(soft upbeat music)
- Come on girls, come on girls.
Welcome to the farm.
It's gonna be an exciting day here at St. Isidore's Mead.
I'm gonna work with the cows a little bit,
change some pasture, and then I'm gonna
head off to Rush River Produce
at Maiden Rock, Wisconsin for some blueberries.
And then it's into Eau Claire to help the children
at the Montessori school do a little gardening.
And then I'm gonna invite them all back to the farm
for some sweet treats on such a hot day.
Gather with us Around the Farm Table .
I'm your host Inga Witscher.
- [All] Gather with us Around the Farm Table .
- A few years ago, I moved up to Wisconsin.
I started an organic dairy farm at St. Isidore's Mead.
That's when I discovered the abundance
of Midwestern local food and small-scale farmers.
Growing everything, from green zebra tomatoes,
to pasture pork.
I'm taking a break from the cows, hittin' the road,
and seeing if I can't satisfy my epicurious appetite.
Oh.
(upbeat guitar music)
That's great. (meat sizzling)
This is amazing.
- Around the Farm Table is funded in part by
Wisconsin Farmers Union,
Heartland Credit Union,
and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.
(upbeat guitar music)
- One of my favorite places here at the farm is my garden.
It is a place where I can be creative,
a place where I can come in solitude, and the place
where I grow the food that ends up on my table.
I've been gardening since I was a little kid.
My grandparents gardened, my parents did,
and now I get to have my very own vegetable garden.
One thing I've learned over the years
is about companion planting.
The rule of them with vegetables is
if it goes together, it grows together.
And a classic pairing is tomatoes and basil.
They go together on the kitchen table,
and they also grow together in the garden.
The basil will enhance the flavor of tomatoes.
And it also releases a scent that confuses pests
so they stay off the tomatoes.
The other thing I like to add to my tomato garden
is marigolds; marigolds is another one of those flowers
that gives off a scent that a lot of bugs don't like.
So they're gonna fly off somewhere else,
and hopefully stay out of my garden.
So not only does companion planting help
by enhancing the flavors and deterring pests,
but also if you have plants like beans, beans and legumes,
and what it does is it pulls nitrogen
from the atmosphere and puts it in the soil.
So that can help the plants
that grow alongside of the beans.
The possibilities are endless,
and it's a fun way to experiment in your garden.
Someone else who's been gardening
for a long time is my friend Erin.
Let's head over to the zinnias
and talk to her about gardening with kids.
(folksy music)
Erin, thanks for joining me at the farm today.
I'm getting ready to go and learn about school gardens and I
wanted to ask you a little bit about gardening with kids.
What's your experience with that?
- As the horticulture educator for Eau Claire County,
we have a summer youth garden program.
And we are at the North Riverfront Park Garden,
in cooperation with the city of Eau Claire.
We have Boys & Girls Clubs members come there
and also the neighborhood kids can come.
And we teach them how to garden
and then we use that produce to teach them
how to prepare those vegetables and the fruits
in a nutritious meal or snack.
- What a great resource for the community.
- Yes, they really love that garden.
- Why is it important for kids to learn about gardening?
- It's important for them to know how to grow food
so that if they ever want to or need to,
that they don't feel they have a barrier to do that.
So we like exposing them to the garden
and different ways of gardening
and also how to prepare the foods.
- When did your passion for gardening start?
- I have been gardening since I was just little.
Grade school my father had a garden,
our family had a garden, I enjoyed going into the garden
by myself and then I got really interested in herbs.
And I started growing herbs in the garden.
And my father was like, "What are you growing here?"
- (laughs) Yeah, isn't it great to be able
to kind of just experiment with different things?
And oh, I'm gonna try this herb
this year, or something else.
I think that's my favorite part about gardening.
- Exactly, and I really encourage people to experiment
with gardening and don't worry if something doesn't work out
because we've learned what works and what doesn't.
- So now with kids is there something to grow
that they like more, or to encourage them to garden?
Can you suggest something?
- They like to have produce right away and they like to
be able to pick a lot of stuff in one session,
so green beans is a good one.
Carrots, they love pulling those out of the ground
and seeing how long they get.
Cherry tomatoes is another one.
And they just love to be able to pull things from the garden
and eat it right there and show people
and share it with them.
- Do you have any tips for parents or teachers
or people who want to garden with kids
on how to keep them interested in it?
- Realize that their attention span in the garden may be
short, especially if it's humid or buggy or really sunny.
So make sure you're in the garden
kind of early when it's cooler.
Also, they love to water.
That's one of their favorite things to do.
And don't expect too much in each session,
but repeated exposure, you know, every day or once a week
is really important. - Well wonderful.
Thank you so much. - Thanks for having me.
- Before we meet up with the kids in their garden,
let's head over to Rush River Produce
for some U-Pick blueberries.
(light guitar music)
I found a little gem out here in the river bluffs of Wisconsin,
It's Rush River Produce.
And they're a U-Pick berry patch.
They've got all kinds of things growing,
but today I'm here for the blueberries.
I'm planning on making the kids a blueberry
and yogurt popsicle, so let's go to find John
and find out a little bit more about what's happening here.
(light guitar music)
Hey, John. - Good afternoon.
- How's it been for blueberries this year?
- An excellent year this year, good crop.
- How many acres of blueberries?
It feels like I'm in a huge field of blueberries here.
- Well, this field here is about four acres.
And then we have another five acres
that we pick mostly in July.
This we refer to as the August field.
- All right now, so that means you have
a couple varieties growing? - 14 different varieties.
- Wow. - Some of them are earlier.
Four varieties that we have in this field.
These guys are usually not blue
until into the second week in August.
- [Inga] What makes blueberries blue?
- [John] Well actually first they turn--
- [Inga] 'Cause I'm surprised that--
- Kind of a white-ish. - Yeah.
- They go from green to white-ish
and then they start to turn pinker.
And then they turn blue; they're still not ripe yet.
- So how do you tell that they're ripe?
'Cause I would just be like, "Oh, they're ripe."
- When a blueberry first turns blue,
it has high acidity and a low sugar content.
- Okay. - And over the next two weeks,
depends on the weather, but close to two weeks,
the acidity drops, the sugar content increases,
and towards the end of that period,
they pick easy. - Oh.
- They don't adhere to the stems as much.
And when they get fully ripe,
that's when the commercial pickers come in
with the machines and shake the bushes, and the berries
all drop onto conveyor belts and run through a sorter.
- Well you thought ahead and were like, "Forget that,
I'm just gonna have people do it for me."
- Well we call that the Tom Sawyer business plan.
Get somebody else to paint the fence for you.
So people really love to come out to the farm
and do something.
We get plenty of people who like
to just sit at the picnic tables all day,
but it's even more fun when they bring the whole family.
I get kids here from two weeks old to 90 years old.
- You know, I'm a big believer in
if you get kids involved with their food,
in growing the ingredients or harvesting those ingredients,
the kids have a better appreciation for those meals.
- Yup. - And they can,
and so do the adults too. - Yup.
- Let's face it, we all do.
- And it's better nutritionally too.
- Is that what made you get into the business of berries?
- Oh. - Is having healthy food or...?
- It seemed like a good idea at the time.
I wanted to have a farm, my wife wanted to have a business.
We thought about a lot of different things.
And ran into a salesman
who said I can show you a bush
that'll grow you a 10-dollar bill every year.
And we said, "That sounds pretty good.
Why isn't anybody else doing this?"
And this was back right after the University of Minnesota
had released several new varieties.
And we decided, if we're gonna try this out,
we might as well jump in whole hog.
So we planted an acre a year for four years.
- John, is there a specific soil
that grows really great blueberries?
- Yup, and this is not it. (laughs)
They like a sandier soil and they like an acidic pH.
- Okay.
- Ours is a very loamy clay soil
with a relatively neutral pH.
And we had to spread a ton and a quarter of sulfur per acre.
- Wow.
- Prior to planting, like nine months prior,
'cause it takes a while to work into the soil.
- Seep in there, sure.
- And then every year when we add our fertilizer
we mixed in some sulfur with the fertilizer
and spread it up and down the rows.
And that eventually acidified the soil enough
that it's great blueberry soil now.
As the neighboring farmer says,
"You'll never grow alfalfa there again."
This is where we ended up,
exhausted at the end of the road.
(Inga laughs)
With something like 10,000 blueberry plants.
- Wow, that's amazing.
And it's a beautiful, peaceful place to be.
- Yeah, yeah, the commute's great.
Walk out the backdoor and you never
have a shortage of things to do.
- Well, I tell you what, as fascinating as it is
finding out about blueberries out here,
the sun is beating down on me and I'm scorching.
And I saw Terry sitting in the shade, so I'm gonna go
grab some blueberries from her and a little bit of shade.
- There you go, sounds like an excellent idea.
(light guitar music)
- Sitting here with a glass of water, cooling off,
blueberries, I feel like I'm a little kid again,
back on the farm house.
- And indeed you are, you and thousands of other children
of all ages come to my backyard every summer
and they have a fun time.
Moms, and little ones, and grandmas,
and every generation, and now, 30 years later,
who knew where 30 years went, but 30 years later,
it's a whole 'nother generation coming up.
And there's a pile of kids that want to
come to play on the tire swing.
Some Saturdays, the picnic tables are all full.
There's even people picnicking on the grass.
And there's a lineup to get on the tire swing.
- [Inga] Oh nice.
- Children are swinging and swaying,
and have picked berries.
So we want everybody to come and enjoy.
We're a family farm, fun in the summer.
And, you know, that's where berry pickers come from.
If you don't start them when they're little,
and let them get out there and eat all they want,
and you know, where it and own it,
than then they grow up and bring their next generation.
And the next, and the next.
- For the folks that don't get to live on farms
and do this all the time, it's nice to be able to come out
and have a slice of your life for the day.
- Oh it is, and it's their summer right of passage,
you know, it's like, "Oh you mean, I just want to come.
It's my thing to do in the summer."
It's really fun, it's great,
it's nice to have so many people come.
In the winter, it's pretty quite here.
- Yeah. - And no one comes.
But in the summer it's really great.
There's folks here all the time
and I need that bit of socialization.
- Is that why you chose the U-Pick?
That model, instead of going to farmers' markets?
- You know, years ago John and I lived in California
and we went there and we could go pick peaches
and cherries and apricots by the 5-gallon bucket.
I kind of got the, "Wow, you can grow fruit."
And then we moved back here
and said well, "Wow, we can grow blueberries,
so let's grow blueberries."
And that's kind of where we came from.
- Don't you feel like there's something different
if you go out there and harvest that food?
Whether it's the fruit or the vegetables from your garden.
You think about it differently when you're cooking.
- And it tastes so fresh. - So much better, yeah.
Yeah, yeah. - Fresh is great.
(soft chuckle) That's the good part.
- You guys are doing blueberries out here,
but there's all sorts of other things.
- We do a few other things.
We have currants and gooseberries
at the beginning of our season in early July.
So gooseberries are a thorny, darling little thing
that are dangerous to pick but nice and delicious.
People make jams and jellies.
And then we have red currants and black currants.
And a lot of different ethnic, varietal people come out
for red currants;
the Scandinavians love the red currants;
and the Russians love the black currants.
And they make jams and jellies and wine
and tea sweeteners.
And some people like the leaves for things.
And you never know, you learn a lot.
- You never know. - 'Cause, you know.
They bring you their jar of this,
or their recipe for that. - No kidding.
- Oh, it's fab. - Oh, I love that.
- Yeah, it's really nice. - I love the connection
with everybody, and, oh.
I suppose a lot of people, especially after they coming
from generation to-- every year for different generations,
that this is their farm as well.
- Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
And then they like to bring along, you know,
the expanse of people who come gets even bigger
because then they bring their neighbor,
and their sister, and their cousin,
and the groups get larger and larger.
And yeah it's fun.
- One of my favorite parts about farming is
the community involved in farming.
And how farms can create community
by bringing people in and making people feel a part--
- Yeah, it's pretty swell, I mean it's really sweet,
after a long day or a hard day or whatever
and somebody'll say to you on the way out,
"Thank you for doing this, we really enjoy it."
And that just means so much.
You know, it keeps you going, keeps you smiling.
- Good. - And it's a good thing.
- Well I'm gonna go out and pick some berries.
And why don't you meet me in Eau Claire, Wisconsin
to learn about the kids who are growing vegetables
for themselves at their school.
(light upbeat guitar music) (clapping)
Hi kids. - Hi, Inga.
- Hi, Erica. - Hi.
- Why this is so nice to be able to finally come here
and see the kids working in the school garden.
I love the concept of this.
So how did the school garden here get started?
- Well, it was a conversation
between myself and a parent and a teacher here,
and we were just talking about,
"Oh, we should do it, we should do it, we should do it."
And then we just decided,
"Let's stop talking about it and just do it."
As a part of the Eau Claire Public School District,
I think we really felt, as a school,
it was something that to do or say,
"Look you can do it, you can do it."
As soon as we sort of said the word, let's do it,
then it just kind of happened from
parents coming out of the woodwork to help,
donors, everything, it just really came together nicely.
- [Inga] Well, this is such a nice thing to have
because I think it's so important for kids
to be able to get hands-on
and learning how the food's being grown.
What are the other benefits to having
these kids out here learning this way?
- The benefits are just innumerable, really.
Often, the issue out here is there's not enough work
to go around, there's not enough for the kids to do.
- So they love being hands-on participating.
- They love being hands-on, that's all they want to do.
And so I think that they really have to work together.
It teaches them how to interact with one another
and how, you know, one class comes out
and they do a little work and they water.
And then the next day, somebody else comes out
and they come out.
First kids come out again, and they say,
"Oh look at, but that got them too."
And so it's definitely community effort.
- I love that the kids are so involved.
And I love it that they're learning about this
because this is our next generation.
And I hope that with this next generation
that they're growing a lot of their food.
That this is what they do
and that we can get rid of the world local food
and just have food. - Food, yeah.
- And this is just what people do.
- Yeah, I think that's one of the best things.
I mean, as a volunteer, I've seen and I'm sure
the other volunteers and the staff have seen it.
But basically how it works is we plant everything
in the spring, the kids go home.
And there's some things that they see coming up right away:
radishes, and lettuce, and stuff like that.
And they do get to eat a little bit before they leave
and then we have a core of families
that volunteer to take care of it during the summer.
So some kids are seeing it over the summer.
But then they come back in the fall,
and it's just huge and it's rich with produce.
And we spend the fall harvesting.
Then, we have a big party.
Foster Cheese Haus comes with their fire truck
and they cook pizzas for the kids.
And we have a really great festival
and celebration of all of the work that's happened here.
So the kids in the spring, now when they plant something,
they say, "Oh this is gonna be great in pizza."
(both laughing) That's really cool.
- That's a great reward to have at the end of day.
- [Erica] Yeah, pizza is always the best, yeah.
- I love seeing them out here also because
I know with my nephews for example.
My brother's always like, "Ah they won't eat vegetables."
But I feel like when they're out in the garden
and harvesting those vegetables,
they can't wait to get inside, cook them, and eat them.
There's something about that pride or that ownership
over that whole process. - Yeah, yeah.
- I mean your kids eat a lot of vegetables.
- They do, surprisingly, people always say,
"How do you get your kids to eat that?"
There's healthy peer pressure,
I hate to say, there really is.
When they see their peers eating something
that they've never tried before.
And sometimes we hear a lot of, "I don't like it."
But most often it's, "Oh it's not bad."
That's usually, like radishes and kale.
One of the fun things that we did in the spring was
we planted different types of lettuces.
And then we had a lettuce tasting party.
So we had the kids out and we got to the arugula.
And they all put it in their mouth and like,
"Oh, it's not, oh..."
(laughing) - It's different, yeah.
- So it really is fun and it's a fun thing
to have them try new things.
- Good, I'd love to harvest some things with the kids
and spend some time with them.
Then, I'd like to have everyone back to my farm
so they can see my garden and have some treats.
- I'm sure they'd love that.
- Okay, kids, want to harvest some carrots with me? - [Kids] Yeah!
(light guitar music)
- Well now that I've got my carrots,
I'm gonna head off to the kitchen
and make some carrot sorbet.
And do you guys want to come out to the farm and see? - Yeah!
- Yeah, eat carrot sorbet?
- Yeah. - Okay.
Well I'll see you guys there.
(light guitar music)
I was lucky enough to have a school garden growing up.
Of course, I was home schooled
and we had a very large vegetable garden
right outside the front door where I got to work
alongside my parents and my grandparents growing food,
learning that it's my responsibility to make sure
that everything is watered.
And just having a sense of calm.
And also, I picked up my passion for life
right there in the garden.
I love growing a garden now, and I think it's just lovely
to see the communities and the teachers
advocating for these kids to grow their own food.
Now in the garden, the kids were telling me
that their favorite vegetable is carrots.
So I thought it'd be a nice, fun treat to turn
these beautiful carrots of theirs into a cool sorbet.
So why don't we get started?
The first thing we're gonna do is
I'm gonna add my carrots to the blender.
So my carrots I've already boiled them down a bit
for about seven minutes until they were tender.
I popped them in the fridge for just a few minutes
to chill down, and now they're ready to go.
Always remember to use really good ingredients.
I think this sorbet is gonna taste extra lovely
because these carrots just came
out of the ground a little while ago.
And with the sorbet, you want to make sure that
you're using the freshest fruit or the freshest carrots.
It just helps make everything taste a lot better.
Next I'm gonna add a little bit of sugar.
And then some citruses, I have some lemon juice
and some lime juice.
There we go, that will be a nice little flavor enhancer.
And a little bit of honey from the bees out in the field.
I have tons of honey from the beehives
that we have here at the farm.
And I love to find ways to use it all up.
Now I'm gonna put in a little pinch ginger, too.
I think ginger and carrot goes really well together.
And now I'll puree this up for a little bit.
(blender revving)
Gonna add a little bit of water to help the process.
(blender revving)
There we go, and I'll add the rest of the water.
I'm adding two cups of water to our sorbet.
(blender revving)
I'm loving the color of this sorbet.
And also, there's a lot of different varieties
of carrots out there now, so you could do a purple carrot
sorbet even, and knock the socks off of all your guests.
I'll just pour the sorbet right into my glass dish here.
So I'm just gonna pop this into the freezer
for about an hour and then it's gonna go into
my sorbet machine, and we'll have wonderful carrot sorbet.
I'm gonna get this cleaned up because I have
an equally delicious plan for the blueberries.
Let's make some blueberry and yogurt popsicles.
I like the idea of a U-Pick farm.
I think it's a great way to get people
from urban communities out into nature,
out into the country, and see what's happening on the farm.
There's something really incredible when you're able to
pick your own food and then go and just eat it right there
standing when you're picking it off the bush.
It's a great thing and I'd love to hear the stories
from Terry when she was telling me how she'd seen the
families and all the different generations of the families.
So she says she's gotten to see kids grow up,
have their own kids,
and now they're bringing their grandkids.
And what a wonderful thing to experience.
And I love it that these folks
have a connection with their farm.
And they feel it's a part of their family summer history.
I thought it would be nice to turn these blueberries,
since they're at their peak freshness,
into blueberry and yogurt popsicles.
I know a lot of these moms don't want their kids
to have a ton of sugar or a ton of sugary,
popsiclely things so I decided to make them homemade
using yogurt, blueberries, and honey.
Very simple recipe, but when you have great ingredients,
you can do things very simply.
The first thing I'm gonna add of course is blueberries.
It's two cups of blueberries.
You can either use them fresh
or if you pick them in the summertime
and you want to make this recipe in the wintertime,
you can use frozen blueberries too.
Just make sure they're thawed out first.
So two cups of blueberries goes into my blender.
I know these blueberries are going to make excellent
popsicles because the color is just going to be amazing.
We have the blueberries and then a little bit of honey
just to sweeten things up.
And then two cups of vanilla yogurt goes right in,
all together.
This is gonna help add a nice creaminess to these popsicles.
And if you're on a dairy farm,
it'd be a shame for you not to have
a little bit of dairy when you're out running around.
Now I'll simply puree all this up.
(blender revving)
And that looks good.
I just love the blueberry color.
Since I love the color so much, I want to make it stand out.
So to my popsicle molds, I'm gonna add a little bit
of that vanilla yogurt to the bottom of my molds here.
So that way they're two-tone
when they come out of the freezer.
Already, now on top of that I'm gonna add my blueberries.
And you don't want to fill them too full
'cause they're gonna expand when they start to freeze.
And also if the kids have too much of these blueberries,
their little faces are gonna be dyed purple
for the rest of their way home.
Okay, now just put the top on.
And then I'm gonna add my sticks to my molds,
pop them in the freezer until they set.
If you got 24 hours, you should leave them in for 24 hours.
And I think these are going to be a perfect treat
for the kids today.
I'll see you outside.
(whistling) (clapping)
(light guitar music)
- [Inga] Kids and summer afternoons, perfect for
healthy, homemade, blueberry yogurt popsicles.
This is one way to get the kids to eat their veggies.
Icy carrot sorbet.
- Well, I hope this has inspired you
to rethink the way you eat your fruits and veggies.
And I hope you'll gather with us next time.
- [All] Around the Farm Table .
- I'm your host, Inga Witscher.
(light guitar music)
- Around the Farm Table is funded in part by
Wisconsin Farmers Union,
Heartland Credit Union,
and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.