(folksy guitar music)
- Welcome to the farm.
Farm weddings have been growing in popularity,
and we're planning on having one here today.
But first, I'm gonna go gather some sustainable flowers
in East Troy, Wisconsin,
and then it's off to pick up hickory nuts
for a wedding cake.
Gather with us, Around the Farm Table .
I'm your host, Inga Witscher.
- [All] Gather with us, Around the Farm Table .
- [Inga] 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.
That's great.
This is amazing.
- Around the Farm Table is funded in part by
Wisconsin Farmers Union,
Heartland Credit Union,
and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.
- Now that the chickens are fed,
let's head back into the barn and meet with Dr. Dettloff,
to find out about how to read a cow's coat.
Dr. Paul, it's so exciting to have you at my farm.
About 10 years ago, I took one of your classes
at the MOSES Conference,
and it was the Organic University.
You talked about the hair coats, things like that
and I've been trying to get you out to the farm,
to look at my cows ever since then,
so I'm hoping we can go through,
and tell me a bit about your experience.
- The hair coats is a complete lost art in the US.
It was developed in Germany,
in the 1870s and 80s.
I put on an organic vet school,
starting 20 years ago.
At that point I would go into these 50-cow herds,
and I could predict what was happening,
and it was like, wow,
with the DHIA records I was,
I was amazed myself that, "Hey, I can pick out
the three cows in the herd with high protein."
- So Dr. Paul, when you're looking at the cows,
how do you determine from the hair coat?
- Well, we can go through that.
The first thing I would do is I'd look at the hair coat.
The hair coat should have
a shine, nice shed out.
Your four cows we have here,
have excellent, excellent hair coats.
- [Inga] Oh good.
- That's a sign of mineralization of the farm.
- Okay.
- And you have to have some pretty good grass on this farm,
to get this hair coat,
and I think you told me that you are a kelp user also?
- Yes.
- Kelp is full of trace elements,
and that feeds the whole endocrine system
for a healthy cow.
More things you can look at are,
this girl here shows it.
She's got a dark line,
all the way from here.
So how darker this is?
- Yes.
- That means this girl has got a lot of macro minerals:
calcium, phosphorous, magnesium, potassium.
The shine on her coat means she's got trace elements:
cobalt, zinc, manganese, copper,
and this comes from grass and hay and kelp.
I have never seen anything
that has done as much good
for the health of the organic cow as kelp.
Two ounces of kelp, or free-choicing it,
and it fills up the system with trace elements,
and that runs the endocrine system.
You know what trace element in kelp
is really a key for reproduction?
Manganese, MN, manganese.
Kelp is very high in manganese and iodine.
Therefore, when we put cows on kelp,
we're giving them plenty of manganese
and we're gonna have some really good
first service conception on reproduction.
- That is so interesting.
- For every dollar you spend on kelp,
you're gonna save two dollars in veterinary supplies,
it just happens.
And so, I really like--
That's my last commercial, I guess,
and I don't sell kelp.
I recommend it.
And so, that's kind of become a standard paradigm,
and the first thing that happens
when somebody starts, or comes to us,
we say get your girls on kelp,
and start working on your soil.
So this girl here is really well-mineralized.
Even though she's not fat as a pig.
Organic cows are going to tend to run a little thinner.
- Okay. - And, we're not being inhumane.
They're not starving, they're not wanting for anything
or you wouldn't have a hair coat like this.
When you look at a cow in the front,
there's a cowlick in her forehead.
And you draw a line between her eyes,
the lower that cowlick is,
the gentler she'll be.
- [Inga] Oh, no kidding?
- The higher it is,
the more high strung she'll be.
If you look at them from the front,
with the sun,
it'll be from a handful to bigger.
That's called the thymic swirl.
That means her endocrine system is really, really working.
And that she's going to breed,
and she's healthy.
She's highly mineralized.
- So you can tell by the swirl if the cow's pregnant?
- [Paul] Yes. - Wow.
- It's difficult to read,
like on these girls here with short hair.
Where it's easy to read,
is like on Hereford beef cattle.
- Okay.
- I had a 120-cow Hereford beef herd
that I would pregnancy check every fall,
and they were kind of longish hair,
and it just stood out.
- Wow.
- That's the swirl for pregnancy down underneath here.
That grass makes them so healthy that
we don't want them to be roly-poly fat.
If you want to have a problem,
feed your heifers corn silage and get them fat as a pig,
and you'll have a vet out for every one of them.
- Dr. Paul thank you so much for coming out here.
And I'm never gonna look at a cow the same again.
- My pleasure.
I love passing on knowledge.
That's what I'm all about at this stage of my life.
- Well, I'm gonna get the cows out and get changed.
And then why don't you meet me over in East Troy,
where we can learn about how to grow flowers sustainably.
(folksy guitar music)
- Emily, thank you for letting me come visit you.
- Hi, thanks for coming, thank you.
- So tell me a little bit about your flower farm here.
- This is my grandpa's farm,
he's owned it for over 50 years.
And about eight or nine years ago,
I decided I wanted to start a flower farm.
So, he gave me this little half acre.
And it's turned into this, yeah.
- It must be exciting for him to see another generation
continuing on farming, too. - I think it is.
I think he was a little bit confused by what I was doing
for a while, but I think he really likes it.
- So tell me about the sustainable flower growing,
and how is that different than flowers
we see in the grocery store, the conventional flowers.
- Sure, most flowers that you buy in the grocery store
come from South America,
and they're not necessarily grown with sustainable
growing practices or sustainable labor practices.
And they're all sort of bred to travel,
they aren't necessarily bred to smell good,
or be the prettiest flowers.
So, what I grow is just, whatever is pretty.
- Yeah, I like that. I like that philosophy.
I also like it 'cause,
I wanted to use some of these flowers on a cake later on,
and so I don't have to worry about
any chemicals or anything like that getting in the cake.
That's nice. - Yep, it's really nice.
I put a lot of flowers on cakes.
- So when you're growing flowers,
are you having to think about the soil as much as we are
with our dairy, or our growing pasture, and things like that?
It's probably at the top of your mind, too.
- Yeah, the soil, the soil is important,
just the structure of it, the way that it holds water,
and nutrients.
We like to add compost every year.
It helps for a lot of things.
- Yeah, absolutely.
So when you're growing here in Wisconsin,
do you have to think about different varieties,
something that'd get through the wintertime,
or how do you choose the flowers that you're growing?
- That's actually a really good question.
A lot of the-- I grow a lot of perennials,
so they need to be hearty to here,
where it's about Zone 5, sometimes Zone 6,
so I take some risks sometimes.
But otherwise, there are plants,
the stuff that I plant early in the spring,
are a lot of annuals
that can withstand just a little bit of a frost,
and then they'll come up and bloom.
There are things that won't withstand a frost at all,
so I really wait until after the 1st of May to put those out,
and then just cross my fingers that we don't get a late frost.
- Now when I picture you out here on your farm,
I just picture like perfect weather,
like a little bird kind of chirping on your shoulder.
I just think of the most idyllic place to work.
Am I correct in thinking that?
- Sometimes, sometimes it's like that.
Sometimes it's really, really hot, and miserable,
and there are spiders dangling from my hat.
(laughing)
- Just help me out here,
when you're picking the flowers,
what stage should we be picking flowers at?
Is it when they're in full bloom?
- Not most of the time.
All flowers are a little bit different.
But I think a good rule of thumb
is when they're about half or a third of the way open,
is a good time to pick them,
because then they'll still, when you bring them in,
they'll open in the vase, and they'll be beautiful.
- Okay. -Most flowers last about a week.
- Really? - Yep.
- My flowers don't last that long,
so I'm doing something wrong.
- Not all flowers are meant to be picked,
but the ones that you can pick usually last about a week.
- Do you see a growing trend with brides wanting to
use sustainable flowers and that more natural look?
- You know, I do, I do.
A lot of them are worried about the environmental implications,
and they want something that's more natural.
They don't like to waste as much, I think,
a lot of the younger people.
But some of them just really like that look.
- I love this natural look that you have here.
I love the greens, too.
These different, like this, what is that?
I love it. - These are Northern Sea Oats.
- [Inga] That's so pretty. - [Emily] I just love them.
They turn a beautiful shade of brown,
so they're pretty for months.
- It's something so unexpected, and there's hops in here, too.
- The hops are also great.
These, especially because I do so many weddings in Milwaukee.
People have a lot of beer-themed weddings,
and they're just, they're great, I love them.
- I love this. I think it's so...
I guess I want to say untraditional,
but I feel like it's probably more traditional
to like our grandmother's era of having these beautiful,
more natural-looking flowers.
- Yeah, I think so.
A lot of times people will pick up a bouquet
and they'll have memories of their grandmother.
They'll say, oh my grandma used to grow sweet peas,
or my grandma used to grow marigolds.
- I love that.
Well, I was hoping to gather some flowers.
I'm making a wedding cake this afternoon.
I thought it would be very beautiful so,
do you mind if we pick some for that?
- Nope, that'll be great.
- Well, I'm gonna pick some more with Emily,
and then why don't you meet me over in Princeton, Wisconsin,
where we'll pick up some hickory nuts
for the perfect wedding cake.
Hey, Mike.
So Mike you're the President
of the Wisconsin Hickory Association, is that correct?
- Yes. - So tell me, what is it?
I want to know everything I can find out about hickories.
- Well, how much time to you have?
We could be here all day.
Well, the Hickory Association was founded
by a group of individuals that recognized
this great natural resource
that we have here in Wisconsin.
We've explored the history of hickory,
it goes back at least 8,000 years,
with Native Americans.
And then, the explorers who came to this country,
learned about the use from the Native Americans.
And we have some writing from Hernando de Soto
back in 1539, in Georgia,
about the Native Americans using hickory there.
- Wow, what are all the uses of hickory?
- Most people today know hickory for barbecue sauce.
But there's also hickory cabinets and flooring that we have.
But we've explored different areas of hickory use, now,
like a hickory syrup.
We have hickory nut oil,
hickory fudge, hickory-smoked coffee.
So there's a great variety of things
that we can do with hickory.
- It seems like it's a nice perennial crop
to be able to harvest nuts from.
Is there anything happening here in Wisconsin
to get it to become more of an industry?
- Well, it's what the Hickory Association has been working on.
We just were announced to receive a grant from the USDA,
as a crop feasibility study that we're going to do
on hickory in Wisconsin,
and it comes from the Specialty Crop Block Grant,
from the USDA. - That's fantastic.
Well, I started eating hickory nuts a few years ago.
I just love them.
I make a hickory nut tart that I just love.
I love just grabbing them out of a bag,
and just eating them.
Their flavor is just really wonderful, don't you think?
- Yes, it's a great nut,
and most people don't realize that a pecan is a hickory.
- Oh is it? - But to the Native Americans,
they favored the hickory over the pecan,
because it's a sweeter nut,
but it's much, much harder to crack.
And that's why you don't see hickory nuts
in the store right now.
They're still shelled by hand, even today.
- When's the right time to harvest the hickory nuts?
- Well, we're coming up on it pretty soon.
If you look at the nuts that we have in the tree here,
we're about a month away.
The seams on the nut, and there's four seams,
they become concave, and kind of bulging.
And then in about late September, early October,
is when they'll start to crack open.
These nuts are from last year.
- [Inga] And they look like they're pretty hard.
- They are, they're very, very hard.
You have to dry the nut after you harvest them,
and cure them, and that makes the wood on the nut
really seal in the freshness.
It's a great natural container.
- Probably the Native Americans loved it because
they could just keep it for an extended period of time.
- Absolutely, it was one of the few foods
that came in its own packaging.
There's explorers journaling about the Native Americans
storing them in baskets underground for up to two years.
- Wow, well I'm planning on making
a hickory nut cake this afternoon,
and I love the flavor, I think it's fun.
I live up near Eau Claire,
and I just never see
the shade bark hickories up there, as much.
Maybe I'm just not exploring enough, up there.
- Well, it's not as common.
Hickory, if you think of the map of the United States,
it's mostly in the southeastern part of the United States,
away from the Gulf Coast,
up the Mississippi River states,
about halfway to the west, across those states.
And Wisconsin is way up in the northwest corner
of distribution, and about halfway across our state.
- For folks that are in areas where there's
not a hickory tree in their backyard, where can they
find hickory nuts to be able to experiment with?
- Well they certainly could come down here to Green Lake County.
We have a lot of hickory trees in our area,
and in our regular forest, and our public parks here,
and the southern half of the state.
Anyplace where there's a thick woodlands,
generally you'll find some hickory trees,
maybe about a third, would be hickory trees at the most.
Unless, of course, there was a Native American
encampment in the area,
because Native Americans actively propagated these trees,
and there are some trees still standing
that are nearly 300 years old,
that are likely to have been propagated
by the Native Americans.
- That's so exciting to be able to be
a part of that history standing here now.
- It's amazing.
- I'll see if I can't get hickory nuts off of Mike,
and then why don't you meet me in the kitchen,
and we'll turn them into a delicious, hickory nut cake.
Back home in Washington state,
my grandmother was known for a lot of things.
She was a farm wife, she milked cows by hand,
and she baked all the time.
One of her favorite things to do,
was bake wedding cakes for people in the community.
So I thought I would bring a little bit
of my grandmother's spirit into the day today,
by making the wedding cake.
And what a perfect way to showcase
these amazing hickory nuts,
that we have growing here in Wisconsin.
The first thing that we're gonna do,
is separate out the egg whites and the egg yolks.
Now, when you separate eggs,
it's nice to have a really cold egg.
That way the yolk, can separate easier from the whites.
But when you're baking, as you know,
you want to have everything room temperature.
So, I'm gonna take my chances today,
with room temperature eggs.
One thing I do like to have,
is an extra dish to crack my egg into.
That way if I mess up, I can just toss that away,
and I'm not incorporating them into the rest of the eggs.
Okay,
wish me luck here.
When I was a kid this one of my jobs,
that my grandmother would have me do when she was baking.
I still haven't mastered it after all these years.
All right.
Oops!
and we'll start on the batter.
All right, so, I've got the butter
and I'm gonna add here,
and now you just whip that butter up
until it's nice and creamy.
(mixer whirring)
Now I can add in 2 cups of sugar to the butter.
And now once the butter and the sugar have creamed together,
then you can add your eggs.
And look at that color.
And a little bit of vanilla.
Okay, look at the color.
I love the summertime egg yolks.
They always just make everything so beautiful.
Okay, now mix up here.
I think having these homemade touches,
like a homemade wedding cake,
is a nice way to
just, you know, keep it on the cheap.
Okay, so now it's time to add
the flour and the milk mixture,
and when you're making a cake,
you just add a little bit of flour, and little bit of milk,
and I've heard from several people,
that when you're doing the back and forth,
you want to start and you want to end on the flour.
So I'll just put in a little bit of flour,
and I'm gonna mix it by hand, oops.
Try to keep some of the flour in the pan.
You know what?
I'm gonna use the beater for this, too.
Just make it easy on myself.
(mixer whirring)
Then a little bit of buttermilk.
A little bit more flour.
So I'm gonna add the rest of the buttermilk.
And then finish up with the flour.
Okay.
When you're cooking
you can put in those nice good intentions
into what you're doing.
One thing I've learned from Dr. Dettloff,
is when you're treating an animal,
you want to give that animal good intentions,
and positive feelings.
It's the same when you're cooking.
You want to give that recipe good intentions
and positive feelings.
Now, the hickory nuts, the star ingredient.
I'll just sprinkle those in.
The hickory nuts just give it a beautiful, nutty flavor,
and it's a little bit of a surprise for a cake,
to add the hickory nuts to it.
Oh, it smells good already, with the hickory nuts, yum.
I'm gonna set this off to the side,
and then get my beater clean,
because the next thing we're gonna do,
is whip up some egg whites.
Egg whites are gonna add
a little bit of a lighter texture,
when they get whipped up,
which is nice for a cake.
(mixer whirring)
Okay, see now, when the peaks form like that,
that's when you know, they're good to go.
So,
now we're just gonna simply fold in
about a quarter of this mixture.
This is where you want to be careful,
you don't want to over-incorporate,
or else you lose that lightness.
Okay, boy, I'm messy baking today.
I guess that's part of it.
Fold these in.
And I'll get the rest of them in here.
I like using eggs from the farm, too.
It's a little bit of the farm in the cake.
Okay, and now we can just add them right to our pans.
I've got three cake pans,
and what I've done so far, is I've buttered them,
and then I put a piece of parchment
on the bottoms of each,
and then, put a little flour in,
so they're sure not gonna
stick to anything today, hopefully.
And, divide it out among the three here.
There we go.
I think this looks nice and even-ish.
And what I like to do,
is just hit that cake
on the counter,
to get it to go through the pan.
There we go.
It takes out a lot of your frustration and stress,
at the same time.
Now, I can just pop these in at 350.
When they come out, we'll let them cool,
and then we'll get started on the frosting.
Cream cheese frosting is a classic,
and I think it will pair wonderfully
with the hickory nut cake.
So let's get started, it's a very simple recipe.
I'm gonna put eight ounces of cream cheese in here,
and get it whipped up a little bit.
And again, you want to have all your ingredients
at room temperature.
That way they can come together nicely,
and it's a nice, nice texture.
Get some butter in there.
Some vanilla for flavor.
And now I'm gonna slowly add some powdered sugar.
It's gonna get messy.
And a little bit of milk to thin it out.
We want to be able to spread nicely on the cake.
I'm gonna lick the beaters and get this all cleaned up,
and then we can start on the fun part,
which is decorating the cake.
One thing I've learned when frosting cakes,
is to put a little bit of the frosting down on the bottom,
and that'll kind of hold that cake in place.
So when you're walking it out to where you need to set it at,
it's not gonna wobble as much.
Okay, so now, got my fun cake tools here.
I'll just put a dollop
in the middle,
and just spread that out.
If you wanted to, you could put jam inside the layers, too.
Some homemade jam.
My parents, when they got married--
My family was dairy farmers,
so they had to, kind of get married
in between the morning and the evening milking.
And that's true for a lot of folks,
I know when people get married in the area,
sometimes milking times have to be switched,
in order to get to the church on time.
And it's just a reality of being in a farm life.
Just because there's a wedding,
doesn't mean that the cows don't need to be milked.
And I don't want to overfill the inside,
because sometimes it just gets to be too much.
I need to turn this on top.
I'm gonna turn the top one upside down,
just to give me a smoother top
when I start decorating.
I'm getting excited for this cake.
Now I can start loading up with the frosting,
and smoothing it out.
My worst fear is that I'm gonna have crumbs
coming out into the frosting,
but I've thought ahead,
and I've decided that I'm gonna put some hickory nuts
on top of the frosting,
so if I do have a little crumbs, that's gonna disguise it.
You don't want it to--
You know, I think it's nice
not to take yourself, or your baking, too seriously.
And just have a good time.
Don't get stressed out about it too much.
If it's not perfect, it's not perfect.
But then people will know it's homemade.
And when you're working with your frosting here,
and it's a hot summer day out today,
if it gets to be too movable,
you can pop it in the fridge and let it set up again,
and cool down,
and it can spread a little bit more evenly.
And to the top of this,
I'm gonna add some hickory nuts.
And now you can just sprinkle around.
Toast them up a bit before you do.
So I wanted to add some of Emily's beautiful flowers,
to decorate the cake with,
but I wanted to wait
until the very last minute to do that with,
that way the flowers stay nice and fresh.
I'm gonna go set this to the side,
get the cows milked,
and then get into my wedding dress,
because the bride should never be late to her own wedding.
(wedding music)
- I now pronounce you, husband and wife.
You may kiss the bride.
(cheers and applause)
The perfect ending for the perfect day.
Wisconsin-grown hickory nut wedding cake.
Top it all off with cream cheese frosting.
Keep things local
by tossing a sustainably-grown flower bouquet.
(cheers)
Well, I hope this has inspired you
to fall in love and have a farm wedding.
And I hope you gather with us next time.
- All: Around the Farm Table .
- I'm your host, Inga Orth.
(cheers and laughter)
*
- Around the Farm Table is funded in part by
Wisconsin Farmers Union,
Heartland Credit Union,
and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.