- Announcer: The following program
is a PBS Wisconsin original production.
[slow folksy music]
[sledgehammer knocking]
[Inga exclaiming]
[silo crashing]
- Welcome to the farm.
It's been one heck of a winter, but now that spring is here,
we can start cleaning up.
[upbeat folksy music]
I've invited some friends over to help me with the cleanup
and I'm gonna be making them a delicious lunch.
For the ingredients,
I went to Hillview Urban Agriculture Center,
and then I went off ramping in the woods
with my friend Bjorn.
And finally, I stopped at Birdsong Ridge Farm.
Gather with us, Around the Farm Table .
I'm your host Inga Witscher.
Good morning girls.
I'm Inga and I love everything about farming.
[upbeat folksy music]
Midwestern farms are a bounty of good food
made by good people.
I love being able to travel,
to search out good ingredients.
Cooking is all about what's seasonal, what's fresh.
Every day can be filled with good food,
good friends, and a beautiful herd of cows.
Welcome to the farm.
- Inga to cow: Good girl.
- Announcer: Around The Farm Table is funded in part by
Wisconsin Farmers Union: United to Grow Family Agriculture,
Heartland Credit Union,
Focus Fund for Wisconsin Programming,
and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.
[tractor engine roaring]
[upbeat folksy music]
- Boy, we've had quite a few months here on the farm.
In November, I woke up to the barn engulfed in flames.
It was a few days before we were finishing
our construction of our new creamery.
So, it was a double blow.
Luckily, all the milk cows were outside in the pasture,
so we didn't lose any of them.
I'm grateful to the community that came out
to support us after our barn fire,
and I thought that our luck was turning,
but after all the big snows we had here
in January and February, our hay shed collapsed,
and then a few weeks later, our winter housing collapsed.
So, I guess things really do happen in threes.
I hope that our luck is changing.
We've lost a lot over the last few months,
but we didn't lose hope.
We are so hopeful that, now that it's spring,
we're gonna start rebuilding the farm,
rebuilding our creamery,
and everything is gonna be as good as new.
I'm gonna help my guys finish cleaning up here,
and then I'll head into the kitchen to make us some lunch.
Why don't you check out the farms I visited yesterday
to get our ingredients?
[gentle folksy music]
I traveled to downtown La Crosse,
where Natalie is working
at Hillview Urban Agriculture Center,
growing fresh foods in the middle of the city.
[rocks hitting metal]
In addition to the greenhouse,
Hillview is also making some special compost
with the help of some wriggly little friends.
Hi, Natalie. - Hi.
- Nice to see you. - Nice to see you.
- Boy, spring has sprung in here.
- Ah, yes, we're very excited.
- Well, can I see a little bit around the greenhouse?
- It's just-- - Yeah, I'll show you around.
- I'm so excited for spring
and to be able to see living things.
- Yeah, if we go around here, I'll show you around.
- So, what kinds of things do you have
going on in the greenhouse?
- So, we have lots of things going on,
but this is just one place where we
do all of our services for the community.
We also have cooking classes,
but here at the greenhouse,
we host lots of community members to come here
and learn how to grow plants and the foods,
so they can take it back home and then implement it
in their gardens, or even just their one pot of basil
that's not really doing so well.
- I got to learn from my grandparents and my parents.
They drug us out to the garden all the time.
I imagine folks in the city sometimes,
they didn't have that opportunity growing up.
Do you find that's a problem?
- I find that's a big problem in the cities.
A lot of people when they think of agriculture,
they think of the farm fields,
but they don't know that it can happen right in their cities
and even right in their homes and their backyards,
you know, when the people don't have bigger spaces to grow,
they think it's just not possible.
But even teaching kids or the next generation
or even yourself as an adult,
how to care for that one basil plant or that herb,
or just that one thing that you could
probably even grow in your house.
I think it's really important for people to still keep
the growing culture alive.
- What does it mean to you to be able
to be a part of such an amazing project?
- I absolutely love, you know, what I do at my job here,
and the reason why I love it is 'cause I really believe
in the mission of Hillview Urban Agriculture,
is to give people access to a healthy, sustainable
food system, which really isn't always possible in the city.
So, really to teach people and kids of all ages
and gardening ability, whether they've been gardening
for 50 years, or they kill everything they touch,
I love to teach everyone how to grow the plants
and how to somewhat be sustainable themselves.
- Well, one of the reasons I wanted to
stop down here is I'm really interested
in your compost that you make from worms.
- You want to see it?
- I would love to go see it.
- All right, let's go check out the worms.
[gentle folksy music]
- So, this is actually where the worms are living?
- Mm-hmm.
- I don't see any.
Are they kind of underneath the whole thing?
- Yeah, so just like in nature,
you never really see worms right on the top.
So, they actually live right underneath the surface.
So, if we take a look...
- Okay.
- ...we could see them under there.
- Oh, wow.
- Yeah.
- And it's fun.
So, you've got eggs in here,
carrots, all kinds of different vegetables and fruits,
where are you getting all this from?
- So, we pick up from two local universities
as well as a health care center in La Crosse,
and that's gonna be about 400 pounds of food waste a week
that we pick up and feed to our worms.
- That's a big deal.
I mean, food waste is such an issue in the United States.
We have so much food waste.
What a great way to utilize it.
- Yeah, it's really happy.
You know, once you see all the numbers add up
and when you carry those heavy buckets of food,
you really understand, you know,
once you get into this operation, you know,
it's reused in such a great way
instead of just sitting at the landfill.
- Sure, yeah.
So, for the people that don't know about compost,
can you explain what it is
and what's the benefits of compost?
- Yeah, so there's a few different kinds of composting
and a lot of people are familiar with, you know,
kind of your pile of your grass and your branches
and maybe some food waste outside in a pile,
but vermicomposting is really special 'cause it uses worms,
and the worms that we have here are a kind of earthworm,
they're red wigglers, and they're special
'cause they reproduce really fast and they eat a lot.
- So, they're actually taking these scraps and eating it
and then, that's their-- it's coming out and it's soil,
basically, or soil amendment.
- Yup, so yeah, so we get to harvest their waste,
which acts just like any other manure,
and this is actually really special
because of the type of worms that we have.
They have a special bacteria in their stomach
that their end product or their waste that we harvest
is actually more nutritious than when they ate it.
- Wow, interesting.
Is this something, you're doing it on quite a big scale.
Can I do this at my house, if I wanted to?
- Yeah, it's very possible to do this on a small scale
with just your average tubs
that you pick up at your hardware store.
You could buy the worms online or even from us,
and you use some basic bedding like newspaper, grass or...
and you just start feeding the worms
and they adapt very well, and they're here to eat
and reproduce and that's what they do well.
- One of the things that I like about using compost is,
I never have to worry about burning the plants.
I know it's an organic resource
and I know you're just building that soil by adding compost.
Is that what you're encouraging folks to do?
- Yeah, we definitely encourage, you know,
people are always asking, you know, how do you,
how do I use this fertilizer?
You can use it in many different ways
from top dressing throughout the season.
So, just putting a little teaspoon to a tablespoon
on a plant and watering it in.
You can mix it into your raised bed or your garden rows
at the beginning of the season,
and you can even make a worm tea.
So, you just put, you know, put it in a sock
and leave it in a bucket of water for 24 hours,
and it seeps through and that's a liquid fertilizer-- - Sure.
- that your plants can use.
- Sure.
Well, I'm gonna let these guys
keep the worms in their garage,
and I'm going to grab some compost
and then head out to our next location.
[gentle folksy music]
From the city to the hills of the Driftless Region,
I took a hike into the forest,
where I found Bjorn foraging for ramps,
a wild food that appears for a short time
only in the early spring.
Hi Bjorn.
- Hey, Inga, how are you?
- Good, good to see you.
- Good to see you.
- It's nice to be out here in the ramps with you.
- Yeah, totally.
- I always know when spring is here,
is when I see you out ramping around.
- Definitely, definitely,
it's one of my favorite things to do in springtime.
- So, look at all these beautiful,
this is the most I've seen, ramps
and for folks that don't know, what is a ramp?
- They're actually a native plant in Wisconsin,
and they're in the Allium family,
which is what onions are in, garlic is in, leeks are in,
so they're a relative of onions, garlics, and leeks,
and they grow wild in Wisconsin,
in usually north-facing maple forests,
and they're a perennial, so they just come back
year after year after year and they're super delicious.
- I love well, I love anything garlic,
anything that has a strong flavor, I'm all about it,
and that's one of my favorite things about this,
is just, it's really pungent, you know what you're eating
when you're eating it.
- Definitely, definitely, definitely.
Yeah, you know, you get a little bit of that garlic breath,
but I think it's a great thing for spring.
- It's worth it.
[laughing] Yeah, totally, totally.
- Have you found that wild food, especially ramps,
is becoming more and more popular?
- Yeah, I feel like it's getting more and more popular.
I know for me, about the same time I started
seeing them on menus, I was like, "What are ramps?"
"I have no idea what these are,"
and a friend introduced me to them,
who I was helping with their maple syrup operation,
and I had never known what a ramp was,
and I was walking through them all the time
in the springtime.
Yeah, and like you, I love garlic and onions and leeks
and essentially, it's just a combination of
all those things that I love.
- Yeah, and I was reading about ramps a few years ago
and I read in Appalachia, they're really popular,
and people would go out and harvest these,
just like I do with nettles because it was that first green
and they were full of that, all that nutrition
that we'd been missing for the whole winter.
- Yeah, it's kinda-- - And it's just a cleansing.
- Yeah, it's kind of like a spring cleansing tonic,
at least for me, I just love, you know,
you've gone through the winter eating lots of potatoes
and carrots and stuff like that.
- Don't show me another squash.
[laughing]
- It's all good, but getting that first local
green thing of the year is just super rewarding
and fresh and bright, and so,
ramps are just some of the first things
to come out of the ground here in spring.
- Here's what else I love about wild foods
and things like this, is you don't really
have to do anything to them, it's not like you're out there
weeding away all these other things so they can grow or
having to bring out compost for them.
They just, they do their own thing.
That's the kind of harvesting I like to do.
- Yeah, yeah, that's the beauty of ramps
and native perennials like this is,
they just do their thing, they're there, they grow,
and you just have to come out and harvest them.
- Speaking about harvesting,
I know it's important not to overharvest.
- Yeah, I'm glad you brought that point up.
That's super important to talk about.
Ramps are a really slow-growing species.
They reproduce in two different ways.
They'll produce seeds and then they'll also
produce little rhizomes
where they'll reproduce off to the side of the plant,
and what's crazy to think about is,
when they reproduce with seeds,
it takes
five to seven years for a plant to be able to produce seeds,
and then once it produces seeds
and it drops those on the forest floor,
it can take anywhere from 6 to 18 months
for those seeds to germinate.
- So, if we all got really excited
and went out and collected all the ramps in this area,
we could really be destroying that habitat
or that whole plant system.
- Yeah, totally, it's really important to be,
have sustainability in mind.
I know all the ramp patches I harvest from,
I only take a tiny bit of the population that's there,
'cause I want to enjoy them into the future,
and I want other people
- to enjoy them in the future. - Sure.
- So, yeah just, I think it's so important that
if people are going and harvesting ramps,
they just take a little bit here and there
and they can come back every year and enjoy.
- So, a lot of times I noticed you'll just harvest
the leaves but, if we, could we harvest one of the bulbs
just to kind of, see what they look like?
- Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Yeah, and so typically, they grow in these clumps
as you can see right here,
there's kind of a clump of ramps between us,
and what I think of is, there is one seed,
way years ago, maybe 20, 30 years ago
that germinated in this spot
and it's kind of been shooting off rhizomes or seeds,
and we can dig one up to kind of show you,
and they're pretty hard to get out of the soil.
You can't just pull them, like a carrot or anything.
There's quite a bit of roots.
- Mm-hmm.
- And then when you pull them up,
they usually come up kind of in these clumps here.
- Okay.
- As you can see.
- They're beautiful to look at.
- Yeah, yeah, definitely, and what I find interesting
is there's this little, kind of sheath of skin
and this is the ramp from last year when it was
full-sized. - Oh!
- And so, you kind of have to pick that off
and I always try to get as much soil off of them as possible
'cause it takes a long time to clean these--
- Yeah. - ...when you actually
dig the whole entire plant, but that's pretty much it
and you can, I usually trim off the roots
- Uh-huh.
- And then you can eat from the bulb,
the stem, all the way up to the leaf.
- What's your favorite way to eat them?
- I love ramp pesto actually.
Really early in the season, when they're smaller,
they're very fiery, they have a really strong garlicy
and oniony flavor, and I love making pesto that time of year
and eating it throughout the season from my freezer.
- Ah, I know.
I think I'm gonna do a pesto,
but since I'm cooking for some folks
that maybe aren't used to that fieriness
- Yes, definitely.
and that intense garlic like we are,
I'm gonna put a little bit of kale in
to help mellow it out a little bit.
- Yeah, yeah, that sounds like a great idea.
I bet that'll be delicious.
- Well, I'm gonna harvest some more ramps with Bjorn
and then, why don't you meet me at our next stop.
[gentle folksy music]
[raindrops]
I'm here in Viroqua at Birdsong Ridge Farm.
I'm ready to get out of these April showers
and into the greenhouse to find out
what Beth is doing here on the farm.
Just outside of Viroqua, Birdsong Ridge is taking form.
After working for years as a research biologist,
Beth and Frank relocated to Wisconsin
with their two children to become farmers and homesteaders.
Hi Beth, thank you so much
for agreeing to meet with me today.
- Oh, hi, Inga.
- I love coming to Viroqua
and I wanted to visit some people
who are doing something different,
and you guys are, you fit the bill.
I love visiting new farms.
Tell me a little bit about what you're doing.
- Well, in the couple of years that we've been here,
we've been growing greens here in our greenhouse year-round
and then, in our 13 acres of fields,
we're working on regenerating soil that was
pretty compacted and nutrient deficient from years of
monoculture from corn and soybeans.
So, that's been quite an uphill battle,
but we're getting closer to where we want to be with it.
- So, one thing I love, I found your blog a few months ago,
and I am just so inspired by reading it
and learning a little bit about what you guys are doing
and your intentions for here.
Can you tell us what regenerative agriculture is?
- Yeah, well regenerative agriculture,
it's a pretty broad term for just a style of farming
that focuses on giving back to the land
in a way that enhances biodiversity and soil health
rather than just trying to take from the soil.
- Okay.
- So right now, we're starting a series of cover crops.
We've been doing a summer mixed cover crop
and then a winter cover crop in rotation
to try and just add organic matter back to the soil
and then, we're also working on planting trees,
and we're possibly gonna do a prairie restoration.
Lots of different things.
Just less areas of mowed grass is one of our biggest pushes
because so much of this farm was actually just
mowed lawn before, so that doesn't give very much habitat
to very many things.
- Yeah.
- I'm not a lover of mowing lawn at all.
- Yeah, why do it if you don't have to?
- I sort of put my cows in my front yard,
and I know it irritates the neighbors, but I love it.
- Ah, that's a great idea.
Grazing is something that we thought of too,
but with our two little kids on the farm,
as well as trying to get all this new stuff started,
we're like, maybe a few years down the line,
we can start grazing animals.
We're not quite ready.
What's it like being in this new adventure?
Also, you're raising kids, I see you've got the sandbox here,
and toys and the kids are running around.
They must be in heaven.
- Yeah, well, especially in the wintertime, you know,
they're so little that there's only
so much time they can spend in the snow
and so, we come in here and this is our oasis
and we only heat it to about 34 degrees right above freezing
but on a sunny day, it can easily be 70 in here
in the winter, so, we're in here in T-shirts
and running around and yeah, it's been great for them.
- All my favorite memories were growing up on the farm
with my dad and my mom and my grandparents around
and my uncles and it's just,
I think it's the best way to grow up.
- Oh, yeah.
Well, that's one of the reasons that we decided to do this.
My job as a biologist for the government before
had me traveling several weeks out of every month
and when I had my first baby, I thought, you know what,
I need a shift, I need a lifestyle that allows me
to be with my kids, but yet still, you know,
doing something I really wanted to do.
So, farming was a, kind of an obvious choice for us.
- Do you see yourself growing in the years to come?
- Yeah, yeah, we actually have a business plan,
and it entails every year trying to expand a little bit,
a little bit what we're producing
and right now, we're very small.
We sell to a couple restaurants in town
and you know, a few individuals,
we drop off salad mix on porches, you know,
around, so-- - I love that.
What do you find most gratifying about
being able to grow this delicious beautiful food?
- Well for me, it's having free fresh greens
just picked moments ago, and you know, I was saying,
my kids, for whatever reason,
don't eat vegetables off their plate very easily
unless they're dipped in ketchup, maybe but,
- My husband is the same way.
[laughing] - still,
they will come out here and they will just pick
kale off the plant and they'll be, you know,
their faces will just be green with vegetable matter
and I think if we didn't have this,
they wouldn't be eating their vegetables at all.
So, we're so lucky in that way.
- What are some tips that you can give me for
going into something like growing in a greenhouse?
- Well, you have to be a little more careful
in a greenhouse setting than you do out in a field
because you don't get that annual
kind of flush of the spring rains
and the winds blowing things around.
I mean, it's, everything is very cumulative
and what you put in the soil kind of stays there,
other than maybe some of the nutrients that
the plants take up and you take away.
So, salts can accumulate,
you can end up with pest problems,
and you know, there's not predators
in here to come and eat insects.
So, we actually brought chickens in last year for a while
to deal with grasshoppers that were in here,
and we bring ladybugs in to deal with the aphids.
So, you kind of have to get a little more creative with
you know, disease and pest issues than you would
if you were just doing it outside.
We're not certified organic yet,
but we are definitely wanting to be,
as of next year, we hope.
So, we're really committed to using organic methods
and non-chemical ways of controlling those problems.
- Well, that's fantastic.
I'm gonna gather some greens here
and then, why don't you meet me back in the kitchen.
[gentle folksy music]
Even though I don't have a barn to milk cows in,
I still have to milk the cows,
and the good thing about that is,
I've had plenty of milk left over to do things with.
So, I've been making lots of things with dairy products.
Cheeses, butters, everything you can think of,
and one of my favorite things to make is ricotta cheese.
It's really easy, and it's delicious in everything,
especially these ricotta dumplings.
I'm telling you, they taste like you're biting into
just little clouds of deliciousness, they're fantastic
and the best part is, they're easy to make.
What I did is, I started with about two cups of ricotta,
and I strained this in a cheese cloth for 24 hours
to get out any extra moisture.
You want the ricotta to be firm,
and now, I'm ending up with about a cup and a half.
I'm gonna put that right in my mixer
along with one egg and one egg yolk,
some Parmesan cheese, and then just a little bit of flour.
That's gonna help thicken everything up.
And we're just gonna give that a little bit of a zip
just until it comes together.
[mixer whirring]
And that is perfect.
It only takes a minute.
Now that the dough's come together,
I'm gonna put it in my handy dandy pastry bag,
and you can pick these up at the craft store
or some grocery stores.
I use them for a lot of different things.
I don't know why I talk to my food; it never listens to me.
Get down, get down, come on.
Once you have everything in the bag,
you're gonna cut off the end of it
and then we're gonna pipe this out
on a floured cookie sheet.
We're gonna go in long lines.
Look at how nice that is.
It's so easy to work with these bags.
Stop right there.
We'll start again.
Once you have them all squeezed out,
just cut them into about one-inch pieces
and then, you can just toss them
with a little bit of that flour
and let them rest for a few hours.
Okay, while these are resting,
I'm gonna make my next recipe.
We're gonna be using our ramps and the kale that we got.
So for our pesto,
like if you were doing a basil pesto or anything else,
I'm gonna start with a little bit of Parmesan cheese.
I'm just gonna toss this right into my mixer here.
[mixer whirring]
Alrighty, so into here, I'm gonna add
a little bit of kale and I'm just gonna slice it up,
so that it
comes together a little bit easier.
I'm gonna take the stems off.
So, I've got a good handful of the kale
and then, a little bit more of the ramps
to get that nice ramp flavor.
And then, I'm gonna put
a little bit of lemon juice in there.
Give it a fresh squeeze,
and then, now you're just gonna
press go.
[mixer whirring]
Once everything starts to come together,
you're gonna add a little bit of olive oil,
a little bit at a time
until you get the consistency that you want.
[mixer whirring]
And I think that looks perfect.
Look at that beautiful green.
I'm gonna go ahead and boil up some water
and pop the dumplings in, and then we'll have lunch.
[gentle folksy music]
Serve the ricotta dumplings with a wild ramp pesto.
A light-bodied wine pairs nicely.
Serve your guests Wisconsin cheese and charcuterie
to round out the meal.
[everyone chuckling]
I hope that this is a good reminder to never give up hope,
and I hope you'll gather with us next time
- Unison: Around the Farm Table .
- I'm your host, Inga Witscher.
Thanks guys, cheers.
Only one week of clean up left and then we're done.
[chuckling]
[gentle folksy music]
- Announcer: Around the Farm Table is funded in part by
Wisconsin Farmers Union:
united to grow family agriculture,
Heartland Credit Union,
Focus Fund for Wisconsin Programming,
and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.