- Narrator: The following program
is a PBS Wisconsin original production.
[gentle acoustic guitar music]
- Inga Witscher: There's nothing better
than sharing a meal with friends,
gathering around the table,
enjoying home-cooked food with fresh ingredients
and sharing stories about how we live our lives as farmers.
That's what brought me to the small community
of Prairie Farm, Wisconsin.
Welcome to Prairie Farm, Wisconsin.
I'm here today to enjoy a meal with these amazing farmers
and to find out what brought them
to this wonderful small community
in northwestern Wisconsin.
Along the way,
we'll learn more about the unique things
that they're doing on their farms,
and we'll cook and eat some delicious food.
Gather with us, Around the Farm Table .
I'm your host, Inga Witscher.
[cows mooing]
Hey!
I'm Inga, a fourth generation dairy farmer,
milking cows and making cheese on my small farm in Wisconsin.
I'm passionate about exploring new places,
meeting new people,
and finding the best local ingredients
that I can turn into delicious meals.
I would like to invite you along
on this food and farming adventure.
Sometimes, you find the most interesting people
in the most unexpected places.
[upbeat guitar music]
Ken and Jay are a wonderful couple
who I've been inspired by for years.
They came to Prairie Farm to try something new and original.
[upbeat electric guitar music]
- My name is Ken Seguine.
- I'm Jay Gilbertson.
- And we are the proud owners and founders of
- In unison: Hay River Pumpkin Seed Oil.
[upbeat electric guitar music]
- Americans love pumpkins,
and you know, they're actually native to the Americas.
They really became very popular in Europe.
And in about the 1600s,
the Austrians started taking the seeds
and pressing the seeds for the oil.
And you know, the pumpkin seed oil, it tastes delicious.
And so we think a lot of Americans,
if they tried it, would also enjoy it too.
- Inga: Thank you so much for having me out to the farm.
Everything looks absolutely gorgeous.
So tell me, what is happening here on the farm?
- Well, we are the proud producers
of America's first pumpkin seed oil.
So we're growing pumpkins.
- Nice. - Quite a few of them.
- We've got 80 acres,
but we're only farming on two this year,
'cause we really wanna focus on pumpkins.
- Inga: Right, and that's still quite a few acres
for this kind of an operation.
- Our whole thing this year,
even though we've been doing it for a while,
we really wanna perfect the technique, you know.
It's not just a cookie cutter recipe of how you do it.
So we're really still learning how to do this well,
and that's our real goal.
- Jay: They're looking really close.
- Ken: Yeah.
- Part of learning how to do it well
is finding creative solutions to the challenges that come
with being organic farmers.
How are you growing these pumpkins here in Wisconsin
with the climate we have? - Well, as you know,
we have a relatively short growing season,
and pumpkins are very tender.
They're very delicate for frost and cold.
So we greenhouse start them.
[water spraying]
And then we take those transplants from the greenhouse
and we transplant them in the field.
- I imagine that there can be some weed issues,
as there is with all organic agriculture.
What have you been finding that's been working for weeds?
- Oh, we don't have weeds on our farm.
Maybe you do on your farm, our farm is good; we're good.
- Paper mulch.
We're trying paper mulch this year,
and so far it's been great.
- Like a lot of us, Ken and Jay are always looking
for effective ways to deal with weeds.
And from what I've seen,
they've found a solution using paper mulch.
[upbeat music]
- Jay: Paper mulch is the best way that we can think of
of weed control.
It completely suppresses the growth
of anything underneath it.
- Ken: So at least in the strip where this mulch is,
where the pumpkins are being planted,
there's gonna be no weed competition.
The plants are gonna be able to have the sun,
the light, and everything to really grow at their very best.
[upbeat electronic music]
[water spraying]
- We plant 50-cell seed trays over in a neighbor's greenhouse.
We greenhouse them for 10 to 12 days, depending.
And then we bring the seedlings over here on a truck
and they go in with the water seed planter.
[upbeat electronic music]
[tractor rumbling]
- We use a water wheel transplanter today,
and it's new for us.
It's pretty cool.
You roll along,
and it has a wheel that has three spikes in it.
And these spikes will pierce that paper mulch that we have,
and then it also has a tank of water,
and a it's dripping water.
And when that spike goes into the ground, it drops water.
So you're just sitting on the transplanter
and you're reaching over and dropping a seedling
into basically the mud
that's in that little hole in the paper.
And it's an ideal way to get the seedling started
because they have complete contact with the soil
and a boost of water.
- With their seedlings in the ground,
we'll give Ken and Jay some time to let their pumpkins grow.
[gentle acoustic guitar music]
And I'll travel a couple miles down the road
to visit Maggie.
Maggie is a one-woman flower farming force of nature.
- My name is Maggie, and I am the owner/operator
of Green Light Farm in Prairie Farm, Wisconsin.
- She came to Prairie Farm to realize her vision
of growing locally produced, sustainable cut flowers.
- So a lot of people think more and more
about where their food's coming from,
but people don't necessarily always think about
where their flowers are coming from or how they're grown.
So when you seek out local flowers,
that supply chain is so much shorter, so much simpler.
You're getting a product that is fresh.
Every flower that I sell was sold
within days of being harvested here on the farm.
- One of the things I really enjoy about Maggie and her farm
is following her social media.
She's always posting the most beautiful pictures
of just this amazing variety of cut flowers
throughout the year.
And this spring, she showed me how she cares for
and harvests her tulips,
the first cut flowers of the year.
[groovy guitar music]
- So this year and the past couple of years,
I've grown about 20,000 tulips.
They're all harvested by hand
and sold here on the farm, throughout western Wisconsin,
and in the Twin Cities.
Tulip season is only a couple of weeks long.
It's very energy-intensive.
We harvest tulips one, two, sometimes three times a day,
seven days a week until they're all harvested.
- For me, it is so interesting
to see this different style of farming,
so different than dairy farming,
and realize the amount of work and knowledge
that really goes into this.
- When I harvest tulips, I pull the whole thing up,
bulb and all, outta the ground.
I harvest them into crates.
I then take them into my barn.
I wash the dirt off the stems.
[hose spraying]
Put them in the cooler.
And then when I'm ready to sell them,
they come out of the cooler, we snip off the bulbs,
put them in water,
and then they go out into the world from there.
[whimsical music]
- Is a hoop house something that you definitely need to have
to be growing your production flowers in Wisconsin?
- So I don't think that you necessarily need to have it,
depending on what you're growing.
But for me, my production
is increasingly more and more focused
on early and late season, and then perennial crops,
so when I grow things inside the hoop house,
I have a lot more, just control.
So I can grow things earlier.
I can grow things later.
And also the quality of the flowers is nicer
because I get longer stems in here.
I also have control over water and things like that.
So it just gives me higher quality flowers
earlier and later than I could otherwise have.
- How do you choose which flowers to plant?
- Some of it's trial and error.
Some of it is guessing on what I think demand will be.
Some of it is just colors that I'm drawn to,
that I just really want to grow.
So it's a little bit of a lot of things.
- That's the way it should be.
It should be what you wanna grow, right?
Tell me about those early seasons.
I notice on your Instagram,
it's like my favorite thing about spring
is when you're posting these beautiful pictures
of these tulips.
And the colors of the tulips are just,
I've never seen anything like it before.
It's just the most beautiful tulips ever.
Is that how you start your season?
- It is.
So every season ends with planting tulips
and then begins with harvesting tulips.
So it's very labor-intensive,
but it's also just one of the more important crops
in terms of the business, but also I think it's the crop
that really connects with people most
coming out of the wintertime.
And one of my favorites to grow.
- While Maggie got back to work,
I headed up to go visit with Erin,
another woman who's bringing
her own unique vision to the area.
[upbeat music]
- My name is Erin Link.
I am the owner of EB Ranch,
located in Dunn County, Wisconsin.
And I am a goat farmer and poultry farmer,
among other things.
[goats bleating]
EB Ranch's big idea was to showcase that a small farm
can be diverse in not only livestock,
but in the products that it produces
and offers to the community.
[upbeat music]
And show off that these animals,
that these different livestock and poultry
can work together in tandem
in a rotational grazing situation.
- She decided to focus on raising and preserving
a rare breed of goat called the San Clemente.
[groovy music]
- I am happy to say that I'm steward
to the critically endangered San Clemente Island Goat.
There's only about 1,400 of them left.
And what's so intriguing and special about them
is their multipurpose nature.
They are really hardy; they're adaptable.
They can be really good milk and meat producers,
as well as possibly fiber, or just browse pets.
You name it, they're there for any small farm or homestead.
They're this rugged little goat that I really enjoy raising.
- Inga: Erin finds creative solutions
to the challenges she faces as a homesteading farmer.
[upbeat rock music]
- My milking situation is fun.
The shelter that the goats use on rotational pastures
is actually a gutted-out camper
that I have the milk stanchion in.
Good girl.
[milk splashing]
[metal clinking]
I enjoy farming because of the variety
and the challenges that it offers me.
I love problem-solving.
Look out you guys, we're moving.
[chickens chirping]
It's a mix of routine and surprises. [laughs]
- Erin, tell me what you're envisioning for your farm.
- I am a person that likes to do many things,
and so having multiple species on my farm
is really important to me
to see how everybody works together for livestock.
And so my big dream is to have ducks and goats
and chickens and other poultry
following each other up in this rotation system
that has been recommended
by a lot of different places and people.
- I'm always fascinated with how people decide
on either dairy cows or beef cows or goats.
How did you come to the decision of the goats
and the ducks and the chickens?
- I, you know, moved back up here in western Wisconsin.
And I always wanted to have goats since I was a little girl.
And I couldn't have goats 'cause everybody had dairy cows.
- Yeah, same here. [both laughing]
- And so it was never my true intention, really.
Like I didn't have this long-term plan
of moving back up here to farm,
but my partner and I had the opportunity to do so.
And so I was like, "I'm getting goats."
And I wanted to see
if there were any heritage breed goats around.
And that's where I came across the San Clemente Island Goat.
These goats have a very unique DNA,
and that's part of this heritage breed
is that they offer diversity and uniqueness
in our food system
that is really important for our food safety.
We need people to be more aware of like,
their actual meat sources or their product sources.
And if we don't find those purposes for those animals,
those animals are gonna be gone.
So we need to support farms
that are raising heritage breeds.
- Inga: I love it, because a lot of people
who are not from Wisconsin
really think that Wisconsin is just dairy cows, right?
- Yeah.
- It's so fun to be in these communities like Prairie Farm
and see how diverse it is just in this community,
with what you're doing here with these amazing goats
and the ducks and the chickens,
what Maggie's doing growing these beautiful flowers.
And then you have Ken and Jay
with America's first pumpkin seed oil production,
all in this area.
I just, this is the great thing about Wisconsin
is just all these communities
that are being built through agriculture,
and just through sharing of knowledge too.
- And this being supportive of each other.
The overwhelming support and this encouragement.
This is a really open and giving and helpful community
to be part of, yeah.
[ducks quacking]
[gentle acoustic guitar music]
- Inga: The summer months have also been kind to Maggie,
and new crops of flowers are in full bloom.
So what are some of those differences
between buying those store-bought flowers
at the grocery store,
where they're coming from so far away,
and then buying from a local grower?
- In the United States right now,
about 70% of the flowers sold in the United States
are imported, primarily from Central and South America,
but really from all over the world,
and of that small percentage grown here,
most are grown in California, about 70% to 80%.
And you think about all the miles
that it took for them to get from halfway around the world
into your home.
You're not able to have that connection
with the farmer that grew it,
or to even be able to ask the questions
of how it was grown and the story behind it.
So local flowers is a really small, but growing market.
- Inga: The flowers seem to be more interesting too.
What I see at farmers markets or here,
it just seems like the flowers are more interesting
and there's more of a variety. - Yeah, absolutely.
You know, a lot of the flowers that are grown commercially
and shipped from abroad, you know,
they're bred for their ability to be shipped
and to survive that process, whereas with local flowers,
and what really makes them special,
is I can choose varieties that smell amazing,
that you can really stick your nose into and enjoy that,
that are gonna have all the colors and textures
and all the things that you might not necessarily get
from flowers that come from halfway around the world,
we can get with local flowers.
- It must be so meaningful for you
to be out here working with the flowers.
What is that passion like for you to be a farmer?
- It's interesting, especially,
you know, here we're talking, it's the beginning of July.
It's a time when you're a farmer,
life moves very, very fast.
And I always have to remind myself
to take some moments to move a little bit slower
and to just take a look around and really take it in
and be reminded that I am surrounded by beauty.
And I'm very lucky to have that in my life every day.
And that I can provide beauty and kind of a place of peace
for myself and for other people.
I can provide a habitat for pollinators.
There's just so much beauty that comes with growing flowers
that I just appreciate more as time goes by.
- This has been amazing getting to be here
and getting to hang out with you.
Prairie Farm seems to be just a wonderful place to visit.
And I'm so happy that I've had the chance to visit.
- Yeah, I'm so glad that you came out.
- Once the work of summer is finished,
we're gonna see how Ken and Jay call on their farmer friends
and an amazing machine.
[garage door rattling]
- The machine to me, it's improbable.
If you had told me how it works,
I'd say, "Nah, that wouldn't work,"
but it actually works very well.
[engine rumbling]
[surf rock music]
[air whooshing]
[air whistling]
[pumpkin thumping]
All the work, all the planning that you've done,
everything is all geared to today.
- Today is a huge relief; it's very exciting.
It's harvest.
[surf rock music]
[motor rumbling]
[pumpkins thudding]
When we have harvest, we need a whole bunch of people to help.
And I think what's really interesting
is we never know what kind of crew we're gonna end up with.
So we're always meeting people, and that is really wonderful.
- Today, we harvested pumpkins with Ken and Jay.
It's very physical,
but I really enjoy helping out friends.
[whooshing]
- It's my 13th year helping Ken and Jay harvest pumpkins.
My role now, kind of is just like kicking their butts
and like, let's get going here and get this done.
- Harvesting pumpkins is actually a lot of fun.
We take turns grabbing the pumpkins off the ground.
We break them off the vine
and then we just toss them into the chopper box, basically.
- It's incredible to see the technology of these machines,
to be able to harvest those pumpkins,
separate out the seed, and get it all cleaned.
These kinds of things really help out around the farm.
- Ken: It smashes up the pumpkins,
and then it goes into a series of three tubes.
And in the very first tube,
it actually will spit out out the back end
the rind, the flesh of the pumpkin,
so it's a net gain of organic matter to the field.
[surf rock music]
And the seeds move on into the other tubes
where they're cleaned.
And we end up with remarkably clean seeds at the end.
- Helping out other farmers like this,
it means a lot to me.
- It's nice to feel like I've helped a local farmer
create a product.
- Ken: It's very nice to be with community in doing this.
- The harvest is a delight; it's just a delight.
[tractor rumbling]
[gentle acoustic guitar music]
[cat meowing]
[geese honking]
- So tell me a little bit about the oil.
I wanna know like what it tastes like,
what are those benefits of this oil?
- Actually.
- You know, have you ever had roasted pumpkin seeds?
- Yeah.
- It has a rich nutty flavor; it's delicious.
I mean, that's the main reason we're doing this.
It's a really tasty, delicious oil.
- Inga: The color is beautiful and kind of unexpected.
- Ken: It is; you're not normally seeing this in oils.
And actually, the color is the nutrition.
So pumpkin seed oil is rich in some of these compounds
that are antioxidants in our body.
And it's a very healthy fat with a wide range of benefits,
you know, from healthy cholesterol
to supporting heart health.
But the thing that we like to really focus on is the taste.
It tastes good.
- The flavor is really amazing.
It's delicate and nice.
How else do you use this?
'Cause it seems to be very, you don't wanna heat it.
- You're right.
So it's also high in omega-3 fatty acids that are delicate,
they don't like high heat, so you wouldn't fry in it.
But you would use it like this, salted to dip bread in,
or maybe most commonly a salad dressing,
a vinegarette salad dressing,
or to put it on cooked vegetables,
like it's been asparagus season here.
It's delicious on asparagus, on broccoli.
- Well, this is really interesting.
I have a couple ideas on how I wanna use this in the kitchen.
So if you don't mind, I'd like to get started.
- Yeah, our pleasure, please do. - Wonderful, let's go.
- For this summer meal, I use the fresh, local ingredients
picked from local farms and my own garden.
I cooked them up together, added some cream,
and topped it off with Ken and Jay's pumpkin seed oil
for a delicious corn chowder.
[upbeat acoustic guitar music]
This is what I love about Wisconsin.
People from all walks of life,
coming together to expand on our farming traditions
and build community.
[people chatting and laughing]
Well, I hope this has inspired you
to sit down with the members of your community
and enjoy a meal.
And I hope you'll gather with us next time,
- In unison: Around the Farm Table .
- I'm your host, Inga Witscher.
Enjoy. - Maggie: Thank you!
- Inga: Thanks for having us. - Ken: Everything is so good.
The soup's delicious, the salad's great.
- Inga: You know, I really love this meal, because...
[upbeat folksy music]
- Announcer: Support for Around the Farm Table
is provided by Wisconsin Farmers Union,
a gift in memory of Wendy Bladorn,
Marge Engelman,
Focus Fund for Wisconsin Programs,
and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.