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

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

A transcript made via Castmagic’s AI is available.

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

A Unique Butcher Shop & Restaurant

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

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

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

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

 

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Different Cuts & Flavors too

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

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

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

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

Learning how to Break Down Beef

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

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

Farmer Deliveries every Week

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

The Holidays are Coming!

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

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

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

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

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

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

The role of food in holidays is unmistakeable and everyone has favorite holiday foods! Over the years of the podcast, we have had a variety of way to talk about holiday foods in the farm and the kitchen. While the page on favorite foods helps us find posts with the holidays tag, with so much content, it’s gotten unwieldy.

So we’re creating this to offer simplicity!

As you scan through the headings & links, know you can always come back here for more good info on your favorite holiday foods. We’ll start with the farm and move tot he kitchen just like food does!

Hear From Farmers who Grow Our Faves

The commitment to growing food is something all farmers share, but some farms seem to shine brightest at the holidays as the foods they grow are central to festivities. Here are links and brief descriptions for some of our past episodes that are so holiday friendly.

Sweet Potato Farmer Todd O’Neal Is Feeling the Love as Sweet Potatoes Grow in Favor

Turkey Farmers Are Deep Into the Holiday Rush

For Egg Farmers, Both Chickens and Eggs Have to Come First!

Growing Corn in Iowa, Dave Walton is Not The Stereotype You May Hear

Growing Sugar & Baking Cookies is the Sweet Life

Pumpkin Patch & the Passing of Time Means We Need An Update

Life Beside a Cranberry Marsh: Smoothies, Ecology and a Cran-Baby (Updated)

Favorite Holiday Foods in Our Kitchens

You’ll frequently find my entire family in a kitchen during the holidays, some working while others visit. We’re going to have to add more to this arena. So if you have some holiday foods you’d like to share recipes for or wondering about something we mention on the show, please drop a comment to help us

Holiday Foods and Traditions: Stories from Listeners & Friends

Cranberry Recipes Tested on Farm and in the City

What’s New Year’s without Black-Eyed Peas for Luck? I’m Not Tempting 2022

The post Favorite Holiday Foods from the Farm and Kitchen appeared first on Grounded by the Farm.

37:06

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

pumpkin, pumpkin patch, people, year, seeds, called, pumpkin pie, pumpkin muffins, acres, enchanted, recipe, iowa, bit, favorite, compost pile, weekend, pie pumpkin, big, fun, varieties

SPEAKERS

Grounded by the Farm –  Janice Person, Shannon Latham

Grounded by the Farm  00:03

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. For the next few weeks, we’re going to be re mixing and updating some of our favorite episodes about holiday foods. We did a series on them in 2020. And we thought it was time for an update. So we’re starting with pumpkins and our friend Shannon laid them who has enchanted acres of pumpkin patch in Sheffield, Iowa. You guys may remember the episode you may not have heard it yet. She gives us so many great tips on enjoying a pumpkin patch and on getting the most out of pumpkin when it comes to foods on the table. Just listening back to it. I so want pumpkin muffins right now. It’s crazy. Anyway, we’re going to remix a little bit of this episode, and then we’re going to update it at the end. So hope you enjoy and hope you’ll be back in a couple of weeks. Hey, everybody, this is Janice and this week we start our holiday seasons of episodes. We’re talking about pumpkins, which is obviously the first holiday thought I have every fall like what would fall be like without pumpkins. So we’re talking to Shannon Latham and Shannon is up in Iowa. And I can’t wait to hear what all’s been going on up there. Shannon, how’s your fall going?

Shannon Latham  01:40

It has been a beautiful fall so far in North Iowa, which you know, Janice, I always get a kick out of following you on social media and talking about how cold it gets. I’m always hopeful we can finish the pumpkin season without a snow. Snow and the pumpkin patch is not my friend. But it’s going great. The leaves are starting to turn we’ve had the perfect hoodie, apple cider wet weather so far. So let’s hope that that continues.

Grounded by the Farm  02:05

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it’s horrible to get to a pumpkin patch and be hot and sweaty. I think, you know, it’s like football games. You want to be a little bit chilly. But you don’t want to be told, right? Right. So

Shannon Latham  02:19

there is nothing like the super hot 85 degree weather to kill business at a pumpkin patch. You’re absolutely right. Another one is drizzle. No one wants to go out and pick pumpkins in a drizzle. And if we could only order like 65 degree and sunshine with no wind. That’s what I would put on tap for every weekend of October.

Grounded by the Farm  02:40

I love it. I love it. So we’re talking right at the changeover from September to October this will go up in about two weeks. Can you tell me when is your busy season? Was I crazy for scheduling you as the first of October hit?

Shannon Latham  02:54

No, that’s perfect. And I don’t know if you know this, but October is National pumpkin month. So as a foodie, I’m all about celebrating food holidays are early and often. So October is National pumpkin month and we typically open mid September. So in Iowa, the Iowa Iowa State game weekend is like our Super Bowl. And when I was new to the pumpkin patch business, I opened that weekend. And it was a lonely place to be it was a very lonely place because everybody in Iowa is either watching the game hosting a watch party or going to the game. So I have learned and I typically open the week following which is usually the third Saturday of September.

Grounded by the Farm  03:35

I love it. I love it out of all the farmers I’ve talked to you’re probably one of the few that a lot of people think Hey, pumpkin farm, I’ve done that. Right. So a lot of people have gone out and picked pumpkins or taken photos on a pumpkin farm and your farm is one of those farms for people in Northern Iowa. Right,

Shannon Latham  03:54

right. In fact, one of when you talk about that, you know and we all kind of joke about what’s Pinterest inspired. One of my favorite photo opportunities was when a young couple came out, she showed me a picture that was Pinterest inspired or Instagram inspired. I’m not sure which at the time, but it was this couple kissing in the pumpkin patch. And she’s like, would you take this for me? So yes, it is that place. And I just like having cute places if you’re whether you’re a young couple in love or you’re a family, and you make it an annual tradition. So I really love seeing that we’re where people come and bring their kids back year after year. We have a photo board that says how how tall this fall. And it allows them to continue to measure and it’s just really fun to see those families come back time and again. But I think that might be one of the biggest misconceptions is that people think oh, pumpkin patch that’s just for people with toddlers, but we really tried to provide activities. I’m a big believer in experiences and creating experiences, I believe experiences create memories, right. And so yeah, so we offer activities every weekend with different He has in mind. So every weekend we offer a special pumpkin decorating workshop. It might be buttons and bows, it might be decorating pumpkins with succulents to make a centerpiece for your Thanksgiving table. But I try to think of things that people might not do at home. So I think people traditionally think of carving pumpkins. Yeah, but they don’t maybe think about other things they could do one weekend, this fall we’ll be doing we’ll be using furniture tax to decorate pumpkins. And, and then every weekend, we allow people to paint pumpkins, and they can glitter them up, because you know what I was gonna

Grounded by the Farm  05:35

ask about today litter because that’s one of those things I would not do at home. But I would love Zeder pumpkin to stay out on the front porch never come in the house.

Shannon Latham  05:45

Right. So I like to say, leave the mess with us and take home your masterpiece. And so the name of our area where we do all of the pumpkin workshops is called Geppetto workshop because I’m a big Disney fan. And I just thought that was yeah, I just thought that was a good fit. It’s like leave the mess. And also we only charge $5 That includes your pumpkin, your paint your glitter. If you went to Hobby Lobby or Walmart and you wanted to buy different colors of paint as well as the pumpkin. You couldn’t do it for $5. So I think it’s just affordable. I was gonna say affordable family fun, but really affordable fun for the whole family. It’s fun to see grown. Mother daughters come last weekend I had a mother daughter and daughter in law come out. Yeah. And they did succulents. It’s also been a great area, or a great activity, I should say for bridal showers. So like the bridal party come out and decorate pumpkins. So yeah, I really like to think that we appeal to a broad audience.

Grounded by the Farm  06:45

I would tell you our office over the years, probably 20 years ago, I started doing pumpkin carving contest or pumpkin decoration contest. And it’s amazing how competitive people can get in that. If it’s yes, it

Shannon Latham  06:58

1. Exactly contest is the keyword people. Especially I worked in an advertising agency in West Des Moines and we did the same thing. And those graphic designers, there was no way I could compete with them on the pumpkin carving. So I had to enter the pumpkin baking contest. And I you know, the the little featured me is proud to say I won the pumpkin baking contest one year.

Grounded by the Farm  07:22

Oh, that’s funny. I actually can claim ownership of a ribbon from the pumpkin decoration contests because I used inside humor, right? Like at an office, we all have those insider jokes. And to create a pumpkin that illustrated one of those brought me the big the big prize one year. So quite proud of that. Well, yeah, exactly. So I was an accidental pumpkin grower one year, I don’t I don’t know how many people have ended up in that happen. Right? My front porch when I bought a new house, the people had young kids and I don’t know if somebody accidentally brought you know, broke the pumpkin into the nice flower bed. Or if somebody just never dealt with it and ultimately just kicked it there to die. But the first year I lived there in the fall, I had this weird vine come up. And you know, I can’t help my curiosity. I had to let it go. Right. So from this spring, and then I started seeing the flowers and I’m like, squash or pumpkin. One of those. What do you think people should know if they try and grow a pumpkin? Probably not. The best way to do that

Shannon Latham  08:35

is space. It takes a lot of space, which I’m sure you found out right. Those different forms. Yes, the leafs get big and the vines can go for feet. Yeah. So when we plant our pumpkins, we plant them anywhere from eight to 14 feet apart. And there’s a couple of reasons we do that. We want the divine out, but we also pump raising pumpkins in large quantities like we do is really hands on. It takes a lot of labor. And so we do it every so often we make it a little bit wider so we can get through with the tractor and cultivator.

Grounded by the Farm  09:11

Yeah. So tell me, I obviously did not have that kind of space. It took over part of my front yard as well as the flower bed. And it was not your typical orange pumpkin. So do you guys grow just traditional orange pumpkins or there seems to be a lot of different things going on in the pumpkin world? Yeah, I

Shannon Latham  09:35

think you would be amazed if you saw a pumpkin growers catalog. It’s literally like and I know you Janice would be familiar with a seed catalog. Not everybody who’s listening probably is but what would that be half inch thick maybe and it’s all different pumpkin varieties. And I I’m like a kid in a candy store when I open that book because this year what was new was yellow pumpkins. So I am totally fascinated Buy pumpkin breeders because who thinks of this stuff like a yellow pumpkin, I plant more than 20 varieties, but it’s honestly a struggle to keep it down to 20 varieties.

Grounded by the Farm  10:11

If you’re cool half inch, that book of different seed varieties, even if it’s just one per page, that’s a lot of pages I would really

Shannon Latham  10:20

it is a lot of pages. I mean, you would be amazed by the number of different colors and so many different uses. So one of the pumpkins that I grow is called the peanut pumpkin for those who know French, I can’t even pronounce it but you would know it by a French name. And it looks like little peanuts are growing on there. So I just harvested some of those. Some of them are called speckled hound. Oh, that’s the other thing. The marketer in me loves the name of these different pumpkins and squashes. So the speckled Hound is orange and green together. And it’s speckle Yeah, then there’s one year I bought some just because it was called fairy tale. And I really thought, you know, enchanted acres should offer the fairy tale, it’s probably no surprise to you that our signature pumpkin is called the Cinderella. And it’s like, if you watch the Disney movie, it looks just like a Cinderella coach. It’s flat. And they are awesome for stalking. And so I usually put a Cinderella pumpkin on the bottom. There’s the Jared Dell, and it’s kind of a greenish blue color. And it’s a little bit thicker. It’s so pretty. And I had that’s the other thing I love about the pumpkin patch is you get visitors from everywhere. And I had a lady who was from Australia. And she’s like, Oh, you have the squash, which I think it’s actually I don’t know if it is a winter squash or if it’s a pumpkin, but they it’s very popular apparently in Australia. And this is going to be my ninth season and I have yet to eat one every year, I think I’m going to fix one of these. And every year I don’t know I guess I get busy and forget to do it. But they are really good eating, you know, squash is related to the pumpkin. So that’s that’s no big surprise. And then where I live, we have a very big Latino population. And so I’ll help people stop by because they love to eat pumpkin there too. So there’s just Yeah, every kind of squash and pumpkin really has a use whether it’s decorating some or even better for painting than yours. We’ve learned over the years, how do

Grounded by the Farm  12:16

you help the people who are coming to visit you figure those kinds of things out, right? Because if you come to the pumpkin patch, I typically just look for one that as the shape I like but then if I wanted to make a pie, maybe not the best one to have. Exactly. So

Shannon Latham  12:32

there are definitely pie pumpkins in in our place. They’re called Baby Pam or sweet sugars. So they make a better pie because they have I suppose a higher sugar content. Yeah, and they’re smaller. So we put signs we offer a you pick pumpkin patch, but not everyone wants to get dirty. And not everyone wants to climb through the vines because I’m sure you learned in your external pumpkin patch that pumpkin vines are prickly and go out into the field. Yeah, you want to make sure exactly want to make sure you’re dressed for it. So I would recommend a long sleeve shirt and boots. At least clothes you don’t mind getting dirty long pants. Exactly. So if you’re going to wear tennis shoes, make sure they’re ones that you know you’re okay with throwing them in the washing machine because that’s the other thing. Sometimes people dress so cute to come to the pumpkin patch, or they dress their kids so cute. And then they’re like, oh, but don’t get dirty. Well, I’m just a big believer you’re on a farm like half of that, especially especially if you’re like a little kid is getting dirty. That’s half the fun anyway, we provide that experience for those who think getting down and dirty is fun or picking their own just like you would go out to a Christmas tree farm and pick out a tree we offer that nice

Grounded by the Farm  13:40

pictures first before you get really exactly

Shannon Latham  13:43

exactly and then change your shoes like Mr. Rogers, you know, we provide pallets so if you if you want to have the pumpkin picking experience without all the dirt we’ve already picked them wash them and place them on a pallet and then to help people choose I make signs I’ve had them designed so that we can use them year after year but it lists the name of the pumpkin and talks about what what its best uses are and then it gives them a picture. So that’s how we tried to do it. I mean

Grounded by the Farm  14:11

who would have thought when we were kids right? It was such a simple world you had either as a tall you had was an orange or a perfectly round pumpkin right like it was taller it was round. And that was how it was exist the only question

Shannon Latham  14:25

so absolutely. I didn’t know there was anything other than a jackal lander and pumpkin when I was

Grounded by the Farm  14:30

a kid. Right right. So that traditional Jacqueline are and pumpkin. Do you guys have those? I assume as well? Yes, absolutely.

Shannon Latham  14:38

But they come in all different sizes too. I mean, I’ve grown some that are big white pumpkins, and they’re called polar bears and they get just huge. I also have Atlantic giants which are big orange pumpkins. In fact, one this year we had to use the forks of the tractor to move it I’m not sure who’s going to take that home with them because it’s it’s so big but It’s been kind of fun. And when you were talking about accidental pumpkins, some of our biggest pumpkins actually grow in our compost pile. And, and I think it’s just because it’s so full of nutrients in that pile and then it’s also kind of shady. So it probably helps keep a little bit more moisture over there as well. But it’s kind of fun to see what just grows naturally over by that compost pile. Well, that was really small but that part up to the public though would want to pick from they’re

Grounded by the Farm  15:31

playing in the compost pile doesn’t sound as fun as it you know, digging worms is one thing, but in the compost pile, something else. That’s so funny. So when you guys look at pumpkins, is one of the big difference in what would be considered a carving pumpkin, sort of the the texture or the whip of the right, like what’s different between carving pumpkins and painting pumpkins?

Shannon Latham  15:57

Yeah, I think it has to do with the skin. You write carving pumpkins are a little bit thicker. Some of the pumpkins, though, are too thick, so they don’t make a good carving pumpkin. Right. Um, and some of them are it’s just basically I think size and preference anymore. I would have never thought about carving a white pumpkin. But my mom did. Yeah. And it was so cute. And then if you’re going for some designs, you don’t even have to paint the pumpkin because you can just use the color of pumpkin we have some that are color are called knuckleheads. And, and they make the perfect like which face because they have all these it almost looks like little works growing all over them. Oh,

Grounded by the Farm  16:35

they’re probably a disease or something. But that’s it.

Shannon Latham  16:40

Yeah. In fact, of the first year I grew knuckleheads, my brother was out looking at my pumpkin patch, and I wasn’t there. And he said, What’s wrong with your pumpkins? And I said, which ones? Any any sent, sent me a picture and I said, Oh, that’s a knucklehead. And he’s like, That’s not nice to call me names. I’m like, No, that’s variety. So they just a moment. They really, it’s funny to say, but pumpkins have a lot of character. Like each variety. Kind of has its own personality, if you will, just like that is a little bit bumpy. We have one called orange roughy thing. We have a really popular gourd Friday called the lunch lady. So sometimes people see that and they buy it just because the name is funny.

Grounded by the Farm  17:22

Yeah, that’s funny for those people who are either carving it or using it for a, you know, some kind of eating extravaganza baking or whatever. What do you suggest they do with the seeds? Do you have like ways to use the seeds that are yummy or useful? i

Shannon Latham  17:38

My family loves roasted pumpkin seeds. My son’s favorite is with cinnamon and sugar. But then I did a taste test. Yeah, I did a taste test a couple of years ago at the pumpkin patch. And it did some with Italian seasoning, some that had a little bit more of a Mexican flair. And then the Cinnamon, cinnamon, and also we just like butter and salt on some of them too. So I think you know why not? Kind of like spice up your salads. I don’t know if spice up is the right word. I guess it depends on what you put on there. But But why not add some pumpkin seeds to a salad? Get it? Give it a little bit different flavor instead of the same old same old also, you could put it on the tops of soups. Yeah. Which this time of year is great soup weather.

Grounded by the Farm  18:22

So how do you roast them

Shannon Latham  18:24

my go to is taste of home. By the way, if anybody, which probably dates me a little bit, but taste of home is online. And it to me all those recipes are like what my mom and my grandma would make. So they’re just like comfort foods. So so that’s where I usually go to grab a recipe. And what what I do is I go ahead and scoop out the insides of the pumpkin by the way, if you get a pie pumpkin, they’ll have way more seeds in them and there’ll be smaller. So you could go ahead. Yeah, you could go ahead buy a pie pumpkin use the seeds for your salad soup or just playing as a snack to eat them by themselves. And then you could actually turn that pie pumpkin into pie. I see that you also share on your Facebook page, some recipes, I can share you my favorite share with you my favorite recipe if you want to buy a pumpkin pie pumpkin and turn it into pudding. Yeah, so Pumpkin Pudding tastes like pumpkin pie, but you don’t have to make the crust. So like How awesome is that? So I’ll send that your way if you want to share that. And then it’s really simple. Like I followed the Pioneer woman’s recipe for making your own pumpkin puree. It’s really not hard. It’s a very it’s an investment in time, but it’s really not that hard. And then yeah, so then that way you can have the seeds and you can use the fruit. In fact, that’s one of the things that I make sure I do a lot of field trips, usually. I love field trips because kids are so curious. They ask a lot of questions. But the one thing I want them to go home remembering is that pumpkin is a fruit and we can eat it. So usually we’ll make pumpkin pie in a bag for them. And then I just do little single servings have little cups that put graham crackers in the bottom. Then we squeeze some of that pumpkin pie filling into it. And I always love getting the thank you notes from little kids. And my favorite one was, you are such a good cook, will you be my friend. I just love it because first of all, like pumpkin pie in a bag is the easiest thing you’ll ever make. And second of all, it requires no cooking. So when

Grounded by the Farm  20:25

it sounds like the perfect, perfect setup well so you say pumpkin pie requires no cooking. It’s a really easy thing. You make it a lot

Shannon Latham  20:33

of pumpkin pie in a bag pumpkin kind of bag, I should say. And that’s what we do on our field trips. And so really, we just mix it in a Ziploc bag. It’s pumpkin pie filling out of a can. It’s instant pudding, it’s milk and some pumpkin pie spice. you squish it all together in a Ziploc bag, and it’s ready to eat in a matter of minutes.

Grounded by the Farm  20:53

Yeah. What’s one of your favorite ways of putting pumpkin on the table? Like as a food product?

Shannon Latham  20:59

Pumpkin Bread is definitely one of my family’s favorite pumpkin muffins. So I’m newly an empty nester. So it’s very strange for me, I used to I used to be called like the muffin lady because I would make muffins all the time. And so last year during my kids a senior year, again, I change out my recipes like some people change at their word. I definitely have a pumpkin muffin season. And I’ve shared that recipe several times in several different blogs. pumpkin muffins are one of my kids is

Grounded by the Farm  21:30

favorite. I’ll have the link for the show notes. Yeah,

Shannon Latham  21:34

definitely. And I like pumpkin muffins even as a side dish. So if we’re going to do a bowl of chili, some people might put that with cornbread, I’m going to serve it with pumpkin muffins. And then I’ve also made pumpkin chili and add enchanted acres. We have a little restaurant called the marketplace cafe and will serve pumpkin chili there are some times you really don’t taste it. I think it really just kind of gets absorbed by the other flavors of the chili but I figure you know when at the pumpkin patch, right? Why not give it a try? So we’ve done that What did

Grounded by the Farm  22:08

skins kind of add nutritionally what’s what’s there that we should

Shannon Latham  22:12

they are high in vitamin a and beta carotene for sure, you know, just like a carrot would? Uh huh.

Grounded by the Farm  22:18

Good for your eyesight.

Shannon Latham  22:19

They are definitely good for your eyesight. So they’re sometimes will feed some of the pumpkins that we aren’t able to sell. We’ll feed them to our goats, or we’ll feed them to our chickens and they eat everything but the shell they love to eat out. They love to eat the little seeds. They love to eat the filling.

Grounded by the Farm  22:34

When you think about pumpkins, a lot of us go to sweet things like the pies and and things. Are there more savory pumpkin recipes.

Shannon Latham  22:43

Yes. And I have a recipe actually for so there was a gourmet food club in the area that came about pie pumpkins, and then they shared a recipe for me. And it’s it is a savory recipe. So

Grounded by the Farm  22:55

I’ll have to get that. Yeah, I think that’s what’s really interesting about so many of the holiday kinds of things, right? So many of them, you can make them into total sweet as a dessert or something like that. But you can also make them into the savory kind of moments that other people who don’t necessarily like sweets as much we’ll go wait a minute, that’s really good.

Shannon Latham  23:18

I often stuffed zucchini, like some people stuffed peppers. I stuffed zucchini, but I don’t know why you couldn’t stuff a pie pumpkin, or even cut it up and then layer it, I’m gonna have to give it a try. Gosh, we might have we might be on to something there.

Grounded by the Farm  23:35

Well, and I can tell you some of the squash and things that I’ve had when I’m in places like Japan, they have some great, great ones that they’ll do that way. And so I’m always looking for some of those to come back again, when I’m in the US. I never know when I’m going to find one. So kind of look around to see if I can find something similar. Uh huh. Now I know you said you were trying to make sure people have an opportunity to learn about the farm because you are in a really rural area. We didn’t really mention it, but your family’s in other parts of agriculture too. So you, you bring a lot of agriculture to the pumpkin patch. Right?

Shannon Latham  24:10

That’s right. We’re very much involved in the seed industry. So that’s why I’m such an advocate for people who come especially those on field trips to learn where the pumpkin comes from. I want them to know that it starts with a seed and then we’ll actually walk out into the pumpkin patch and show the different parts of a lifecycle. So some people may not know that the blossom is what is where the little baby pumpkin forms. So you can we can see the seed then we can see the blasts and then you can see the little baby pumpkins start to grow. And then we’ll see it when the pumpkins a little bit bigger. It starts out green and then it turns orange and then we know it’s right. Batcher so for me that’s really fun way for people to learn where their food literally comes from. Also, my husband and I own a seed company and so we sell corn, soybeans Alpha also uncover crops across six states in the upper Midwest. So that is so this pumpkin patch is definitely one of my passions. It’s kind of my it’s literally my little hobby farm. But my day job is doing marketing for Latham, high tech seeds.

Grounded by the Farm  25:14

Yeah, which is how I got to know you wasn’t through the pumpkin patch. Back in my days of the seed business. It’s funny, I actually had a chance here a couple of weeks ago to talk about seed with a bunch of gardeners, right. So people who are new to gardening, or people who are a little more established, you know, for a lot of people, they look at a seed catalog or they look at the seed rack in their local nurseries or whatever. They didn’t necessarily haven’t seen the full pumpkin catalog.

Shannon Latham  25:42

Right? Right. Because he knew there was just a pumpkin catalog, right?

Grounded by the Farm  25:49

I didn’t. It makes sense to me, but I’ve never thought about it, even though I’ve been working with farmers for so long.

Janice Person  25:58

Hey, everybody, we’re back. Now we’re going to catch up with Shannon. You’ve heard the interview we did and 2020. All I removed really was the things you were doing around COVID. I hope last year was a good year back. But then this year sounds like a grand year at enchanted acres.

Shannon Latham  26:17

Yes, fishy. There’s so much excitement. We’ve had our best pumpkin crop ever. I believe we’ve also had our best crowds ever. And I think a lot of that is just people trying to get one last visit into enchanted acres.

Janice Person  26:32

Yeah. So now you’ve said this is going to be your final season. It’s been a generational family thing to do this every year. And this is your final season.

Shannon Latham  26:44

Yeah, this is our final season. We started in 2012. And when I started in 2012, I knew that I was committed to at least 10 years. So I guess I kept saying, you know, last year was gonna be my last year and then I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready. And then my brother’s like, sure this is gonna be your last year. We’ve heard that before. But I made it Facebook official. So this is it. This is it.

Janice Person  27:09

I love it. I love it. I know since it’s been a family affair, you’re you’re working multiple jobs, your brother’s working in multiple places. And your parents are the ones that actually did a lot of this work, too. So it sounds like it’s time for you guys to take a break.

Shannon Latham  27:28

Yeah, I think it’s time for what’s next. Right. And the other thing that’s changed too, when I started this, my kids were 10. And so now they’re in college, and they’re, you know, spreading their own wings, which is what we raised them to do. And the last thing I want them to do is feel guilty for not coming home from college or thinking that they can’t pursue their dream job because we need to, you know, need their help at home. So, but with that said my daughter, she has come home every weekend since she’s been in college, which is great, because we definitely need her help. So I’m glad that she helped. So what she really enjoys doing is picking gourds of all things. I don’t

Janice Person  28:10

ask you about decorative gourds and things because they have become huge.

Shannon Latham  28:17

Yeah, so she loves picking and washing them, which is awesome, because my least favorite job of any of them is washing things like gourds. So she loves doing that. But she also has just so much patience. And she’s really good with kids. So she helps them with the pumpkin painting. So we added changemakers we like to say, you know, leave us with a mess and you take home the masterpiece so people can paint and put glitter on their pumpkins, and then just take home the finished product.

Janice Person  28:45

Exactly. So when we talked a couple of years ago, yellow pumpkins were just becoming a thing. I’ve seen some white ones and some Yeah, they’re strange colors. What’s the is there a new N thing this year?

Shannon Latham  29:01

You know, that’s a great question. And I did not look at the seed catalog this year to see what was new because you know how some women love shoes and you know, jeans and things like that. Like I love looking at that pumpkin seed catalog there are times when I planted over 20 varieties. And so this year I didn’t even open it up. I just planted our tried and true I mean the name of our pumpkin patches enchanted acres so our Cinderella pumpkins are our signature pumpkin so of course we had to plant a lot of those. The yellow pumpkins are still really popular this year. I’m not sure what happened in years past I’ve had polar bear pumpkins and I don’t know if my seeds didn’t come in or what but we didn’t have any big any big polar bear pumpkins this year. I was disappointed when I went out to pick and there were

Janice Person  29:53

Well you mentioned the Cinderella pumpkins and on Facebook I saw it A picture of your place. And it was like a Cinderella carriage lit up at night. It is amazingly beautiful. Oh, thank

30:09

you is,

Janice Person  30:11

are you actually doing nighttime activities? Or is that just a little something,

Shannon Latham  30:16

it’s just to have some wonder at night, there is literally a tree that lights up. It looks like something from Disney. And it’s in the middle of a field in the middle of everywhere, let’s say right in the middle of nowhere. But people are driving like 50 miles to see that tree during Christmas time. So I hope our big giant pumpkin is one of those things that people want to drive past. Because we’re literally just two miles off Interstate 35. And if I had little kids, I would definitely drive them by at night and tell them it’s the Great Pumpkin. And then I probably read it’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown or make them watch the movie because I was that mom. Yeah. It really isn’t. I’ve had people call me like I had a friend who lives outside the area. And she’s like, I totally forgotten we’d be driving by your pumpkin patch. And I could not believe it when there is this big glowing comic in the middle of the field. So I you know, that’s been fun. It’s fun to hear you bring a little bit of enjoyment to someone’s day.

Janice Person  31:18

I love it. We talked a lot of recipes when we talk two years ago, because you and I both love food so much. Exactly. And I suddenly was wanting pumpkin muffins because we had talked too much about them.

Shannon Latham  31:32

But speaking of all things pumpkin, so we put our pie pumpkins on special today for this weekend, I should say. And that made me think about all my favorite pumpkin recipes. And then I thought, Oh, I wonder what the Pioneer Woman has to say. So I shared a few links to some of her favorite pumpkin recipes. So now there’s even more that I want to try.

Janice Person  31:52

You have just a couple of weeks left, right.

Shannon Latham  31:55

We used to stay open through Halloween. But it turns out most people have their pumpkins by Halloween. So go figure. So yeah, so just a couple of weekends left. It’s bittersweet. I’ll tell you it has been so much fun. One of the families came to visit me last weekend that have literally been there every year. So they had moved to the area when their daughter was little, was just Yeah, real little. And so last year, she came back and she bled storytime, which was really fun. And then this year, they just came back to wish us well. And it has been just, I can’t even find the words to describe what it means to be part of somebody’s family traditions and literally watch their kids grew up during the last 11 seasons.

Janice Person  32:41

Well, I think this is an opportunity for somebody else in that Sheffield area to take on this great role in your community there.

Shannon Latham  32:50

I do think genius. I do think we’ll see somebody in this area. You know, we really live in the heart of rural America right here. Yeah, in Iowa. And I am especially in North Iowa here. I really, I really do believe we’ll see. See another pumpkin patch or to crop up.

Janice Person  33:06

Well, I know here in St. Louis, we have several around. Also apple picking is still a big thing. There’s still plenty of apples going on. So I’d encourage people to do that. You’ve only got a little time and then it’s Yeah, then it leaves.

Shannon Latham  33:23

Yes. And the leaves have been particularly lovely. So our family has an exchange to that this year. And when your host parents were in a pumpkin patch, you obviously don’t go anywhere on the weekend. So they had school off on Columbus Day I believe it was and so we took her to Wisconsin apple orchards and just had a blast. Yeah, the leaves were beautiful, but I you know, like you I love food but I also believe foods destination so we made sure that apple cider doughnuts were on the list for Monday. And then also I love a good burger. So I was scouting out best burgers in this area. I have been known to plan trips around the best burgers. And I’ve been known to break for cheese curds. So so many reasons to get out and travel.

Janice Person  34:14

Well, I’ve got big food plans almost all the time. There’s always a food destination on the horizon. So thanks so much. I’m going to eventually get to your farm but I guess I won’t get to Enchanted acres I’ll just

Shannon Latham  34:28

Yeah, well rest isn’t going away. Just the pumpkin patch podcast. So yeah, so you can still come and so people are asking me what’s next wedding venues are really big deal. Yeah, so I’m thinking that’s probably what the next array is going to be. It’s enchanted acres upstairs is really cute. I think that’d be a great place for not only the wedding party to get ready but even to host a wedding shower. I posted bridal showers, baby showers up there. It’s a great place for a family reunion. You I’ve just got

Janice Person  35:01

it out after you get all those pumpkins in and you and your holiday season, he can think about that after the new year comes maybe

Shannon Latham  35:11

I just think I might need to do it beforehand because there’s probably a lot of wedding rings that are gonna happen between Christmas and New Year. I know that’s where I was like, I don’t know that I can rest on my laurels for too long here. So

Janice Person  35:23

family gathering over the holidays for the big families too, because it’s nice to finally have crowds getting back together.

Shannon Latham  35:31

Yes, absolutely. I think there’s, you know, I think it’s gonna look different but I’m excited. It’s just it’s it’s time for the next chapter.

Janice Person  35:39

That sounds great. Shannon thanks so much for being here. Now let’s remind people it’s enchanted acres on Facebook. And they may need to make it when they search look for enchanted acres Iowa. Correct. Oh, yeah. Didn’t know see in our carriage kind of shape there for your logo.

Shannon Latham  35:59

Yeah, and it’s our website is enchanted acres i A because apparently other states have a chance to make goods as well, you know. So, yeah. Makers. ia.com.

Janice Person  36:10

All right. That way people can see what what’s going on here as you guys close out your seasons. Thanks so much for getting on with me tonight. I appreciate it.

Shannon Latham  36:19

Thank you so much for having me as a guest to get it’s always fun to talk with you.

The post Revisiting Pumpkins, Grounded by the Farm, Episode 324 Transcript appeared first on Grounded by the Farm.

This transcript is for Growing Dates:  Coachella’s Longest Running Jam Session,  episode 321 of Grounded by the Farm. It was created via AI.

39:45

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

dates, grow, crop, fruit, tree, people, farmer, flowers, pollen, eat, farm, varieties, palms, industry, palm tree, valley, orchards, rainfall, ripening, workers

SPEAKERS

Albert Keck, Grounded by the Farm

Janice Person Grounded by the Farm  00:03

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 have gone somewhere. Wow. Different from most of my adventures. We’re in the Coachella Valley. Yeah, that like Coachella from the music. Beyonce is not around. We are talking about dates, and not the kind that go to music festivals. We’re talking about dates, the fruit that grows on beautiful palms. And so today we’re here with our kick. He’s with Hadley’s and their whole operation is focused on dates. We have looked at so many trees today. I feel like I learned so much. You’re gonna see some of it in the video. But I asked Albert, if we could then sit down and really talk about dates. I’m gonna just start with an easy question. What’s your favorite way to eat dates?

Albert Keck  01:03

Just hold fruit form?

Grounded by the Farm  01:05

This like a pitted date?

Albert Keck  01:07

Yeah, yeah. Are off the tree. Yeah, yeah. I love it. Yeah.

Grounded by the Farm  01:10

How does your family fix them? Otherwise? Because I understand that maybe. Do some of the stuffed and bacon wrapped in?

Albert Keck  01:18

Well, the the bacon wrapped? Is that’s more of a culinary where you’ll you can find that at restaurants for making the home. But yeah, most of most of the way we eat dates as a family is just as a whole piece of fruit, love putting them in cookies or smoothies. But I think by far, we deceived them as whole fruits. Yeah. So

Grounded by the Farm  01:40

dates are one of those things. They’re not grown everywhere. They’re grown just sort of in this part of the desert. Is that right?

Albert Keck  01:47

Yes. They’re just in this little corner of the country, southeastern California and very Southwestern Arizona, this little corner of the country. The interior of the Southwest, is probably the hottest, driest climate in North America. And we get very little rainfall. But we do have good agricultural soils, and a lot of water available to us. Right now. We’re very concerned about that. But it does take a lot of water to grow these crops in this climate, obviously. And it doesn’t matter if it’s dates or citrus or vegetables.

Grounded by the Farm  02:25

You know, we saw all kinds of stuff. We saw okra, we saw lemons, driving around, there’s a lot of stuff.

Albert Keck  02:32

It doesn’t matter what crops you grow in this climate in these soils, you need water to grow them. It’s not in the form of rainfall. One thing that is important for fruits is that there is very little rainfall during ripening, right. California’s water patterns are typically rains in the wintertime, and drought in the summertime. And we have droughts, it’s usually associated with winter rainfall, because we usually don’t get summer rain or snow packs. So that winter rainfall brings the snow packs into the mountains, which fills the reservoirs which then allow which we capture and then we allows us to grow these crops through irrigation during the growing season. We don’t like rain when fruit is ripe. So that’s dates they need that dry hot desert climate but

Grounded by the Farm  03:27

you guys are really specific on where you put water on a lot of things right like you at the precise times you need it or the ways you need to put it on there are different ways to put water on.

Albert Keck  03:40

Yeah, on the farm. It’s it’s everything is very coordinated. And so as you saw earlier dates require a lot of labor, tillage and whatnot and all those things need to be scheduled around irrigation. Some of our orchards we use flood, we have basins that are dead level and then we also have drip on on most of our orchards. So it’s it’s we have to water you can’t grow a crop without water. A lot of times you have to schedule the application on water so you could do the other jobs. It’s not

Grounded by the Farm  04:14

like given to me juicy like a lemon right? So if I’m eating table grapes, I feel the water. Yeah, grapes. Dates do they do do they naturally dry or

Albert Keck  04:26

so dates are? Technically they’re not considered a dried fruit in the sense they were a fresh grape that then got dried down to a raisin, okay? Dates actually ripen in the form that we know them as, okay, so they’re they’re not laden with active water. Like a lemon would be your tangerines or Mandarin. The form that we know them in the way we eat them. That’s how they write.

Grounded by the Farm  04:51

Okay, it’s a little more dried down than a lot of fruit. It’s

Albert Keck  04:54

low moisture.

Grounded by the Farm  04:55

Yeah. What kind of nutritionally What does a date offers Am I like me fiber?

Albert Keck  05:01

Yeah, fiber. And they’re, they’re probably one of the highest sources of potassium of the fruits.

Grounded by the Farm  05:07

Forget those bananas that everybody’s eating for their leg cramps.

Albert Keck  05:10

Yeah, they’re higher and potassium of bananas. And so those are those are the fiber and potassium are probably the two most beneficial aspects of daily nutrition. But yeah, they’ve got natural sugars. And, you know, a lot of other minor elements of iron and you know, a little bit of protein, but they’re no salt, no carbs, no, no cholesterol. So they’re, they’re considered a very healthy heart healthy food. Yeah. And that that’s, that’s good for us. People are interested in eating healthier. Yeah. And that’s helping us.

Grounded by the Farm  05:45

And I think dates are one of those things that you can find a lot of places to put dates in recipes and stuff. It’d be like to cook or bake or something, you know, their state breads or cookies or something. And if you’ve come in with some chocolate chips, your kids may not even notice.

Albert Keck  05:59

So I’ve, you know, one of my favorite homemade recipes that we use, I guess, date pieces in is, it’s an oatmeal pecan cookie. Oh, this is so good. It’s just and so a friend of mine shared that with our fish, she actually shared some batches with our families that I got her out of me. So good. But yes, dates are very versatile. Yeah. And like I said, in our family, we mostly eat them as whole fruits. But, you know, from, from a culinary perspective, they’re they’re extremely versatile. They maintain their form, through Cooked Dishes, you can put them in rice dishes and whatnot. They’re popular in salads, you know, obviously baking, so they’re, they’re very versatile in that regard.

Grounded by the Farm  06:46

So there are several different varieties. And you showed me them as we went through. How How would you describe the differences to somebody who’s not sure they, they maybe haven’t bought a lot of dates themselves?

Albert Keck  06:59

Yeah, the date palms. It’s interesting, the different varieties that we grow. The palms actually look different to me, but to most people, they would probably all say

Grounded by the Farm  07:12

they all look like palm trees or at the beach to me, except they’ve got fruit hanging off of them. Yeah, so

Albert Keck  07:17

they have they have these just, you know, I guess unique details that I notice but I think most people passing by would never notice.

Grounded by the Farm  07:25

It’s like parents with identical twins usually find something that makes a difference is

Albert Keck  07:30

they’re very similar. They look very similar. So they’re, but once you you know, exactly, that’s a great analogy. So the the main varieties we grow are Deglet Noor module, but we also have a few Palaui and Zahidi varieties, most of the our main varieties deglet Norman jewel, they’re they originated from North Africa. The other varieties believe are from Iraq, okay. And there’s also a bar he variety, which is a very unique date, and that’s grown. That’s actually harvested in the unripe conditions actually, it’s actually yellow like a yellow apple, and you actually it is crunchy, you actually eat it like an apple. It’s like, I don’t know, it’s it’s very sweet. But it’s crunchy. It’s not it’s not soft and chewy, like a ripe date. They do ripen in that form, but but they’re edible in a in a non ripen. Yeah. Which is very unique. So that’s also an Iraqi date variety. So Iraq, and then North Africa, Tunisia,

Grounded by the Farm  08:33

and they date back like, can we are saying Iraq, but they date back to like math at the time. Yeah, I mean, yeah, dates are like one of the oldest foods in the world.

Albert Keck  08:43

Probably. It’s, I think it’s one of the oldest cultivated fruit crops in the world. Yeah. Yeah. And I think a lot of the references in the Bible, I think, when they talk about certain trees that are referencing date palms, but they might not say date palms. Yeah. But yeah, it’s it’s obviously very central to Middle Eastern culture.

Grounded by the Farm  09:04

Yeah. So do the do the dates appear different. So the Medjool and the Deglet Noor are the biggest ones. In terms of percentages for you, US market. Even I noticed some of the ones look so much bigger on the tree.

Albert Keck  09:21

The modules are noted for their size, but that’s also a result of hand Vinny. Okay, and so, if you can imagine the flowers have days that the female flower on a date on it basically is a bunch with a bunch of with several strands on it and with a lot of berries that when they’re pollinated, they grow into dates. Well, those those modules, we go up with the workers and have been each strand, okay, which means twisting off the berries and keeping about an inch of space between the berries on the WoW strands is extremely labor intensive. So that results obviously in a much larger piece of fruit. Yeah, but a very expensive piece. So it’s laborious. It’s time consuming. It’s expensive,

Grounded by the Farm  10:09

right? Those more used in restaurants and culinary, then I,

Albert Keck  10:14

I’m not sure. I think in the US State market, I would say, I would say both the module and Douglas are about evenly split. And I’ve seen their application in both both culinary and whole fruit form and whatnot. Yeah.

Grounded by the Farm  10:28

Neat. I do like the idea that there are these magic golden ones out there that I might be able to find someday, but I don’t I didn’t see them today.

Albert Keck  10:36

bar here, you’re probably very seasonal. But for them in late August, find something very Specialty Produce market or so

Grounded by the Farm  10:47

yeah, I would say having lived in various parts of the country dates weren’t something I always saw in the typical grocery store in my neighborhood, I might see a more in the Mediterranean market, or some of those kinds of things that would at least be more plentiful, like you would have a larger package, or something of them. Whereas in some of the smaller grocery stores dates only came out sort of around the holidays with Datanet breads and some of those kinds of things. But it seems like they’ve gotten a little bit larger market share and a little more attention, probably because of the health properties. And

Albert Keck  11:25

I think I think in general produce in America has become a year round thing. You know, for all of us. We go to our supermarkets and the variety and quantity that’s available to us all year long.

Grounded by the Farm  11:39

Amazing is incredible. Yeah,

Albert Keck  11:41

yeah. And so that’s, we’ve become accustomed to that. I think in the old days, these fruits would come into season, and we would expect them we’d like you’ve just mentioned, in our mind, culturally, it’s like, oh, this is day season, and this is Grape season or watermelon season. Well, now we don’t have that anymore in our, in our in our own personal lives, cultures. But the other thing that and so there’s more competition year round for that, for that produce space in the supermarkets. And so there’s just it’s almost like too much choice almost, you know, it’s like, if I go somewhere, there’s too much choice I shut down. But the one thing we are enjoying, in produce in dates, especially fit into this is I think the American diet is, is more health conscious and conscious than it used to be. Yeah. You know, when I was a kid, it was like Cheetos and Doritos and get out of my way. And, and I noticed now the younger and the younger generations, the young adults and even the teens, that they’re aware of what they eat from a nutritional or dietetic perspective is really interesting. Yeah, that that’s, that that’s established itself in the, in our culture and the younger generations that they’re, they’re aware of those issues. And when I was young, just starting back from college, and we were struggling in the market with the data industry, and a lot of the people here were lamenting that it’s just old people that are eating dates, and they’re all dying, and we have no future. And and I

Grounded by the Farm  13:10

thought that was Prince. Yeah, totally different.

Albert Keck  13:13

Well, trends are very different than dates. And they still have that, that, I guess the laxative effect. But they’re high in fiber. But anyway, there. And so I remember that this there was this concern over the Yeah, it was it was a pessimism that was over the trade in that regard. And then I started thinking, oh, people are living longer to us, too. Right. So that could be an expansion of a market. But I didn’t expect the younger generations to latch on. Yeah. And that in the past 10 or 15 years, the per capita consumption of dates in this in the United States has gone from about a quarter a pound per person to about a half pound per person. Wow, that doesn’t seem like a lot. That’s a lie. But but a lot of your listeners might not think that’s a lot doubling, but that’s doubling the per capita consumption and to an industry like ours, when you go from one quarter pound to a half pound, that’s 10s of millions of pounds. And then you really need to plant more dates in the United States. A lot of that has resulted in a lot of important dates, which is a concern for me as a farmer, but I’m I am happy that people are eating dates whether they’re grown here are important I’m happy that they’re eating more dates and I want them to eat more yet but but it’s it’s it’s it’s good nutritious food and all natural and, and so yeah, we want to we want to keep increasing that per capita consumption we need to and so I’m optimistic even though we’re facing some stuff, some tough times right now I’m often asked

Grounded by the Farm  14:49

Well, how did you become a date farmer? Like what is your background path to

Albert Keck  14:53

get here? My grandparents they actually moved out from Los Angeles right before World War Two mm. My parents followed. And then me and my sister and brother in law succeeded. When I was in college, I realized I did not want to live on the coast in an urban area. Growing up here in India, this was when I was interior agricultural valleys that a lot of kids grew up in that their first thought is leaving and not coming back. And that was my plan. That’s like, Okay, I went to school here and going off to college. And thank you, Mom and Dad. And now I’m out of here. And I never thought I’d come back. Well, when I was in college, our nation when the recession, jobs weren’t plentiful. The data industry was in a tough spot as well. My, like I said, grew up in this grew up in this business, parents worked hard, I saw that I had that instilled in me growing up. But what I didn’t realize is that I also loved it. And it took me going to college to realize that I don’t want to work in an urban coastal information age, tech age environment. I’m getting out of here, I don’t know where I’m going, it’s going to be in agriculture. And I thought I might be in Missouri. I don’t know where it’s gonna be Kansas, Missouri. I don’t know, Ohio, I don’t know where it’s gonna take me. But I know I’m not going to be in coastal California. And then the date industry was in trouble. My dad was growing dates for what became dole food company, and they were getting out of the business, they were canceling his long term contract. That’s when having deep gardens was offered to him for sale. And my dad’s also a cattle ranch in New Mexico. And he was, I think, looking forward to finally retiring from the date business when this opportunity came up. And he he talked to me about it. He said, you know, Albert, you know, these guys are in trouble. It’s not a good time in our industry. I thought I was done. But they really want to get out of it. And if we want to accept their offer of this business, we can make that happen. Make it work. Yeah. But you have to want to come back and do this. If you don’t, that’s cool. He wasn’t pressuring. He was happy an option. He was happy with his plan. Yeah, not coming back or not continuing in the industry. And it was tough times. And I don’t blame him for that. And again, you know, farming has got that legacy aspect to it. Blood farming, it’s in my blood. But it’s also business. Yeah, makes no sense in doing it, if you’re gonna go broke and lose what you have, and that those are the 80s. And I think most people today don’t realize how much of a crisis farmers were in in the 1980s in this country. Yeah. I grew up in that. So my parents struggling and interest rates were pushing 20% recession helped me make a decision. And I said, Yeah, that sounds like a great idea. Let’s do it, and came back. And my sister and brother in law followed me shortly thereafter. And I forgot to get the approval of my fiancee.

Grounded by the Farm  18:18

When you agreed to come back,

Albert Keck  18:19

yes. And she grew up in New York City in Manhattan. And I was, I was really worried that she would not agree to live in India, and said, Oh, I’m not I don’t know if I did this. I did not do it. Right. I know that much. But she, she was getting your teaching credential in LA. And thank goodness, she was loved being here. Yeah. She loved being here. So we made a go of it. We started having kids raised a family and, and turned out to be a wonderful life decision. Yeah, I love farming. It’s what I do. It’s natural to me. It’s, it’s it’s in my blood. We got in it was a tough row very long time of just the industry is in a bad spot. Yeah. And again, like I said, a lot. A lot of my colleagues in the industry were lamenting, being in this industries and you know, our consumers are dying is no future and nothing else. Yeah. And our the industry is twice as big as it was back then.

Grounded by the Farm  19:26

Yeah, it’s amazing. And I’m sure this area has changed like immensely, right. So I grew up in Memphis. Memphis hasn’t changed that much. I would say Indio, the Coachella Valley is probably changed like, at least culturally like people know this area just because of music festivals and Palm Springs. Yes. And

Albert Keck  19:47

well, one thing we we enjoy is that this is a resort Valley. You know, not many farmers get to farm in a resort community. There’s there’s that dichotomy to our community. It’s nothing you could show value. He was always an escape for LA. And we talked about Memphis with Elvis Elvis honeymooned here in Palm Springs, Sinatra and Dean Martin. They all hung out here. Yeah, it was their little.

Grounded by the Farm  20:12

Just like, Yeah, let’s let’s go up hope has his own.

Albert Keck  20:15

Yeah. And so all those Hollywood celebrities back in the day, Palm Springs was their playground and it became a resort, obviously, as a result of all that, and our beautiful climate, you know, half the year.

Grounded by the Farm  20:28

I’m in here in the worst time of year. Yes. It’s like so freakin hot. Yeah,

Albert Keck  20:32

you’re dedicated that let all your listeners know just how committed you are to yeah, this getting them that information. But but it’s also been agricultural, because of its climate and in the water and is soils and whatnot. The valley kind of developed along both those two lines, hospitality resorts and agriculture. Many people in this valley don’t realize how your cultural This valley is. Yeah, they just think of it for Coachella Palm Springs, but the main connector in the valley is called high we went a lovin. And when I was a child, I remember that 111 was lined by date orchards. Those they’re just remnants of those days. And day palms are also used as a landscape specimen. So a lot of those developments have date palms from the old date orchards. And most people don’t realize that those one Levin’s wind by date origins, and we also call them date gardens. And I remember that people are a lot of times they’re very concerned because they see farmland being taken over by urban development, but most of coastal California was farmland. Orange County was named Orange County because of

21:42

oranges. Yeah.

Albert Keck  21:44

I think

Grounded by the Farm  21:45

we talked to an avocado farmer who had moved further and further out. They used to grow other things. They were in Orange County, and then they moved

Albert Keck  21:53

so Human civilization has, you know, obviously happened in

Grounded by the Farm  21:57

New York at LaGuardia had friends that used to farm in that area their family did

Albert Keck  22:01

so is civilization has always revolved around agriculture. And it’s in the cities have grown, where the farms were in the farms getting pushed further out and probably go to lower quality soils and whatnot. But anyway, there’s, you know, we always adapt. And so this valley is no different. The farms were long 111 and Urban Development, push those farms further southeast in our valley. Today, there might be more land and agriculture in our valley than was 50 years ago.

Grounded by the Farm  22:29

Let’s walk through you gave me a really good explanation while we’re driving around have the two months two months, like six different seasons that you have on a date farm because of that your farm is a little different than some like some farms really need seasonal labor. But yours has so much work being done throughout the year. So would you mind going through that

Albert Keck  22:49

it’s a year round endeavor. We have a year round climate here. The the growing of the, of the actual fruit is about a six months six to seven month process, okay? But the work in the orchards all year, it flows along a calendar year, very, very conveniently, in January and February we we have to go up the tree this is harvest is in the fall. So by the end of the year, we’re done harvesting. And then as we round out the new year, we start the work all over again. And that requires a cleanup of the trees. And so keep in mind every single tree has to be worked by hand. And so the palm tree workers we call them palmettos. And That’s Spanish for a man who goes into palm tree or something. So the Palmetto will go up the tree in January and February each and every tree, clean off the thorns that come with the new flush of fronds and cut off the old bunch stocks in the previous crop so that we’re cleaning up the tree it takes about two months.

Grounded by the Farm  23:50

So now if you don’t mind me stepping back. So people have seen palm trees, almost all of us have seen palm trees but may not have seen how they get trimmed out and that’s what you’re talking about is so the stock that had the dates on it to cut that off and the new ones that have come out from the center. That’s thorns on it, you’re getting neutrons.

Albert Keck  24:09

So the palm tree is most people know palm tree. It’s a long, skinny trunk with the fluffy head

Grounded by the Farm  24:18

and you have all sizes heights. Yeah, cuz some are the higher trees.

Albert Keck  24:22

The height of a palm tree is typically related to his age. So the older it is taller it gets. So a palm is basically a plant with a long skinny trunk and a fluffy head that fluffy head or the palm fronds, the leaves. They ate palm leaves have very severe thorns on and they’re about four to six inches long. Very, very thick. They

Grounded by the Farm  24:45

rip through flesh very rigid.

Albert Keck  24:47

Yeah, they’ll go through boots and tires and everything else. And so workers have to go into the crown of those deep pumps to work the crop, but they have to shave the thorns off of them before they can do that. So of the new flush of fronds, the leafs will come out with those meat thorns. So the first job in January February is D Thorning off those thorns and then cutting off the old bunch stocks and basically cleaning up the tree. And then that’s followed by pollination. So day palms are fruit producing trees, which means their flowers will develop into fruit. And the, the varieties that we grow here, they they typically bloom in March and April. Day palms are not insect pollinated, they’re wind pollinated, which means in a natural Oasis setting where they originate from. They also come in male and female, half the trees would be male, half of them would be female. The male flowers, male trees grow flowers, just like the female trees. The male flowers are instead of tight, compact berries on the stem, excuse me, they’ll have pods along their stem that are hollow and full of and full of pollen, okay. And as those flowers grow in them, and then open and bloom, as the pods drive out, pollen is then released into the air. And so in a natural setting, the wind would just dust that pollen all throughout the air and the female flowers, they bloom and open and and those female flowers have pollen land on them, and then that creates pollination, which creates fruit and the date industry.

Grounded by the Farm  26:31

Things open to happenstance. Yes, exactly. The wind goes

Albert Keck  26:36

the right way. Right, you can write you can have one strong windstorm, take away all the male pollen for the rest of the season, that kind of thing. And so we actually intentionally cultivate and harvest the male flowers, bring them in, we dry them, we dust the pollen out of the pods, collected, filter them. And then we allocate the pollen to the workers, very measured basis, because it’s very expensive. And we know how much we need for for each acre female palms. And then the workers will then go and work the female palm by load, climb up the tree, get into the crown, open the flower, and then the flower by hand. And then we typically put a paper bag over the flower over the female flower. So we tie the female flower back up after we open and finish it, then put a bag over and then poke a hole through the bag with the hand duster. And then puff a couple puffs of pollen into that female flower. And the bag serves a purpose it contains the pollen but it also improves the local climate of that flower raises at probably a couple degrees, which if we’re if we’re above 65 degrees for four hours, we’ll get a successful pollination. And so that time of year in March and April, it could be cooler than that. So just you know, every little degree helps. And so that’s, that takes two trips up the tree because the female flowers don’t bloom all at once. And we have to go back up and capture the second flush and and so by the end of April, the workers have been up the tree three times. Those flowers that are now pollinated, will grow into bunches of fruit. And now keep in mind that they’re they’re artificially pollinated so that the heavier crops and then you would have just one pollination, well, those bunches would kick grow upwards of 100 pounds and break off the tree. Yeah, when they’re green and wet. And so in order to support the developing ripening bunch, we have to go allocate the bunches around the tree to balance the crop load and also support the bunch by tying each bunch to frond so as to support the weight of that bunch. And then at that point, that would be the fourth trip up the tree. And we’re usually done by That’s May and June. Yeah. So two months cycles for each of these. And then in July and August we go and now the crop is now pollinated set and then balanced around the tree and now it’s them now the fruit is growing. And you saw the bunches and they’re green at this point of the year in July and August. Those workers will then go back up each tree again. They’ll do a second pruning because palm fronds on all palm trees ACNs from the bottom of the crown so the oldest fronds would be on the bottom of the head of the crown. They will start to dry out later in the summer. So we prune those off the tree to keep the tree clean. And then we put the bags over the bunches that are now set and and basically ripening of course of the summer to protect them from birds and insect insects and also from rainfall.

Grounded by the Farm  29:47

I got some video of Rodolfo doing Yeah, yeah. And

Albert Keck  29:51

so it’ll protect them from so protects the ripening fruit and then in September we start harvesting the early varieties and then usually by Christmas We’re done with later varieties. The other thing that helps us because it’s a very skilled labor force, as you saw, it allows us to employ a permanent labor force year round. That’s highly skilled that takes years to develop these abilities. Within the valley, this small little tiny valley that Coachella Valley, we have microclimates, which also regulate the flesh of the flowers and the ripening of the crop right at different times throughout that season. And so they all diagram is spaced out a little bit. So geographically there are farms are spaced out across the valley. And so the other thing that helps regulate that, that pace of production is the age of the date, orchard and a variety of the date palms. So different varieties flush out earlier and ripen earlier than others, different age palms to the same thing, different locations in the valley, all those things. So a lot of details to keep track of all those things combined to help us regulate the labor force required to keep up with the crop. Yeah, and so it all it all works very nicely in the sense that it allows the workers more time to reach all those trees before, let’s say the flowers no longer receptive to pollen or before the crop is, is damaged by not being harvested. I think that works nicely for both the farmer and the worker in the sense that we’re able to manage these very highly skilled workers and they’re able to make a lot of money and work around. And you know, as far as the global economy, we’re, you know, we’re we’re fighting for consumer dollars for value. Consumers are demanding they want quality, you know, we have to meet that market. And the cost per unit is very important. So how do you operate in a very high cost environment like California, the United States in general, and you have to be productive, you have to, you have to mind your cost, you know, we win, especially in this environment. Nowadays, with fertilizer being crazy, you do trim corners, sometimes it’s just not worth it. To put that extra pound of nitrogen on with the cost of nitrogen. We’re always striving to keep costs contained. But you know, before we get so caught up on cost, we do have to have good production, we need yield and quality. And so it’s that yield and quality that that does pay for this high skilled labor and does pay for these inputs and you know, the water until and everything else. But again, we’re in a global environment, the economy, and it’s tough because we’re very expensive area to, to farm in especially for these produce crops.

Grounded by the Farm  32:41

Life isn’t always easy and catchy.

Albert Keck  32:43

No, no, no. Yeah. I’m sure the people that put on a concert ever. You are right. Yeah. Like people put on the conscious work hard. And they have to keep their costs under control to put on a good show. But yeah, like you say, we don’t see other people’s, you know, the details of their of their trades. Yeah. But yeah, this is this is how I actually think despite the specialization of our day crop being in this industry, yeah. Throughout agriculture and produce, especially, there’s so many things that are similar.

Grounded by the Farm  33:19

It’s wild. Yeah, yeah. And, and, you know, I think people get to know once you’re in farming, you get to know other farmers. So you get to have a line of sight on other things. We identify so closely, and so much that relates over,

Albert Keck  33:34

we saw a new orchard that’s not quite yet in production, right? It takes us about five years before we start getting crops off of these. I

Grounded by the Farm  33:43

asked you that question while we’re writing. But I didn’t ask it now.

Albert Keck  33:46

But the date palms don’t come into full bearing until about 10 to 12

Grounded by the Farm  33:50

years. Yeah. And you said the trees can last?

Albert Keck  33:53

Yeah, they can last seven or eight years. And then they start to fall over in the orchards thinned out. And then we finally bite the bullet and spend money to get rid of the orchard and replant it. But, um, but yeah, it’s a it’s a it’s a really long, long, long term endeavor. Yeah. And so

Grounded by the Farm  34:11

the oldest trees, maybe your dad or granddad?

Albert Keck  34:16

Those are going out now? Yeah. Yeah. And, and the trees that I’m planting today, I will see the end of Yeah, it’s kind of strange to think of it like that. But it’s a long

Grounded by the Farm  34:25

you’ll see I’m productive, but you won’t see

Albert Keck  34:28

see them and I don’t even see them leave the prime of their production, which is probably they’re typically prime producers through their 50s It’s almost like a human life cycle. You know, there’s a lot of jokes you can make you want to talk about dates.

Grounded by the Farm  34:47

But all the puns lined up, I mean, all the puns

Albert Keck  34:51

we talked about, see the the male palms and the female palms, so the male palms are are short, fat and lazy and And then once they do their job, which is one time per year, the female palms bear the load and work the rest of the year. And it’s one male for 50 female. So there’s a lot of fun things about days. And now Now, first the word date goes. Date, I think in the English language, I think it’s its origin is related to maybe in Latin with digit. So, Spanish, they call them Dotty. And I think that’s related to like, like a finger like a digit because they’re kind of like a digit, like,

Grounded by the Farm  35:36

a napkin. And the benches Yeah,

Albert Keck  35:38

and, and so I guess that that became date in the English language. And one of the things we do have the California date Commission, which is our Industry Association, to try to promote dates and research and all that. And, you know, one thing that we struggle with is how do you do a search for dates on our industry? Because, you know, you arrive at all the wrong ones, right? And even have a calendar date. That’s another difficult and so the thought crossed my mind and there’s something else we can call these things because you can’t do internet searches on them. But anyway, we, you know, it’s it. It’s it is what it is, we are California dates and that’s that’s what we tout but no I enjoy I love them. I enjoy this industry and and I enjoy that a lot of people are more and more people are enjoying

Grounded by the Farm  36:31

this nice. Oh, I’ll make sure we give people your website. We don’t

Albert Keck  36:34

sell to the retail trade. Now we’re just the farmer now but have the fruit orchards are cousins down the road, they are at retail. And there are other retail outlets in here in the valley. There’s a couple more large farm stands sell days in particular. And

Grounded by the Farm  36:53

they saw your dates were being loaded up in it look like I can find them in my local Costco.

Albert Keck  36:58

Yeah, they’re they’re available on the trade and we shipped to retailers and we also on our byproduct grades they’ll skip those go into energy bars are very popular for for that ingredient use large a lot of the large energy bar companies use dates as is their one of their base ingredients. And of course, dates have sugar and they have fiber and potassium. They’re just they’re just loaded with things. That profile nicely to the energy bar segment.

Grounded by the Farm  37:23

Yeah, yeah. Well, we’ll make sure they see your logo and stuff we when we came through, because it’s always fun to me to find somebody that you know, I have a friend that grows for Andy boy lettuce and like them when I see that lettuce in the store. I know like it’s from a farmer, like John. Yeah, these are real companies and real families. We need people who can grow it so that people like me can continue to do that they

Albert Keck  37:45

all go to the joy we all go to the produce aisle. Yeah, farmers do. And Assist is a nation of 350 million people and even more in the world will not get fed without commercial farming. And that’s, but I think those family farming operations, which by and large are commercial operations. We hold those values and I think people admire, yeah, that’s hard work, care for the land care for the workers care for the consumers. You know, my, my suppliers, and my customers are also part of what I feel responsible for. Right? I think, and I don’t think I’m unique in farming,

Grounded by the Farm  38:28

I think, I think pretty standard.

Albert Keck  38:30

I wholeheartedly agree with that.

Grounded by the Farm  38:33

Thanks so much for coming, we will have this video up on grounded by the farm, you guys are gonna really enjoy it so many odd things I’ve never even seen. So I really appreciate Albert, thank you so much for having me.

Albert Keck  38:46

So Janice, thanks for the time you took and all the all the preparation that went into this as well. I really admire that. I

Grounded by the Farm  38:52

had a great time. It was enjoyable for me too. I’m not sure why, but I had never given much thought to date. And wow, did I learn a lot, especially getting out and seeing it. So I tried to capture a lot of that in the video. And I think you ought to find it interesting. It’s on grounded by the farm.com or the grounded by the farm YouTube channel. Go ahead and take a look at that. We’ll share it on our Facebook page too. But I really am blown away and got myself some dates through Amazon. So Hadleys also has retail partners, one of whom actually offers their dates on Amazon. So I’ll leave a link for that here too. And we’ll talk to you guys again in two weeks. Thanks so much.

The post Date Farming, Grounded by the Farm, Episode 321 Transcript appeared first on Grounded by the Farm.

23:50

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

cows, milk, dairy, farm, barn, big, herd, eat, people, ice cream, logan, jerseys, day, cattle, operation, water, bred, bacteria, grow, anthony

SPEAKERS

Charlie Coblentz, Grounded by the Farm, Anthony Coblentz

Grounded by the Farm  00:03

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. For this episode, we’re in northeastern Oklahoma, it’s a beautiful area. Not sure if you’ve been here before, pretty hot and humid this time a year. Today, what I’ve done is go to visit two different dairy farms. And so excited, we’ve got video from both of those on the website grounded by the farm.com. Midwest Dairy actually created this event for a number of people around Oklahoma and myself to come in and meet these farmers on two different operations. Really appreciate that, and they’re sponsoring this episode. That’s a first for us, you may notice that in this I interviewed three different people. So you’ll find that I’m trying to keep them straight for you as we do it. You got Charlie and Anthony who farm with the rest of their family, their dad, mom and brother and then Logan, who farms on his own for the most part, but his sister actually as part of his operation, and his parents are incredibly supportive. With that we’re going to start with Anthony and Anthony, I want you to tell me a little bit about your farms background and how would you just describe your family’s operation for our listeners.

Anthony Coblentz  01:30

So our family farm includes two generations, three generations, I guess, with myself, my two other brothers and my mom and dad being primary operators on it. We operate primarily Holstein, dairy, and among other crops we raise and beef cattle that we raise.

Grounded by the Farm  01:47

So you grew up around dairy farming, right?

Anthony Coblentz  01:49

Yes, it’s multiple generations, like your grandparents, your great grandkids or when did it start? So technically, I guess, even generations before that, everybody always had a milk cow. So everybody milked cows, but my dad and my mom started gearing in 1972.

Grounded by the Farm  02:06

Okay, I shouldn’t have asked you what town are you in?

Anthony Coblentz  02:08

Choteau would be the address and the name of the farm? Charles H and Ellen L Coblenz. Dairy farms incorporated.

Grounded by the Farm  02:16

All right. Now Logan, tell me a little bit about your farm and sort of what you’re doing.

Anthony Coblentz  02:21

So our farm is Courtney farms dairy part of Courtney farms, which is a multi generational family farming operation. There’s currently three generations on the farm at present. I didn’t grow up in the dairy industry, like Coblenz did but grew up in production agriculture, with beef cattle, crops and hogs. Dairy was a passion that I’ve had a big interest in pretty much all my life. Yeah. through organizations like for H I became involved in showing dairy at county fair state fairs, those type of events. And I decided I wanted to make it to the my career choice as an adult. So in 2017, we started milking commercially, my sister and I own pedigreed herd of registered jerseys. So a little bit different than what most dairy farms are with the big black and white cows, we milk little brown cows. So that’s kind of

Grounded by the Farm  03:11

and I hope you don’t mind. So on the Koblenz is we have like from the 70s. And you said you started? Did you start in college or after college?

Anthony Coblentz  03:20

Well, after I left college, I started dairy farming. I have some very supportive parents who were very encouraging my career choice. Probably not most parents would be happy about their kids coming back home to milk cows, but I made it work. And it’s something that I really enjoy every day. One of the things

Grounded by the Farm  03:37

I think is really interesting, Charlie, when we got on your farm today, your dad had given us some background and everything. But when we came in the first building we saw was the milking barn. Would you mind tell him sort of how that setup works and sort of how you keep your herd doing what it needs to do?

Charlie Coblentz  03:57

Yeah. So the first thing you would have saw was our milk barn. You stood in the cafeteria where we make the milk the bottles of milk to feed the baby calves you went to their first and then went into the milking parlor is a double 30 was 60 milkers 30 on each side, and we design that we use a design for a milk barn that should that could milk cows 24 hours a day. But we need to try we’re trying to milk our 400 cows in the morning and evening chore as quick as possible. And two guys milk or or or gals which by the way, women are always better milkins they would be there they’re always more sensitive, always more caring always do a better job. I shouldn’t tell but most of the time they do a better job but so and we need help right now. So if you know anybody wants to milk cows and round around Shoto area should Oklahoma come on down. Especially if you’re especially if you’re a caring sensitive woman and you you are hired

Grounded by the Farm  04:52

is married lady. This is a pickup lot. Okay, so

Charlie Coblentz  04:57

we’re milking we’re trying to milk 400 Cows Basically as fast as we can twice a day, so that’s why that’s why I’m on set up. But we put two or three extra people in there. And you can really knock it out fast and get it done. But that’s,

Grounded by the Farm  05:08

that’s as fast as you can. Is that good for the cows are

Charlie Coblentz  05:12

yes, the less time they’re standing up on the in the lot on concrete. Okay, the better it is on them.

Grounded by the Farm  05:16

So that’s like farmers, they don’t like to stand on Congress. Exactly, exactly.

Charlie Coblentz  05:21

I mean, it hurts me to stand still. So on concrete, but same way with the cows up. So they’re in and out as fast as possible cow milks an average of seven minutes. You know, some are, you know, from two minutes to 15 minutes, but we’re basically we’re trying to get them in and out as fast as possible, get them back to their beds, the feed to the water tanks and to their, to their, where they can where they can hang out and be nice and comfortable.

Grounded by the Farm  05:43

And since we weren’t at your barn at five o’clock in the morning, I wasn’t able to get video of the milkers working but I do have video of the parlor and what it looks like. And I do have some of that kind of video from another farm. So I might splice them in so people can see generally how it works. Because yours you have those 30 days you sit on each side. So you got 60 cows in there at any time when you’re milking.

Charlie Coblentz  06:08

Yes, yeah, it would be very unusual to walk in there and see 60 milkers on at the same time, but it would not be uncommon to walk in and see 30 members on one side that were just put on 30 cows coming in on the other side. Yes. And you know, there’s the first couple 100 cows will come in on their own and turn as fast as they can just to be ready to be ready to be milked and then in your truck. We’re always training we kept out 60 heifers in the last two months. So we’re always we’re always training some new some new cows also enjoy it’s a bit of a process. Yeah.

Grounded by the Farm  06:39

Alright, let’s talk about milking at your place looking because it’s pretty different.

Anthony Coblentz  06:44

So it it is different. Walking in our barn versus Koblenz his barn does look different. But the same basic principles apply. We’re wanting to get our cows milked and back to where they can be comfortable. And we want our cows to you know, be calm, and you know everything while they go through our barn. Something a little different. We were the first robotic dairy in Oklahoma, this new technology for this part of the country. But

Grounded by the Farm  07:05

it’s gonna tell you when I told a friend last night I was coming to robot dairy, where robots milk the cows, they really were I think they thought the Jetsons kind of robots or something?

Anthony Coblentz  07:15

Oh, yeah. And that’s a lot of people are surprised that cows can be milked with robots. It’s technology that’s been around for quite a while in Europe. Some of the oldest robots are 20 years old. So it’s new technology here. But it’s not new technology as a whole. Yeah, unlike how Charles is dairy, they bring in, you know, 60 cows, we’re only milking one cow at a time. So it looks like we’re milking slower, but we’re milking day and night. So the cows freely come and go as they choose from pasture, come up into the barn to eat, to get milk to go hang out with friends do whatever they’re going to do throughout their day. So it’s really about free cow flow, the cows do what they want. We make sure our cows are milked twice a day, we go through the herd and make sure that you know Samantha Mae and whoever has visited the robot and got milk we shoot for 2.5 visits a day is kind of our goal. But higher cows that are higher producers making more milk per day can milk more times a day if they want to. So it’s very customized to the cow.

Grounded by the Farm  08:14

Yeah, it’s funny, but looking at both. So I learned early on that cows only Moo when they need something, or when they sent something is wrong or something like that. And moving through the cattle in both places. The cows seem pretty quiet and pretty content, I would say would you say, Anthony that part of that is your cows get a routine they know they’re being cared for? Or what is what is it that makes them so happy? Go lucky.

Anthony Coblentz  08:45

So cows really like normal? They they thrive with normal. If random people show up, it does kind of throw them off, like what’s going on? And they’re very curious animals, but just keeping them quote unquote normal. Is there.

Grounded by the Farm  08:58

Like a routine like a toddler?

Anthony Coblentz  09:00

Yep. So I mean, if you all of a sudden, don’t let your toddler sleep? No, they don’t get their nap. They’re going to act different. Yeah. So basically, as long as they’re left alone to do their thing, like they normally do eat, drink water lay around to count out

Grounded by the Farm  09:13

when we were going through the barn and people will say we were on a wagon with hay, I noticed that the cattle they kind of had like beach access with sand or something.

Anthony Coblentz  09:23

Yep. So they have sand beds. It’s also for comfort, but also bacteria and things don’t grow in sand. So it’s a good media did to clean and to let them lay in.

Grounded by the Farm  09:34

That makes sense. And I noticed on the concrete there was always scoring of the concrete. I know a lot of people like to do that with their floors these days at home, but that’s a piece you mentioned about how the cattle walk and the cows then won’t slide so much.

Anthony Coblentz  09:49

Yeah, so cattle hooves are very hard and then you know, they’re they’re kind of top heavy. So they’re, you know, they’re on a slick surface. Yeah, if it’s no groove or anything like that, that Slide and you don’t want them to fall. So we take a lot of effort to get grooves and things to make sure that they, if they ever happen to slipper, you know, they can catch themselves,

Grounded by the Farm  10:09

that’s Holsteins are pretty big. They’re the black and white cows that everybody always thinks of, and what makes that whole thing so great, and the dairy world,

Anthony Coblentz  10:18

it’s kind of a generational thing, or even longer have they been bred through the centuries, they give a lot of milk, they basically, you know, even for their offspring that they would no normal cat could consume all the milk that one Holstein cow produces. But we also we do have some crossbreds in the herd for components, but also trying to fit different, you know, it’d be great to milk all different types of cows at once. But your facilities, you know, a Jersey cow is a lot smaller than a Holstein cow. So then, if they don’t fit right in the stall, then they maybe defecate in the bed or not about that they don’t fit in the stall of milk barn. So they have a lot of room to kind of bounce around. So it’s kind of it’s nice to have more of a uniform size that way that there’s not a big, you know, variance, you know, because sometimes the jerseys are kind of funny that they’ll like to lay in the beds backwards. And so there’ll be

Grounded by the Farm  11:08

jerseys have more personality. They

Anthony Coblentz  11:10

do they they know. Okay, they sent open gates. Yeah, yeah, they already had to see him. They just sent him that they know they’re

Anthony Coblentz  11:17

there. Well, I’m mostly able to open a gate to snow.

Charlie Coblentz  11:20

Okay, yeah, they are real quick. This is not negative toward Holsteins or anything, but I want to Holstein is born, they’re looking for a reason to die. When a jersey is born, they are lively. It is true.

Grounded by the Farm  11:34

We’re so glad Charlie weighed in on that. You should see the response from his parents in the background. So Logan, you guys have jerseys, which I think are the prettier cows, they’ve got the long eyelashes, which are really fashionable right now. But tell me a little bit about the difference in those and some of the things that you do at your place, because you’re they’ve got barns separated from the milking, they’ve got your operations just set up totally different. But are you taking good care of those cattle?

Anthony Coblentz  12:07

So our operation is quite a bit different than the Coblenz is farm our cows, they don’t have sand beds to lay in, we utilize pasture. So we utilize systems such as holistic grazing, to manage our grasslands. Yeah, conservation is a big thing for us. So we’re using dairy cattle to manage grasslands that Bison would have in past centuries. So as part of our conservation program on our operation, so we need a cow that’s a little more heat tolerant Holsteins, like fans and stuff a little bit more they need a little bit different housing for the jerseys can be out there out in the fields all day, they travel a little better. They’re a little smaller, they’re a little more lively. So also a big plus for us. Milk is priced according to components. Partially though we’re components are butterfat, and protein, so we’re really wanting to breed for those really high fat and protein cows that makes yummy stuff like cheese, ice cream and yogurt. You know, who doesn’t like butter fat? So yeah, so it’s a little bit different. Also, we enjoy breeding jerseys. All of our cows are pedigreed. They have 150 years of breeding behind them that’s carefully selected, and we exhibit our cattle that shows and stuff. So it’s fun to take cows that you bred at the farm to a show and come back with ribbons and I got selfies with one Eric. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And that’s another plus the show cows they love. They love taking pictures. So that’s a that’s a big plus. So.

Grounded by the Farm  13:24

So. So he mentioned some of the types of sustainability work he’s doing your farm and operation is just very different. And I know you do the cropping on that side. Now, Charlie, can you tell me on the sustainability side since you guys don’t put your cows out on pasture as much per day?

Charlie Coblentz  13:43

Yeah, yeah, we have several pastures that the cows can also go to. It’s really, they’re open right now. They’re open to go out to pasture, but they choose to lay in the sand beds underneath. On a day like today, I would choose to be inside today to weather the weather’s nice, they will go out they will go out but today they’re hanging out inside.

Grounded by the Farm  14:00

All right. And so help me understand some of the other sustainability pieces. So you do have that option of going out on the field and having sort of the grasslands are managed and some of those pieces what else are you guys doing in terms of sustainability on the farm, and Anthony, would you mind covering that?

Anthony Coblentz  14:18

So in that freestyle barn that they stay in, the barn is scraped clean once a day, twice a day, and that manure is collected and then put into a spreader and then it goes out on all the farm ground fields. So the crops that we’re raising the corn silage and corn that we’re raising and an alfalfa, we take that manure back out to the farm fields and spread that out over the ground.

Grounded by the Farm  14:39

Oh, that’s fantastic, right? It’s, it almost gets to like composting or some of that kind of thing that people do at their home gardens or something. Can you help me understand some of those other pieces? You also do some cool stuff with water. I think management on the farm when we were looking through the parlor when there A neat piece where yeah, we’re doing some things to kind of take the water through, it was caught right there.

Charlie Coblentz  15:06

Yes. So we catch every drop of water in the milk barn or on the concrete there. And it will end up in our lagoon, which is it’s a big, it’s probably a big pond. It’s a big, it looks like a big pond. Yeah, basically. And we will this summer, as it gets drier, we will want we will pump that out onto our farm onto our fields and water crops with it.

Grounded by the Farm  15:27

And part of the thing that I find just amazing is you guys are checking for bacteria and stuff in that kind of product as well as you know, you’re worried about food safety with the milk and the cows and stuff. But you’re also very focused in on Bacteria entering any of those other systems Logan

Anthony Coblentz  15:42

And another great thing about that it’s nutrient rich water, it’s not just runoff water, so it has nutrition that can go and grow crops and stuff. And so it’s it’s not a waste product, it is a valuable part of any farm really that’s you that utilizes that water

Grounded by the Farm  15:56

and part of it you test it for the types of nutrients and offers as well as the bacteria, right. So what the nitrogen amount is so that you know really what you’re feeding the soils to get what you need out of it.

Charlie Coblentz  16:09

Yes, and that’s one of the things is recent change on all these were those milk cows are milked, cows are eating about 1000 acres of corn a year. So we’re constantly making that sparkle from the with the lagoon water which is full of nutrients and over the counter, is we are we’re grid sampling our soils to figure out what each acre needs. So that’s that’s a recent change is trying to fit instead of just dumping everything out there. We’re trying to we’re trying to grid sample figure out what we actually need for each acre.

Grounded by the Farm  16:37

So you guys really are trying to work the animals and the land and everything together. Can we talk about something a little more exciting, like your favorite dairy foods? Okay, so who’s gonna go first ice cream. Anthony is weighing in with ice cream.

Charlie Coblentz  16:51

Every time we it gets brought up that that maybe we shouldn’t milk cows anymore because it’s very hard to make money on cows. It’s very, it’s very stressful. And it takes seven days week, but I always think about who’s gonna make the ice cream if we stop.

Grounded by the Farm  17:06

Logan, are you a ice cream guy?

Anthony Coblentz  17:08

Well, ice cream is obviously wonderful, but I prefer cheese. It’s far, far more diverse. And so it’s, you know,

Grounded by the Farm  17:15

you even had cheese out for us today. So that’s, that’s like, bonus points for having snacks available. Do any of you guys do? Do you make any of your own ice cream like every now and then do you have one of those old turns that my dad used to make me turn?

Charlie Coblentz  17:32

Not yet.

Grounded by the Farm  17:36

I love it. I love it. Any favorite recipes that your family does that includes dairy do use a lot of of yogurt type products,

Anthony Coblentz  17:45

like cheesecake.

Grounded by the Farm  17:46

I like cheesecake. You’re a big cheesecake family. Oh, my brother in law has a cheesecake. That’s amazing. He’s a fantastic cook when it comes to cheesecake. Logan, how about your family?

Anthony Coblentz  17:56

We do a lot of yogurt. Yes, that’s kind of a big one at our house.

Grounded by the Farm  18:00

Yeah. Yeah, I’m a huge fan of milk. But I’m gonna tell you I’m one of those people as a little problem with lactose. So some of the filtered milks and some of those things has made it easier for me to enjoy more milk. I’m a big fan of chocolate milk, especially any of the cream top kind of products, a big fan of those. And I understand it helps me replenish the nutrients. You know, like if I’ve been really sweating having a hot day, something like chocolate milk gets me back on the road faster.

Anthony Coblentz  18:32

Chocolate milk is great. I mean, what’s not to like on it? We consume a lot of dairy at our house meaning ice cream is probably my favorite. But do I eat ice cream all the time? Not so much. But cheese is probably an every every meal. Yeah, it’s

Grounded by the Farm  18:46

I’ve known a lot of farmers and not until I started working with dairy farmers did I always have milk brought to the table. It’s not something that happens. You know, when you’re eating dinner in the city, we don’t always have milk on the table. But I love how many farmers actually get milk on the table. Because they know it’s actually delivering all those great nutritional kind of components. So like vitamin D, calcium, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all those different things, right? I’m a whole milk girl myself, but I’ve found reasons for all the other types of milk and heavy creams, all those kinds of things but in different places. Do any of you guys really know about that nutritional side of the dairy piece?

Anthony Coblentz  19:25

Milk is one of the only things in nature that provides all nutritional needs. I mean, you can it will sustain life. So I mean, that alone speaks a lot that milk and sustain life. So the milk fats and sugars in it are highly nutritional, full of vitamins.

Grounded by the Farm  19:41

I really appreciate it’s got that combination of protein that’s hard to get in a drink or something you know, like protein isn’t automatically unless you’re getting one of those weird shakes with some white, some kind of powders in it and stuff. I’m a big fan of getting some protein because it’ll make me feel full for a little bit. I’m kind of between things. But that upset cycling, like I can’t eat grass, I don’t want to eat grass, I appreciate that your cattle eat grass, they eat things that I would never want to eat. I’m a big fan of cottonseed oil you can grab and yeas and that all day, but I don’t want to eat the fuzzy seed. And you guys showed me that that’s in your rations for your cattle, right? So what kind of things do cows need to eat to feel happy.

Anthony Coblentz  20:28

So we do have a paid nutritionist that we use for formulating our rations and stuff like that for the dairy. But I mean, just like, you know, we need a well balanced diet for whatever we consume kind of the same thing with cows, making sure we meet their energy requirements or fat needs.

Anthony Coblentz  20:42

Well, dairy cows are like extreme athletes, they need a very carefully balanced diet. And, and it is easier to use a nutritionist to make sure that we’re meeting those goals the same way a Olympic athlete is not formulating their own meal plan, there is somebody that’s, you know, gone to school that know how to do a nutrition plan to meet their optimal potential. And it’s the same way with a dairy cow.

Grounded by the Farm  21:02

That’s a great way of thinking about it, because they’re focused on their job at hand on a regular basis. And on your farm, they actually get Scooby Snacks delivered in the robot.

Anthony Coblentz  21:11

Yeah, so our cows are fed while they’re being milked, and we feed a sweetened grain in there that sweetened with molasses. So it’s a, it probably wouldn’t be sweet to us if we ate it, but to them, they think it’s really something special. So we’re bribing cows with treats,

Grounded by the Farm  21:26

and it happens I can I can be bribed easily is there some big Watch out just real quick, always has something to say we

Charlie Coblentz  21:35

in order. Okay, we have to, we have to make money to keep doing this, we have to be we had to financially it has to make sense. But if our cows are not happy and comfortable, all the time, they cannot produce milk. So cow comfort is everything to us,

Grounded by the Farm  21:53

I appreciate that that’s a real, real clear line. It just makes good sense long term, and it keeps those cows in your herd for years to come so

Anthony Coblentz  22:03

well, in the same way a good employer takes care of his or her employees. It’s the same way with cows, we want the cows to be around for a lot of years old cows that are in the herd a long time are going to produce good quantities of milk. Like they are saying, there’s not big profit margins and milking cows. So you have to partially want to be doing it to start with, but if we can keep those cows in the herd longer, we have cows that you know, are in the herd for years and years and years, 910 12 years old, and you know, they’re still in the herd living their best life making milk. And that really comes down to cow comfort.

Grounded by the Farm  22:35

Well, I really love that we’ve been able to see two really different dairies, we’ll have that video up on the website. And then having this conversation, there’s some real differences in the way you milk and the way you choose which breeds of cows on your farm and things. But at the end of the day, what I’m hearing is, is you both are really both farms are focused in on animal comfort, you’re both looking out for the environment. And you both are presenting a healthy, wholesome product for us at the end that’s really safe for consumers. And that is the kind of thing that you’d be happy to serve your children or my nieces and nephews and things along that line. And I think that’s what makes dairy a pretty different piece of the world is that you guys get to do all those things. So thanks so much for sharing your stories, we’ll make sure that we put any of the social media that you guys want to share with us. So folks want to get back in touch. And this episode is sponsored by Midwest Dairy. So we’ll make sure you have all the information on how to get back in touch with them as well. Thank you guys.

The post Oklahoma Dairy Farms, Grounded by the Farm, Episode 319 Transcript appeared first on Grounded by the Farm.

In this week’s episode, we talk with Will Kornegay about how Ripe Revival is capturing food waste at the farm and providing access through subscriptions and outreach to people in rural food deserts.

An AI generated transcript is available for this episode.

Working on farms and having an entrepreneurial spirit go well together. Add in an interest in building connectivity between people growing food and those eating it and a passion for eastern North Carolina and you have a full picture of Will Kornegay, founder of Ripe Revival & Ripe Revival Market.

What food waste at the farm do they capture?

With a base in Rocky Mount, NC, Will has a network of farmers growing a really wide diversity of crops — bell peppers, cabbage, watermelons, cantaloupe, berries and of course the sweet potatoes that first piqued his interest.

Will says farmers have grown accustomed to planting and caring for crops throughout the year only to harvest a portion — sometimes as little as 50 percent because of some sort of cosmetic issue. That waste on the farm level doesn’t only take a toll on the farmer, but the ripple created on the economic and the environmental sides are hard too.

What is Ripe Revival?

Having worked on a sweet potato farm for several years, Will had a chance to see first-hand how much food waste at the farm could happen. A pepper gets sunburned or a spaghetti squash got scratched a bit and grocery stores know it won’t be sold as people pick the ones that look best. But Will knew the other things all have a great nutrition profile as well as taste.

He set about thinking about various ways that produce could be captured and made into something more attractive. And while he started with high protein gummies made out of the food that would have been wasted. And they have moved on to several more businesses since.

Pivoting during the Pandemic

Will was completing the investments to make those high protein gummies when covid began shutting things down. Suddenly a new product wasn’t as interesting to stores and suddenly the farmers in his area lost contracts with restaurants so they were facing more waste than ever. That’s when Will launch a produce box service. And while we’ve had farmers who previously did this (including avocado farmers and tomato farmers), Will’s ongoing commitment to reducing food waste makes it different.

He not only started doing produce boxes for people who weren’t able to find produce at their local grocery. He’s building that service out to add meat, allow for choices among products and farms and more. And he also got grants to get food to some of the people in greatest need. And he continues to build more programs for the rural poor.

Serving the Community

Finding a win for the farmers and rural poor in the area is a major thrust for Ripe Revival. The team has purchased farm equipment and is working with schools and non-profits to plan and plant gardens and is converting buses to serve as mobile markets bringing produce to the rural food deserts in the area, having a team that teaches about nutrition and cooking and more.

Learn More about Ripe Revival

You can follow along as the business continues to grow by connecting with Ripe Revival online.

• Ripe Revival on LinkedIn
• Ripe Revival on Instagram
• Ripe Revival on Facebook
• RipeRevival.com and RipeRevivalMarket.com

The post Capturing Food Waste at the Farm & Providing Access to More Nutrition appeared first on Grounded by the Farm.

As episode 305 came together, I remembered having had a blog post on my site Hundred Percent Cotton for years describing what cows eat and why. I had a veterinarian friend — Dr. Kathy Swift who also does really awesome art — put together the information to answer my question on the various components of the diet cattle need.

Kathy points out a few key points:

• Feeding cattle properly is a very important part of keeping them healthy.
• Like with people, a lot of diseases can be treated and prevented through proper nutrition.
• Cows have a very unique microbial population in their stomach that allows them to digest parts of plants that humans cannot.  This presents a unique situation and opportunity.
• Like a lot of households building a grocery budget, feeding cattle economically is also important. In fact, for dairy farmers, 50 percent of the expenses on a farm can be on feed!  So finding nutritional and economical sources of quality feedstuffs is also important.

Working with livestock nutritionists and veterinarians, farmers find various sources of calories, ruffage and more that the cows will need. Grass is a big part of that, but knowing how seasons work and grass goes dormant, farmers harvest feeds or bring them in for storage.

That leads us to one of the points we discussed in the episode, farmers feed a range of byproducts to their cattle. There are several reasons farmers turn to byproducts on farm and off.

Farmers Embraced Sustainability Long Ago

Finding uses for those things that are left over is something farmers have done for all time. And that is a major piece of sustainable, environmental practices. And sometimes these byproducts come from other farms or ag-related businesses, and may otherwise end up in landfills, etc but can provide some key nutrition for cattle.

As Kathy shared the information, she also shared some photos. The rest is the way Kathy wrote it out for me:

Before farmer even begin with feeding byproducts, you have to decide where you’re going to put them.  Proper storage of these feed ingredients is essential.

Notice the roof and concrete walls?  This keeps the area dry and reduces the amount of spoilage.  The concrete wall and floors also allow for a thorough cleanup once the area is empty.

The feed barn is separated into “bays” by a concrete wall in between.  This allows only one feed ingredient to be in each bay.  This allows for better inventory control  and allows the farmer to only include that specific ingredient when making a feed mix.

Now that we’ve got a place to put them, I’m going to show some of the individual feed ingredients.

This is a pile of whole cottonseed. When cotton plants are harvested and processed to get the cotton fibers, the seeds are captured by the cotton gin.  This whole cottonseed is a good source of fiber, energy and protein for cattle.  Yes, it’s as soft as it looks.  (I must admit I have taken a running leap into the pile on an occasion or two.)

The white “fuzzy” portion is actually not cotton, but the cellulose portion that makes it fiber effective.  (Remember that special bacteria I said cows have?  It allows them to digest the cellulose.)

Cottonseed can be fed to adult cattle because their stomach bacteria are capable of digesting it.  Monogastric animals (like people, cats and dogs) and young cattle and chickens cannot eat whole cottonseed because of the naturally-occurring plant chemical gossypol, which they are overly sensitive to.

Citrus pulp is another feed byproduct for cattle.  It is the dried leftovers of the pulp, peels and seeds of grapefruit, oranges, lemons and limes.  The pulp is created during the process of juicing citrus fruit, something we have a lot of in Florida, compared to the rest of the country.  This pulp is dried by machines to a moisture level of approximately 10 percent (pretty dry).  It is a good source of calcium and carbohydrates and the cows love it!  It smells like the orange extract you use when you’re baking.  To make it easier to store, a portion of it will get made into pellet form, but the cows enjoy the peel form better.  This, of course, is a very economical feed product in Florida since most dairy farms are very close to orange groves.

Wet brewers grains are the byproduct of producing beer.  This is another favorite of the cows too.  It is a high protein feed and an average carbohydrate source.  It’s a wet feed (like the name implies) and is good at keeping a feed mix from getting to dry (like eating popcorn without butter).  Because it is wet, it has to be fed quickly because it won’t store for more than 3 to 4 days, especially in hot weather.  Close up, the texture looks a little bit like sawdust.  The brewers grains this farm feeds happens to come from the Anheuser-Busch plant near Jacksonville, Florida.  (Don’t worry, there is no alcohol present, but to be safe, we don’t let the cows drive.)

Distiller’s grains are almost the same thing as wet brewers grains, but are the byproducts from “spirit” making.  It is also used as a protein and energy source.  You may not be able to appreciate from the picture that there are some fine corn pieces and the same smell you might experience when cooking with the flavored alcohol extracts.

Anyone like grits?  Wonder what happens to the rest of the corn in the process?  The corn hominy we feed to cattle is the byproduct of making coarse grits for human consumption.  It is one of the most “powdery” feeds for cattle and is a good energy source.  The cows really like the taste of this.  This is their version of “candy”, but will give them a bad belly ache if they eat too much.

One of the main things needed to keep cows healthy is a good fiber source.  While the byproduct feeds I’ve talked about a good in a variety of ways, we still need an effective way to get fiber in them.  One of the ways is to feed a good quality hay.  This is alfalfa hay, which comes from farms in the west, typically Idaho.  Our sandy soil in Florida does not allow us to grow alfalfa effectively, although we sure can supply the sunshine.  We do have a variety of grasses that my clients make into hay, but they don’t have the protein that alfalfa supplies as well.

Dairy cows in Florida are typically fed two to three times a day.  Most dairy farmers have the fresh feed ready for them to eat once they return from the milking parlor.  (Their perfect time to refuel.)  To help speed things along, farmers will sometimes make a “premix” of the dry ingredients (much like you do when you’re baking).  This is an example of the premix at left.  Notice how everything is evenly mixed?  This premix includes everything I’ve talked about so far except the wet brewers grain (it would make a sloppy mess), but also includes their mineral, which is a gray, finely ground substance (a bit less coarse than table salt).

The last ingredient to talk about here is corn silage.  In Florida, the corn is typically planted in late February to early March and harvested about mid to late June.  The corn is harvested when it has a certain dryness (about 35 percent).  The entire plant (ear, leaves and stalk) is harvested and chopped.  This corn is then stored and allowed to ferment for a minimum of three weeks.

This dairy farm stores their corn silage in long plastic bags.  Some farms will use the upright silos or will use a large bunker.  For this farm, the bags best fit his management style.

You can see that these plastic bags for storing the corn silage are about 200 feet in length.

We’re finally ready to mix a load of feed for the dairy cows.  Using a loader, the farmer can put a specific amount of the premix, corn silage, and wet brewers grains into the feed mixer.  The operator dumps the feed into the mixer wagon (red thing behind the tractor).  The mixer acts like an industrial size kitchen mixer and completely and thoroughly mixes each ingredient.  Why would we want to do it this way?  Cows can be like kids and pick and choose what they want to eat.  To make sure they get a balanced diet, we make a big “casserole” (without having to put it in the oven.)

Now, it’s finally time to feed the cows!  Hearing the tractor and mixer wagon coming is their equivalent to ringing the dinner bell.  Chow time!

Yes, this gets done 2 to 3 times daily, 365 days a year.  The girls never take a day off.

Dr. Kathy Swift has been a cattle veterinarian in Florida since 1997.  When she’s not busy providing veterinary care to animals the North Florida area, she is enjoying her artistic side with 

The post What do cows eat and why? appeared first on Grounded by the Farm.

Eating turkey is such an integral part of the holiday season in the US, that I knew a year ago I had to find the right turkey farmers for Grounded by the Farm. My family has big Thanksgiving every other year, where we have several turkeys and a crowd enjoying it.

While my brother raises a turkey or two now and then, I’ve never been to a turkey farm and I love learning about the foods I enjoy. So yes, even before the show existed, I knew I would be doing this interview. And the other ideas kept coming so it became a series of interviews focused on various things that could end up on a holiday plate.

Meet Our Turkey Farmer — John Peterson

John Peterson is the third generation to work Ferndale Farms & Ferndale Market. He points out his grandparents, Fern & Dale, started the farm in Cannon Mills, MN more than 80 years ago and his parents still live on the farm. While his sister & he are evolving things, John takes a lot of pride in honoring a lot of the past including offering outdoor environments for the birds.

(Photo at right is John with his dad Dick on the farm.)

This is the peak season for Ferndale, getting birds ready for sale through a range of suppliers and restaurants for the holidays. Luckily, we caught John in September so he could talk us through working with pulots (baby turkeys) in the spring just after they break through the egg shell to a range of market weights for our tables. He also offers insight on the differences in fresh and frozen turkeys, how to handle so food safety isn’t a problem and he even offers tips for buying your Thanksgiving turkey.

Connecting with Ferndale Farms & Market

• Ferndale Market‘s website
• Ferndale Market on Facebook
• Ferndale Market on Instagram
• Video Overview of Ferndale Farms

Where to Find Grounded by the Farm on Social Media

• GroundedbytheFarm.com for photos, blog posts, show notes and more
• Ask the Farmers Facebook Page
• Groundedbythefarm_ on Instagram
• Grounded by the Farm on Youtube
• @groundedbythef on Twitter

Raw Transcript of the Turkey Farm Episode

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. All right here we are another episode in the holiday series for 2020. And I’m so excited to be talking to a turkey farmer in Minnesota of all places. We talked back in September because as you can imagine, with so many of us looking to get our Thanksgivings underway, he is pretty darn busy these days. Not only does john Peterson and his family have Ferndale farm, but they operate ferndown market, which enables people to go in and buy products directly from their farm and from some others in their communities. So it’s a pretty neat setup they have going on. I really love how he talks through the season, starting with chick and talking about how they choose to raise the turkeys they have on the farm. But I also appreciate that he is willing to talk about some of the things around food safety and different things on tips for people who may not have cooked their turkeys themselves this year with some of us taking smaller holidays than in the past. I think maybe his tips will be especially helpful for some of us. All right, here we go with john Peterson.

John Peterson  01:31

Yeah, well, you’re you’re exactly right. If we if we had attempted to do this any closer to Thanksgiving, I, I might have missed the call and you’re busy would be the appropriate word for our our November. And, you know, we’re we’re just sort of busy on all fronts. I mean, we have, you know, the farm piece. And so we’re, of course really busy getting turkeys ready for for Thanksgiving tables. But then we have our own farm store. And so we’re actively taking orders from customers that are going to be picking up a fresh thanksgiving turkey. And we also wholesale our turkeys to retailers and restaurants across the region. So we’re busy distributing turkeys as well. So it’s sort of like a, you know, all of the puzzle pieces that are in the air, and we’re working hard and then juggling to get them to fall into the right place.

Grounded by the Farm  02:13

Well, let’s start talking about the farm part first. A lot of people have seen like chicken barns. But what does a turkey farm look like? I’ve seen some videos from your place. And we’ll put that in the show notes. So people will get a visual, but let’s describe what it looks like in words.

John Peterson  02:31

Yeah, absolutely. So So our farm happens to be about 140 acres, our farm is in some ways similar to the way another farm would be would be set up in terms of how turkeys flow through our farm. And we’ll talk about that. But probably the biggest visual point of difference is that our turkeys are grown free range, so they spend at least second half of their life completely outdoors. So I’ll first talk about the parts that would be similar all in all turkeys, probably anywhere would start out in a brooder barn, where they’ll spend about the first month of their life in a really warm, clean barn, we’re doing a lot of hand feeding, hand watering to keep them comfortable and make sure that all those really immediate needs are satisfied. And then when they’re about a month or so old, we move them into more of a transitionary type barn where they’ll start in our case start to have outdoor access and they’re you know, a little bit more self sufficient at that age and certainly more more able to withstand temperature variation and things like that. And so those pieces would be pretty similar on any type of a any type of a turkey farm. The piece that comes next for us is that during the nicer weather our birds would be then moved out to to a range to a pasture or they would then spend the rest of their life and move through that range pasture about every week or so. On the fresh grass.

Grounded by the Farm  03:42

You said you start with a brooder barn So does that mean you guys get a lot of young turkeys delivered from like a hatchery or something?

John Peterson  03:52

It does and that’s a that’s a great question to ask because we used to hatch our own turkeys. In fact, I mentioned that we’ve been on our farm for 81 years and so of course the you know, first portion that was my my grandfather who got our farm started and his real love was hatching baby turkeys sort of the the science of you know of handling an egg and then incubating that egg into a healthy Turkey. A poult is the term for a baby Turkey. About 13 years ago stopped hatching our own it was just a incredibly labor intensive piece of the farm because we had to be picking eggs every hour those hens laying lots of eggs and we were picking them and bringing them to the to the incubator I I sometimes say that I spend most of my time growing up picking turkey eggs off of nests. We get out of that about 13 years ago and now you’re correct. We source all of our poultry. Within a day of their hatching they pack their way out of the egg and within a day they arrive on our farm and they are custom hatched for us. So they arrive on the farm and then we take it from there.

Grounded by the Farm  04:50

Right. I think a lot of people have probably heard friends or something talk about getting backyard chickens, and they get them as baby chicks and they raise them up from that. So it’s Very similar to, to that even on a backyard basis so people could raise backyard turkeys maybe

John Peterson  05:07

why get into it you got a good place to get turkeys?

Grounded by the Farm  05:10

Well tell me some of the differences with turkeys because for some reason I think the noise level might be really different.

John Peterson  05:17

Yeah, so this is a funny thing. I’ve spent my whole life around turkeys and really not around any other poultry or fowl species. So I don’t I don’t actually have a very good comparison people oftentimes ask me, you know how turkeys compared to chickens. And one of the funny things growing up, you know on a commercial turkey farm is that, you know, we were always taught to stay away from other birds because they could be carriers of something that could get into a flock of turkeys. I don’t know quite how they compare. But I do know turkeys can make a lot of noise. You’re right, you’re right about that jazz. And turkeys are so curious. I think that’s really the defining personality trait for turkeys. They’re just incredibly curious. When we are in a flock of turkeys. They’re always excited to see us and curious know what we’re up to and you know, generally following us around and oftentimes that includes a lot of noise making.

Grounded by the Farm  06:08

My niece wanted to know that turkeys that we’re buying, are they all male or all female or a combination of those things are? Yeah, we all see the turkeys as having that nice, beautiful tail to like show off.

John Peterson  06:22

Yeah, yeah, you’re nice has a great question here. Typically, most typically the turkey that you would purchase as a whole Turkey and would typically be a hen of female Turkey. With few exceptions. You know, on Thanksgiving, we do have some Tom’s male turkeys that would be sold as a whole Turkey. But typically, folks are looking for smaller size turkeys and that would you know, that would come from a hen. And then our Tom’s are more oftentimes more of a meat type turkey that we would grow to a larger size for more cut up or boneless products.

Grounded by the Farm  06:54

How long does it take for a turkey to go from that? What is the baby called again? Yeah. Yep. How long does it take from that to market weight? Or to your sales? Wait?

John Peterson  07:07

Yeah, it’s anywhere from about four to six months, depending on whether it’s the header of time and then the size that the size that we’re growing them to for six months.

Grounded by the Farm  07:16

I guess that the cycle for Thanksgiving is probably the biggest driver of Turkey sales. I’m gonna guess

John Peterson  07:24

you are correct. Yes. I

07:28

believe for sure.

John Peterson  07:29

Yeah. And and on Thanksgiving is the the pinnacle of the of the holidays and the turkey world. I always say our year starts and ends on Thanksgiving. And you know, as a farm focused on, you know, sustaining what we do, we’re always looking for ways that we can continue to bring demand into other portions of the year. And so we’ve added a lot of other turkey products that can really help give us you know, 12 months of foundation, but you are absolutely right. Thanksgiving is is certainly the time that every family in America thinks about purchasing a whole Turkey.

Grounded by the Farm  07:58

Yes. In addition to Thanksgiving, what are the other drivers? Well,

John Peterson  08:03

nationally, you’re exactly right, that, you know, the per capita consumption of Turkey is driven in large part by like deli sandwiches. And I think people are oftentimes they may struggle to think of times beyond Thanksgiving that they eat turkey and yet, how often do you go in order, you know, Turkey sob or something like that. So those are ways that a lot of you know a lot of the turkey would be consumed 12 months a year, we do some of those products, we make a milk turkey breast and a roasted turkey breast that are great for sandwiches and salads and things. But we’ve also tried to do things like Turkey snack sticks and Turkey hotdogs, you know, items like that, that that are really good for families on the goal for kind of that convenience that folks are looking for and food today.

Grounded by the Farm  08:48

I think Turkey has a good kind of nutritional outline, right? I mean, people talk about it making you sleepy a lot of the times like that’s the biggest thing about Turkey but really it’s a good lean protein.

John Peterson  09:01

Absolutely. Yeah, the for sure. That is one of Turkey’s real strengths. And you know what, it’s subbed in for other proteins awfully Well, our turkey hotdog, for example, or our turkey snack sticks carry the same kind of a great flavor that you would expect from a you know, hotdogs nextech made with another protein, because turkey does take on those other flavors really well. And yet it is incredibly lean. I do just have to say that, you know the the notion that Turkey makes everybody sleepy turkey does contain trip to fan but people never seem to realize that they also you know, and just two pounds of potatoes and you know, piles of

09:38

crap. A lot of times

John Peterson  09:42

I think the turkey gets a bad rap after everybody has a big meal.

Grounded by the Farm  09:47

Well, I would probably agree with you on that. But you know, it’s easier to find somebody else to blame than to look at ourselves that how much we put on our plate. Yeah, well,

John Peterson  09:58

I’m as guilty as anybody. My Thanksgiving Places always heaping. No, when I go take my nap, I know it might have been some of the other items that didn’t.

Grounded by the Farm  10:06

Yes, can you tell me, you mentioned that you guys sell in your market, but you also sell to some wholesalers and others, how does the processing work,

John Peterson  10:17

we don’t process on fire, we work with a USDA processor, also here in Minnesota, in fact, all of our processing, both to the slaughter piece, and then also, you know, for any of our sausage, or smoked products, or anything like that, we use other Minnesota processor. So we’re, we’re sort of fiercely proud to be an independent Minnesota farm. And I want to extend that to all the processors that we work with that are also local independent folks. So all of our birds travel to a slaughter facility for processing. And then they come back to us here, at which point we would either sell them, like you mentioned through our on farm store, or they would be distributed into one of the restaurants or retailers for groceries that would carry our turkey from there.

Grounded by the Farm  10:58

One of the things that processing got a little bit of attention last year is on the tick tock videos and everything where like moms were getting their sons to pull the things that come in the cavity of the turkey out. Yeah, I’m sure you saw some of those videos.

John Peterson  11:17

I hate to admit, I think I missed them actually. Probably like, I’m assuming the the giblet pack out of the cage.

Grounded by the Farm  11:23

Yes, yes. But it doesn’t necessarily look like that to a young guy who’s you know, seeing pulled out and it was really pretty terrifying for for quite a few people last year, but it’s also hysterical for people to know what’s going on. I guess when it comes to eating the birds and stuff besides taking that out? Before you start cooking it right, and decide what you want to do with it. I mean, my mom uses all that stuff for dressing and things like that. But what other things should people think about us? They’re kind of getting ready to fix their Turkey? Yeah.

John Peterson  11:58

Well, the the question that we probably answer most frequently, and we’ll do so again over the next couple months is trying to determine a size, there are so many cuts of meat that are similarly sized. You know, I don’t think consumers are, are always familiar with this process. I mean, a turkey there, there can be such a tremendous range of sizes, our smallest turkeys are typically about 10 pounds or so dressed. And our biggest turkeys will be close to 25 pounds or so now. So it’s a significant difference. That, of course depends completely on how many folks you’re going to have at the table and what you know what you’d like for leftovers and what you what you plan to do with those leftovers. So that is definitely one of the most frequently asked questions for us this time of year is how big of a bird Do I need. And then we typically suggest a pound to a pound and a half per person. And you know, there are always folks that are leftover lovers and I would include myself in that camp. If you err on the high side, you just you just treat yourself to even more leftovers. But if you’re you know, if you’re hosting a small gathering of two or three, you probably don’t need that 25 pound turkey. We work through that with folks every Thanksgiving trying to trying to pair them with the perfect bird for their gathering.

Grounded by the Farm  13:10

Yeah, that is quite an issue. The other one My family has is we love fried turkeys. And you know like the fryer you can only put such a size bird down in it and really get good cover with all the peanut oil. Right? Yeah, that nice crispy, and we do a lot of things with like Cajun seasoning and stuff. Yeah. Steve does an amazing job on on our turkeys that we fry. But we also bake them. So how does your family make Turkey?

John Peterson  13:41

Well, we, we’ve probably tried most of the different options under the sun over the years, thinking of Thanksgiving Day, we oftentimes will grill our turkey, because it creates extra oven space. It’s sort of a you know, throw it on the grill and forget about it for a few hours. And you can you know, you can use your oven for everything else. But you know, you mentioned the frying a turkey. This gets to one of the other questions that were so oftentimes asked to Thanksgiving, you know, how, how do I guarantee a good Turkey? Do I fry it? Do I brine it? Do I base it? Do I cook it in a bag? Do I

Grounded by the Farm  14:15

figure it out?

John Peterson  14:16

There are so many options. And you know, we’ve always tried to be really careful not to be too prescriptive about it because every family has their own tradition. You know, clearly they must be working if they’ve maintained themselves as a tradition. So we always say that if you pick a good Turkey and make sure not to overcook it, have a good meat thermometer, cook it to 165 pull it out, let those natural juices reabsorb before you carve right into it. Regardless of which of those cooking or roasting options or grilling options you choose. You should be able to have a really delicious thanksgiving turkey to gather around.

Grounded by the Farm  14:53

Nice. I like the way you’re playing that diplomat we need more diplomacy in the world these days instead of divisive have language. So that was really good. I assume you sell a lot of your turkeys fresh? Do you also sell frozen? And how do you kind of go about deciding as a consumer whether you want to try and buy a fresh one or a frozen one?

John Peterson  15:15

That’s another great question and another one that we feel this time of year. And you’re exactly right, we offer both fresh and frozen. The only difference between the two is that the frozen birds were harvested a little bit earlier. You know, for us, that gives us a little bit more flexibility, that we’re able to get those turkeys out and do our own store and into the broader marketplace a little bit earlier, which is both a service for folks who are gathering early or you know, sometimes folks who are traveling a long distance would prefer to have a frozen turkey rather than a fresh Turkey. But you know, really all of the other attributes are going to be the same. But we do say that you know, a fresh Turkey, you’re going to be able to have the luxury of getting it just a day or two before Thanksgiving, you’re not going to have to tie up the shelf in your fridge to thought for gastric emptying could take a week, maybe you have a 20 pound turkey it It could could take a week to fully thawed. So there’s certainly a convenience factor with fresh turkeys. And because they were never frozen, they do roast a little bit faster. I oftentimes caution people when they’re picking up a turkey at our at our own farm store that a fresh Turkey will roast just to just to touch quicker, because that core was never as cold. But either are a great product in our frozen turkeys are flash frozen at our processor. So in many ways, they’re you know, they’re just as fresh as the fresh turkeys.

Grounded by the Farm  16:33

Right that flash frozen helps with maintain all the food safety, right food safety is always a question with almost any food. And I noticed you said and buying it in the refrigerator, which is a great point on sort of some of these things. Sometimes if you’ve never done turkeys you think, Oh yeah, just pull it out of the freezer and cook it. It takes a long time to thought that Turkey.

John Peterson  16:57

Yes. It’s not like pulling out a hamburger patty and having a thought and time for dinner. Especially when you’re in those you know, 20 plus pound turkeys, we generally say that it takes 24 hours to thaw every three or four pounds of Turkey, when those bigger birds can be pushing a week in your refrigerator to get fully thawed.

Grounded by the Farm  17:16

Yeah, and just putting them out on the cabinet would probably lead to some food safety concerns for part of the birds getting so warm on the outside. So it’s best to tend to defrost in the refrigerator, right?

John Peterson  17:29

It makes me want to cover my ears to hear you say putting them out on the countertop. Now, not what we’re supposed to do. So I mean, you can for folks and we this this comes up most years, you know the day before Thanksgiving, somebody realizes they haven’t fully thought their Turkey. You can in a you know, in a water bath, you can safely thaw turkey more quickly. There are ways to expedite the process safely. But I would never want to know that somebody put a turkey out on the out on the countertop, that would not be the recommended way to do it.

Grounded by the Farm  18:00

That’s exactly I wanted to make it really clear.

John Peterson  18:04

I was already record.

Grounded by the Farm  18:06

We really appreciate food safety efforts on poultry and things you know, I mean, you just don’t want to get in a bad spot. I’ve never I’ve never had that in my family. So we’re you know, we’ve we’ve got some great cooks obviously, with that leftover turkey. Do you have great ideas for us on what to do with it. So many people don’t plan it out. And suddenly the next day they’re like, Oh my gosh, I’m not gonna eat turkey sandwiches for the next three days.

John Peterson  18:32

Yeah, well, I might let you down here because I’m I’m pretty simple with my turkey leftovers. I do love a turkey sandwich. In fact, I just had lunch shortly before we’re visiting here today jazz and God’s honest truth I had a turkey sandwich. So I I never tire of a good turkey sandwich and especially you know that kind of day after just the simple simple turkey sandwich you know, get some really good bread and you know a good, good cheese to pair with it. I think you can make a an awfully good turkey leftover for the next couple of days with sandwich.

Grounded by the Farm  19:08

I love it. I love it. Do other people in your family have other preferences, though?

John Peterson  19:13

I don’t. I don’t actually know that we have strong traditions. Okay.

Grounded by the Farm  19:18

busy cleaning out the store and getting everybody going, huh?

John Peterson  19:22

We’re probably still in our Thanksgiving map, right? Yeah, no, you are you are certainly hitting on the truth that those days after Thanksgiving are really our family’s chance to catch our breath after such a big push to get to Thanksgiving Day. So we’re Of course still eating our Thanksgiving leftovers but probably lacking the ambition to do that is the thing much more creative with them.

Grounded by the Farm  19:45

We haven’t talked too much about the market. Tell me a little bit about the Ferndale market and what you guys do there for your customers.

John Peterson  19:52

Yeah, for sure. I should probably start by telling you where the Ferndale name comes from. perfo Yeah. So I mentioned That our farm was started by my grandfather and his name was Dale, Dale Peterson. And he, he wanted to find a farm that was well suited for, for growing turkeys outdoors, which, ironically, just as a sidebar here ironically, that would have been the way all turkeys would have been grown when he got started. You know, the way, the way we’re growing turkeys today is really nothing novel or new. I always think we’re sort of the dinosaurs that have, you know, held on to these practices after most others have got away from them. But you know, this is the way that my grandfather would have started growing our turkeys. So his name was Dale. And shortly after he got the farm started, he met my grandmother to be and her name was Fern. So Fern and Dale are my grandparents. I love when, when that recognition happens that this is where our name comes from. And you know, now for me three generations later, there’s just a ton of pride in having their name literally on our storefront and on the label of every turkey product that that leaves our place. That’s really rewarding. What. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yep. That’s a quick backstory on where the name comes from. But the store itself, interestingly enough, actually sits in our former hatchery building we talked about when we used to hatch our own polls, then we remodeled our hatchery building, so it is right on our farm. And during the summer months, if visitors come, you can oftentimes see turkeys out on range right behind our our market, it is truly an on fire market. And our vision really was to was to be able to bring customers to the farm to the source of where their food was being grown. And you know, so oftentimes the model in agriculture today is that food is grown out in rural areas and then trucked into the into the cities. And oftentimes the consumer doesn’t know where their food comes from. And likewise, many farmers don’t know where the food that they’ve put so much care and energy into raising goals. So we really wanted to turn that on its head and give people the chance to come right to the farm to source their, in our case turkey products. And yet we saw when we were planning to open that there were a lot of other local farmers and food makers in our area of southern Minnesota. They were doing a lot of really unique things in terms of, you know, sustainable farming practices and making some really creative traditional foods and things. So we decided to broaden the scope and pull together a whole host of local foods in our store, Ferndale market, and have today, foods for about 100 different farmers and food makers. Wow. Yeah, so everything from you know, delicious cheeses, to of course, other meats. I mean meats and meats and dairy are probably our specialties. But you know, great seasonal produce. And you know, Thanksgiving, we bring in a lot of other kind of holiday and seasonal specialties to round out Thanksgiving Christmas tables as well, the whole idea that we really want to sustain what’s happening right here in our in our local region and make it available for shoppers that value those kinds of foods.

Grounded by the Farm  22:55

That’s amazing. I think for a lot of people going out and visiting a farmers market. Or in your case, a Farm Market is a way to sort of connect with the local community. And it sounds like you’re making sure that not only your farm is able to show up but a lot of other farms and and perhaps you have like jams and jellies from locals? Is that the kinds of things yeah, so yep, those are the kinds of places I love to go and end up just go in here take all my money because I get so many ideas. And I don’t know how many honeys I have from how many different parts of the US but I end up having all those and have different reasons for liking different ones too. So I’m bet everybody can get that whole flavor profile there when they come out to see you guys at Ferndale.

John Peterson  23:43

Absolutely, yeah. And one of the things that we’re really working through sort of as we speak this year, that we typically of course are awfully busy. And that week before Thanksgiving with with customers come in to pick up their fresh thanksgiving turkey and many of those folks have ordered them weeks or maybe a month in advance letting us know what size turkey they need. And when they plan to come get it. And it’s one of our great traditions. I mean, certainly one of my favorite weeks of the whole year is getting, you know, to reunite with so many these folks that have our turkey at the center of their traditional meal. And yet this year, we’re kind of having to reinvent how that works of social distancing. We’re kind of reimagining it as a curbside pickup for all of these Thanksgiving turkeys to get into the into the right car and ultimately enter the right table. So that has been one of the pandemic related challenges and opportunities for us is to figure out how we can maintain that tradition in the way that feels most safe this year.

Grounded by the Farm  24:42

Yeah, that’s it’s interesting. Luckily, you’re at least able to learn from some restaurants and other retailers that have been trying to do a good bit of that this summer. And I’m sure you guys started some of it this summer. Your busy season is really going to be the crunch time so hopefully you have some Extra family members who are going to be able to lend a hand?

John Peterson  25:03

Yeah, we’re going to be looking through the local phonebook for for extra hands, I think. Yeah, well, it’ll be an all hands on deck kind of event. And you’re right, we did. We did start planning early. And I’ve learned a lot from you know, plenty of our the restaurants that carry our turkey, I’ve kind of, you know, walked us through, you know, how they’ve been able to persist through this. And it’s such an important time of year for us that we knew we had to figure out how to adapt to the times and make this happen, both for our sake, and for the sake of all of our customers and the value of the tradition. Exactly, exactly.

Grounded by the Farm  25:35

Can you tell me you said people can come up and they’ll see the birds around the store and your flock is raised outside? Can you tell me do birds typically have a standard height? You know, when they come in all together? At the same time? Do turkeys tend to really vary their diets? You mentioned hens differ from the Tom’s, how much variability do you get there? If you’ve got people looking for a 10 pound bird and a 20 pound bird, I get the thin and the time difference? But how are all those other variables put in there?

John Peterson  26:06

Yeah, that’s a great question. I think it’s one of those pulling back the curtain kinds of things that a lot of customers don’t think about how you know, how did all of these different sizes just appear here in the in the grocery store, but it actually takes multiple flocks, where we’re starting polls on separate days, you know, starting weeks apart, to be able to achieve all of those, all of those different sizes. So you know, we’ll sort of have, you know, an earlier flock and then a flock that starts a couple weeks later, and then a couple weeks after that, and then the mix of hens and Tom’s to be able to cover all of those sizes. because ideally, a flock when they’re, you know, when they’re at a market weight, or pretty consistently sized. You know, of course, there’s always natural variability, like you’d expect with, you know, with anything, they’re gonna hug fairly close to an average size. And so it does, it does take staggered flocks to be able to hit all of those, all of those different sizes that we need.

Grounded by the Farm  27:02

And I assume you’re feeding them a lot of locally grown grain and things along that line, but they also get to eat whatever they find outside.

John Peterson  27:10

Right. Exactly. Yep. Yeah, so our staple diet is similar to you know, what most other turkeys would be would be fat, it’s a mix of corn and soybean meal, when they’re out on on pasture. Like I mentioned earlier, turkeys are curious. And so so there’s all kinds of things that they can get their beak on. Certainly, though, you know, ticket grasses, and insects and all those things, when they’re outdoors, they can get a self select what else they’d like to find,

Grounded by the Farm  27:35

you know, we’ve heard a lot about different things and poultry, with chickens doing, you know, kind of caged individual cages and things like that. Because sometimes chickens can be really aggressive. Do you have similar issues occasionally in turkeys? You know, they,

John Peterson  27:51

they certainly do have some sort of a hierarchy or a pecking order, as you know, we don’t know it in the world of poultry. I oftentimes wish I was smart enough to understand, you know, who’s, who’s the top jerky? And, you know, how was that established? I mean, it would, it would be fairly rare that they would be, you know, really aggressively, you know, overtly aggressive to one another, but it does happen, you know, most of the time, I think they, you know, they sort of work it out amongst themselves. And we don’t know who, who the top Berkey is, somehow they know.

Grounded by the Farm  28:26

But they they usually play nice when they’re outside or or. Yeah, great. JOHN, could you tell me who else in the family is involved? Because I think when I send an email, I actually got your sister first.

John Peterson  28:40

You are You are correct. Yes, we are very much a family business. Both my sister and myself are, are in the third generation. My sister does all of our marketing and communications work. And then also parents, the second generation that can Jane are still actively involved and live right on the farm with my wife, and myself and our son. We all have separate homes, right on the farms, we have a lot of a lot of opportunity to both, you know, work and be together as a family. And that’s really still what what guides all the decisions that we make. We want to we want to carry forward the you know, the tradition and the legacy that my family had here and take care of the land the that we’ve been on and the turkeys that have been a part of our farm for 81 years now.

Grounded by the Farm  29:22

Wow. That’s amazing. 81 years as a family farm. That’s a lot of Turkey.

John Peterson  29:28

It is a lot of Turkey. Absolutely.

Grounded by the Farm  29:30

Thank you so much for joining us. I can’t wait to get this and the other parts of the holiday series live because I think for me, I certainly will be looking at my Thanksgiving meal a little bit differently. haven’t learned this much about turkeys.

John Peterson  29:44

Wonderful. I can’t wait to hear and really appreciate the chance to be a part of Thank you so much.

Grounded by the Farm  29:51

All right. So there we are the conversation with john and his family, Katherine there. His sister works on the farm as well. If you’re in Minneapolis St. Paul area sometime or down near Rochester or something, it’s not that far away. town’s name is Cannon Falls, we’re gonna put some photographs and some videos things like that up on Grounded by the farm.com. They’ll also be in your show notes. So give it a check. And hope you guys will stick with us for the rest of the holiday series. We have several more coming up. Now that we’re past Halloween, we’ve moved on into Thanksgiving and eventually into Christmas. And next step will be cranberries. And I can’t wait to show you what all was going on there. We’ll talk about it and we’ll have some great stuff in the show notes on that one too. Thanks so much. We’ll talk to you guys later. Bye.

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As school started and our summer intern returned to classes, I recorded this week’s episode and had an unexpected opportunity to work with a former colleague again. And it all comes together with sheep.

Stick with me. You may remember Abby who interned with us over the summer, showed sheep growing up. I’m interviewing a farmer who raises lamb for the show. And while Molly Atkins and I were talking about how perfect everything would be with her contracting part-time on Grounded by the Farm and all the other things I have going with my business, she mentioned family friends had a sheep farm she spent time at.

The perfect fit is evident in the fact Molly not only had the chance to spend time on a sheep farm, but she’s already written about it and agreed I could share it here to help you get to know her a bit!

Here’s that story:

There are some places from my past that are crystallized in my memory.

When I was a little girl, my mother used to take me to a place called Full Circle Farm.  It was a small family sheep farm, nestled in the Cascade Mountains of Washington.  Bill and Phyllis were dear, dear family friends.  They ran their farm with love and care.  They loved their animals and cared for them with great devotion.

It was a magical place.  I think there must have been wild chamomile growing in the fields because the light smell of apples and clean hay infused into every thing.  To this day, the smell of chamomile tea takes me right back to the farmhouse and the warmth of our friends.

In the evenings, the fog would roll in from between the fir trees, and in the mornings, it would remain, reluctant to drift off.  The red wooden barn was full of hay, and sheep, and the warm, comfortable smells of lanolin and wooly bodies.

My time at the farm has taken on an almost mythical quality in my mind.  Was it really that green?  Was the morning fog that dense? Was the air truly that sweet? Having spent time in the Olympic Mountains as an adult, I am inclined to believe that it was.

Bill is still with us, but we lost Phyllis several years ago to lung cancer.  That loss still hangs heavy on my heart.  She was a deeply peaceful and deeply loving woman.  She was a mentor, a friend, and grandmother figure to me.

Last night I had a dream that I had gone back to Full Circle Farm.  Phyllis was there, but Bill was not.  They had sold the farm and the new owners turned it into a luxurious horse farm.  I didn’t recognize anything.  The farm house was a different building, the barn was in a different place.  Instead of chamomile and wool and sweet fir trees, it smelled like dust and heat and horses. And I was so sad.  I wanted to take the girls to show them the special places at the farm.  The barn, the goat shed, the kitchen, the chicken coop…

I’m not sure what my dream means.  Perhaps it’s telling me that you can’t go back.  A reminder that I must look forward.  Still, I treasure the memories of Full Circle Farm, and I hope I can find new memories to make for my own children that are full of the same magic as that place.

You may not see or hear Molly often, but she will definitely be making contributions. And she’s great at helping me level set so if you look, you’ll probably see her fingerprints on the things I do.

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As I talked with Michelle Jones about her family’s wheat farm, I craved all the wheat-based recipes and comfort foods. And with the way so many of us are accessing the food system differently, although this is the first spring I’ve felt compelled to bake and I am far from alone. Some of my friends on the farm have some amazing recipes to share. Go ahead… make sure you have all the flour… you are going to want to fire up the oven!

Since my family craves bread enough that babies will cry hysterically ruining their first birthday photos if you dare try to pull a yeast roll from their clutches, I’m sure my people will be taking note.

Having Dessert First with Beyer Beware

When I looked through some of the recipes that friends sent when they heard we would be talking about different kinds of wheat, I couldn’t help but think this almond danish puff pastry from my friend Leah Beyer at Beyer Beware needed to lead the post. After all, I’m a grown up and can start with dessert if I want LOL!  And I can so see Leah sneaking a piece of the danish when she was younger and her mom fixed it for guests.

Bread with My Fearless Kitchen

You may remember Marybeth Feutz of My Fearless Kitchen…. She showed us around her cattle farm and talked to us all about how to pick steaks out and ways farmers take care of their cows and the planet. Well, she likes to bake too!

Easy Homemade Bread

When a recipe puts the word easy in the name — like easy homemade bread — I can say hope lights. This recipe offered not only the hope of an easy recipe but as it is raining here, seeing the photo of Marybeth I took years ago as we soaked up vitamin D in Florida, I found myself hoping for the warmth of the sun too.

Blackberry Bread 

This is one of many recipes that you will see in this recipe post that I haven’t only not eaten, but I hadn’t thought of at all! And blackberry bread? I am a life-long lover of blackberry and we are poised for blackberry season… I need this in my life. Seriously when I saw it, I ran to Instacart to put blackberries on the list!

Farm Wife Feeds Baking Breads

When we share recipes, often Jennifer Campbell (who I call Jent a lot of the time) of Farm Wife Feeds is usually spot on. She feeds the Indiana crew and enjoys sharing lots of recipes. Her mom (and her Kitchen Aid mixer) got her hooked on homemade bread, so you won’t be disappointed.

Honey Wheat Oat Bread

Jent says this is a Gooseberry Patch recipe her family has worn out and just the name honey wheat oat bread…. well it makes my mouth water! And the photo? Stop it.

Two Ingredient Beer Bread

Not going to lie as everyone else was desperate to find yeast, I asked a few folks why they didn’t just make beer bread and you’d think I’d straight laid voodoo on them. Two ingredients? Since this post is all about wheat-based recipes and has beer in the name, you can easily guess the two ingredients! Jent talks us through it and just give it a look… it pairs with beer.

Homemade Rhubarb Donuts

Sharing a recipe for rhubarb donuts means putting my life in the hands of others… my sister has discovered a deep love of rhubarb but lives in the rhubarb-less south. She’s going to want this tasty treat. Hope someone else can find it so she can get cracking on this wheat-based recipe.

Wheat-Based Recipes on Plowing Through Life

Another friend named Jennifer Osterholt has been Plowing through Life in Ohio for a while. She named the blog at a time when there were some adversities and she’s definitely had challenges, but loving wheat… if that is wrong, I don’t think Jennifer wants to be right with the wheat-based recipes she shared! I have to say these options make me rethink banana and pumpkin bread.

Farmhouse Peanut Butter Bread

I’ve never even thought of peanut butter bread, which Jennifer changed that. As a household that has included multiple jars of peanut butter and lengthy debates on brands and textures that are best, I’ll have to give this one a whirl. Maybe make it next time I visit my nephew too. And I think I’ll have to have it with the Nutella spread option!

Carrot Bread (Farmhouse Style of course!)

There are more than a few carrot cake folks in my world, but carrot bread? That seems like such an obvious choice but I’ve not made it. The orange flecks makes it perfect for a niece of mine too!

Who’s ready to bake some wheat-based foods now?

Seriously. My pantry is stocked and all of these ideas…. well, the grocery list will be growing to include a few components I need to make one or two friends on the farm recipes this weekend. Really glad talking about all things wheat led me down this path!

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