*
- Hi there, welcome to the farm.
I want to see what I can do here on my 30 acres of land
to make it a little bit more profitable and keep on farming.
To start, I'm re-imagining my land
with a quarter acre of garlic.
We're also gonna head up to Colfax, Wisconsin,
for a closer look at Scottish Highlanders.
And unique cover crops for grazing.
Then it's down for garlic seed in Trempealeau
and since we'll be in the area,
I thought we'd stop by Ecker's Apple Orchard
to pick up some apples.
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.
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.
[speaking to cow] Good girl.
- Around the Farm Table is funded in part by
Kwik Trip,
big on fresh
and proud to support Wisconsin's farmers,
Wisconsin Farmers Union,
united to grow family agriculture,
American Provenance,
Heartland Credit Union,
and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.
*
- Garlic is not only one of my favorite ingredients,
it's something I've been wanting to grow here at the farm
for years.
When I decided to transition this field from cow pasture
into a garlic field, the first thing we did
was start liming the soil and tilling everything up.
And then I hauled up loads and loads of compost.
Garlic, like most things,
likes really good soil and fertile soil,
so it was important to have that compost
added into the soil.
The next thing we did is I had my neighbor come through
and shape up the beds with a bed shaper.
It gives us a nice, loamy bed to plant that garlic in.
Garlic doesn't like wet feet,
so wanted to bring it up from the ground
so it doesn't have to sit in wet
in case we have a ton of rain in the coming year.
The first thing you do when you plant your garlic
is separate the cloves from the bulb.
And that's time-consuming and hard.
Once you have the clove separated,
you plant your garlic about 10 inches apart from each other
in your beds, then you want to put it in six inches deep.
I've got my piece of tape on my planter here.
So I'm gonna go in to six inches.
And then I simply just plug that right into the ground,
getting a good soil-to-seed contact,
and cover that up.
And later on, when the guys get here,
we'll get everything mulched
and the rest of the garlic planted.
But in the meantime,
let's go find some ingredients for supper.
*
[Scottish Highlanders bray and moo]
Hey, Chad, how are you doing?
- Hey, how's it going? - Good.
This is a nice-looking group of Scottish Highlanders.
- Well, thank you.
- What is the characteristics of the Scottish Highlander?
- Some of the characteristics are that you can see
their hair and their horns.
- Inga: They're adorable cows.
- Chad: Also, they're known for their temperament.
They're a fairly docile breed.
They do well on pastures.
- I haven't been
in a group of beef cows a whole lot
that just kind of come around and want to say hi.
- Yep, they'll just kind of watch you
and just do their thing and continue grazing.
- How's the meat?
- The meat tends to be very tender
because they are a slower growing breed.
And they are also
lower in cholesterol than other breeds.
- Oh, really? - Of cattle.
- Why is that?
- The main reason that they're lower in cholesterol
is because of their long hair.
They don't need all the back fat.
- Oh, right.
- So they're just more naturally low in fat.
- That's great, I love that.
How many cows do you have here?
- Right now, we're right around 30.
- Okay, that's a good number. How many acres are you grazing?
- Currently right now, I have 40 acres
that I'm grazing rotationally,
so I'm setting up fence every two to three days
and moving them to new grass.
- Inga: That's how I always did things at the farm.
I think it's a wonderful way to raise animals,
especially cows.
They're designed to turn grass into milk and meat
and it's a nice way to fertilize your pastures
and get the cows on and off.
- Yeah, that's one of the main reasons.
Very low maintenance, and since both my wife and I
work off the farm, it saves a lot of time.
- Have you done anything here to improve the pastures?
- Yes, right now we're working on trying out cover crops
as a tool to use to rotation into reseeding the pastures.
- What sorts of things have you been trying out so far?
- This last summer, we did a warm season mix
with sorghum, Sudan grass, and millets,
and we also threw in some turnips and clover, as well.
- Did the cows, do they eat the turnips?
- They actually do.
They'll eat the leaves off first
and sometimes they'll actually
pull the turnip out of the ground.
They don't tend to eat the actual bulb of the turnip
but what happens is the turnip will then decay
and go right back into the ground.
- Wonderful, I'd love to see some of the cover crops.
That's something that's interested me for a long time,
so I'd love to have a look, if you don't mind.
- Yep, this way.
*
- It's neat to actually be out here,
seeing the diversity of what you're planting here.
I've read so much about these cover crops
and just the different species you have out here.
It's neat to be able to see it up front.
What all do you have in here?
- Yep, what we planted here is a warm season cover crop,
which things that we planted
were sorghum, Sudan grass,
there's some sunflowers,
cow peas, Japanese millet, pearl millet,
and we also added in
for diversity, a few cool seasons,
mainly clover and turnips.
- One thing that happens in the summertime,
in the heat of the summer, the grass stops growing,
so it's nice to have a crop like this
to be able to put those cows through.
- Yeah, that filled a little niche for us this summer
when things got a little drier.
The grasses started to--
The cool seasons didn't grow as good
and this warm season cover crop was over my head.
So it provided a lot of tonnage for the cattle.
- Is conservation something important for you?
Because that's what you do
in your outside-of-the-farm job, right?
- Yeah, that's right.
Farming is not my full time job.
I actually work off the farm for
a local land conservation office through the county.
- That's wonderful.
I love the breed of the Scottish Highlander.
Obviously, they're just so cute.
I think they'd look perfect in the pasture.
But I would like to try out some of the beef
and see how the flavor is.
- Yes, we actually have a few packages
of tenderloin for you to utilize in a recipe.
- That's fantastic. Thank you so much.
*
I'm here in Trempealeau, Wisconsin,
at Ecker's Apple Orchard.
I thought that apples would be the perfect accompaniment
to this fall meal.
Let's go out in the orchard and find Sarah
and find out just what she does here.
Well hello, Sarah. - Hello, Inga.
- How are you doing today? - Excellent, how about yourself?
- Good, what a beautiful day to be picking apples.
- It's lovely.
- Sarah, tell me a little bit about your farm here,
your orchard.
I'm excited because this
has been in your family for quite a while, right?
- Yes, my sister Jessica and I are fourth-generation
apple farmers and my dad lived just a few miles away
and he knew it was the place to be.
And he really hung onto it.
- That's amazing.
What a great experience for you to be able to come home
and continue on your family tradition of growing apples.
I love it.
- We really love it too.
- What kinds of things do you have to worry about
as far as the weather is concerned?
I bet that's something that's on your mind all the time.
- Yes, so frost in the spring is our first fear of the year
and we actually purchased a frost fan.
We lost them in 2012
and this frost fan this year saved 75,000 pounds of fruit.
- Wow. What does the frost fan do?
- It's actually positioned a little bit positive
and it's like a helicopter in place.
So it pulls warm air down from the inversion layer
and at 25 degrees, you lose everything.
28 degrees, you have almost a full crop.
- Wow.
- So we had 24 on the farm in one part,
away from the fan, and then a full crop beneath that fan.
- Wow, so it really is an important tool
to have here on the farm.
- Yes, and we could use about six more
but we're gonna save our pennies for one more.
- That's good.
What do you have to do?
I've got a few apple trees at my house.
Nothing like this.
They don't look quite as good as these.
What do you have to do in the fall
to put them to bed?
- We will go through and mow everything very closely.
Mowing your weeds down,
rodents don't like to cross bare ground
and if a rodent girdles right around the tree trunk,
it can die.
There's no way for that xylem and phloem to move anymore
and your tree does not make it.
So mowing cuts down on your rodent pressure
but it also chops up leaf litter,
and leaf is where some of your fungus is.
If you can just chop that up,
you have much less inoculum for the spring.
- Being in the orchard, this is pretty hands on
and it's just you and your sister
that are running the place here?
- So in peak season, we can have about 40 employees
between pickers, pie ladies, caramel apple crew,
and then,
all of our retail staff.
Then we drop down to about four employees
in the off season when we're pruning.
- Wow, okay.
Now this is the place to come for pies, right?
- It is the place to come for pies.
It's been a lifelong tradition here.
My grandmother made pies with her friends
and then as she got older, my mom picked it up
and now there's still a crew of 10 ladies
three times a week, assembling fresh pie
and freezing it, and then my mom bakes fresh every day.
- That's amazing.
I like that, too,
as I'm starting to kind of reimagine my farm
into something new,
I'm thinking about, what can I grow
to put into a product, because I think it's nice
to be able to have that outlet, maybe,
for your apples that aren't as beautiful
as some other ones.
Do you ever have a problem kind of explaining to people
about the apples and how they don't all have to look
the same shape and the same size and that kind of thing?
- Yes, and we do, we offer a discount on those apples.
If people are willing to accept a little bit of blemish
or a cosmetic challenge--
- But they taste the same. - They taste the same.
Sometimes it's debatable that they may even taste better,
that they're a little bit sweeter.
They might even be healthier for you
because they already had a little battle of their own
so they have a higher antioxidant content.
There's a little push to eat ugly apples.
- I'd love to take a look inside, see some of the pies,
and get some apples for supper tonight.
- Come on in.
- So, Sarah, this is the sorting area.
What are you sorting for?
What are you looking for when you're sorting?
- We're looking for, number one, is our best quality fruit,
so there will be no imperfections on it.
Number two is an apple that will have a mark or a bruise,
but it's still just cosmetic damage.
Nothing is wrong internally with the apple.
- Tastes the same, yeah.
- The machine here is sorting by size so that
I have a little bit of help
with my caramel apple size, my school apple size,
and then our extra fancy size.
- So you're selling to schools too?
- We do, we work with the farm to school program
and sometimes 100 boxes a week.
- That's fantastic.
Wonderful, I'm gonna collect my apples
for my dinner this afternoon
and I'll let you get back to work.
But thank you so much for showing me around.
- Thank you.
I noticed on the way down here
there's a little squash and pumpkin stand next door.
Why don't we go have a look
and see what we can find?
*
Hi there. - Hi.
- I'm Inga. - I'm Ryan.
- Nice to meet you, Ryan. - Nice to meet you as well.
- I was on my way up to get some garlic
and I couldn't help but notice
all these beautiful pumpkins from the road.
Is this just a roadside pumpkin stand?
- It is.
It's been here since the '50s.
My dad and brothers had it.
- Well you've got the perfect location.
We're literally right on the road.
There's no better real estate.
- Right, with all the traffic, it works good.
- Do you do mainly the squash and the pumpkins?
- We raise vegetables of all sorts.
There's 16 varieties of squash. - Wow.
- And about 50 varieties altogether of everything.
- Would you have any great advice for me
if I decided next year, I want to put in some pumpkins?
Is there anything you've learned over the years
that you wish you would have known from the beginning?
- Just not to get too big right away.
You gotta experiment.
A lot of little things to learn.
- I tell you what, I'm gonna have a look around here
and get some fall decor.
Why don't you meet me up at Tamarack Garlic,
where we're gonna find out how they plant their garlic.
*
[garlic skin crinkling]
Well, hello, guys. - Hi, Inga.
- How are you doing today? - Doing well.
- Good, I came down to pick up more garlic.
I've got some in the ground but I still need some more.
- Okay, great. - Since I'm here,
how did two teachers become garlic farmers?
- It all started three, four years ago.
My father-in-law sent me a text message.
He said, "Research garlic farming."
What? What's this about?
We got thinking about it, researching it,
and pitched the idea to Jason,
and we both thought we had the time, the resources,
and it looked like a high value crop
that can earn a little bit of money on the side.
- I'm kind of in the same situation right now
where I'm trying to reinvent my farm
and kind of do different crops.
Garlic is something I've wanted to do for years,
so I'm glad I'm doing it.
And I'm glad I have the resource available here,
which is you guys who are growing seed stock.
Because it's important to be able to buy
your garlic seed locally, right?
What are the benefits?
- It's one of the things we looked for
when we first bought seed.
We tried to buy it from somewhere nearby
or a climate that was similar to yours.
Helps the seed acclimate a little bit more quickly.
It can acclimate but it'll take a little bit more time
if it's not a similar climate to yours.
- Sure, okay.
I tell you guys,
the other night I started cooking with the garlic.
I hadn't been doing anything with it
because I thought I'd better save it.
Then I said, oh, I want to see what it tastes like.
The flavor is amazing.
It really is.
It's like anything you're growing in your backyard,
whether it's a tomato or anything else.
The flavor was there.
It was pronounced, and it was delicious and mellow
and now I'm just thinking I need to come down here
and just buy a bunch of garlic just to keep at my house
because it's really-- It really makes a difference.
- It really doesn't compare to what you find
in the grocery store.
The flavor of a hard nut garlic like this
compared to a soft nut garlic
from somewhere else in the world,
there's just no comparison.
- What are you guys doing here?
This is a little bit more than how I planted.
I didn't have any soaking tubs.
What are these soaking in?
- We have a tub full of vodka with our garlic.
We use the vodka for sterilization treatment.
If there was any disease floating around airborne,
or if there were any bugs in the garlic seed,
swimming in vodka for 15 minutes kills just about anything.
- So this is just an insurance policy.
- Yep, that's our insurance policy.
In our other tub, we have
a 5-1-1 Fish Emulsion Fertilizer concentrate
that we buy, dilute it with water.
Great nutritional value added to our crop.
Really helps the roots get a jump start here in the fall.
- You're doing a great job. The flavor is great.
We're back at the farm.
I asked my neighbors to come up and help me finish
with planting the rest of the garlic,
and we've got that done.
So the last thing we have to do before winter
is mulch the garlic with about four to six inches of straw.
So Tom, let's get it done.
[tractor's ignition turns on]
Okay, I'm gonna let these guys finish up with the mulch,
and why don't you meet me down at the kitchen,
and we'll make some supper?
Folks will ask me all the time
how to be successful at farming,
and the one thing that I've found to be successful
at farming is living in this neighborhood
with my amazing neighbors.
I'm so grateful that they came over
to help me get the garlic mulched
and they always are there to offer a helping hand,
so I wanted to make them a beautiful supper
to say thank you and to celebrate the fall season
and these beautiful apples and this great grass-fed beef.
And I definitely have to make a dessert,
because they all have sweet tooths,
so I'm going to start off with making an apple turnover.
I've got a cup and a half of flour
and a half a cup of cake flour.
When you're making pie crust, it's always a good idea
to have everything really, really cold.
So I would even pop your flour in the freezer
for a few minutes to get that chilled out.
We'll put a little bit of sugar in here.
Pinch of salt.
Then it's one and a half sticks of butter.
I cut them up into small pieces
and then I popped these in the freezer
because like I said, you want everything nice and chilled.
That's gonna really help the crust.
When it bakes, if it's nice and chilled,
the butter will kind of slowly release,
and that's what gives it that flaky texture.
So add that right to there.
And then I have some shortening too.
So you can do this in your Cuisinart if you want to,
but I like to do it the old-fashioned way,
the way my grandmother always did it.
I think she'd be proud
that I'm still carrying on her traditions.
This is where you have to use your hands a little bit too.
One thing I loved about growing up
and cooking with my family,
whether it was with my grandparents or with my parents,
is that they always let us get hands on with the ingredients.
We always got to get our hands in there
and start kneading the dough.
And it was special, and it's a nice way to connect kids
to eating and to food and to cooking
is by letting them get in there and get their hands dirty.
The dough has come together,
so I'm gonna add a little bit of flour to my surface.
That shortening in there really helps
bring everything together.
That's gonna also add another flavor of flakiness.
Okay, that looks perfect.
I'm gonna chill this down for about half an hour
in the fridge, and I'm gonna scrub up my apples
and get ready to make the filling.
This is a really simple apple recipe,
but when you have really tasty, delicious apples,
it's fine to have a simple recipe to go with them.
That way, that apple flavor can really shine.
I'm going to use about four to five apples
for this turnover recipe.
You just want to cut them in quarters.
There's really nothing quite like being in an apple orchard
on a beautiful fall day.
What a great way to spend time with friends and family.
I think everyone should be getting out to apple orchards
this time of the year and gathering apples.
Maybe I'll start making it
one of my new favorite traditions in the fall,
and I'll start taking my nephews out.
Now I want to cut the apples thin and try
to keep them all the same size, as uniform as possible,
so that it all cooks correctly and evenly.
Okay now, all the apples can go into a bowl.
Look at that, I got it in one try.
Now it's time to season our apples.
So what we're gonna do,
take a lemon and squeeze it over the apples.
This helps the apples not to brown before they start baking.
And it's a nice little tang that acid brings out
a lot of the flavor in the apples.
I think I'm gonna use the whole lemon.
And I'm a big zester, as you may know,
so I'm gonna zest the lemon peel right into here.
Okay, and I'm gonna season this very simply
with some sugar and some cinnamon.
Just a little bit of each.
And mix that up.
My hands are very clean, so I can use my hands.
And coat all the apples as evenly as you can.
Mm, the cinnamon smells so good.
It's a perfect spice for fall.
Okay.
If you've got the time,
you want to let this sit for about half an hour
so those flavors can macerate and come together.
I'm gonna set this to the side, get some dishes done,
and we'll start rolling out our dough.
On a lightly floured surface,
you're gonna put that dough down.
We're gonna roll this out into a big old rectangle.
Keep working that dough, keeping it together.
Always keep it moving
so it doesn't stick to the bottom.
Okay, once the dough is rolled out and looking good,
then you can pile up your apples.
I might have cut too many apples for this dough.
We'll see.
I think I did do too many apples,
so I'll put those in the fridge and I can snack on them later.
Okay, now let's hope
that the dough comes off.
And it is.
It's a lucky day for me.
We just fold that-- oops-- right on over.
That's okay.
Now there's a place for the steam to come out, see?
The glass is always half full.
I want to crimp the sides here to make sure
that dough sticks to the dough below it.
Okay, and then we'll do an egg wash on top.
And if you have the time again,
you can pop this back in the fridge
to set a little bit more,
let that dough rest.
And it's gonna help it become more and more flaky.
Looking good, and then on top of that,
I'm gonna add a little bit of sanding sugar.
All right, I'm gonna pop this in the oven
and then we'll get started on supper.
When you have great beef,
you don't have to do too much to it.
What I did was add a little salt and a little pepper
and then throw it into a hot skillet
for a minute or two on each side to brown it,
then pop it in the oven for about 10 minutes to finish.
The last thing I'm gonna make
is a little topping for the steaks.
It's a compound butter,
and you can have fun with compound butters
by adding different flavors, different herbs,
but today I wanted to do
a blue cheese, garlic, and rosemary compound butter.
I love all those flavors
and I think they all work well with red meat.
So I've got a stick of butter here
and I'm gonna chop up some rosemary.
Oh, I just love rosemary.
Rosemary is one of my favorite herbs.
You know, they say it helps with your memory.
So if you eat a little bit of rosemary every day,
hopefully you'll have a really good memory.
In it goes with the butter.
When you're cooking with fresh garlic,
it's a whole different experience,
and you'll find that you don't have to use as many cloves
as you would if that garlic, say,
had been sitting around for a few months.
Mince these up fine, and I'm just gonna use two cloves here.
Mm, the smell is just so wonderful.
I like cooking because then when I'm chopping up the garlic
and the rosemary and people come in the house,
it just hits them
and it just sets the tone for a good meal.
Gonna pop this right in here,
and then the last thing is gonna be
some crumbles of blue cheese.
Oh, lovely.
I almost want it to be a little overpowering.
I love strong flavors.
Then we're gonna just mash that all together.
And I'm gonna let that sit in the fridge for a few minutes
to cool off and then I'm gonna serve the guys
a lovely local supper.
*
A thank you supper for the garlic crew.
Garlic rosemary compound butter and Highlander beef,
the perfect pairing.
Snap peas, simple and delicious.
Boiled potatoes are the perfect way
to round out this meal.
Apple turnover with a dollop of Wisconsin ice cream.
I hope this has inspired you
to feed your neighbors a hearty supper,
and I hope you'll gather with us next time,
- All: Around the Farm Table .
- I'm your host, Inga Witscher.
Good job, guys.
*
- Around the Farm Table is funded in part by
Kwik Trip,
big on fresh
and proud to support Wisconsin's farmers,
Wisconsin Farmers Union,
united to grow family agriculture,
American Provenance,
Heartland Credit Union,
and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.