammer mill before the brewing process. So it’s very fine particles, but there’s still a lot of great nutrients for the cows to absorb from it.

Janice Person [00:18:01]:

This is one of those upcycling things that I think happens so often in agriculture that people don’t hear about.

Jeff Swanson [00:18:07]:

Yeah. And I’ve heard of other producers, they get like unsellable candies bread, all kinds of different commodity things that would end up going in a dumpster somewhere.

Janice Person [00:18:19]:

Yeah. Going to a landfill and becoming a problem somewhere else.

Jeff Swanson [00:18:23]:

Exactly. So why not bring those what they would be waste products home to the farm and feed it to your cattle, feed it to your hogs, whatever you have, and make something else out of it. Yeah, that’s the saying. Cows are the best upcycle in the world. They turn the grass into beef.

Janice Person [00:18:40]:

Well, their stomachs can do things that you and I they can take things that you and I would never be able to take.

Jeff Swanson [00:18:47]:

And that’s the thing, is, we spoke a little bit about this in the truck. There are so much misinformation out there, people that think, oh, my gosh, don’t feed cows corn because it ruins their stomachs. And it doesn’t. You need a balance. I mean, obviously they need that hay or that grass to help solidify and balance things out in their rumen, but they can eat a lot of corn.

Janice Person [00:19:13]:

Well, and you think about it, a lot of grasses that they could be eating out in pastures and stuff. It has seeds and stuff like that on it, too. Right. And those seeds are, I mean, the wonder of breeding. But Tiacente was a grass that was like the head of it was as small as my pinky. And now we’ve got corn that came out from that from centuries or millennia, thanks to the native people of this world.

Jeff Swanson [00:19:40]:

Right, exactly. Yeah. They’ve cultivated. And the same thing has happened in the cattle. We started out with one specific thing, and then we’ve selectively bred and they’ve.

Janice Person [00:19:52]:

Done dairy and you have beef, and.

Jeff Swanson [00:19:54]:

It’S split off into all these different tangents. And there’s literally a breed for everybody.

Janice Person [00:19:59]:

Yeah.

Jeff Swanson [00:20:00]:

You’ve got the people that love the wally like we do. You have the people that, oh, nothing’s better than a Longhorn or Angus or Hereford or Scimitol or limousine. There’s just so many breeds out there for everybody to pick and choose from.

Janice Person [00:20:15]:

When we were out looking at your cattle, you kept saying, I just like the look of them.

Jeff Swanson [00:20:20]:

I do. Well, I mean, I’ve been a cowboy at heart for my whole life, pretty much from a little kid riding my pony around, that’s all I wanted to be was a cowboy.

Janice Person [00:20:30]:

Well, if you’ve had ponies since you were little, I can see why you have horses and stuff out here now and how easy it was for you to get into cattle. But you actually had a military career for a while.

Jeff Swanson [00:20:42]:

I’d spent six years in the army and got to see the world a little bit and enjoyed it, but decided that wasn’t what I want my future to be. And then you were a farrier for.

Janice Person [00:20:54]:

23 years, an important skill set to.

Jeff Swanson [00:20:57]:

Clean up those horses, trimming shoe horses every day for years on end.

Janice Person [00:21:06]:

And now you’re in this space where you’ve got your cattle. How many do you have? Is that okay to ask?

Jeff Swanson [00:21:13]:

Right now we have 40, mamas.

Janice Person [00:21:16]:

Okay.

Jeff Swanson [00:21:17]:

So we calve about 20 in the spring, and then we’ll calve another 20 or so in the fall.

Janice Person [00:21:24]:

And you’re trying to run your so you’re occasionally processing cattle, instead doing them all in one fell swoop.

Jeff Swanson [00:21:32]:

Yeah. We cater to the individual consumer. We don’t have any big restaurant accounts. We don’t do wholesale or things like that. We basically are set up to take care of the individual person that wants to come directly to the farm and buy some really wonderful beef. Yeah, because we’re not super small scale where we only have five or six head of cows, and we’re not super huge where we have several hundred. So we’re kind of in a spot where we don’t have the volume for the big, huge Walmart whatever accounts, big grocery store accounts. And we don’t have a small volume where you can just sell it to your friends and family and be done. We’re kind of in that middle ground where we’ve got to be able to keep a consistent volume of people coming to pick it up.

Janice Person [00:22:26]:

So how do you do? Like, where do people find you?

Jeff Swanson [00:22:30]:

Facebook and Instagram is pretty much what we’ve done from the start.

Janice Person [00:22:34]:

Okay.

Jeff Swanson [00:22:34]:

I’ve set down a starter.

Janice Person [00:22:36]:

Instead of going to farmers markets up.

Jeff Swanson [00:22:39]:

To this point, up till this last spring, I shot horses all the time. So I had a schedule of five days a week. First thing in the morning, I feed cows, get in the truck, and I go shoe horses most of the day and then try to catch up with the farm stuff at the end. And then, of course, we have two young boys. They’re active into baseball, football, and everything else. And my wife, fortunately, takes care of a lot of that stuff, and I help out where I can. So as far as the farmers markets, there’s just no time.

Janice Person [00:23:09]:

Yeah.

Jeff Swanson [00:23:12]:

And we’ve developed enough of a customer base because we started selling in April of 2019. What happened about ten months later?

Janice Person [00:23:21]:

Yeah. The world shut down.

Jeff Swanson [00:23:22]:

The world shut down. And for us, as basically a new business, just kind of getting out there. We had a big influx of people early on, like April of 2020. We had oh, my gosh, the grocery store.

Janice Person [00:23:35]:

Because suddenly the grocery stores were empty because so much food was going into cafeterias and restaurants and weren’t all going into the grocery stores, which is where everybody was buying all their food.

Jeff Swanson [00:23:46]:

Yeah. And people found out about us, and they came out and they bought a little bit, took it home and tried it, and some absolutely loved it, and others liked it, but the price was not cheap. Yeah. It just didn’t fit into their budget. And we still get a lot of those people. They come by every few months, but it’s not a regular thing every week deal. Most people, they’re going to run to Kroger Walmart or even Publix or whatever to pick up their groceries. That one day a week or every other week where a lot of our customers it’s that once a month, maybe every couple know they want something.

Janice Person [00:24:24]:

Yeah, yeah.

Jeff Swanson [00:24:25]:

So it’s kind of one of the nature of the beast we’ve got to consistently advertise just to keep people coming through.

Janice Person [00:24:32]:

Okay. So I’m guessing people really love the steaks they do from wagyu ground beef or what else do you do with it? Because you got the whole animal, I’m.

Jeff Swanson [00:24:44]:

Assuming everything you can imagine. We do all your normal steaks. You’ve got ribeyes, New York strips, fillets, sirloins, because the marbling these animals can produce. We get some really phenomenal steaks out of the chuck or the shoulder of the animal. Flat Irons Denver’s we do a ranch steak, which is a little bit leaner, but compared to commodity beef or what you buy in the grocery store, it’s way more well marbled. It’s going to be similar to a sirloin, but has a little bit beefier, richer flavor than sirloin does.

Janice Person [00:25:21]:

Nice.

Jeff Swanson [00:25:22]:

It’s a really wonderful steak that most people don’t know about. We do the Culada pecania steaks and that are phenomenal also. They look like a miniature New York strip. Once we cut them, then we do very few roast. We do a mock tender roast out of the shoulder.

Janice Person [00:25:40]:

Okay.

Jeff Swanson [00:25:40]:

We do a chuck eye roll roast out of the shoulder. And so we’ll take the chucky and we’ll cut about the first three pieces of that into a steak because that’s the same muscle as your ribeye is. So your chucky is a baby ribeye, essentially. We’ll take about the first three steaks off that. Then you start losing the eye muscle. So it’s not worth cutting into a steak anymore. Becomes a really wonderful roast. If you want to do a pot roast or something, we do sirloin tip roasts, which are from the knuckle on the back leg and or hip, I guess, area. And they’re a wonderful well marbled roast cook that a bunch of different ways you can do it as a pot roast. We reverse sear it and make sandwich meat out of it.

Janice Person [00:26:26]:

Oh, yeah.

Jeff Swanson [00:26:27]:

Phenomenal. Done it on the grill that way. Slow roasted on the grill about 300 degrees until it got up to 150.

Janice Person [00:26:35]:

Oh, yum.

Jeff Swanson [00:26:35]:

And then had that smoky flavor with it too. It was amazing.

Janice Person [00:26:41]:

I could tell from your face it makes you hungry. Talking about it too.

Jeff Swanson [00:26:45]:

That’s been one of the most fun things with these animals, is just experimenting and seeing what’s possible.

Janice Person [00:26:50]:

Yeah.

Jeff Swanson [00:26:51]:

Korean short ribs. I think I just had a picture up here was going to show you those. Your chuck short ribs thin sliced across the bone. So you’ve got a little piece of bone in every single one there are.

Janice Person [00:27:05]:

So all of the favorites on his all the photo favorites are of meat.

Jeff Swanson [00:27:09]:

Meat pictures and few cow pictures.

Janice Person [00:27:12]:

I love it.

Jeff Swanson [00:27:13]:

We do so many things that you just can’t find anywhere. We keep all the off wall. We keep the tongue, the cheek meat, the oxtail, and sell that.

Janice Person [00:27:22]:

And then with all the little trimmings and stuff, you make sausages.

Jeff Swanson [00:27:28]:

We take a portion of what would become ground beef. We make bratwurst and Dewey sausage, sweet Italian sausage. We just came out with the tree Zoe a month or two ago. That is phenomenal.

Janice Person [00:27:40]:

That’s my love language.

Jeff Swanson [00:27:42]:

The easiest, wonderful tacos you’ll ever make.

Janice Person [00:27:45]:

Because once you cook the meat, you’re good.

Jeff Swanson [00:27:48]:

You’re done. Yeah.

Janice Person [00:27:49]:

You might want to put some lettuce or cilantro cheese on it and a.

Jeff Swanson [00:27:52]:

Little bit of sauce. We fed eight people one night with four pounds of trees and still had leftovers.

Janice Person [00:28:01]:

Everybody was happy, and it took five.

Jeff Swanson [00:28:03]:

Minutes or maybe ten at the most to fix it all.

Janice Person [00:28:06]:

It was just amazing. I love it. So most of your people, I assume, are from Clarksville.

Jeff Swanson [00:28:12]:

Very local. We’ve had a few people drive from a little farther out. We’ve had people come from 3 hours away just to try our beef. Everything’s locally raised, locally sold. We do not ship or anything like that because we live within an hour of about 3 million people.

Janice Person [00:28:32]:

Yeah. There’s a lot of folks around here.

Jeff Swanson [00:28:35]:

Not that that’s a good, bad, or indifferent, but to me, it just doesn’t make sense to ship.

Janice Person [00:28:42]:

Yeah.

Jeff Swanson [00:28:42]:

Why would I box it up and charge you $50 to get there overnight when you only live an hour away?

Janice Person [00:28:48]:

Yeah.

Jeff Swanson [00:28:50]:

And that’s, I guess, the puzzle with this whole deal, is figuring out how to get the customers to us, and you’re going to have a lot that think it’s too far. For whatever reason. I’m used to driving all over the place, so it’s nothing to drive an hour down the road. But a lot of people aren’t used to that.

Janice Person [00:29:07]:

Yeah.

Jeff Swanson [00:29:08]:

So that’s kind of been the one struggle for us, is convincing the people to come here.

Janice Person [00:29:14]:

Yeah. In today’s world, I guess during COVID people were really excited to drive out into the country. I noticed that from friends that were in the city that never used to go to the country to get away from. People suddenly were excited to go for nice long drives. Right. They kind of get out of the house because they were so tired of their house. But this part of the country is gorgeous for a drive.

Jeff Swanson [00:29:38]:

It is.

Janice Person [00:29:39]:

I mean, when we were coming through, there would be like these really wooded hollers, and you could see, like, there’s got to be a creek down in there somewhere. I’m not sure where it is. So many trees, you can’t see it, but then it just opens up into some beautiful pasture land, and then it’ll close back in with lots of trees and. Stuff. It truly is beautiful.

Jeff Swanson [00:29:58]:

A few cornfields and bean fields. Tobacco is a big crop around here, too. And yeah, it’s a very diverse area.

Janice Person [00:30:06]:

Yeah. So if people aren’t in an hour or two, strive and stuff, is there like a wagyu network?

Jeff Swanson [00:30:15]:

That’s the one thing that’s, I guess, amazing. And we’ve had people contact us from all over. It’s like, well, do you ship? I’m like, sorry, we don’t. But the biggest thing is the Internet’s amazing. If you type in wagyu and search enough, you’re going to find somebody within a reasonable distance that raises these animals to some extent. You’re going to have a lot of the crossbred. So the Wagyu and Angus cross, there’s more people out there raising those than there are the full bloods. They’re a little bit faster maturing, faster to process because of that crossbred genetics and the benefits from the Angus meat quality is going to be good, but it’s not going to be the same as 100% animals. It’s just the nature of the beast. We decided to stick with the 100% wagyu from the start just because of the consistency of the meat.

Janice Person [00:31:07]:

Yeah.

Jeff Swanson [00:31:08]:

So you’re going to get 50% genetics from the sire, 50% genetics from the dam. So if they’re both wagyu and they both have phenomenal bloodlines, it’s going to increase your chances of producing really awesome beef with the crossbred. And we produced a few early on and we had some really great results, I mean, comparable to what our full blood do. But the biggest thing is you’ve got that possibility they get the marbling at some point.

Janice Person [00:31:38]:

You don’t know whether it’s going to shift.

Jeff Swanson [00:31:40]:

And if the marbling genetics from the mom and not the sire, and you get an animal that doesn’t perform as well as it could.

Janice Person [00:31:47]:

Yeah. And you don’t know that until you’ve taken it to be processed and stuff.

Jeff Swanson [00:31:51]:

And you can have one turn out great this time, the next time. And that’s the thing is, in the cattle industry, everything revolves in three year cycles. So almost three and a half, almost four, actually, because by the time you breed a cow gestation is nine months, and then you’re going to raise that calf for a certain amount of time before you process it. So it’s a very long drawn out process.

Janice Person [00:32:18]:

Well, when we were talking, you started this with a partner and it’s been forever and you feel like you’re going to make a profit one of these days. Yes, but that’s also why you were still shoeing horses off, right?

Jeff Swanson [00:32:37]:

You got to be able to keep the bills paid and keep the cows fed. When we had shortcomings, like if we had a slow month on meat sales and we had to kick in a little bit to help cover feed costs or whatever, that’s what we did.

Janice Person [00:32:49]:

Yeah. So eight years.

Jeff Swanson [00:32:52]:

Well, there’s seven now.

Janice Person [00:32:54]:

Seven now.

Jeff Swanson [00:32:56]:

Next spring will be eight years.

Janice Person [00:32:57]:

Seven years before you quit the job of shoeing horses. It’s a long term deal.

Jeff Swanson [00:33:08]:

And I knew full aware that the thoughts that we had producing the beef and there are things to do. We’ve sold a few bulls. We haven’t sold really any females, but we’re kind of getting to that point where we will we’ll start selling a few heifers probably coming this fall.

Janice Person [00:33:26]:

Yeah.

Jeff Swanson [00:33:27]:

But everything’s been worth it to us to maintain and grow the herd. And we do process we process females, too, because that helps prove what your genetics do.

Janice Person [00:33:38]:

I love it.

Jeff Swanson [00:33:38]:

Yeah. It’s a labor of love, and one of these days, I hope it pays off.

Janice Person [00:33:44]:

So is there anything I really forgot to ask you? I was going to let the boys tell me, but I knew they would get tired of listening. And they have been making faces at me for like, the last 20 minutes at that door. They do that. So is there anything I missed asking you? Like, when your customers come out, is there something that they’re always blown away by?

Jeff Swanson [00:34:07]:

Usually they’ll look at the steaks, especially if we’ve got ribeyes and New York strips in stock. The marbling on them is beautiful. And they’ll pick it up and they’re like, oh, my gosh, look at that marbling. And then they’ll realize how big that steak is because it’s assurable. They’re used to going to the grocery store and buying personal package of ten ounce ribeyes, and all of a sudden they pick up one ribeye that weighs a bunch. And that’s the thing, is we try to keep our prices as reasonable as.

Janice Person [00:34:40]:

Possible because the price per pound is one thing versus the price per steak.

Jeff Swanson [00:34:44]:

Exactly.

Janice Person [00:34:45]:

Okay.

Jeff Swanson [00:34:46]:

And we figured that out years ago when we first started selling meat, because we started out at price per pound, and all it did was confuse people because they would pick up a ribeye that was 24oz or 22oz or whatever, and like, well, how much is that going to be? Well, it says 1.25 pounds. Yeah, but how much is that? They didn’t want to sit there and do the math in their head, so we broke it down and basically based our steak prices on an average, a minimum average. So our ribeyes are based on an 18 ounce steak.

Janice Person [00:35:22]:

Okay.

Jeff Swanson [00:35:22]:

And they’re never 18oz. So the customer is getting they get the nice little bonus.

Janice Person [00:35:27]:

Yeah.

Jeff Swanson [00:35:27]:

And the processor asked me that we were at a couple of years ago. He’s like, well, we can get them down to that. 18oz at what cost?

Janice Person [00:35:35]:

Yeah.

Jeff Swanson [00:35:36]:

I said, okay, you’re going to trim a little bit off here and a little bit off there, and then what are you going to oh, we’ll just throw it in with the grind. I said, that doesn’t do any good. Yeah, I’d rather give it to the customer than throw it in the grind.

Janice Person [00:35:47]:

Yeah, I love it.

Jeff Swanson [00:35:49]:

Yeah. And the ribeye strips, we keep whatever they are. We cut them inch and an 8th inch and a quarter thick. And whatever they are, they are our other steaks filets. We cut them down to 8oz and sirloins, we cut a center cut sirloin down to eight or 9oz. And we do the same thing with flat irons and Denver’s and ranches. And most people love the smaller size because it’s a perfect meal, especially when you have that richer flavor. You realize you take an eight ounce Denver steak, which is phenomenally marbled, and it’s just beautiful. And by the time you eat that eight or nine ounce steak, you’re like that’s plenty.

Janice Person [00:36:33]:

Yeah, I love it. All right, Chris, now ask you, did I forget to ask him anything important? So people do buy their ground beef.

Jeff Swanson [00:36:41]:

They do? Oh, yeah, absolutely. It makes the most amazing hamburger you’ll ever eat.

Janice Person [00:36:48]:

Really?

Jeff Swanson [00:36:49]:

That same rich, buttery, tender flavor.

Janice Person [00:36:53]:

I do love really good burgers.

Jeff Swanson [00:36:55]:

When we first started processing it and made our own burgers here at home, the best way I could describe it, it was like biting into air that had a beef flavor to it. It’s that tender.

Janice Person [00:37:08]:

Wow.

Jeff Swanson [00:37:08]:

I mean, you had no resistance. Not much chewing. It’s just bite into your burger and you’re like, oh, my gosh, it’s fantastic. It’s just amazing. And then you get the rich, buttery flavor with it. Everything we do, minimal seasoning, salt and pepper, that’s about it. Because there’s so much natural flavor to the meat, it does not need much else.

Janice Person [00:37:33]:

I love it. Well, I can’t wait to get this episode out to people. As I do this. I’m going to tell you which all photos I need you to send, if you don’t already send them to me. I really appreciate your time.

Jeff Swanson [00:37:45]:

And I tell people, I said our goal for the future is one day we’d like to buy our own. Right now we lease, so we’d like to buy our own big farm. But it’s going to be more not just producing phenomenal beef, but the whole agritourism. We want people to come see how the cattle are raised, be able to walk around, enjoy nature. And like you and I going out and checking on the mamas. Just have a path where they can go by and see them, not get out in them. Because mamas can get territorial.

Janice Person [00:38:17]:

You saw. I know how to stay on the other side of the farmer.

Jeff Swanson [00:38:22]:

People are so disconnected from to where their food comes from that we’d like to get it back to it. They want to know where their food comes from.

Janice Person [00:38:34]:

That’s all. What I’m trying to do with this podcast is help people better understand because not everybody has phone book in their phone where they can just call up people and say, who else should I talk to?

Jeff Swanson [00:38:44]:

And there’s so much misinformation out there that if people really want to know the truth, all they have to do is come ask the people that are doing it.

Janice Person [00:38:54]:

Yeah, well, I’ll make sure they can find you on Instagram and Facebook, and they can ask you all those questions, too. But knowing that they could just find some farmers in their area by looking is also a great thing. Thanks so much. Your boys are dying to get back in this house, and I can’t make them stay out there any longer. Jeff, thank you so much for being here.

Jeff Swanson [00:39:14]:

Thank you for having me.

Janice Person [00:39:17]:

I have to tell you how fun it was when Braxton and Gunner came back in and were checking to see how the interview went and what was going to happen next about the sweetest kids ever. Braxton convinced his mom to make shepherd’s pie, which is one of his favorite meals, and was trying hard to get me to stay for the evening. It’s so sweet. But now I really want to try shepherd’s pie with wagyu beef because it seems like there may be a little bit of a different butteriness to it, and that does sound really good with shepherd’s pie. So I hope you guys found this of interest. We’re going to go ahead and share it on our social channels. If you could share it with people in the way you think, they’d find it most fitting. Those who might enjoy hearing about the foods they enjoy, but a little bit different perspective than they may normally hear. Thanks so much. We’ll talk to you again in two weeks. Bye.

The post Transcript for Episode 408 with SouthwindS Cattle – Adams, TN appeared first on Grounded by the Farm.

transcript to accompany the interview with Terry Button on growing traditional Indian corn, tepary beans etc on the Gila River Indian Community, transcript created via AI using castmagic.io (affiliate link)

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.

This is the second part in our talks with people on the Gila River Indian Reservation, and and this conversation is a bit different. So we’ve heard about the irrigation and the projects that have been going on from, like, an archaeological standpoint, and we heard about the new water reinstatement. Now we’re going to talk to Terry Button. Terry, thank you for coming on the show.

Terry Button [00:00:40]:

Oh, you’re welcome, Janice. I enjoy the opportunity.

Janice Person [00:00:44]:

I’ve had a great time riding around with him. He was teaching me foraging techniques for Arizona, which is not a usual thing for me. So what all were we eating out there, Terry?

Terry Button [00:00:55]:

We were eating what’s known by the pimas as a qua. It’s the desert wolfberry.

Janice Person [00:01:01]:

It’s a very small berry. There was a seed in it, I could see. But you didn’t have to worry about the seed, I hope, because I didn’t spit them out or anything. But it really changed the sweetness level based on the plants that we were getting it off of and how ripe they were versus whether they had been there a while and trying a little bit. Right?

Terry Button [00:01:20]:

Yeah. They’re actually a very slightly astringent, sweet little berry that’s in the Solen ACA family, which is related to a tomato. So the seeds are very similar to tomato seeds.

Janice Person [00:01:33]:

Yeah. So part of why I wanted to talk to Terry is because his family so it’s him, his wife, Ramona, and daughters and niece and plenty of other people helping out. But they have a really unique farms in that they’re doing heritage things in one track and they’re doing commercial things on another track, and they’re able to balance those two things as they honor the cultures of Ramona’s people. Ramona is from this area, and you’re not correct, but you moved here 50 years ago, so you’re part of the land at this point, I guess. The land is part of you kind.

Terry Button [00:02:20]:

Of adapted, I guess.

Janice Person [00:02:23]:

So what are some of the heritage things? I’m sitting here and I’m looking at pink corn, so I kind of want you to tell me about it because, wow, it’s neat. Most people haven’t heard of pink corn, but what all corns are you doing? What kinds of corns, and what are they used for?

Terry Button [00:02:40]:

Well, the corns that we grow here, we have four different types that we grow every year, are flower type corn. They’re not flints, they’re not dense, they’re not popcorn, they’re not flint dense, and they’re not flower flints, but they’re flower corn. So that when you dissect the kernel with a knife, it has a very thin paracarp. And then the kernel itself is white endosperm, and it’s a soft mostly flour. All flour, very little starch. And the Pima 60 day corn that we grow has a little bit more of a hard starch layer. But none of these corns dent when they dry down.

Janice Person [00:03:21]:

That’s a really important thing for people who’ve never learned about corn. Sweet corn is always nice and round. You don’t want it to dent. That means it’s getting too old, shrivels like a raisin. Yeah. But corn that’s grown for most of the feed and food, kind of, yeah. The bigger corn in the Midwest, obviously. But this still looks pretty plump, even though it was harvested last year. And you’re already planting it, right?

Terry Button [00:03:50]:

Correct. This was harvested last June. Actually, this was harvested in August because we allowed it to mature fully and dry down on the stalk. These corns are native to the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. These are grown by indigenous communities here. We originally obtained this seed for the pink corn from a Monkope village, actually a sister village to the Monkope Village. It was Houghton Villa. A friend of ours allowed me to grow some corn for him, and I grew it out here because they didn’t have enough water up there. And the name was Kenny Quinn Nimptoa. And when Kenny brought the seed down, I said, I’m going to plant about three acres of it. You all come down and pick everything you want. So they showed up with about five or six pickups, and they had a crew of people that went out and picked corn, and it was hot.

Janice Person [00:04:55]:

They were thrilled to fill up those.

Terry Button [00:04:57]:

Pickups, and they were and they took them home. And the way they pick them and cook them back there, they make ovens under the earth. They make us, and they steam them and they cook them in there, and then they hang them up to dry. And once they dry out, eat them. Sometimes they prepare these and eat them like sweet corn as well, because it is pretty sweet. We kept whatever they didn’t have, which they left quite a bit, actually.

Janice Person [00:05:23]:

Taking corn takes a lot more time and effort than people want to think.

Terry Button [00:05:27]:

It’s a lot of work.

Janice Person [00:05:28]:

It’s a lot of work. I’ve done it for some sweet corn.

Terry Button [00:05:33]:

We used to grow sweet corn quite a bit, actually. We were a grower shipper packer for fresh market sweet corn for many years here. But that’s where the pink corn came from. And then we have the Pima 60 Day, which is actually from here.

Janice Person [00:05:50]:

Right.

Terry Button [00:05:51]:

And it’s probably, if not the most it’s one of the most quickest and earliest corns in the world.

Janice Person [00:06:00]:

It’s really well adapted to here.

Terry Button [00:06:02]:

Yeah. When planted in the summertime, in probably early or mid July till about the 15 August at the latest, you can actually be eating that corn in October, mid October.

Janice Person [00:06:20]:

That’s fast.

Terry Button [00:06:21]:

That’s pretty quick. And then it takes a little longer to fully mature out and dry down. And where we use it also to make the guy of suffering that I spoke about, or to make corn meal. We take the corn in this stage, fully mature, and we will roast it and parch it. We call it parching. Some people in the native communities will parch it in hot sand.

Janice Person [00:06:49]:

I don’t know how that works.

Terry Button [00:06:50]:

Very fine sand. Yeah. And it’s really a good way to do it. And it almost pops it. And then we roast it over coals and parch it. And then we dry it down. Then we mill it and make cornmeal out of it.

Janice Person [00:07:07]:

Okay.

Terry Button [00:07:08]:

Or pinoli. The pima is called Hak Chewy.

Janice Person [00:07:12]:

I did not say the name of your farm is Ramona Farms. And that’s what your products are then marketed as.

Terry Button [00:07:19]:

Right.

Janice Person [00:07:20]:

How many different kinds of corn do you think you grow?

Terry Button [00:07:22]:

Four.

Janice Person [00:07:23]:

Four pima, 60 day. Okay.

Terry Button [00:07:27]:

The pink, the blue, and the red, which is a red and white. Sometimes we select for an all red corn, which we call Ramona Red. So that could be actually five.

Janice Person [00:07:40]:

I love it. And out of that corn, most of it. Do you use it here in this community commercially? Right.

Terry Button [00:07:49]:

We use it at home. We use it the people in the community buy it from a lot of our different products. It’s really well received by a lot of restaurants around the nation. We have a lot of native chefs that buy our corn products.

Janice Person [00:08:03]:

Great.

Terry Button [00:08:03]:

And then we have several mills. Matter of fact, we just got an order from a mill in Orange County, California, for several hundred pounds of blue and red corn.

Janice Person [00:08:15]:

Oh, nice.

Terry Button [00:08:16]:

Along with the whites and or wheat berries that we sell.

Janice Person [00:08:18]:

Yeah. So another one of the things so you mentioned wheat berries. A lot of people probably never heard of wheat berries. Tell me more.

Terry Button [00:08:27]:

Well, it’s just the way we describe the wheat as the grain. The grain itself is the whole kernel, and some in the foodie industry often called it berries. So we said, well, we’ll just call it what they call it because they know what it is. And so they use it a lot in their salad preparations, for instance, or adding to certain dishes we like.

Janice Person [00:08:50]:

It’s almost like a tabooli kind of salad or something. Right, right.

Terry Button [00:08:54]:

And we like to use it added into beans, soups and stews, and it goes well that way.

Janice Person [00:09:01]:

And now another one that’s on the heritage side is tepary beans. And you have multiple varieties of those, too. Help me first. Tepary beans, as far as I can tell from you, is maybe part of the same family as lentils and peas because it’s so high in fiber and protein. Are they related or not?

Terry Button [00:09:23]:

They’re a legume.

Janice Person [00:09:24]:

Okay.

Terry Button [00:09:25]:

But they’re not related. They’re native to North America, as most beans are, but Southwestern, the Sonoran Desert and south somewhat into Mexico. Now, what is now Mexico, back when these beans were first utilized and grown out, they came from wild stock. The wild tepary beans grew as far south as the Copper Canyon down in Mexico. The tepary beans were grown out by native peoples, especially the Akimel Oodham or the Pima. And they’re grown because they’re the world’s most drought adapted bean. Interesting, they can grow on the least amount of water of any bean variety. They’re resistant to a lot of diseases.

Janice Person [00:10:17]:

But that’s very cool. And it’s a high protein, high fiber, as I was discussing earlier, they’re small, like a lentil.

Terry Button [00:10:26]:

They’re smaller than your comb. They’re about the size of a small white or what’s otherwise known as a navy bean, except they have a more flatter profile.

Janice Person [00:10:38]:

Okay.

Terry Button [00:10:38]:

And they’re a little bit truncated at the top where they crowd into the pod. So especially the brown, more so than the white. They’re nutrient dense. Actually, the name for them in pima is they call them bavi which is the white bean. Suambaf is the brown bean, and Stuuk of is the black bean.

Janice Person [00:11:06]:

Okay.

Terry Button [00:11:07]:

And then the beans are grown traditionally by the people to the south of us in the desert. They’re grown planted in the summertime, in summer rainstorm, runoff areas where the water collects and little washes, and it kind of irrigates the soil in those areas, and they can plant them in those areas. Those areas sometimes are called charcoals. They’re little royals run together and there’s a little floodplain, and they’ll plant them in there and they’ll survive on just the rainfall and make fruit, whereas other beans would die.

Janice Person [00:11:44]:

Yeah.

Terry Button [00:11:45]:

And here the Pimas have always used the diverted flows of the Gila to irrigate them.

Janice Person [00:11:52]:

Right.

Terry Button [00:11:52]:

And so they can be grown in either area. And they’re so well adapted genetically that you can take the same bean that was raised on irrigated agriculture and plant it in the desert environment, and it will do equally well.

Janice Person [00:12:09]:

Wow, that’s really cool. And these beans, you told me, are pretty hard. So cooking them is a long time endeavor.

Terry Button [00:12:19]:

It takes longer to cook than other.

Janice Person [00:12:22]:

Bean varieties or more like a chicken stock or does it matter?

Terry Button [00:12:29]:

I guess it doesn’t matter as long as you don’t put salt in the water. If you salt your water, you’re going to keep your beans will get hard.

Janice Person [00:12:36]:

They won’t cook.

Terry Button [00:12:37]:

So you don’t want to put salt in the water.

Janice Person [00:12:39]:

It’s a good note for me when I start cooking some. Okay. Because most time people put salt in the water for a lot of things, like pastas.

Terry Button [00:12:46]:

Yeah. Well, you don’t want to do it when you’re cooking beans.

Janice Person [00:12:49]:

Okay. And so tell me about the flavors or whatever it is that differentiates white, brown and black other than the colors, which are very clear on the package.

Terry Button [00:13:00]:

Maria probably gave you the best description of the flavors, and I’ll try to recall what she said, but the white tepary, which usually cooks the fastest, is a milder, almost a sweet taste to it. It’s a buttery sweetness, and cooked plain by themselves are just excellent. Matter of fact, all beans are. I just happen to be a bean connoisseur. I’m a connoisseur of beans. I’ve always loved them all my life, so I like every kind of bean. But these are among my very favorites. And if you ask me what my favorite bean is, it’s always the one I’m eating right now. But the white bean has a buttery sweet flavor, relatively mild compared to the brown. Yeah, the brown is a kind of a more nutty flavor. It’s kind of sweet, but a little bit nutty.

Janice Person [00:14:02]:

Okay.

Terry Button [00:14:03]:

And then the black bean has a kind of a rich, more robust and little bit, like Maria says, a little bit of a chocolatey finish.

Janice Person [00:14:12]:

Okay.

Terry Button [00:14:13]:

So they have their different advantages. They all really work well in a lot of different dishes, and they’re good. I just like a big bowl of beans. I just eat them like soup, bean soup. You can mash them up and use them other dishes or on bread and.

Janice Person [00:14:34]:

Make a sandwich almost like salad dressings and stuff.

Terry Button [00:14:37]:

Yeah. As a matter of fact, Maria makes I call it a bean dip, some people call it a hummus. And they cook the beans and blend them out and make it into a paste. And that makes a really good dip or a hummus. And depending on how you flavor it, you can add chilies, you can add garlic, whatever.

Janice Person [00:14:57]:

I’m a huge fan of hummus.

Terry Button [00:14:59]:

And then you can take and thin it out a little bit, and it makes a good salad dressing.

Janice Person [00:15:07]:

Yeah. Okay, so we’re going to all have to try temporary beans, and Maria will be shipping them out for us. So you’re growing those are different seasons than the corn, and some of the corn is different season from other corn. How many crops, like, you’re farming all year long, how many different things are you planting? Like, at different times?

Terry Button [00:15:34]:

Anywhere from nine to 14 crops a year.

Janice Person [00:15:36]:

Okay.

Terry Button [00:15:37]:

And so we’ll grow four different varieties of Indian corn. We’ll grow three different varieties of terry bean. We grow chickpeas or garbanzos. We also grow white sonoran and Pima club and Durham wheat. We also grow some other soft white wheats that we’re growing commercially, organically, or another buyer. We do also raise alfalfa hay and Bermuda grass hay on our commercial side of our farming operation under Button Farms. And so we grow cotton.

Janice Person [00:16:15]:

Cotton is my favorite.

Terry Button [00:16:17]:

Yeah. We grow upland cotton and pima cotton. And our Pima Button is organic pima cotton grown by Ramona Farms and another sister company called Dart Organics.

Janice Person [00:16:28]:

Okay.

Terry Button [00:16:29]:

Which is my brother Dale and myself.

Janice Person [00:16:31]:

Yeah.

Terry Button [00:16:32]:

So we grow quite a variety of crops. We also grow trudeau.

Janice Person [00:16:37]:

Kyle what is that?

Terry Button [00:16:39]:

Well, that’s a hybrid between red wheat and rye grain. It’s a grain that’s grown for cutting as silage when it’s in the soft dough stage, and then it’s in siled for dairy feed.

Janice Person [00:16:54]:

For dairy, yeah.

Terry Button [00:16:57]:

And we also grow oats for hay, oats for silage. We grow TEF for horse feed.

Janice Person [00:17:05]:

Okay.

Terry Button [00:17:05]:

Bermuda grass, hay and alfalfa for both horse hay and for export and for dairy cattle feed.

Janice Person [00:17:13]:

So do you happen to know much about the background of pima cotton? Because a lot of times people talk about Egyptian cotton, they talk about Peruvian cotton, and I keep telling them about pima cotton, and I buy so many things made of pima because it’s just so high quality, it just feels good.

Terry Button [00:17:36]:

Well, American pima cotton was developed here in Sacatone, and it earned its name, pima cotton, because it was developed here on the Pima Reservation by the United States Department of Agriculture. At that time, it was under the direction of Carl Feaster, dr. Carl Feaster. And it was originally a cross of native cottons and Egyptian cotton and introduction of different strains that they developed over time. And when Ramona and I first got involved in growing pima cotton that’s been a few years. Yeah, it was a few decades. We started growing pima cotton about 40 years ago. And at that time, the variety that was prevalent then was a variety that had just come in, was called S Six.

Janice Person [00:18:35]:

Oh, yeah.

Terry Button [00:18:36]:

And S Six was the best we have ever raised. We did really well. Then I went to S Seven. We didn’t like the growing characteristics of S Seven as well as S Six, but our climate changed here and we started getting the heat island effect, which we called it, where our nighttime temperatures weren’t cooling enough.

Janice Person [00:19:02]:

And that’s important for pima.

Terry Button [00:19:04]:

Yeah. Our early morning temperatures, Janice, need to be in the sunrise to get the pollination that you need during the peak bloom period. And we seldom see nights where the temperature drops out of the 90s.

Janice Person [00:19:20]:

Yeah.

Terry Button [00:19:21]:

And so our pima stopped producing. Our yields dropped from three bales to the acre, 1500 pounds, down to less than 1000 pounds. And it got really difficult to make it work, especially when pima prices came down to where, at a buck and a quarter, in less than two bales against $75 to $0.80, but way higher. Three and a half or four, it wasn’t working.

Janice Person [00:19:48]:

Yeah. The difference with pima, just so people understand, so there are different sections and species of cotton, not just varieties. Right. Because we were talking about varieties like S Six and S Seven, but pima is a different like they’re all justipium but it’s a different jusipium. There’s a barbadance, right, rather than her Pseudum, than her pseudom, which is more upland. It’s what’s grown in Georgia and Mississippi and most of Texas.

Terry Button [00:20:22]:

There’s some Sea Island cotton that’s been introduced into the beam of strain.

Janice Person [00:20:27]:

Those barbadants is what, like, the Egyptian cotton is from that. It’s a very long, strong fiber and it’s fine. So you can make your fabrics a lot smoother silkier, because you’re not going to have yeah. And they last a lot longer. That’s why men’s shirts right. Doesn’t show the wear around your collar or around your wrist.

Terry Button [00:20:54]:

Right.

Janice Person [00:20:54]:

Makes a big difference.

Terry Button [00:20:57]:

They’re a little bit more difficult to grow. They’re quite a bit more challenging to harvest. And gin, it requires separate different ginning equipment. Upland cotton is otherwise known as short staple cotton because relative to pima, they’re shorter. They are ginned on a saw. Gin, where the lint is pulled away from the seed by rotating saw blades, circular saw blades, a whole rack of sawblades, and they’re spun on a roll.

Janice Person [00:21:31]:

I can put some pictures with this because I got a lot of pictures and video. I’ll make sure people can see it on the website. Definitely different.

Terry Button [00:21:39]:

Whereas pima is not a fuzzy seed, and it doesn’t cling to the seed as tightly and requires saw to pull it away. Pima is a smooth seed, and the fiber comes away from the seed more readily. So it’s ginned on what’s known as a roller gin, which are rubber covered rolls, and it does less damage to the lint.

Janice Person [00:22:00]:

Yeah, exactly. And part of that. So people who have never thought about how cotton grows and where it grows in Texas, if you’re growing pima cotton in the wrong place because it doesn’t hold on so tightly to the bowl, to the seed, you may have more that disappears with the wind and things like that, but it really does require those cool nights. And that’s why you find it mostly in Arizona and California, places where the temperatures drop at night, not in places with lots of humidity, where the temperatures stay up high all night long.

Terry Button [00:22:37]:

Correct.

Janice Person [00:22:38]:

And it makes a big difference. So it is interesting to me, it’s called pima cotton, but it’s not like, historically a pima crop. Right. Like, I mean, cotton was native.

Terry Button [00:22:49]:

The pimas grew cotton here.

Janice Person [00:22:50]:

Yeah.

Terry Button [00:22:51]:

And it was an aboriginal it was also called pima aboriginal.

Janice Person [00:22:54]:

Okay.

Terry Button [00:22:55]:

And that strain is still maintained, actually, in USDAC bank.

Janice Person [00:23:00]:

Yes.

Terry Button [00:23:01]:

And it’s being grown out by certain.

Janice Person [00:23:03]:

Parties around to make sure you replenish the seeds. Right.

Terry Button [00:23:07]:

And there are some people here that are actually growing it and using it and spinning it for traditional products, traditional fabric.

Janice Person [00:23:17]:

Oh, that’s fantastic. I didn’t realize that was going on. I may have to be back.

Terry Button [00:23:23]:

Yeah. And so it’s an interesting product, but the reason they called it pima was because the research station was established here at the old school farms just north of Sacroton.

Janice Person [00:23:36]:

Okay. I love it. So help me understand how you approached this. Like, you and Ramona have been farming together and stuff for, like, 50 years, but how do you get to a place where you have such a reasonably well balanced kind of honoring the culture and the land and participating in current markets, which might have a different financial profile and things like that. How does something like that happen? Do both of you actively farms?

Terry Button [00:24:12]:

We do, as a matter of fact, for many, many years. Ramona ran our field cruise until she decided she’s had enough of it.

Janice Person [00:24:22]:

It gets really hot out there.

Terry Button [00:24:24]:

And she was running the weeding cruise and the thinning cruise on our cotton, our pima. We used to plant our pima and thin it back by hand, and we did all our hand weeding back before we had selective herbicides or resistant plants that we could use. Non selective herbicides over. So we have got a lot of experience in that. And Ramona has devoted her time to establishing this farm, but her focus was to be able to bring back her traditional crops, the foods that her people used to insisted on. These were staple foods of the Pima people. These were the actual staple foods that they used the corn, the beans.

Janice Person [00:25:12]:

This was the way her ancestors were able to continue living. It wasn’t.

Terry Button [00:25:17]:

And she thought that part of the problems that we are having here and elsewhere in the world today are due to the fact that our diet has deteriorated. They’re not so good for us.

Janice Person [00:25:30]:

Yeah, like introducing more temporary beans and things like that to our diets. I know. At least according to news reports, we’ve had issues with diabetes with a lot of our native people. We’ve got it definitely in a lot of other people in the US. And stuff. So some of those things that are heavy on nutrients and stuff seem like a good way to go. So that was part of Ramona’s commitment on the front end?

Terry Button [00:25:59]:

Well, she was raised. Her dad emphasized to her as she was growing up in her formative years and while she farmed and worked with him on his farms as she was growing up. She remembered back in her years when she became an adult. Some of the things that he taught her that were so important to him and that was treasure your heritage, treasure what you grew up with, treasure the foods that you were eating and share it with your family. Remember, this is where you’re from, and this is what you should continue with and be able to grow that and share it with other people. He says, don’t be keeping it to yourself.

Janice Person [00:26:45]:

Yeah. And she has a health background, having been a nurse and things like that. So it all kind of comes together. She does share it a lot. So you joked with me about I’m getting, like, the B team or something by having an interview with you instead of Ramona. I’m like, Well, I think I’ll be fine. But she’s very active on behalf of the Pima people in getting their history better understood by other people, which includes such a large part the foods that are part of the heritage. I mean, it’s a central part of understanding who you are is understanding the foods that your people came up with. Right.

Terry Button [00:27:25]:

It really is. It’s very important. And then you got to also take into consideration the importance of the background of how people river in the days that they were subsisting on their own native crops that they raised here before they lost their water.

Janice Person [00:27:45]:

Right?

Terry Button [00:27:45]:

But these communities, people went out and they got exercise. They worked their land. They worked their garden plots. They had not only small doryard farms, they had family acreage plots, and they farmed a variety of crops some watermelons.

Janice Person [00:28:09]:

Some that you eat, fresh corn and.

Terry Button [00:28:11]:

Sugar cane and lots of different things so that they had a variety of things. And they were very adept and skilled and knowledgeable about foraging the desert.

Janice Person [00:28:24]:

You’ve learned some of that since you got here.

Terry Button [00:28:26]:

Important foods out there, really important to.

Janice Person [00:28:32]:

The overall diet, and hopefully more come back with the water availability shifting again.

Terry Button [00:28:39]:

And if people start to focus on pay attention and pay attention and learn about it, that’s what’s so important, is getting involved, going out and doing it, getting the exercise, growing your garden. Even if you’re not a farmer on a large scale, get out there and do something and grow some crops.

Janice Person [00:29:03]:

Even if it’s in your backyard, even if it’s in containers, it’s fine because.

Terry Button [00:29:07]:

A lot of people in these communities did that. That’s what they did. That’s how they lived. They farmed their little plots, and it’s healthy, and that keeps you active all the time. You got to also remember that back in those days, nobody got paid for working. There was not a cash economy.

Janice Person [00:29:27]:

Yeah. Barter.

Terry Button [00:29:28]:

It was all barter. So somebody was really good at raising cattle and beef. Somebody was really good at making butter. Somebody else was good at making cheese. Somebody else was good at growing different.

Janice Person [00:29:41]:

Types of crops, maybe weaving and spinning. Oh, yes, all those things come together.

Terry Button [00:29:48]:

When I first got here back in 1972, there was a lady that used to travel up and down. Several different ladies would sell different things that they made. A lot of people sold tamales.

Janice Person [00:30:02]:

Well, I saw several different trucks around town, and I had tamales for lunch with Wes. And then when we were going back, he said something about temporary beans. And I went, oh, my God, I’ve never had them. And he goes, we should have gone to a different truck.

Terry Button [00:30:18]:

Yeah. Red feather. But, you know, that’s the thing. Ramona used to make the tamales when we first got married, and that’s how she would make enough money to pay our electric because that’s the only thing they had. It was electric, was a light bulb hanging in Adobe house. So it was a light bill, you know. But she would take the corn and make her own masa by externalizing it with wood ashes, and then she would work it with her hands and get the skins off the paracarp and then float that off. And then she would grind it into the masa. And then she would cook her chilies. Her dad raised the chili. He was a chili. He raised the corn and he raised the chili. And everything was made there. And then the beef would be raised, or dad raised beef. And then they would take a little wagon and go through the neighborhood selling it out of a little red wagon. That was part of what people did there. And I met several. There was one lady named Molly Murado that I remember that used to go up and down, and she used to sell this really delicious stuff. And I never had it before from where I came from, and it was what they called hak chewy. And I learned later that it was also called Pinole.

Janice Person [00:31:43]:

Okay.

Terry Button [00:31:43]:

And it was made with wheat, and they made the wheat, and they parched the wheat, and then they ground it into a fine flour, and you would mix that with water or milk. And Myles, it really satisfying drink. Or you can eat it and then drink water behind it. So this lady would go around and sell it in little brown bags. Yeah, and it was neat. And the way that she made it, ramona had another relative that the children called Grandma Annie. And she would make that and showed them how to do it. She would take one of her baskets and she would dampen the basket with water. And then she would take live coals out of her mosquito fire in her wood stove and put them in the basket. And then she would take the wheat that was already winnowed, and she would put it in the basket, and she would shake it around the live coals, and then she would winnow it and separate the coals and the wheat. Then she would take the wheat and then grind it.

Janice Person [00:32:41]:

Oh, my gosh.

Terry Button [00:32:42]:

So it had that wonderful mesquite coal roasted flavor.

Janice Person [00:32:46]:

I’m going to guess your Pinoli does not have that, because that sounds like a safety issue of great proportion in today’s world. But you do a good Pinoli, we do a mesquite. Okay.

Terry Button [00:32:59]:

A little bit more mechanized.

Janice Person [00:33:01]:

We’re not using a basket. A little bit differently produced, but still honors the traditions. Right? I love it. Thanks so much. What else did you want to tell me that I forgot to ask you?

Terry Button [00:33:16]:

Well, I just really want to share with you some of the really neat things about being around people that are from here. Everywhere in the country is unique, and we all have our origins, and we want to hearken back to a lot of us in our elder years. We want to hearken back to the old days and old ways.

Janice Person [00:33:37]:

Yeah.

Terry Button [00:33:37]:

Well, I was schooled back east, so I learned about shade grown tobacco and tobacco farming. I learned about corn and blade pulling, putting up. Pole fodder and stover and that kind of stuff, that my relatives down in maryland and my dad’s folks up in connecticut river valley. But when I came here, I also started to listen and learn, and I’ve known lots of people that farmed here and that are no longer with us and a few that still are. And they’ve told me wonderful things about how the very beans that we grow today were harvested and prepared back when they were and their grandparents were farming them. And I got to learn about. Okay. For one example, our former governor, donald antone, who’s still with us, he’s now farming in district five. Okay. And he’s also ranching the tribal governor.

Janice Person [00:34:36]:

Not the arizona, in case anybody’s confused.

Terry Button [00:34:40]:

Yeah. And he told me how his grandfather and his grandparents harvested the teppery beans. They grew temporary beans, and when it was time for them to harvest, they would go through the field and with a team and wagon, and they would lift the beans with pitchforks, plants, pods and all, and put them in the wagon. They would take the wagon full of beans to an area. They made a threshing floor.

Janice Person [00:35:13]:

Wow.

Terry Button [00:35:13]:

And they would take the earth and smooth it out and dampen it down and walk it down smooth until it was almost polished in a large area and probably 50ft in diameter. And they would put a central pole in the middle of that, and then they would lay a canvas. And I hope I’m doing an honor to donnie and sharing his story, and I hope I’m being accurate the way.

Janice Person [00:35:41]:

He can correct us if not.

Terry Button [00:35:44]:

Yeah, he can correct you if I’ve misled you. But they would keep their horses off of feed and water for it. They would take them out, exercise them, and bring them in, and they would cover that threshing floor with cannabis. And then they would throw the beans off of the wagons onto the threshing floor. They would hitch the horses by lead rope up to that pole with a swivel around it, and then they would wrap gunny sacks, burlap sacks around their hooves with sizzle torn.

Janice Person [00:36:22]:

Wow.

Terry Button [00:36:23]:

They would have the horses walk on the bean pots and the bean brush.

Janice Person [00:36:27]:

Until they to separate it out, thresh it out.

Terry Button [00:36:30]:

Then they would pick the cannabis up and scoop it all off, and they would winnow it. And the ladies would finally take it down to the stage where they would take the beans that were roughly cleaned into their baskets. Big, large I’ve seen those baskets. The flat baskets are round, and they’re very shallow.

Janice Person [00:36:49]:

They have a slight I know what you’re talking about.

Terry Button [00:36:51]:

And they would flip it up and was a great skill.

Janice Person [00:36:56]:

Like leave matter and all the shaft and stuff will just blow through almost right. Or they know how to do it, so they create a little bit of wind to separate it.

Terry Button [00:37:08]:

But that was called the way that they thrashed him.

Janice Person [00:37:11]:

That’s beautiful story, and I love the idea. More people now are trying to get back in touch with some of those things. Like, we started doing different things because it was convenient. And quite frankly, it really benefited some women like me who otherwise would be doing some of this work all day, every day. And now I’m able to have a professional job and travel and all that kind of stuff. But there’s somewhere a balance where we can honor some of that and do some of the modern. And that’s what I think your farms has figured out, is you can honor your heritage. You can do these things as well as do some of the commercial things like the pimas and the wheats and things. So we don’t have to choose whether to honor our past or move towards the future. We could and should bring our past with us. And if we hadn’t got it with us now, we can go back and find our elders and start digging that stuff back up so we know better.

Terry Button [00:38:11]:

Well, we need to we need to know where we came from, how we did things, why we do things the way we do, what it might be that we’re missing in the way that we do things today that probably we should be paying attention to. But at the same time, we have to stay efficient and we have to be able to be competitive to be able to produce crops in a cash economy for what people can afford to pay. Because you got to remember one thing. If people have to pay too much for food, they won’t have enough discretionary income to buy anything else or to.

Janice Person [00:38:47]:

Send their kids to school or whatever it is. We still see that happening in other countries. We’re lucky enough that public school is a thing, but even going to school still costs money in terms of getting your kids clothed and shoes and all that stuff.

Terry Button [00:39:05]:

That’s right.

Janice Person [00:39:07]:

What a note to end on. Thank you so much. I so appreciate the day that I’ve spent with you this afternoon, I’ve spent with you. We’ve got video of going around and looking at some of the crops in the field. We did not get to see temporary beans because I’m not here during season. I’m going to have to come back. I will come back when Ramona is here too. And maybe one of your daughters, two of your daughters, get them to show me the different things they do. I do want to encourage people to check you guys out. It’s Ramonafarms.com. It’s a simple website to find. You’ve got recipes, you’ve got products up there. There’s a lot of things going on, and I’ll make sure I put all those things in the show notes so people can find it easily. I’m also going to share some other stories because Ramona was featured. You guys were featured in a story recently from the Smithsonian, and I want people to see that that’s going on. And that’s why she’s not here, right? She’s in DC. Doing important work. So thank you again, Terry. I really appreciate your time.

Terry Button [00:40:06]:

Oh, thank you, Janice. I enjoyed it.

Janice Person [00:40:10]:

As you can tell, I thoroughly enjoyed my time at the Gila River Indian Community. The visit with Terry was so enjoyable. I hope you have a chance to go to groundedbythefarm.com and check out some of the photos and video that we have there, because I think you’ll get a better sense of Terry as well as pink corn. Who would have thought? Please, go ahead, check it out. Share it with friends if you think there are others that might be interested in hearing about some of these farming traditions and some of the heritage that people are trying to maintain in different communities that we may not always learn about. Also, wanted to just give you a heads up if you currently use Stitcher, I understand that app is going away, so I hope you find a new place to listen to us, and we’ll look forward to talking to you again in two weeks.

The post Transcript for Episode 406 with Ramona Farms – Sacaton, AZ appeared first on Grounded by the Farm.

36 minutes

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. Last night I drove north from Phoenix and I know I’ve done this drive before Ashley but I’m gonna tell you it felt different because I was doing it at night and the Sun was behind the mountains to the west it was a beautiful glow. Most of my drive up to Prescott or in the Dewey area at Mortimer Farms today. And Ashley is going to talk to me, Ashley Mortimer, her family has been working with this farm. She handles their marketing, You’re going to see some great videos that she’s done and you’re going to see my less than great video of a tour, but it’ll be fine. But I’ll show you around what they’re doing here. And Mortimer Farms is 1. How many did you say you’re growing like 50 something crops here? Yes, we grow 54 different things here at the farm. This is really kind of an agritourism. Tell me a little bit about your family’s history in agriculture and how you came to be part of the farm, because I know it wasn’t an automatic.

Ashlee Mortimer [00:01:18]:

Yeah, absolutely. So my family, both my parents grew up in the farming and ranching community.

My dad is from Iowa and grew up on a corn and soybean farm there and they also had cattle and horses and my mom grew up on a cotton farm. And so when they were kids, they both moved away from the farm.

And when they met, they knew that they wanted to raise us kids before we were around, raise us on a farm as well. All of those things that are instilled in farm kids, hard work and love for the land and love for food, all of those they wanted us to have. And no better way to do that than be raised on a farm or a ranch. And so when we were growing up, we were raised at my dad’s nursery, Mortimer Nursery in Prescott.

And then from there we moved. A plant nursery. Yes, a plant nursery. Raising kids at a nursery is a whole interesting thing. Yes. So he started the nursery and landscape business before my parents met. And then they fostered that business after they were married.

And then from there, we moved to a cattle ranch that’s just 15 miles away from the farm and raised cattle and also had a few farm fields there and then we were Introduced to this farmland and took it over about 13 years ago And that’s a whole nother story that I’m sure we’ll get into in a little bit But that’s kind of how we made it here to where we’re at now.

Janice Person [00:02:49]:

Yeah. So as I came up last night, because it was dark, I did not notice Mortimer Farms. But today, I mean, like as I drove down the highway, it’s the main highway to get back to the interstate. There’s no way to miss this place almost. I mean Mortimer Farms is very clear on different pieces and there’s like fun tractors like you guys have a really neat this is more agritourism probably than deep agriculture in some ways, but there’s deep agriculture behind your agritourism, where some just have the activity pieces. Help me understand

Ashlee Mortimer [00:03:27]:

what’s here at Mortimer Farms. So our primary purpose is definitely caring for the land and the environment and growing food. That’s where our deep love is. We love to be able to do the farming and the ranching side of things. And then our secondary purpose is inviting the public to understand the love of that. Not only the love that our family has for what we do, but the love that Arizona agriculturalists have for what they do, and American farmers and ranchers. And so we take it as our responsibility to educate people about the whole farming and ranching community. And in order to do that they come and see us, but they’re really seeing not just what we’re doing, but what our

Janice Person [00:04:11]:

fellow farmers and ranchers are up to. I don’t do video of these interviews because so often farmers would be nervous to be on video, but I kind of wish you guys could see how passionate she is when she’s speaking. You’ll see it in the video of the tour around the farm, but you can tell Ashley really lives this.

Ashlee Mortimer [00:04:27]:

Yes, we definitely do. And really all farmers and ranchers live this. It’s breathing, eating, sleeping, farming, and ranching. And it’s funny, my in-laws, they are 9 to 5 job workers. And I go over to their house and I’m on my phone doing social media and answering calls from farm workers. They’re like, you’re always working. Like, yes. And I grew up being that way. Both my parents live, eat, breathe, sleep. Everything is around the farm. Our vacations are going to Farm Bureau meetings, learning more about how to do our jobs better. And so it’s definitely a passion for not just my family, but for everybody that I’ve met in the agriculture industry, people, farmers, ranchers, they love what they do. And if love wasn’t behind it, it would be a really crappy job because there’s so many challenges. But you wait until you have those silver lining moments or those, the beautiful outcomes, you’re like, this is what makes it all worth it. Yes, yes. And I want to just explain,

Janice Person [00:05:29]:

we’re in the market. And so we hear customers maybe in the background a little bit off and on. It shows that you guys are actively busy. It’s almost lunchtime so what a great place to be at the market because you guys serve fresh foods, the bakery items. Let’s talk about what all you’re growing at different times, maybe this summer. So right now I saw things in your greenhouses How long are you gonna have stuff in the greenhouse? What all can people look forward to coming out? So our greenhouses

Ashlee Mortimer [00:06:01]:

are a great addition that we added 3 years ago so that we can have produce all year round here in the market. We definitely want to have staples for our local community and for people that are coming a distance to come and visit us that they can come to Dewey’s grocery store and pick up those things that they would get at a regular grocery store.

It looked a little bit like a really cool backyard garden, but it’s 1 that’s shared with others in the community, right? Like that backyard gardener that you wish you were. Yeah, definitely. Yep. I have a lot of people that come into the market and say, oh, I wish that I had a garden or I used to have 1 when I was a kid. I’m like, no worries. You can borrow ours. You can share it with us.

We’ve got all these greenhouses growing it for you year round. Exactly. Yeah. And really that’s a lot of where we’re coming from in what we’re doing is we are a community farm and we look at it that way that a lot of people that come here look at the farm like it’s their own because they love it that much. And a lot of people come here when they’re having a really hard time in their personal life and they come here to get away or to have some resemblance of happiness. And it’s just so special to be able to see that our guests and the community enjoy and love the farm just as much as our family does. So the big things I noticed that would be you pick besides the vegetables in the greenhouse,

Janice Person [00:07:22]:

you’ve got blackberries that will be coming in, which are a personal favorite. And my mom always made us blackberry cobbler if we could save enough of the blackberries before we ate them. Right? You have strawberries that were just going in. So once they get productive, how do people know when you got stuff going? Is it Facebook? Is it an email list?

Ashlee Mortimer [00:07:43]:

Both. We try to hit people as many ways as we can because everybody looks at something different. Yep, exactly. And so we have a page called What’s Pickin’ on our website that tells everything that’s available in the market and everything that’s available to harvest. And then when you come to the farm and check in for your experience, we also have a QR code that sends you to that page.

So you can look at that and look at a map to know where to go to pick all of the things. Just about everything that we grow here at the farm is available for picking and just depending on the season and what time of year you come to the farm, then you’ll have different things that you can pick and take home with you. Yeah, and if you’re coming late in the day and you just need some things for dinner,

Janice Person [00:08:27]:

I noticed you got a decent number of things that are available in the market, fresh in baskets, ready to be picked up too. So you can pick your own or you can leave that to somebody else who’s already done it for you. Yep, absolutely. And then as the season progresses, we’ll have more and more vegetables available here in the market. So tell me about what kids, like what are the components that grab kids? I saw goats and I’m gonna assume any animals always grab lots of attention?

Ashlee Mortimer [00:08:58]:

Yes, farm animals are popular. We call it the animal encounter. We have lots of goats, lots of baby goats, donkey, miniature horses, chickens, geese, ducks, peacocks, cows, turtles, really any farm animal you can find here at the farm. And the reason for that is we want people to be able to interact with animals and be able to feed them and pet them and see their behaviors and

Janice Person [00:09:26]:

kind of feel like they’re living a day in the life of a farmer or a rancher. So that’s 1 of the ways that they can do that. I love it. And there’s also like fun activities, right? So I didn’t get through all of that because I am not a five-year-old or whatever it is, the right demographic. But I noticed some really cool slides.

Ashlee Mortimer [00:09:46]:

Yes, we call it our farm park. And so in the farm park you’ll find farm inspired rides, games and activities. And all things are created with items that are usually found on a farm. And we kind of think outside of the box to make it fun. And it’s for all ages. You can find your inner kid and have fun out there or bring the family and watch the kiddos have fun. And like I said, it’s all about connecting to where your food is coming from. So we’re able to do that sneakily by having fun. And then you’re also a byproduct of that is seeing things that are on a farm and seeing and reading and understanding

Janice Person [00:10:25]:

how things are used on a real farm. It’s an easy place to stop. It’s right on the highway and get some of that energy out for your kids while they’re learning something. Exactly. Grab a great sandwich.

Ashlee Mortimer [00:10:37]:

That burrito she was making this morning, it was like a ham. Ham and bacon probably, so good. Yeah, bell peppers and onions right out of The greenhouse is so delicious. So how many people

Janice Person [00:10:49]:

help make this work? It’s the family farm, but you told me 1 of your guys has been with you guys,

Ashlee Mortimer [00:10:55]:

seemingly forever, like forever. Most of your life. Yeah. So we have 30 full time employees, year round employees here at the farm to make it all happen. We have our crews out in the fields. We have the market and deli employees, the windmill kitchen employees. A lot of our farm crew have been a part of our family for over 30 years. And it’s just definitely part of the family. We invite all of them to weddings.  My sister Just had a baby a few 7 months ago now and then my brother’s wife just had a baby a few months ago And Jesus came to the hospital to meet the babies a few hours after they were born. So they’re part of the family and we love them all so dearly and are so thankful for all of our employees.

Janice Person [00:11:39]:

Speaking of weddings, you guys also have a venue for that kind of thing, for different meetings, weddings, whatever. How did that get started?

Ashlee Mortimer [00:11:49]:

So our venues and private events and our weddings began because of an interest from the public. We had a lot of people saying, hey, we wanna use your beautiful farm to get married and so it kind of evolved from there and it’s really been a really special part of what we do to be a part of such an important day for so many people and

Janice Person [00:12:11]:

for those people to come back year after year and see the farm and spend their anniversaries here and celebrate with us. So it’s just so special. I saw 1 of those those pieces that’s like an annual touch point. So like if kids come out each year to pick strawberries with their mom, there’s a like, how tall are you? I took my picture at this sign to know how tall I was today while I’m out here. But I can imagine that people love getting their pictures with their kids on those things every year. It probably is a tradition for folks to come out. Yes, absolutely. We have

Ashlee Mortimer [00:12:47]:

lots of people that come here because it’s their tradition and this Farm is so special to so many people. I mean we talked about that earlier And so seeing those traditions continue and seeing people bring the next generation to the farm and being so excited to have that experience. And a lot of our weddings are people that bring their kids or that they were kids and came here. And so it’s just the farm is such a huge part of a lot of people’s lives. And so to be able to offer such a diverse

Janice Person [00:13:19]:

amount of things that you can do here at the farm so that tradition continues in so many different ways. Yeah, yeah. I can see how easily it would be. Arizona is so different than any of the other places I’ve talked to about agritourism because almost everybody else has to shut down at some point in the year because winter gets to be too much, right? Like, you can’t be in Virginia in the dead of winter or sometimes the heat just will kill you in some places, right? You guys really have a year round event kind of pace, right? So how do you figure all that stuff out? Because it seems like it would make a very complicated calendar. Yes. Especially with 54 crops. Yeah, very complicated calendar for sure and it’s all about being strategic.

Ashlee Mortimer [00:14:07]:

I use that word especially this time of year when we’re a little bit slower because we’re just getting out of winter. We definitely are slower certain times of year which is helpful because we can re-evaluate how we do things and look at how we can be more strategic and look at where our current employees are and see, okay, maybe if we put them somewhere else they’ll even be more productive and have a better time at work. And so looking at all of those things so that we can be proactive and we can plan and we can be strategic, that’s how we’re able to do it.

Yeah, but the market’s year round. Yes. How many days a week? We’re open every day of the year except Christmas and Thanksgiving, 7 days a week. The market and deli is open every day of the week. The farm park and the animal encounter open every day of the week. The windmill kitchen is open Most of the time, if not for walk-up restaurant service, we do a lot of the cooking and preparing of things that we sell in the market at the Windmill Kitchen. So they’re always over there working.

You can’t take a day off when you’re farming and ranching. So those days, Christmas and Thanksgiving, our team has the day off, but our family picks up and does the chores and waters and all of those things so that they can have the day off. But yeah, we’re open all the time. You sell things from other nearby farms, I think I saw in the store. There were some things like goats milk lotion where you specifically called out the farm involved or some sausages

Janice Person [00:15:42]:

that were specifically called out for a farm involved. So it’s not just things from your farm. You’re trying to support other farms in the area. I’m gonna assume with that Yes, absolutely Although we are very diverse and try to do a lot of things ourselves Just to make all of the balls be able to

Ashlee Mortimer [00:15:59]:

continue flying in the air We do there are things that we don’t do and we love to be able to support local farms when that’s the case. And so we have Hayden Flour Mills is 1 of our partnerships. We get flour. Oh yeah, there were cookie kits too. Yeah. That y’all made up with that. Yes, yeah. So any way that we can support local farms, Polka Goat is where we get the lotions, Troyer Meat is where we get the sausages. So any way that we can help and support each other, because that’s really what agriculture is all about, is supporting each other and sharing not only products like we do and partnerships like that, but also information, because we’ve all been down a different path. And so if we can say, hey, what did you do when you came across this challenge and take their firsthand experience so that we can be a little bit better off and do the same thing for them. That’s what farming and ranching is all about. Yeah, so This ought to go live around mid-June.

Janice Person [00:17:02]:

So let’s talk about what people might be able to come out for like as they hear this episode for the first time. What’s going to be happening in mid-June?

Ashlee Mortimer [00:17:12]:

Mid-June is 1 of the best times to come for the pick your own experience. Most all of our crops are ready to harvest at that point. Blackberries, which we’ve talked about a little bit, both of our favorite crop, they are ready to harvest at that, at this time, I guess we’ll say. Strawberries also usually are harvesting around mid-june and then lots and lots of vegetables tomatoes cucumbers bell peppers All of those delicious things that we grow the list of 54 items most all of them are ready

Janice Person [00:17:45]:

Mid-june is the perfect time And I’d encourage people to take a nice day of it. This would be a great day trip if you’re in the Phoenix area. Obviously, if you’re in Prescott, you’re like right next door. I mean, this is like a weekly trip, right? But a good day trip with the kids, with the family, or for adults. So in June, we can do the pick your own with strawberries. What’s the next season?

Ashlee Mortimer [00:18:11]:

June, July, and August is really our primary vegetable and berry season. And then we go into lots of different flowers. We have lots of flowers that we grow, including sunflowers. So we have fields and fields of flowers. Yeah, it’s absolutely beautiful. And then we go into fall and our pumpkin festing corn maize. But we have, I was just grabbing our calendar, we have over 20 events that happen here at the farm. So, I mean, we have- I’ll make sure I link to this, but I do want to get the audio to get some of the main things, because

Janice Person [00:18:45]:

It’s hard for people to process 54 different things. So knowing there are seasons that shift a little bit. Yep. And seasons

Ashlee Mortimer [00:18:52]:

is a great learning experience for people that come to the farm. So you go to a grocery store and you see everything that you would ever want all the time. And when people come to the farm, they’re able to realize and see firsthand that strawberries don’t grow year round and that there is a season for those and learning how to cook with the season And even learning how to cook with different products that are fresh is a lot of it is different than a lot of people do now because of the convenience of going to the store and being able to… Getting whatever’s there. Exactly. Yeah. So that part of even just shopping in the market in deli is really Connecting back to where your food comes from because you’re able to see seasons and be able to cook different meals based on what the season is and based on what is being harvested

Janice Person [00:19:46]:

And so that’s a really cool aspect of it as well. Yeah, and you’ve got the canning aspect and stuff. So all the things that you grew in seasons can also be jarred up like relishes

Ashlee Mortimer [00:19:57]:

and things like that. All the vinegars, all the honeys, my God, the honeys. Yes, very popular. Yeah, And really good for local allergies. We have 3 different kinds of honeys for different areas in Arizona. So the wildflower honey is really good for central Arizona allergies. I needed that desert honey yesterday as my allergies were calling me. Seriously, yeah. I’ll take some today just in case you go back.

Janice Person [00:20:22]:

But so then in the fall, I derailed you. You said through August really is berry season and vegetable season. Then in the fall, I’m going to guess traditional fall things, apples.

Ashlee Mortimer [00:20:35]:

Yes, apples and pumpkins and our corn maze. Here at the farm, fall is our most popular time of the year. Our pumpkin festing corn maze is the event that you have to come to and then come a few other times throughout the year. But we really have a great time at the Pumpkin Fest in Corn Maze. We have shows and entertainment, fire dancers. We have the corn maze, pumpkin field, hay rides, that traditional fall festival is what we hold every

Janice Person [00:21:07]:

pumpkin fest and corn maze time. And people can also learn about how they’re grown at the same time, which is really cool. I love it. First off, I can’t believe I’m not gonna get to say hi to Sharla while I’m here But now I can say hi to Sharla on the podcast. There you go So the rest of the family you have your dad your mom Your brother.

Ashlee Mortimer [00:21:30]:

Oh, How many of the family is in it? There is 6 of us including my parents, I have 3 siblings and 1 just got married. Yes. Well 2 we really have been making big changes in our family recently adding a lot of new people We were counting the other day. There’s 12 no 13 of us now. There’s I have 2 nieces and in-laws and yeah, there’s a lot of us.

Janice Person [00:21:58]:

And so how many of your siblings, your parents are both involved in the farm? Yes. And how many of your siblings?

Ashlee Mortimer [00:22:04]:

So to preface this answer, my parents have a rule that we need to be away from the farm for at least 5 years after we graduate. And the reason for that is that we can get life experience, we can make sure we actually want to be involved in the family farm and also that they actually want us involved. I mean, it’s not a given. We have to be able to bring something to the table and we also are encouraged to actually want to be here and not feel like it’s mandatory or it’s the only option. Or yeah, exactly. So I have made it much past my 5 years and have been back at the farm for 3 years. And then my brother Hayden, he was in the army for 5 years and has recently come back to the farm. So what are you doing with the farm?

Janice Person [00:22:54]:

Your specialty versus Hayden’s?

Ashlee Mortimer [00:22:56]:

So my specialty is all the marketing. Okay. But we, because it’s a family farm, we jump in wherever we’re needed. So this last week I’ve been working a lot in the market in Delhi and sometimes I’m out on a tractor, other times I’m taking care of baby goats. I mean, wherever we have to be, that’s where we jump in. And on top of the marketing, I do a lot of the strategic side of things and how can we do things better and how can we offer a better experience for our guests. Hayden, who was in the army and now is back at the farm and he also is married, He does, he’s not a very social people person. So he does a lot of the behind the scenes in the farming side of things. He’s always on a tractor or on a horse or. I always try and explain to people, you know, some farmers

Janice Person [00:23:45]:

love being at the farmer’s market and selling direct. And some farmers really like the time alone to think in the tractor and to be in their own head and not to be bothered by people. I mean, I have introverts and extroverts, both in my family, and doing different jobs is a really good fit for

Ashlee Mortimer [00:24:05]:

folks. Yes, absolutely. And because we’re so diverse, we’re able to do that. I mean, if I’m in a pinch on the register, I would not call Hayden because he just would not enjoy that. But your mom could probably show up and… Right, exactly. Yeah, and knowing those qualities in our family and in our employees as well, and knowing, okay, I can’t call Na’u to come and run a register because he is much better at taking care of the cows or whatever the case is and being able to utilize people in the best way that we can.

Janice Person [00:24:39]:

Yeah, so just the 2 siblings are currently in the farm?

Ashlee Mortimer [00:24:43]:

Yes-ish. However, who is my next sister, she owns a hair salon, Wildflower Hair Co. And she also helps every once in a while when we need her. She does most of our bartending here at the farm, but she is loves owning her salon and does a great job. And actually her salon is here at the farm. So it’s very convenient to say, hey Kayla, come over and help me real quick. This bride’s hairstylist didn’t show up. Can you fix it? Exactly. Yep. And she is very personable. So, and just, I mean, she lights up a room when she walks in so I could call her and say hey Kayla come over and help me And she’ll be right there

And then my youngest brother Colton. He is still in his 5 years and I think He is really the reason that my parents came up with the rule, because when he was probably about 10 years old, maybe a little younger, he said, Mom, don’t worry. I don’t need to go to school because I’m just going to move down to the bunkhouse and run the ranch for you. And she said, no, we have this rule. Did you not know about it? So with that rule, Colton is… That’s funny. Yes. Yeah. And he’s a welder and does… Works at a local company here in town. And every once in a while, I convince him to come help me with things. Yeah. So we’ve talked through the Mortimer Farms part that’s really more agritourism

Janice Person [00:26:07]:

and that kind of thing. But let’s talk about the other part of the farm, which is where your parents were before you decided to start this, right? They really are big on beef. You said nursery, but then beef cattle is kind of the big piece. Yes. Yeah. So

Ashlee Mortimer [00:26:25]:

the nursery, like I said earlier, was started in 1986, I believe. My dad started that business and does landscaping and a whole garden center. It’s absolutely beautiful at the nursery. Lots of inventory and beautiful products and plants. And then in 2003, we moved to the ranch and bought the ranch and that’s where our main meat production happens and where we’re able to raise and take care of cattle and pork and all of the different animals that we have. You have pigs too. Yes. We do everything it seems like. That diversity really plays a role in being able to make everything work because at times, beef’s cost is, or we can sell our beef for less and we’re not making money on that so we can pick up on tomatoes and grow more tomatoes because the Cost of tomatoes is higher. So we’re able to juggle a little bit more to make everything

Janice Person [00:27:31]:

The cost of production versus the sales coming in. Exactly. The price that the consumer pays. It is easy at times to lose your shirt on if you’re on 1 thing only. Exactly. Yep. And that’s the reason that we grow 54 things like okay

Ashlee Mortimer [00:27:48]:

our tomato crop this year may not be Profitable, but at least we have sweet corn and we can really put our efforts in that sweet corn And when we do have challenges or things out of our control that happen. Yeah, a weather event that happens to take out something at the 1 moment you can’t suffer that weather event. Exactly. Yep. And so because of that diversity, we’re able to combat those challenges a lot better than if we didn’t have that. And also, when we’re slower with the farming side of things, we’ve scheduled so that the ranch, the major things that need to happen at the ranch are happening at that time. And when we’re slower. So like calving. Yeah, exactly. So we’re able to kind of work our puzzle so that everything fits in at a certain time of the year so we can continue to have our key employees all of the time and all year round and utilize them in the different businesses based on what’s happening in all of the different businesses.

Janice Person [00:28:51]:

Yeah, I know you guys between the, I kind of see them as 2 separate operations. Y’all probably don’t necessarily think of them that way, but they do, they do kind of blend over a little bit because then you have your some of your cattle over here but you’re right on a riverbed so help me understand the kinds of things you guys do to make sure that you’re being the best stewards of the environment and I know we talked about some of them while we were driving around. But I’m afraid if I don’t ask that 1 question, it would get away from us, right? So you’ve got hay fields, you’ve got cows, let’s put the 2 together and stuff like that. What on the environmental side have you guys been able to do that really makes a difference, do you think? Great question. I love talking about the environment

Ashlee Mortimer [00:29:39]:

and water and natural resources because that’s really a huge part of what farmers and ranchers do. Not only are we growing food, but we have to make sure that we are taking care of Mother Nature so that we can grow food and we can feed the community. And so that’s a really big priority to us. On the waterfront of things, this farm used to be watered by flood irrigation, which for us was not efficient.

Janice Person [00:30:05]:

And flood irrigation for somebody that doesn’t know means you’re just putting lots of water and it rolls across the field as the amount of water can after it starts soaking in 1 place it slowly gets to the other places and it can be wasteful,

Ashlee Mortimer [00:30:20]:

let’s say. Yes, and especially how our farm is set up and with the the elevations of The unbalance of the fields, I guess, is a better way to say it. It just wasn’t efficient. Not for the water, not for labor, not for any aspect of it. And so when we took over the farm, we converted to pivot irrigation and also to drip irrigation. And with those 2 methods, which pivot irrigation is an above ground walking irrigation system, it kind of looks like it has tires and it drives across, drives around in the circle on the field

Janice Person [00:31:02]:

And it has sprinklers that come above the crops. They’re the ones that are really cool when you look out from the airplanes and you see circles when you’re out West. Yeah. They’re not crop circles like from aliens. They’re from irrigation pivots going around the field. Yep. And then drip irrigation is

Ashlee Mortimer [00:31:20]:

on the field or underneath of the surface just barely and so with both of those forms of irrigation we have resulted in saving 90% of the water that used to be used on this farm. And that’s just incredible. How much was that reduction? 90%. That’s crazy.

Janice Person [00:31:40]:

Crazy. And in this environment today, reducing your water use by 90%, but keeping your farm production up there.

Ashlee Mortimer [00:31:48]:

And with that being said, we’ve actually increased our farm production because we’re able to water better. And so with flood irrigation, you may miss an area or the water didn’t soak in enough in 1 area before it rolled to the next area. Or so we’re able to better water and water where it needs to be watered and be more efficient in doing so and save water, which is just incredible. Awesome. So that’s 1 of the ways that we work with Mother Nature and try to do our part as stewards Another way is by incorporating cattle into our farming plan And so we bring cattle in at the end of a season To eat the remainder of whatever crop that is, if there’s any left. Those cows are happy cows when that happens. Happy cows, yeah. The best way to describe it is pumpkin fest. Oh my God, pumpkins with cows. Love, they’re in heaven, they love it. And they come in at the end of the pumpkin fest and we put them on the pumpkin field and they eat all of the vines that are left over, any pumpkins that are left over, and as they do so they are spreading manure and fertilizing the land and also aerating the soil with their hooves. And so all of those things it just works

Janice Person [00:33:03]:

all together to make us be able to do our job even better. That’s incredible. I love it. It’s the most gorgeous environment. When people look at the photos, you guys have incredible trees along your property that have been here. You said some of them probably a century.

Ashlee Mortimer [00:33:21]:

Yeah, it’s awesome. I love the trees. Yeah, and really, I mean, I could talk about the environment and what we do for the land all day. We love being able to care for this land and looking at the trees is kind of paints a picture of We not only needed to care for the land for the last hundred years for it to be where we’re at and for those trees To be where they’re at but for the next hundred years Not only for those trees but for the community that’s gonna be around us and the future generations and anything we can do now, not only benefits

Janice Person [00:33:54]:

what we can do now in feeding people now, but also- Makes it easier to continue feeding people well into your grandkids or something crazy. Which is a long way out. Yeah and that’s

Ashlee Mortimer [00:34:06]:

something that I really like about the farming and ranching community is not only are we looking at today but we’re looking at when we’re going to be far gone and what we can do to continue to allow people to eat and allow and help the land and help the environment and so that consensus around all farmers and ranchers is just a really beautiful thing. That did not sound good out there. I’m not sure when that happened.

Janice Person [00:34:32]:

I think we’re gonna wrap it up. I’m gonna make sure I include the link. It’s MortimerFarmsAZ.com

Ashlee Mortimer [00:34:40]:

is the website. And you’re on? Facebook and Instagram are my 2 favorites. I show up on stories every day so you could see my face and I tell behind the scenes of what’s happening at the farm. I love to be able to connect with people on those and we’re also on YouTube and our website and all the places. In that case, I’m going to do like a quick photo of her so she can put that on her stories.

Janice Person [00:35:06]:

All right, everybody, make sure you check out the show notes. And if you’re in this area or you’re planning, I know a lot of my friends love to come to Arizona at some point in the winter to get away from the cold places where some of us live. You’re gonna love this place in the winter too. And I’m telling you that burrito in the morning was to die for. I may have to ask for a breakfast burrito for lunch.

Ashlee Mortimer [00:35:28]:

Absolutely. We also have a chorizo breakfast burrito made with our ground beef. Ooh. So good.

Janice Person [00:35:34]:

All right. Thanks so much, Ashley Mortimer for doing this. I appreciate it. Absolutely. Thanks for coming to hang out with me today. All right. Bye.

Janice Person [00:35:42]:

With that, we’re at the end of our conversation and we’re going to wrap up. Please go by and check groundedbythefarm.com. You’ll see not only some photos and videos to go with this story, but you’ll get our entire catalog. There’s a lot of videos and things, And there’s 1 page there, you can find it up at the top of the navigation bar on your favorite foods. Go ahead and peruse that, see what foods we may have talked about in the past that you haven’t had a chance to listen to yet. It’ll get you not only to the episode, but some of the videos or photos things like that we may have and as always thank you for coming we’ll see you again in 2 weeks

The post Transcript for Episode 404 on Mortimer Farms – Dewey, AZ appeared first on Grounded by the Farm.

Keywords:   Tasting room– Marketing feedback– Winery– Missouri– Law– Vines– Buds– Trimming– Sustainability– AI technology– Root sensors– Sweet wine– Dry whites– Concord grapes– Red wines– Vignoles– Sauvignon Blanc– St. Louis– Family business– Quality assurance– Ozarks– American Viticultural Area (AVA)– German immigrants– Italian immigrants– Prohibition– Fall season– Product quality– Vine redevelopment– Grape varieties– Consumer trends.

Janice Person [00:00:00]:

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 just drove southwest from St. Louis a little bit until I got to the St. James winery. And, oh, my goodness. Lots of people around the country don’t know that in the great state of Missouri, we do really think a lot about our wines. When I moved here, I remember people saying, well, have you been out to the wineries yet? And there are wineries closer to St. Louis. There are some that are further out. This one is a little more in the rolling hills. We’re getting close to the Ozarks, and this is probably the state’s oldest wine. Is that right, Brandon?

Brandon Hofherr [00:00:53]:

Not the oldest. We are the largest.

Janice Person [00:00:55]:

The largest, okay. I was going to say it’s definitely been notable over the years, and that was Brandon Hofherr, and her family actually owns it. Her grandparents started it, her dad runs it, and she’s working with their marketing team now. So you’re going to get to meet her in the video, too. But, Brandon, tell me, have you been like at the winery and the vineyards your whole life? Almost, yes.

Brandon Hofherr [00:01:21]:

So I have been officially on the payroll for about two and a half years in the marketing department. I have been giving free labor my entire life. So everything from helping pick grapes during harvest to helping people up in the tasting room to sampling grape juice.

Janice Person [00:01:40]:

Well, if it helps, I had to help get out a lot of newsletters and stuff from my mom’s church. She was a secretary. So child labor is something consistent.

Brandon Hofherr [00:01:49]:

It’s invaluable experience. You can’t exactly put it on a resume, but it’s worked out for me.

Janice Person [00:01:55]:

And also with us today, we have Sam Cobb, and Sam actually works the vineyards, so very different perspective. He’s used to being out with the vines, working on different things. This is not your favorite year here, is it, Sam?

Sam Cobb [00:02:10]:

No, it’s been a rough start. We’ll see how it plays out.

Janice Person [00:02:14]:

Yeah, we’ll get into that a lot more as we go on. So when most people think wine, they don’t think Missouri. So let’s talk to them about what kind of wines we do really well here and how kind of that fits.

Brandon Hofherr [00:02:30]:

Absolutely. So Missouri actually has the first ava in the country, way before California, way before really any wine industry. So we have always had grape growing and winemaking in the state of Missouri. It was settled generally by German immigrants and Italian immigrants who also brought the history of growing grapes and making wine with them. So what happened to Missouri is that prohibition hit hard. So most people, most wineries were forced to rip out vines they were forced to destroy equipment and that kind of thing. And then after Prohibition was lifted, missouri had more conservative laws. So we really didn’t see a reemergence of the Missouri wine industry until the 70s with my grandparents when they started St. James Winery.

Janice Person [00:03:21]:

Yeah. So we think, like, the winemaking roots of Missouri go back to the beginning of statehood and territory development, maybe even.

Brandon Hofherr [00:03:31]:

Yeah, absolutely.

Janice Person [00:03:33]:

But the modern day wine industry dates to the 70s with your grandparents and others that were able to get back in the business.

Brandon Hofherr [00:03:41]:

Yes.

Janice Person [00:03:42]:

All right. And Sam, you get to go out and actually work the grapes. So she said it started with Concords. Where are we now?

Sam Cobb [00:03:52]:

Right now we have twelve different varieties in full production. A lot of French American hybrids. Some Missouri natives, like Norton, Labrescas, Concord, Niagara. We’re experimenting a little bit with Vinifera, which is like the European grape varieties. We also have the R and D vineyard, where we’re constantly swapping things out. It’s definitely different than it was in the past, I’m sure, but I think we’re going in the right direction.

Janice Person [00:04:23]:

Yeah. So most people that aren’t this deep into wines in the middle of the country are probably more familiar with those varietals that are more popular in California, Oregon, some of that kind of stuff. So we’ve got both white and red grapes. We do both. Tell me what you think, where they fit on the profile, because I’ve had to have people explain it for me before. Because if you suddenly buy a Missouri wine but you’ve never had any before, if you like Pinot.

Brandon Hofherr [00:04:53]:

So I think the general impression is that Missouri makes great sweet wine, which is true. We love sweet wine, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. I love sweet wine. I love dry wine, especially. Whatever you like. Yeah. But we have profiles that we can create out of our vineyards from a big, beautiful red similar to, like, a Cab Sam that you’re familiar with, with the Norton, which is actually Missouri state grape. Fun fact, we’ve got elegant, crisp, dry whites with our vignoles, and then we do have the sweeter Concord that we do. So we’ve really got everything in between. It’s just you’ve learned what a Souven Blanc is, but now you need to be introduced to vignoles, which has some of the same characteristics.

Janice Person [00:05:43]:

So you guys started in the 70s. Do you have any of those vines left?

Sam Cobb [00:05:50]:

Yes. So our estate, Norton Block, is original to Mrs. Hoefer and her husband. I think it’s 50 something years old.

Janice Person [00:06:02]:

Okay.

Sam Cobb [00:06:03]:

It’s still producing today. Actually, it was looking great up until about three days ago. It’s still alive and doing well. But it got hit with the frost, too, like everything else did. It’s one of my favorite blocks. It’s showing its age. It’s 50 years old.

Brandon Hofherr [00:06:23]:

So we have special blocks that we kind of baby and take aside. And the estate Norton that Sam’s talking about is one of those. So we kind of baby it through the year. We make a very small batch, very hands on hand pruned.

Sam Cobb [00:06:37]:

It gets all the whole nine yards.

Brandon Hofherr [00:06:41]:

Very special to us. And it creates a great, beautiful wine that we only sell in our tasting room. So it’s not available unless you come down here.

Sam Cobb [00:06:48]:

Also happens to be my wife’s favorite and probably the most expensive.

Brandon Hofherr [00:06:53]:

It’s funny how that works out sometimes.

Sam Cobb [00:06:55]:

Ironic, isn’t it? Actually, I really like that one, too. It’s my favorite. And I don’t know if it’s because of the time and effort that we put into it or if it’s just I like dried Norton wine, but I think it’s the best.

Brandon Hofherr [00:07:11]:

I think with anything, you put love into it, you get love out of it. So same goes for wine and growing grapes.

Sam Cobb [00:07:18]:

That’s a really cool vineyard. It’s a really cool block. When you look at it, you can just see the age. You can tell it’s been around for a long time. Maybe it doesn’t look the best. It’s not the prettiest, but there’s missing vines. But they’re all original. Even if we’ve had to replant that vineyard, we’re looking for the exact same clone.

Janice Person [00:07:38]:

The Clonal.

Sam Cobb [00:07:39]:

Mrs. Hofherr was putting us in contact with the original nursery where we got the vines to begin with. And it’s a cool vineyard. It’s a cool vineyard.

Janice Person [00:07:49]:

Yeah.

Brandon Hofherr [00:07:49]:

The winemaking community, I think, especially here in the Midwest and somewhat on the East Coast in New York, that’s where we got a lot of the knowledge. We kind of all banded together, so we’re a very close knit community, so we still have those contacts, like finding the original clone and the exact nursery that it came from.

Janice Person [00:08:07]:

That’s crazy.

Brandon Hofherr [00:08:08]:

We’ve all kind of grown up together as we’ve restarted the industry.

Sam Cobb [00:08:11]:

It’s funny. I’ve been on the phone with them, and they even like, oh, yeah, I remember. Or like, my grandpa sold it to them, or something like that. And it’s amazing that they could even remember that.

Janice Person [00:08:23]:

I love it. So tell me a little bit about how the process you guys started in the 70s. What did you start with versus what did you have to build out? Because people will see. Today we’re sitting in the garden doing this interview, and it’s a gorgeous space. There’s a big building next door where they’re making wines. And I’m sure it wasn’t all of this in the probably didn’t have nearly this many grapes.

Janice Person [00:08:54]:

No.

Brandon Hofherr [00:08:55]:

So originally my grandfather worked in St. Louis for a brewery doing quality assurance, and he wanted to make wine, so he drove down 44 and was like, oh, my gosh, there are all these grapes in this town called St. James. So he bought an old Concord vineyard from an old farmer, and then he bought the land that the winery is now on. And he actually the first thing he built was the tasting room. So he lived in the realtor’s garage while he built the tasting room from hand, and then he brought down the rest of his family. So my grandmother, my dad, my two uncles, and my aunt.

Janice Person [00:09:30]:

I’m so intrigued by this, because not until you were explaining this did I remember the mushroom farmer we interviewed years ago. His father also had worked in a food related industry in St. Louis and similarly got the excitement about doing something different and went down 44 until he found the conditions that he needed to grow mushrooms. So it seems like a lot of great things happen in St. Louis, but some of them also leave St. Louis and create great things elsewhere.

Brandon Hofherr [00:10:02]:

Absolutely. I mean, this area is just gorgeous. So our technical grape growing region is the Ozark Highlands. So we are getting close to the Ozarks, but, I mean, it’s just beautiful hills, lots of rivers, great water quality.

Janice Person [00:10:17]:

Why Germans and Italians would feel really comfortable settling in an area like this. So then after the tasting room, how did he start building it? Because now when I mentioned it to Molly, she’s like, I know that bottle. I know that label. She immediately knew exactly what I was talking about. The St. James name and logo and stuff come to mind for people in this part of the world.

Brandon Hofherr [00:10:43]:

Yeah, so, I mean, it’s a process just like anything. Originally, there was a law in Missouri. I couldn’t remember the exact cap, but you could only make X amount of wine per year. So one of the first hurdles was getting, okay, let’s get together with our friends in Herman, our other wine families that we know, and get that law changed so that we can make as much wine as we want to or can. So there were various laws in place like that that we worked really hard to get overturned. And then it just kind of built out. So we have the seller, and then the seller needed more tanks. So we brought that in, and as soon as we start adding more tanks, well, we need more space to store.

Janice Person [00:11:24]:

We need more buildings, we need more space, more equipment. We also need more vines.

Brandon Hofherr [00:11:29]:

Yeah, so it’s just kind of built out from there. Right now, we’ve got about 160 acres planted of grapes.

Janice Person [00:11:37]:

We’ve got a lot of grapes.

Sam Cobb [00:11:39]:

There’s a lot. We have 160 acres, but plans for another 35.

Janice Person [00:11:45]:

Okay.

Sam Cobb [00:11:46]:

But right now, we’re kind of in a redevelopment phase where you kind of like, they’re showing their age. They need some TLC, some replanting, some upkeep. The previous ten years, it was kind of modernizing. The trellis type, which is the trellis is what you train the vines onto the wire. So it was a different trellis type. We had actually two different types of trellis. So we spent the last ten years redeveloping all that to make it all consistent, to make it so that it’s easier to mechanize, it’s easier to take care of and still produce the same quality fruit. So we just, like, a couple of years ago, just got done doing that. Now we started in a new phase of, okay, well, now we’re looking around, going, well, maybe we could use this variety instead, or this is where the consumer is going. Maybe this is where we should be going, too. That type of stuff. And that comes down to Brandon and Andrew and Peter.

Brandon Hofherr [00:12:46]:

Yeah. So our executive winemaker, Andrew Meggett, works a lot with my department, the marketing department, to kind of gauge, like, okay, consumers are really interested in these fruit moscados. So how much moscado do we have? What could we do with it that’s kind of fun and fresh? So we have a lot of input that goes into our R and D process and the what was it?

Janice Person [00:13:09]:

Pineapple mango that I need to try. Yes.

Brandon Hofherr [00:13:13]:

So it’s 100% fruit. It’s pineapple wine and mango wine that’s blended, and it’s coming out May 1.

Janice Person [00:13:19]:

Yeah. You all grow your own grapes, but not all the other fruit cracks.

Brandon Hofherr [00:13:24]:

We trust fruit farmers to farm their own type of fruit, so we know that we’re not necessarily going to be able to put in pineapple plants in Missouri. So we go out and look for the best quality pineapple juice and concentrate that we can, and then we bring that in.

Janice Person [00:13:40]:

Yeah. And I saw Cranberry back there because there is a Christmas seasonal wine that I’ve had. Yes.

Brandon Hofherr [00:13:46]:

So our Cranberry wine is actually number one in the country, and it’s 100% Cranberry, which I think it’s not overly sweet. The Cranberry makes it really tart, which makes it so popular with holiday meals.

Janice Person [00:13:58]:

Yeah. And I have shared a Cranberry sangria type recipe because it was so good that I got that wine. I had to go back and get more of it.

Brandon Hofherr [00:14:07]:

But it’s definitely a process. So as you plant grapes, you don’t plant a vine and then get fruit off of it. It’s a three year process before you even see fruit.

Sam Cobb [00:14:18]:

Yeah. Three years, if you’re lucky. If everything goes well.

Brandon Hofherr [00:14:20]:

Yeah. So you’re really trying to think ahead and work in the future as well as in the now, maintaining, making sure everything’s healthy and taken care of on the farm side.

Janice Person [00:14:31]:

You really have to go out into the future to get vines ready and stuff. But even to get the right things that consumers want, you have to go far enough to schedule out what you might want to you really have to.

Sam Cobb [00:14:42]:

Be careful because whatever you plan in the ground, you have to count on being there for, like, 15 years. It’s not like you can go, oh, never mind. They changed their mind, and we don’t want this anymore. So whatever you put in the ground, that investment, you want at least 15 years out of a vineyard before you kind of start thinking about maybe doing something different with it.

Janice Person [00:15:04]:

Yeah, the long game with a vineyard.

Brandon Hofherr [00:15:07]:

I think we’re really lucky, too, because Andrew, our winemaker, is very creative. So he often looks at something and it’s like, okay, what can we do with our existing varietals that we have? And he is a genius, I think, at doing that and looking at what we have available and kind of what direction we kind of want to make something new.

Janice Person [00:15:29]:

And you were basically, when we were coming through, you were talking about some of the things that have happened since you were a kid. You remember them way back then and then now you’ve got some Brandon new tools. So you’re kind of bridging traditional winemaking with some of the newer capacity and potential, is that right?

Brandon Hofherr [00:15:47]:

Absolutely. So we’ve always been very invested in sustainability just because as a family, multigenerational family business, we want to make sure that as we go down the generations, it still remains fertile and viable business for them as well. So sustainability goes hand in hand with that. So things like we use AI technology in our winemaking process that learns not only from us, but other winemakers across the country that helps us with blending and filtering and all of that. Things like we have root sensors in our vineyard that measure the exact amount of moisture that reaches the roots of the grapes, so then we don’t have to use excess water. So we really try to balance the cost of this technology with also the practicality and what’s right for the planet.

Janice Person [00:16:41]:

Yeah. And it’s cool that you guys are doing it all the way from the vineyards to the bottle. So let’s talk about where you guys sell primarily. I know you do some retail and stuff here. You’ve got a tasting room, and you’ve got a microbrewery now on campus, but so do you sell mainly through grocery stores, liquor stores?

Brandon Hofherr [00:17:04]:

All of the above. So we are distributed in 18 states, mainly in the Midwest. So if you think everything that touches Missouri, we’re probably in that state. But we go through independent stores, liquor stores. We’re in Walmart, every grocery store that you can probably think of, restaurants, all that kind of restaurants. Yeah.

Janice Person [00:17:26]:

Very cool. The Missouri wine scene is actually a pretty active world for folks that don’t know. There are a group like Missouri Wines that actually pulls all the different wineries together, so that kind of market the state.

Brandon Hofherr [00:17:42]:

Yeah. So my dad and I both also serve on the Missouri Grapes and Wine Board. So when the tide rises, all boats float. And what is good for Missouri wine is good for everybody in the wine industry.

Janice Person [00:17:59]:

Exactly.

Brandon Hofherr [00:17:59]:

So we all work together to kind of not make Missouri wines more competitive, because they are competitive. We consistently win awards all over the world, but just bring more awareness that, hey, we’ve got a wine industry, and it’s awesome. And you should come visit and taste. And we’re just as good as, if not better than California or Oregon or wherever.

Janice Person [00:18:22]:

Right. One of the things about Missouri wines, though, is they’re going to have to roll with punches. I think it’s going to happen across the Midwest. California has got some real challenges with the amount of rainfall they’ve had. This may not be the best wine grape year ever. That’s definitely the case here, right, Sam?

Sam Cobb [00:18:41]:

Yeah. We had a pretty rough winter. The tail end of this winter, we’ve seen a lot of fluctuation where it would get 60 degrees for maybe a week.

Janice Person [00:18:53]:

Those were the days I was happy in the winter.

Sam Cobb [00:18:55]:

Yeah. And then we were not. Then it would significantly drop off, like, overnight to like 20 degrees. And with that, we seen a lot of bud mortality. So coming into spring, we knew that maybe the crop load would be a little bit less. But then we followed that up with just this last weekend, we had a pretty significant frost event where two days in a row we were below 30 degrees and also heavy frost. It was pretty significant losses. Pretty significant.

Janice Person [00:19:26]:

If you don’t mind, I’m going to dial us back a little bit, because over the winter when you’re tending the vignoles, you’re really trimming things back some and all that kind of stuff, just in good care of the vines. Right. And so those buds are those initial growing points. And you may not have as much, say, as I have on, like, the dogwood tree in my front yard. Right. I don’t go and trim that every year. I trim it on occasion. But you need to do that trimming in order to keep the grapes really highly productive and producing the quality, is that right?

Sam Cobb [00:20:00]:

Right. The process of pruning and that’s what it’s called, pruning, is removing any undesired growth.

Janice Person [00:20:06]:

Yeah.

Sam Cobb [00:20:06]:

So what we do is we go I sit down with Andrew and I go, okay, I think this vineyard can reliably produce eight tons of the year, or eight tons per acre per year at a good quality. And then so with the historical data that we have, we can go we need, let’s say, 100 buds per vine.

Janice Person [00:20:24]:

Okay.

Sam Cobb [00:20:25]:

So then we go to the vineyard and we go, okay, well, 100 buds per vine looks like this. And so we set that pretty early on in the winter because we have to start pruning as soon as we can. So the problem with the winter that we had was that the pruning was mostly complete when the winter started, really giving us a hard time. So coming out of winter, we knew that there was going to be some bud loss, and we figured that in we usually leave between 30 and 50% extra, just in case. But we’ve already surpassed that with the damages from this last winter.

Janice Person [00:20:58]:

I mean, I would notice, like, leaves that aren’t forming out perfectly on the dogwood tree or something. And I will say lots of people get worried about losing their flowers and things like that at home, but it’s really different on a farm. So we went out and saw one of the vineyards that was hit really hard by Frost. And you see a lot of damage.

Sam Cobb [00:21:21]:

To leaves, a lot of damage. And it’s not just leaves, it’s the whole shoot itself. So when you see that type of damage, let’s say the grow tip gets killed, well, then you more than likely are losing that cluster. And if that’s your primary so let’s say that’s the best fruit possible that you’re Going to get off of that bud.

Janice Person [00:21:44]:

Yeah.

Sam Cobb [00:21:45]:

Plants are amazing. They have built in survival mechanisms, and there will be secondary or tertiary shoots, but they may not be fruitful.

Janice Person [00:21:57]:

It’s going to make your year hard. And it’s going to make Andrew’s year hard.

Sam Cobb [00:22:00]:

Yeah. Even more difficult. So it’s like they May not Be fruitful. So you can’t count on how much fruit that You’re Going To have until you see it. So it’s a waiting game right now. But also, vines are A woody perennial. You can’t just not Take care of it. You Have To Make sure that Your program Is In place, that you’re taking care of this vine, whether It’s fruitful or not, because You Need it to produce next year.

Janice Person [00:22:23]:

I think most People, when they Go to a winery or a vineyard, it’s usually like a fall kind of thing that most People really enjoy going. And at that point, you’re Going to see a lot of leaves on the it’s pretty whether the vines are really producing the right Kind of grapes or not. You’ll still see a lot of leaves this Fall, right. So people May Not notice it if they haven’t taken time to hear from somebody like you. That really gets into the early season, mid season kind of growth to really Know What they have. And that’s why you and Andrew have to work like sidestep.

Sam Cobb [00:23:02]:

We Have To work Pretty closely, especially right now, is because Andrew and the seller team is Going to have to kind of plan out their year, what’s available for them to use for the coming year. Yeah, but If I tell them we’ve lost X amount of fruit, well, then they Have To adjust Their schedules to accommodate for that. Or maybe they have to think. Okay, what can we do instead? Which, fortunately for me, that’s out of my wheelhouse. And that’s an Andrew problem which trickles.

Brandon Hofherr [00:23:30]:

Down to the rest of the company. If we can’t make a product we can’t make a product. Or We Can Look At Other strategies, like bringing in fruit from Other Wineries that maybe Didn’t Get as hit as hard, or it’s always a dance at the End of the day. Making wine Is fun and great, but we are farmers. We are growing this, and we’re at the mercy of Mother Nature.

Janice Person [00:23:52]:

You’re planning years, sometimes decades in advance, and you don’t always know what each season will bring you.

Brandon Hofherr [00:23:58]:

Exactly.

Sam Cobb [00:23:59]:

And it’s even because the way that a grapevine works is we’re producing the buds that are going to provide fruit for next year. We’re producing them right now.

Janice Person [00:24:09]:

Yeah.

Sam Cobb [00:24:09]:

So a severe winter injury now can also impact next year.

Janice Person [00:24:14]:

I love it.

Sam Cobb [00:24:15]:

Yeah, and I love it, too. But it’s also like the blanc of my existence.

Janice Person [00:24:20]:

It’s so much like complicated science and stuff. And usually when I’m enjoying wine, I’m not thinking about the deep science of it. Right. I know if we were talking to your winemaker, they would explain the difference of a really dry year versus a really wet year and all that kind of stuff on different kinds of varieties are going to react different ways and stuff. So it’s hard for me to think about the science involved in winemaking and growing grapes. But then when you get a chance to do it, it’s like mind blowing.

Sam Cobb [00:24:53]:

And it really is. I admittedly am not a huge winey. Like, I’m not a big wino, more.

Janice Person [00:25:03]:

Of a beer guy.

Sam Cobb [00:25:04]:

I’m just not a drinker, really, at all.

Janice Person [00:25:05]:

There you go.

Sam Cobb [00:25:06]:

Andrew used to tell me all the time, hey, I really like this shaded fruit, or hey, I don’t like this shaded fruit, or, hey, I think we should take clusters off, or shoulders off. And I was like, does it really make a difference?

Janice Person [00:25:19]:

Yeah.

Sam Cobb [00:25:20]:

And one year I was complaining about it because it was a lot of extra work to remove clusters out of a certain variety.

Janice Person [00:25:25]:

I love it.

Sam Cobb [00:25:26]:

And he goes, well, we’ll do a side by side. And we did. And I just couldn’t believe that side by side, it was almost two different wines, just from something so simple as removing extra clusters that were not needed.

Brandon Hofherr [00:25:40]:

There’s so much science that goes into taste of things, especially wine. And it’s all in how he everything from the fruit to the soil to aging it, to how they process it, how they let it ferment, which, I mean, a lot of people don’t think about. And you don’t have to. You absolutely don’t have to. And it’s still just as enjoyable. But if you are a nerd, like maybe Sam and I are I’m a bit nerdy.

Janice Person [00:26:06]:

Well, I’m a bit nerdy.

Brandon Hofherr [00:26:08]:

Yeah. It’s exciting to learn about all the science behind it.

Janice Person [00:26:13]:

So I’m just going to tell people, if you’re ever on the highway between Tulsa and St. Louis, this is a great place to stop. I mean, you could come in the tasting room. Somebody in there is going to have some of that kind of information. You can taste different things, buy a bunch of things. It’s a neat place to stop along the road. Probably a good distance between those two cities.

Brandon Hofherr [00:26:37]:

Yeah, we get a lot of people from Tulsa is Texas, too. I mean, we get people from all over.

Janice Person [00:26:42]:

When you’re traveling on the roads, it’s just so easy. And I’d encourage you to check out their website. It’s Stjameswinery.com.

Brandon Hofherr [00:26:52]:

Yes.

Janice Person [00:26:53]:

And they have some more of this history from the family and stuff on there. You guys, thank you so much for having us out, agreeing to visit with us. Is there anything I missed asking you?

Brandon Hofherr [00:27:04]:

I don’t think so. I think we got a good coverage of the basics. I mean, we could talk for hours and hours and hours, but I know.

Janice Person [00:27:13]:

Sam said he couldn’t. He didn’t want to do this. Did it work out okay for you?

Sam Cobb [00:27:17]:

Yeah, it’s been pretty good. I do need to Sam, that I’ve complained about the weather a little bit. Yeah, it’s been a rough winter, but it’s nothing that we can’t handle. It’s rough now, but it’ll get better.

Janice Person [00:27:32]:

You will find a way. Right? That’s great. Thanks so much, guys.

Brandon Hofherr [00:27:38]:

Thank you.

Janice Person [00:27:39]:

Well, as you may have guessed, after we recorded this interview, molly and I headed over first to have lunch. They have an incredible public house, like a brewing company right there on the same property where you can smell that fresh brew beer. And we had oh, man, I had a burger that was killer. So I’m just telling you, definitely take time to stop. In St. James, we also went over to the tasting room and tasted so many different things. They have a tasting flight where you could just go through and choose the ones that you wanted to taste for a set fee for a large number of small tasters. So we did that. We also were able to do something that we’re working with some of their rose and offer up some sort of marketing feedback, so some new things they were looking at. And of course, we had to buy quite a bit. I want to point out the video that we have is the first time Molly, who is on my team at Grounded Communications, that’s the first time she’s done video. I think she did a great job. I did the editing and stuff, but.

Brandon Hofherr [00:28:56]:

I think it will really help you.

Janice Person [00:28:59]:

Understand what that early season was looking like. We’ve now gotten to a month later, and things are looking a little bit bright. You’re over there because now they know what they’re dealing with a little bit more. So wanted to point you to that either on YouTube or on the website@groundedbythefarm.com. Thanks, and we’ll see you again in a couple of weeks. Got some great shows coming up. I’m really loving the season.

The post Transcript for Episode 403 on St James Winery appeared first on Grounded by the Farm.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

shelter, people, work, community, lettuce, greenhouse, farm, central iowa, job, restaurants, folks, urban farm, urban ag, big, growing, food, plants, helps, agriculture, chefs

SPEAKERS

Joshua Spain, Aaron Thormodsen, Grounded by the Farm

Janice Person — Grounded by the Farm  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. I am in downtown Des Moines today it’s kind of cold, but I got lucky and get to go into a greenhouse. I’m at the Central Iowa shelter, a place that offers services to the homeless. And they also have an urban farm. It’s called mulberry farms. And I met these two guys this morning. God loves them. They took emails and LinkedIn requests from me out of nowhere, because I saw an article about a shelter that has an urban farm that’s integrating that into the services for the people that are using it. But you’re also selling lettuce to restaurants. So there’s like job skills, there’s all kinds of things. So Aaron, helped me with your last name, first

Aaron Thormodsen

“thermode sen”

Grounded by the Farm

I knew I was gonna get it wrong. So now Aaron, you actually what is your role here

Aaron Thormodsen  01:06

I am the urban farm manager. All right. And then Josh

Grounded by the Farm  01:09

Bain, I’m the director of

Joshua Spain  01:11

farm and food, which basically means I want to help stitch the farm together with our community kitchen here and other kitchens in our communities so that we’re truly United program and not compartmentalized.

Grounded by the Farm  01:29

I love it. So it helps take a holistic view. So focused on the growing the plants to getting the right people to help grow the plants. When they fish, the farmer title is

Aaron Thormodsen  01:41

pretty self explanatory. Farm and I manage it.

Grounded by the Farm  01:45

And then he helps locate some of the places you’re going to be selling to an all of it to then ultimately together. But most of the time you’re focused on the farm side. And most of the time he’s focused on the food side. Yeah,

Aaron Thormodsen  01:58

I’m in the greenhouse, he’s on the computer, I think I got the better job.

Grounded by the Farm  02:03

I really appreciate you showing me through the greenhouse because and people will see from the video. I mean, it’s beautiful, like such incredible lettuce, and you’ve just started selling it to restaurants. So help me understand the path and I’m not sure which of you is best able to answer. But how did you get to a place where you have a green house, and you have the ability to sell to restaurants?

Aaron Thormodsen  02:28

Yeah. So this has been terms of the more ancient history of talk with Melissa, we’ve been working on this for about three years. I joined the project about a year and a half ago, when I joined, they had the plans ready. They had previously had a geodesic dome, it had proven as a really good space as a training program for folks for food production to supplement for the kitchen. And they wanted to go larger, they wanted to really up that the comparison our CEO makes is that you know the goodwill does thrift stores, we’re going to do farming, you know, that’s what we want to do is our profit center. And so I joined on, we had the designs ready. And then it took about a year. So last November is when we did our ribbon cutting. And then it took about another month to really get the insides working because the greenhouse was done, but the guts weren’t. So we got everything the water flowing out the plants in we got our first plants in like first or second week of the January of this year. First harvest the first week of February, and we’ve been running since then.

Grounded by the Farm  03:29

It was really cool. Even when I drove up, and was parking. I’m like, there’s like seedling trays in the hallway.

Aaron Thormodsen  03:37

Yeah, we make kind of a statement.

Grounded by the Farm  03:41

It’s not something you necessarily expect in a shelter that’s helping people who currently don’t have a home to go to. Right. Like I mean, just from the moment I drove up, it felt different, although the people who are accessing the services feel very much like the people I see on the streets in any town in America these days, right? Because it’s a growing problem. The idea this, this shelter is connected to churches, I understand but a broad group of churches, it’s not like

Joshua Spain  04:12

so initially it was founded by eight churches in the area directly responding to a specific crisis where people died on the street because they were barred from other shelters because they weren’t sober. Yeah, so the low barrier like ethos, like comes into our business through and through in so many ways. We don’t want that to be a reason someone’s left out in the cold. We also don’t want that to be a reason someone doesn’t have a job. So our training program is certainly that low barrier. There’s very few restrictions to who we employ, because who else? Well,

Grounded by the Farm  04:55

exactly. And it’s really kind of a starter program for folks who may have fallen out of the job market for one reason or another falling out of the housing market for one reason or another. And instead of saying getting donations of clothing to then sell to other people, what you’re doing is having people come in, they can work today we saw people harvesting your lettuce to go to restaurants. And so where all this is food go,

Aaron Thormodsen  05:23

oh, several locations. We have several accounts right now. So the stuff we saw today is going to Farm Table Delivery. And I will food Co Op. Okay, I will food Co Op, you can actually go to their store location and buy our lettuce on the shelf. Oh, nice. They’re the first group able to do that for us. But the majority of it is going to restaurants big growth has been a really good partner to us, amazingly, is super supportive to us. And we’re working on building other relationships. Beyond that. You serve a lettuce here. Oh, yeah. So we deliver about 30 to 50 pounds of lettuce to the shelter weekly. But we still have an additional two to 300 pounds that we’re looking to move a week. Okay. Which is between 1014 100 heads a week?

Joshua Spain  06:05

Yeah. Currently most of our excess going to the food bank of Iowa will ended up being one Yeah. being delivered to you greater Des Moines. There’s so there’s free community fridges, so any amount left over that we don’t have a destination for it ends up being available for free,

Grounded by the Farm  06:22

which is fantastic. I know, early on fresh foods. Were the one thing that people who were accessing food banks didn’t have a lot of access to we’ve added a lot of coolers to a lot of food banks over the last several years. And now you can actually provide people, less packaged food, more whole foods, all that kind of stuff, right? Fresh product. Yeah. Yeah. I have so many questions for you guys. Because it is amazing. So you’re on lettuce right now you’re trying some other things. So what kind of big plans do you guys have for this? Because we talked about fish. We talked about time and Theo’s

Joshua Spain  07:00

were so many expanding the biodiversity and diversity of the crop of what we’re doing in the greenhouse by think the bigger plan is expanding into the outdoor park. Yeah, so there is planned like a public park space that is basically like affordable Park. And

Grounded by the Farm  07:21

for folks in Iowa. Y’all are kind of on the west side of downtown. Is that the way you would?

Aaron Thormodsen  07:26

Yeah. 15th and Mulberry. So we’re still in the downtown core, but we’re before you hit like the Ingersol drag are still on in downtown.

Grounded by the Farm  07:34

Yeah. And there’s good water availability, you have a decent amount of land in this area. So is this for a double park really close by or Yeah, it’s hatched.

Aaron Thormodsen  07:44

When you go out to the parking lot. You see the retention basin along the railroad track. That is our property. So that’s four acres, right? That is where the aggregate will be. So there’ll be additional raised beds beyond what we already have. There’ll be floating raised beds. So it’s a modified like dock component, which has been turned into a raised bed. We will have fordable trees we will have loved blackberries and grapes and the hops wall and a walking trail and

Grounded by the Farm  08:10

people making their own beer out there. Well,

Aaron Thormodsen  08:13

as we said, we have a partnership with big growth. So there’s all sorts of aspects of volunteer have our own little outdoor pantry space, so like a community fridge and be in the pantry outside, okay.

Joshua Spain  08:26

Heirloom tomatoes long the sidewalk are pretty popular. Yeah.

Grounded by the Farm  08:30

I gotta say the little tiny tomatoes that you can easily pop in your mouth. I can eat those all day, I have that as my walkway to the front door of my own.

Aaron Thormodsen  08:39

We have some super sweet 100 and some Brad’s atomic grapes. And those are really fun to try out. Yes. You know, as a backyard gardener, you’re always thinking like, oh, I want to try something different. Everyone thought they were big plants. So they left them alone, except for my trainees who knew what they were and went through and picked all of them because they were the chair and they were like, great. These are all I know what I’m doing. I’m getting them all. And then the supersweet one hundreds. I mean, they were cleared out every day. There was nothing being wasted on those.

Grounded by the Farm  09:06

Yeah. So last year you already how many years have you grown outside was last year your first or for me?

Aaron Thormodsen  09:13

It was my first but we’ve been doing some form of outdoor growing for eight years. Yeah, all sorts of different capacities.

Joshua Spain  09:20

The program started very small. Initially, it was just surely inspired to like feed nutritious vegetables in the community kitchen here. Okay, we give away about 600 meals every day for free. Yeah. A lot of that is totally supported by community partners. They give like food rescue, like casseroles and like it just amazed like even like creative produce. But that wasn’t you know, that’s been a long time like in the making and those partnerships have been built over the years. So initially, like there was like a very big need to feed the people in the shelter and that was like the most direct persuaded to it. Yeah.

Grounded by the Farm  10:00

Yeah. It’s amazing. The difference. When you see your trainees, I guess is what you call the the folks that work in the greenhouse and stuff. Do you see a shift? Like, I have been so proud of myself for producing food, right, like in my backyard garden? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And, and I think for a lot of people, they haven’t had that opportunity. And I think of people who may not currently be housed and all of those kinds of things and like to see the impact of your work. I mean, it gets a little bit well,

Aaron Thormodsen  10:34

one of the, it was a really interesting experience for me, I had the gentleman I was working with, and he was doing seating and he’d done the seating for a couple of weeks. And one day, we’re heading over to the classroom, which is where the, you know, the lights are right up front. We do a class every Monday and Wednesday in the morning, and we’re on the way over, and he sees the trays had sprouted, and we’re growing and he was like, Whoa, I seated those like they sprouted. And the back of my head. I’m like, I’m Farmer brain. I’m like, yeah, man sprouted, we’d be in trouble, like they needed to sprout. But it the folks their ability to see something they did become productive, become something bigger and better to go from seeding something to harvesting and eating it all within your job. No, it’s very transformative. It’s very empowering for

Grounded by the Farm  11:21

the lettuce is a fast grow. Yes, it’s very good at giving

Aaron Thormodsen  11:25

you that visual like confidence of like, yes, we are doing something neat here. Because you know, you take this from seed to being We’ve we’ve had over a pound sized heads coming out of the system, you know that the green leaves? So they Yes, it’s very empowering for the folks who are in our programs.

Grounded by the Farm  11:41

And so So what are your goals with these folks? Like, do you have like to get them? Yeah, I mean, like, like, what is the plan? Like, how often are you trying to get new people in? And? Yeah, I mean, because there’s, I’m gonna assume there’s a lot of homeless in Des Moines, just like there’s a lot of homeless everywhere else. And so how do you service the broader community of them? Like, do you have different kinds of jobs? Or what is it?

Aaron Thormodsen  12:08

That’s a, that’s an excellent and really complicated question. Every person that comes into here has their own story and their own needs. And in my program, specifically, I tried to really tailor around whatever situation they’re in. And if I was trying to generalize it, you’re gonna have folks who lost their housing for some reason, by the way, we’re a housing first facility. So the job training program is only meant to help somebody get back into housing, right? That’s the intention of it. Yeah, some folks, they don’t qualify for Social Security, they don’t qualify for any government benefits, they are looking to get back into work, they want to get back to work. And what they need is basically a stepping stone, maybe they haven’t worked for six months or a year, and they need to be able to get back into the rhythm of 711. Monday through Friday, I’m going to be here, this is the work I’m doing. And some of it is the physical aspect, like it can be very exhausting working a full time job. And if you aren’t doing that first six months, you you lose that endurance. So that’s what program provides is the ability to come in work for three days, and then miss a day because you were so exhausted, you overslept, everything, you know, that’s sort of one group. The next group is folks who are in some way disabled, they’re looking to go on Social Security, and they need time and they need money. And they need something to do while they’re working on that process. And so that’s what the program also provides is that sort of mental health aspect that something to do every morning, something to keep yourself busy, keep yourself occupied, and feeling empowered by being in the program. And that’s sort of the second group. And both I allow both groups in both groups have the same intentions of helping them get into housing. And so really, I’m a wraparound service for the case managers. Maybe a case manager needs to talk to somebody about their security application. They know where to find them every morning, they’ll be in the greenhouse. And it’s one of the most difficult parts of being a case manager is finding the person, right, yeah, because everything is time sensitive. If it takes you a week to find the person again, they may have lost their chance for that housing. So being able to have somebody there consistently, who’s working, who I can contact, I can also reach out about, it’s all wraparound for the housing first model,

Joshua Spain  14:13

okay, for sure. And then as an organization as a whole, we actually have other job training programs. So Sintra was shelter and services has the janitorial and maintenance training program. We also have a culinary kitchen training program.

Grounded by the Farm  14:27

So it all works. Like the entire shelter can also be a work program. Yeah, everything you’re doing so yeah, some people may really love the farm aspect and other people may go but man, I am wicked at dicing carrots

Joshua Spain  14:42

for sure. And then we have people change courses too. And they see actually I really want to try that job over there in the farm that greenhouse.

Grounded by the Farm  14:50

People seem to have seemed to really enjoy it for sure.

Aaron Thormodsen  14:54

Well, and I’ve had people in the program be like, actually, I really like being in the kitchen, the kitchen, like the fun place and I’m like Go for it.

Grounded by the Farm  15:01

Yeah, different. John’s try a different pizza. Yeah. the through

Joshua Spain  15:04

line is probably that each one is teaching a universal soft skills. So just the ability to show up to work and come like with a good attitude. And you know, all those things are actually like job requirements anyway.

Aaron Thormodsen  15:22

Yeah, and fill in gaps in resumes, right? A lot of folks, they don’t want to a lot of companies don’t want to hire somebody who hasn’t been working. Yeah, just by

Grounded by the Farm  15:30

for so long or whatever, it could be six months, it could be a year, there’s just the gap, just a

Aaron Thormodsen  15:35

gap, any sort of gap, but by hiring them, we intrinsically make them more valuable to another employer. And that is

Grounded by the Farm  15:41

really helpful to the recommendation they can get. That’s exactly,

Aaron Thormodsen  15:45

Yep, exactly. And that helps the folks here that helped with specifically employment placement. You know, we have a case manager here that does the placement of folks who are in general, you know, in the day room who are just sleeping, you’re on the streets, or also in our training programs, helps them get into some sort of employment.

Joshua Spain  16:03

Absolutely. Some of our community partners to There are restaurants that buyer lettuce are now also restaurants that hire people from our kitchen program, or, and so I mean, really, the unity within the community is starting to lay all those connections are starting to really be created. And, you know, one thing isn’t just one function, it seems like there’s multiple, like, at facets for

Grounded by the Farm  16:31

Yeah, it’s, it’s such a different model from what I know, as shelters, right. So so often, the shelter doesn’t give you something to do there. Right, right. Like it just taking care of your immediate needs of shelter.

Joshua Spain  16:48

Well, since we are like a low bar shelter really like the the bigger idea there is that we are creating, like sobering moments. A lot of people, you know, they medicate, because they’re in a really tough situation, or they’re in physical distress, or emotional distress, and to give layers of activity and stability and community are all designed to, or even hot meal, like, give people that chance to just take a present with their new situation. Oh, actually, yeah, I get to see people every day that care about me, and I’ve got a hot smile when they see me, I’ve got something to do that I enjoy doing. And suddenly, like life isn’t so bad anymore. It’s got

Grounded by the Farm  17:36

to be incredibly rewarding to work in an environment like this. But I assume there are some pretty big challenges, too. So we were discussing even like, you know, how do you your hand pollinating any of the crops right now that you’re trying? And even the idea of getting pollinators in there could be a little bit difficult for some people to face, including me, talked about MIB allergy, right. And I’ve really worked hard on it. So I can be around them because I work in agriculture. So I had to write like, and I’ve even gone to be boxes, and then all the gear. But so what are the what are the big challenges for you? Is it on the agricultural side? Or is it? Is it getting the funding to get to the next level? Or what were the biggest challenges in this program? Because it sounds awesome.

Joshua Spain  18:28

Let’s do both for sure.

Aaron Thormodsen  18:30

I would say funding is the biggest, you know, lettuce is a very forgiving plant Hydroponics is especially the systems we’re using are really well known and well tested systems. Getting the money together to fix the problems that occur getting the sort of continued funding to make things happen getting enough labor in to manage on sort of a larger scale, sort of our expansions. That that is where a lot of our difficulties come

Joshua Spain  19:00

from, we’re still a couple million away from our goal for the groundbreaking of the Agra hood, the no barrier community park just picked up just a couple of million away, but the intention there is for it to be a mainstay of the community and that there’s free choose the mature for generations to come. People can come and gather and also, you know, they don’t even have to be employed with us or in shelters.

Grounded by the Farm  19:26

I mean, it’s a public park, it’s a public park. If I want to pick something I can do

Joshua Spain  19:33

and so I mean that’s that’s a bigger goal right now that we have but you know, our programs themselves take ongoing maintenance as well. The farm is meant to drive some revenue that supports the shelter as a whole. Okay. All in all, pro

Grounded by the Farm  19:49

leafy greens, expensive item for you know, like purchasing leafy greens is probably a pretty good way to go. Yeah, it does have a lot in a little space, like you have a lot more in the same amount of space, as I see on a farm, right? Because you have multiple levels.

Aaron Thormodsen  20:07

Yeah, we’re a higher density and a faster turnaround then like in the ground growing, which provides us a lot of products to move, which is a wonderful problem to have. But that’s what we’re really working on just trying to find places for that product to be moved to, you know, play more vendors, more people to sell to

Joshua Spain  20:24

Oh, yeah, we’re always so excited about new community partners. We’ve got just yesterday St. Kilda is and valley junction and agreed to Yeah.

Aaron Thormodsen  20:35

It was a it was a it was a plus. I like that. Yeah,

Joshua Spain  20:40

I mean, those are always exciting moments that we get to firsthand witness our community signing up to be an ongoing supportive of what we’re doing in our mission. So it definitely keeps us going. Yeah.

Grounded by the Farm  20:54

So one of the other things we talked about is trying to find those niches that people can’t otherwise fill locally. So you said there were a few different kinds of food that you’re testing out, what are you looking at next?

Joshua Spain  21:09

I mean, we’ve have different chefs in the community requesting different herbs for their unique cuisine. We’re also hoping to plant a diverse array of fruit bearing food out in the agri hood said more seasonal foods outdoors. Yeah, native plants that are fruit bearing and also fruits that would accommodate people in like diverse cultures. So that you know, I think apples because I’m from Iowa and like growing apples in my making apple pies, like where I come from and what I have to offer, but home is so different to so many other people and so, you know, being open to growing like diverse amount of crops so that other people could have that same shared feeling of home is

Grounded by the Farm  22:00

Yeah, and if you can get them to either grow in a greenhouse or find ones that are more weather tolerant at the Iowa food scene. Yeah, absolutely. Because that’s probably a little bit of an issue for some of us, right? Like, I love that you are growing okra that’s like my home like I’m from Memphis like we love that down home and collards.

Aaron Thormodsen  22:20

Yep, you’re trying words mustard greens, dill, parsley, cilantro. Knows Yeah, we’re getting some tomatoes out there on yo Serrano’s tomatoes. Cream. What else did we just put in Pisa we just sees it. We just see she’s oh, we’re doing a rainbow chard. We’re doing chicory fresh dill. Yeah, all sorts of fun stuff where we that’s the fun part for me, right? Like I get to just start experimenting with stuff at this point. Like, yeah, just see what works. A lot of restaurants have asked for, you know, like we mentioned the deal, fresh dill, fresh cilantro. And then we’re working towards a spring mix, you know, which is what the chicory and we have like a frizzy Lizzy mustard green, just kind of a prettier one and then working towards some other lettuce varieties, which are more aesthetic and mix well. They look really

Grounded by the Farm  23:09

pretty on the plate or the chef’s right? Because the thing is, is if you’re talking about that spread of types of things that you’re serving at, gonna pay really big money at a restaurant, I want it to look beautiful and tastes awesome.

Joshua Spain  23:25

Absolutely, absolutely. We want our home chefs to be happy too. So we’re actually launching like a CSA program to where I mean, it’s CSA and so many other ways, but in the conventional way, think of a CSA box that you would subscribe to come and pick up every week. Yeah, we’re hoping to boost the diversity to make those boxes exciting, too, for any home cooks that want to support our mission.

Grounded by the Farm  23:51

Wow, I am blown away. So do you know of other states or cities where this type of model is being used? Because I’ve never, never really heard of it being agriculture in this situation, which is what made me so excited about it. So

Aaron Thormodsen  24:07

we’ve done a bit of research to try and figure that out. Because we’ve asked ourselves the same question. Yeah, I mean, we want to learn from what’s working. Yeah, we’d love to have other people ask questions do and the only one I know remember off the top my head is I believe it’s called solutions farms. It’s in San Diego, California. And yeah, and we were what they do is they provide employment training to folks who were I believe previously homeless are not currently staying in a shelter, okay. So they don’t provide housing for them. They provide the employment aspect, which is what makes actually our situation from what I can tell the only, you know, greenhouse operated by a active emergency shelter and especially a wet shelter. Like we allow people to come in who are under the influence of anything and still provide them services and what they need to get back onto their feet.

Joshua Spain  24:57

Yeah, so only caveat there’s like Once you’re here, tolerate, you

Aaron Thormodsen  25:03

know, using being come in under the influence. Yes, yeah. But to be operating a, you know, a controlled environment, multi layer hydroponic and aquaponic system in a wet shelter. I don’t I don’t think anyone else has done that. That’s pretty wild.

Grounded by the Farm  25:19

I mean, even figuring out other things that might closely relate to it is kind of hard, right? Because the amount of labor turnover you have versus other places, is a really different quality. And then, at least from what I know, the indoor agriculture that serving restaurants, frequently has like a staff that’s like, solid, they’re there. They, they know how to do the problem solving and stuff like that. So it’s a really dynamic situation you guys have created. But if you were gonna have that, wouldn’t you have it in Iowa? Like, we’re where agriculture is like central to the world, right? Yeah, absolutely.

Joshua Spain  26:03

Even here in Iowa, though, we find that we’re still doing something new, because most people will get pushed back and be like, That’s a farm or and just even that, like idea of what farming is, has such deep roots here that are like in row crop and so many other other modes of doing it. And so, I mean, we’re teaching like new vocational skills, and of course, like, skills that people already have and bring to the table are useful. But you know, we’re definitely exploring like urban controlled environment ag like in a pretty interesting way. Yeah,

Grounded by the Farm  26:47

I think urban AG is still so new for a lot of cities, right? So the fact that yours is different than most urban ag that we’ve talked to. And stuff like a friend of ours on the south side of Chicago has a great urban farm. And she’s trying to teach people in Chicago about urban farming. So you might want to talk to Natasha at some point. But she’s not doing greens in greenhouses, right. She’s got lots of raised beds, and some of those kinds of things. But she’s also working with neighbors. And the hope is, is this helps create community from the neighborhood. But you guys are looking to create community, with the shelter with businesses with people across the Moines. So it’s, it’s a very interesting model of building community and helping infuse the community back with people who somehow pulled away from it or been pushed away from it, or Yeah, however, we want to talk about it,

Joshua Spain  27:44

or they’re brand new to our community. You know, a lot of times we think, Oh, someone from our own community has become homeless. But a lot of times we discover that people come to Des Moines, already homeless, because they’ve heard there’s opportunities here, or they know someone, or it’s gonna be a job, maybe. Yeah, and so we’re actually almost like the first connection point to what they might discover to be their community.

Aaron Thormodsen  28:16

Well, I think the community building aspect is really powerful. My background being in controlled environment, ag and urban AG, like I’ve seen, you know, we’re talking about, like, difficulties we’ve had, I’ve seen a lot of potential for solutions. In regards to you one of the biggest issues in urban AG is labor, you know, finding people who show up who do the dirty work, who will get the garden hose out and really create a, a clean, and a visually acceptable space for the people who are living around the community, their urban farm or community farm, the folks here want to be doing that, that is the work that they are living for. And so kind of connecting the two together provides a real community space in which folks who want to do that work, are able to and get what they want out of it. And then people that need the food people are managing those community farms can also get that aspect. And that’s something we’ve been trying to build out as we work with groups like Oak Ridge in terms of creating community farms outside of here to provide that extension from learning about urban farming and community agriculture, within our greenhouse and within our raised beds, and making that applicable to the community around us, you know, and it’s that labor training. Also, it’s really hard finding people that have worked on a hydroponic system in any capacity, right. So to have a training program in Iowa, that’s just cranking out people who understand what an NFT system is to understand how to turn the valve off and pull the pipes out and how to harvest a head of lettuce properly and bag it. I mean, that’s

Grounded by the Farm  29:43

yeah, the people you had working in there today needed very little instruction. And in fact, we’re going Hello, you know, you’re in my way. Please. Stop. Stop talking to the girl with the camera. Get out of my way.

Aaron Thormodsen  29:58

The folks I I have the pleasure of working with are some of the most ambitious, hardworking and productive people you’ll ever meet.

Grounded by the Farm  30:05

And they look like they’re having fun, too. Yep. Which is that the pride of a job, I think a lot of people in agriculture have that deep sense of pride in their job. And although I was only there briefly, it seemed like all of the people working in the greenhouse had that similar kind of excitement. Absolutely. And commitment to getting it done. And then they had to brighten time coming up, right. So you know, like, everyplace else, people need a break.

Aaron Thormodsen  30:37

And I provide total leniency on breaks might to folks, I know, they’re out there, they’re getting the work done. I mean, they’re honestly probably already done my, you know, check on him. But they, you know, we hire and folks that have disabilities, whether they are disability that they can actually get Social Security for, or one that they can’t, they all have the right to work in the same space. And so as long as they are working reasonably, and not taking frivolous breaks, and you can easily tell the difference, come back in refreshed and ready to roll and they get their work done. Yeah, that’s the way I like it.

Joshua Spain  31:09

For sure. That worked itself, too is four hours, because we want to leave plenty of time in the day and energy in their hopper to do the tasks and to do to go

Grounded by the Farm  31:21

for jobs or housing.

Aaron Thormodsen  31:23

Whatever it is. Housing First.

Grounded by the Farm  31:25

Always Yeah, yeah. Okay, I have to go Aaron is checking his phone. And I tried so hard to make sure I asked all the questions. I knew we’re hearing questions, because he has an important delivery to not mess with chefs when it comes to their delivery. Thank you so much. Thank you. I’m gonna let Josh continue in case there are things I failed the ask. But a pleasure talking with you. I love it. I love it. So. So the shelter has been here a long time eight years, or it was so much that you’ve been doing the farming side? Yeah, it was the 90s or something that the shelter? I believe it was 92. Yeah. Okay, because I did actually try and do my research. Been here a long time. But this is a gorgeous facility.

Joshua Spain  32:22

Yeah. So it’s received a lot of community support private donations, we’re also receiving a lot of support to from the city of Des Moines. Because of the amount of services across the board, we’re able to administer from this one hub, right? We, you know,

Grounded by the Farm  32:45

do you have an idea of how many people you serve a month or?

Joshua Spain  32:49

That’s a moving target. But on average, we’ve got 200 people in the building. Okay. Definitely. We also give away free meals to use under 18. And about five different meal sites across the city right now to So additionally, there’s probably another 100 kids receive a free meal every day, outside these walls, because this is a 18 plus shelter. Okay. And so, you know, still see the need for almost this homelessness prevention efforts. Yeah. So I would say, like, the biggest thing that we face here is getting the community’s support, really support from all sides to administer the services, because we, we accept people that are suffering from mental illness, and a lot of times unless they’re hospitalized, like where else do they go? And so we’re really eager to be a haven. And, you know, that takes support of all kinds.

Grounded by the Farm  34:01

Yeah, I can’t imagine. And the staffing here. First off, seemed like the nicest people everywhere I went, but but you’ve got a really wide set of skills and educational backgrounds and sort of focus on the job.

Joshua Spain  34:18

Absolutely. Yeah. We have very educated case managers. We’ve got plant scientists. We’ve got chefs. Yeah, you name it, but it definitely takes a village.

Grounded by the Farm  34:33

I love it. Well, next time I come to Des Moines, I’m gonna have to come back and see where you are in the establishing of the Agra hood. What is the plan for that? Like, I know you’ve already got raised beds and stuff. So this summer, people in the community could actually just see what you guys have going on in terms of raised beds and stuff, but for sure, that plan of development how

Joshua Spain  34:58

so this season We are getting a lot of volunteer support with those community garden efforts. So you’re planting edible plants and pollinator friendly plants like along the sidewalk and in those perimeter plantings right now. So we’re really focused on at least provide something with the space we’ve got, while we work on the interior. And we plan to break ground, there’s a lot of Earth work needs to be done to develop the parks, and we’re hoping that happens in spring of 24.

Grounded by the Farm  35:33

Okay. So maybe in summer of 25, it’s beginning to get set up closer to what you you’re envisioning.

Joshua Spain  35:43

Yeah, yeah, that’s absolutely that’s pretty.

Grounded by the Farm  35:46

That’s pretty close timeline in the world of, you know, millions of dollars of investment. But

Joshua Spain  35:53

yeah, well, I mean, our I mean, our goal overarching goal is to help end homelessness in so you know, no time like the present, and we’ve definitely got a fire Honduras. Yeah.

Grounded by the Farm  36:05

So if people want to look you guys up, where are you online?

Joshua Spain  36:11

So yeah, you can reach us at Central Iowa. shelter.org. Okay. And we’ve also had, you know, we’re on Facebook and Instagram as well. So mulberry farms, the name of our farm is just like a subsidiary. But, you know, it’s the lines are extremely blurred on purpose.

Grounded by the Farm  36:31

Yeah, the services in the services out, it’s all it’s all worked under the bigger CI SS, for sure. kind of structure. Yeah.

Joshua Spain  36:40

And additionally, you can find this at the downtown Des Moines farmers market this summer or Saturday morning, Erin will be there with our trainees, some lettuce and herbs, to cut flowers and all kinds of goodies.

Grounded by the Farm  36:55

Oh, that sounds perfect. Yeah. So check out the websites, check out the social media properties. If you’re in Des Moines area, check out like their CSAs are coming and some of that kind of stuff, you’re gonna want to stay in touch because there’s a lot of stuff developing said there’s always gonna be something new coming out of mulberry farms and Central Iowa shelter for sure. Yeah,

Joshua Spain  37:17

and don’t, don’t be afraid to reach out because

Grounded by the Farm  37:20

they’re asleep, people like me reach out and we find you and then up here.

Joshua Spain  37:24

We’re totally so our community garden, we already have huge spaces already accessible and usable, with the raised beds and planters that you’d love community support to come in and schedule a time to get their hands dirty. And

Grounded by the Farm  37:41

that volunteer effort really makes a difference. I mean, and it gives you the pride of contributing to your community, right? Like this is something that serving all of Des Moines and this part of Iowa. Yeah. So you can come down, bring either send donations, bring money, but also sweat equity on some of these weekend days or week days, where you’re building more beds and things like that. It’s a perfect way to get that.

Joshua Spain  38:06

Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, beyond just our central Iowa location. This business is being modeled in other places in rural Iowa. And so we’re hoping to model that vocational training, job training, farm jobs, like and shelter in tandem, in other places, too. And so we’re, you know, the involvement is unlimited. We’re eager to have new partnerships and new people pitching.

Grounded by the Farm  38:38

I love it. Thanks so much for having us. I can’t wait to share this on the website and get more people familiar with this. And I hope that it drives people in other communities to give some thought to the way maybe they could do something like this in their own community because so many of us are experiencing large numbers of people who are currently homeless, and it’s just it felt incredible walking through here today and stuff and seeing people who are knowing they’re making a difference it it’s very uplifting, as opposed to what some people might think of you no shelters for people who don’t currently have a home.

Joshua Spain  39:15

That’s awesome to hear. Yeah, we glad you you feel welcome. And we hope that the feeling’s shared for sure.

Grounded by the Farm  39:22

Thanks again for having me, Josh.

Joshua Spain  39:24

Thank you.

Grounded by the Farm  39:26

If after that you like me kind of want to help them with their mission. Go to Central Iowa shelter.org. There’s a clear donate page. You can mark it as you want to contribute to the kitchen, the greenhouse, the roof, overhead general, the amounts, they also have Amazon wishlist, I’m going to have lots of links in the show notes and on the website grounded by the farm.com. And I hope this really spur some ideas. Thanks so much. For listening

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