(lively music)
- Welcome to the farm.
I'm heading up to Ashland to meet some farmers
from the Bayfield Food Co-op.
I'm gonna bike from farm to farm
to pick up some ingredients for a cream can supper.
But first I'm gonna find out
about some new technology that might help me out
here on the 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.
(lively 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.
[with affection] Good girl!
- [Announcer] 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.
(lively music)
- Guys thanks for coming out to the farm today.
I'm always interested in new technology
and ways that it can help me here on my farm.
Tell me a little bit about what technology
you're bringing to the farm today.
- Yeah, the technology that we're bringing
to the farm today is drones.
And while there is a lot of controversy
associated with drones,
drones can be of great use
in a variety of facets in our lives today.
And one of the ways that drones
can really help out in agriculture
is their ability to what I like to describe
as being able to fly low and slow.
And when you can fly that drone low and slow,
you're able to gather imagery
with an incredible amount of detail.
And that incredible amount of detail
means that you can find out
where you have specific areas of problems in your crops.
And when we start putting cameras on there
that can see what we can't see,
such as near infrared, which really measures
how much health a plant has,
we can start using that imagery
and start making decisions ourselves
on how to better manage our agricultural operations.
And this technology is cheap enough
and readily available enough
to where you, as the smaller grower,
are able to do stuff that before
was really limited to very big science projects
and very big operations.
- Well this is really exciting and you brought Pete with you.
He's a licensed pilot, so if you're doing this commercially
you really have to have that pilot's license.
- Pete has a 107 license,
which means he's able to fly commercially.
He has all the insurance needed
and he has an amazing aviation background.
He has over 2000 hours in the cockpit
of a black hawk helicopter.
- Wow, that's so exciting. - Two overseas deployments.
- Oh my goodness.
Well, this is incredible.
Folks, I'm gonna go out
and find out the health of my pastures
and the health of my garden and then I'm gonna get changed
and meet you all up in Ashland to view some other farms
and find out about the Bayfield Food Co-op.
(lively music)
Now that I made it up to Ashland,
let's head over to Free Hand farm,
the first stop on our journey.
(lively music)
Good morning Michelle.
- Well, hi Inga. - It's nice to see you today.
Boy you've got a lot going on.
You've got the farm to table restaurant here.
You're growing food for your restaurants.
You got the restaurant in town.
I am so excited that you're taking time
out of your busy schedule to do this with me.
- Thank you, no problem.
- So farm-to-table is something I know that's really important to you.
What does farm to table mean to you?
- Well it means bringing food directly from a farm
right to the table.
And that is what we do here.
We source from about 15 to 25 different farms
including the Bayfield Cooperative.
- Is farm to table important to you
because of the freshness of the produce
or is it the philosophy behind it?
- It's both, really.
The freshness definitely, you know.
It's so much fun to have things
that are literally just right off the vine.
And with the chefs that we have preparing it,
it's amazing.
It's, you know, food doesn't usually taste like that.
But it's also the philosophy.
You know, everyone up here strives
to be doing the right thing and sustainable agriculture
is really a practice that everybody follows.
And there's a lot of things that that means, but...
To me it means to enhance the environmental quality
and the natural resource base,
and it also means to enhance the quality of life
for the farmers and society as a whole.
- Well that's wonderful.
I think, speaking from a farmer's point of view,
it's nice to have folks like you that
are willing to purchase our products
so that we can tend our land and really put in the work
that we wanna do with our land and you appreciate that.
And it's a full cycle and it's-- - It is.
- I'm hoping that there's going to be more people like you.
- Well, thank you. - I'm excited.
- I hope so, too.
- I'm excited to have our celebration this afternoon.
But first, I'm gonna head up to Northland College
to find out how they're doing sustainability
and farm-to-table eating.
(lively music)
Todd, it's great to be up here with you at Northland College.
I'm doing a little bit of the Bayfield Food Co-op tour today
and I wanted to stop here and talk to you
'cause I know you're a farmer and a member of the co-op,
but I know the co-op also sells food here at the college
and local food is a huge part of Northland College.
- It truly is.
- So in your kitchen, you're focusing on,
is it mostly just that preserving the local foods
for that winter season?
- The college has a goal of 80% local food
in our food service program.
And in order to achieve that goal
we identified we had to
build a food preservation kitchen space
dedicated just to that,
so that in our short growing season
in far Northern Wisconsin. - Yeah, you guys are up here.
- We can capture the local food when it's available and fresh
and get it in the freezer and have it available
in January through May.
- And this is something that's not only important to the staff,
but obviously it's important to the students, too.
They have to be dedicated, really,
to kind of help carry this through.
'Cause I'm assuming that they're the ones in there
helping put up the food and get everything done.
- They are, yes.
So they have a great number of opportunities
not only in the kitchen, working on preserving the food,
canning, and freezing, dehydrating,
but also within the compost program as well,
which we're expanding outside of campus
and actually doing community collection...
- Oh nice. - ...in this coming year, as well.
And then in our campus gardens, as well.
So we have two campus gardens here at the college.
- And one you actually go to the farmers market with the produce.
Did I see that? Yeah.
Yeah, we have roughly a quarter acre market garden
that the students almost 100% run themselves,
all the crop planting and seed starting and harvesting.
And yeah, they go down to the Ashland farmers market every Saturday.
- It's so nice to hear about, I guess I call them kids.
They're not kids anymore, but that they're working
and they're digging in that soil.
'Cause it's gonna stay with 'em for the rest of their lives.
I mean you and I are both dairy farm kids
so we have that kind of ingrained in our spirits,
but it's nice to know that these folks
who maybe didn't have the same upbringings-
Well, I don't think we got a choice.
We had to go out there and do it, but,
to instill that love.
And also, just to show them about local food
and how they can eat it year round.
- Right?
- I'm amazed that you can eat year round in Wisconsin
because it really is, it's like 10 minutes of warm weather
and then forget it. - That's it.
- Yeah. - Yeah, so you really gotta be on the ball.
And it's great, actually, too, being that
we're an institution, to look forward
to teaching those techniques, right here.
How to be a successful business person and farmer
and that farming is a viable profession, truly.
- Now how does it work for you? I mean, you're farming.
Is it nice to have this co-op?
Is it nice to know your food is going to a place
like Northland College?
It must be nice to work full circle, I guess.
- Yeah, it's great to work in the diversity
of producers that we have.
So it's a 28 member farm, farmer member cooperative.
And we have everything from vegetables, fruit,
all the meats you could think of possible,
even fish fresh out of Lake Superior, right?
And so what that does is there's power in numbers.
We're able to go and open up new markets.
So we provide centralized aggregation,
one stop shopping, right?
And then they have a laundry list
of products that they can choose from.
They have one place to order from
and one truck that shows up at their door.
- That's so nice.
- That's what's worked really good with Northland College
six years ago when we came to talk to them.
- What do you use for you compost material?
- Yeah, so we do have a campus wide compost collection.
So not only the cafeteria, do we collect everything
out of the kitchen, but out of people's plate waste,
but also out of the residency halls as well.
- That's amazing. - The students actually do that.
So they go around nightly and collect all the buckets
and bring 'em to the center and empty 'em .
- That is exciting to hear about. - It's pretty cool.
- Well I wish there was more places, more co-ops like this,
around the state of Wisconsin, 'cause I know as farmers,
it's hard to do everything. - It is.
- And still be able to take a deep breath
and get some sleep at night, so.
- Yep, and if you have one crop that fails
there's usually somebody there to back you up.
So we can really build consumer confidence as well.
- Well Todd, I'm gonna let you get back to work.
I'm gonna go visit some of the other co-op members.
But we're gonna celebrate the co-op today
with a little cream can dinner. - That sounds delicious.
- So I'll let you know what that's gonna be like later on.
- Great. - Well why don't we continue on our co-op trip.
We're gonna go pick up some mead.
(lively music)
I've made it to White Winter Winery
to learn all about mead.
Hey Jon. - Hey Inga, thanks for coming.
You're right on time. - Well, let's go check it out.
- All right, come on in. We'll get started.
(lively music)
- Jon this is so fun to finally see your tasting room
and be able to visit you here where you make your mead.
- We are very excited to have you. Thanks for coming over.
- So for those people who don't know
or are not familiar with mead,
can you kind of explain what it is?
- Sure, in its purest form, mead is simply
honey, water, and yeast, fermented out.
Then we have several different other styles
called melomel, which are made with fruit.
A cyser, which is made with fresh pressed apple cider and honey.
Other products we make here are cider, hard ciders and spirits as well.
- Oh nice.
Mead was one of the oldest forms of alcohol,
right, in the world or something?
- Yeah, it's rumored to actually be the oldest
form of alcohol or fermented beverage in the world.
And we think it predates wine and beer making
by several thousand years at least.
- Let's get some of the folklore behind it.
- Well, the big one is that it's the traditional
drink of the honeymoon,
so the newlywed couple was given a moon supply of mead
to ensure a fruitful union.
And it was thought that the sweeter the mead,
the more fruitful the union would be.
- And your product is really a Wisconsin product.
The honey's coming from here. The berries are coming from here.
That's really a unique thing.
- Yeah, we do our best to try and use
as much locally-produced fruits and honey
as we possibly can.
And we're about 80% successful with that now
coming from within about 150 miles or less at the store. - That's amazing.
Now honey is the main ingredient.
So do you, like, there's so many different honeys.
There's like a buckwheat honey, wildflower, clover.
What do you use? Does it matter what you're using?
- Absolutely it matters. Honey is the key ingredient.
So we wanna make sure we're getting the best,
the finest that we can possibly get.
We use typically a real early season Dutch white clover
and basswood honey in the traditional meads, which again,
are just the honey and water.
So that honey is very much forward.
So we wanna make sure we're getting
just a nice, light, real representative flavor of Wisconsin
in that particular product.
Then we'll use a later season, what I consider
kind of a mixed wildflower blend,
for the styles of mead that use fruit.
And that honey has-- It's a little darker,
has a little bit more of that characteristic
honey flavor to it that stands up
against that fruit a little bit better.
- So your product must change from year to year,
because the honey's gonna change from year to year.
- Yes, that's exactly right.
There's always little nuances of flavor and differences.
- That's one thing I love about these artisan products here
is that it's gonna change a little bit,
and it's gonna be a little bit different,
and that's what makes it special.
It's not some sort of factory, everything's gonna be the same,
and the quality has to be the same every time.
It's a little bit different.
- Yep, that's exactly right. We're not trying to make a commodity product.
We're trying to make a product
that's very representative of who we are
and what we are here in this region.
And that's the essence of craft.
- Up here it's incredible.
You guys have the Bayfield Co-op.
And you're a part of that co-op, right?
- Uh, it's a real synergistic relationship.
We buy fruits from members of the co-op
and they sell our products in the CSA.
- Well that's fantastic. Well, I'm planning on having a little
community dinner for the people in the co-op
later on this afternoon, do you think you could join us?
- I would love to, as long as you're going to help us
finish off the bottling in the back.
- Absolutely. - Okay.
(lively music)
- I'm gonna help Jon finish up here
and then we're gonna head over to Great Oak Farm
to pick up some vegetables from Chris.
I'll see you there.
(lively music)
It was a beautiful ride out here to Great Oaks Farm
here in Mason, Wisconsin.
I'm gonna go see if Chris'll take a minute
away from cultivating to show us around the farm.
(lively music)
Hey, Chris.
- Hey, Inga.
- Well hey, I was sent over here to gather some ingredients
for the party that we're having later on.
Do you have any tomatoes that are ripe this time of the year?
We got a whole hoop house full of 'em.
- This'll be my first tomatoes of the season so I'm very excited.
- Oh, you're in for a treat. Let's go check 'em out. - Okay.
(lively music)
Oh, these tomatoes look beautiful.
It's amazing in here. - Thanks.
- You're involved with the co-op.
How has the co-op helped you here
with your operation on the farm?
Our Bayfield Foods Cooperative has really helped
kind of streamline our marketing, I think.
And it's really been great
because as a producer, I can focus on production here
and then we sort of collaborate on the marketing.
Yeah, I don't have to be out in the field
and answering questions about, from our CSA members
or wholesale buyers or whatever.
We sort of have that streamlined.
- Yeah, that's nice, because I know,
with farming, you have to wear so many different hats.
- Right. - And the less you can spread yourself thin
having to do everything,
the better job you can actually do working on the farm.
- Yeah. - Another great benefit has been,
sort of from an infrastructure perspective,
instead of us having to have, you know,
a refrigerated transportation vehicle,
and each of the other 20 producers in the co-op
having a refrigerated transportation vehicle,
and doing a delivery every week,
and you know, paying a driver, etc.,
we can have one person do all that.
We pooled our resources and have our own.
We have one refrigerated van
and a refrigerated trailer if we need more space.
So then every week,
we can all bring our produce,
and meats, and, you know, you name it,
to one place and the delivery driver picks it up
and takes it on the route.
So yeah, that lets us stay back and do what we do best
but also lets us have some time
to spend with our families at the end of the day
instead of just being in the truck, so.
- And just constantly working, working, working. - Right.
- Well I hope the idea catches around Wisconsin.
I think it's a great idea.
You don't come from a farming background?
- Yeah, my grandparents had a farm in West Virginia.
It was kind of your traditional livestock and row crop farm.
And, yeah, when I was a kid
I always thought, boy, it sure would be nice
to be a farmer when I grow up.
But all the farmers I knew were gray hair and, you know
old guys, so I thought
that's just what people did when they retired.
So then when I was at Northland College
I did an internship in the summertime
at a fruit and berry farm up in Bayfield.
And that was sort of when the light bulb turned on
and the seed that was planted when I was a little kid
running around on my grandparents' farm finally germinated
and I realized, wow, if we're really going to do
this local, original, food production thing,
we need to do it before we're ready to retire, so yeah,
then when I got out of college that was the first thing
I really set down to get established.
- It seems like with the vegetable and the fruit side of farming,
there's a lot of younger people coming into it.
A lot more folks around our age kinda coming into it
and making it happen, and it's exciting to see.
It is, yeah, yeah. It's encouraging, you know,
to sort of see the next generation coming on.
- They say, right now. I think the statistic is,
the average age of a farmer in the United States
is I think 64, 65, so, it's nice to see.
I still consider myself young. I still think I'm 18.
- Right, right. - (laughter)
- I got a few more years to go before I'm the average age,
so I guess I'm doing all right.
- Well good. Do you see yourself growing here on the farm
or adding different animals or anything like that?
Or is this working for you?
- Right, I think I really enjoy doing the vegetables.
And I actually started off doing a lot more livestock
and then that sort of twice a day every day routine,
it was good for a while,
but then when my wife and I started having a family,
and kids were in school and doing after school activities.
- It gets tough. - Yeah, it was just a lot to juggle.
I really like the vegetables that--
They'll be okay if I sneak off
and go camping for a weekend with the family.
You know, the tomatoes will still be here.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
- Oh good, I'm gonna let you get back to work and I'm gonna get some dinner on.
So do you mind if I grab some carrots on the way out?
- Oh yeah sure, they're right down the hill.
- Well I'm gonna grab the carrots and then why don't
we get on back to make our cream can supper?
(lively music)
Today we're cooking up a cream can dinner.
I'm excited that you can use these cream cans
for something other than just milking cows.
It's an old-fashioned recipe
that would happen on a lot of Midwestern farms
when there was a lot going on,
a lot people coming over for a meal.
It's a great way to cook for a crowd.
And we've got a crowd to cook for today.
So I'm gonna get started.
What we're gonna be doing
is we're gonna be steaming all these vegetables
that we've collected up here in Ashland.
And it's a nice recipe for a hot sunny day
because I can stick it into the steamer
and get outta here, because, I'm steaming up here myself.
So the first thing that you do, since we are steaming,
we don't want the vegetables to just hit
the bottom of the pan.
So in the old days they would use clean stones.
But I find using these canning lids
to be a fine substitute for stones.
And these will allow the vegetables
to lift off the bottom of the cream can
and allowing the steam to move around.
So line the bottom of the can with your lids.
The next layer, some cabbage.
Now cut 'em nice and thick, 'cause this
is gonna be the beginning layer of our vegetables
and it'll allow the other vegetables
to kind of have a place to sit on top of.
Next we're gonna add some corn.
Summer is the greatest time of the year
because you can get fresh corn.
My grandmother's thing back on our farm was corn.
She liked to grow a lot of sweet corn
and she would set up this whole production line in our shop.
We'd take the tractors out of the shop.
She'd put all kinds of tables in there.
We had a huge stove in there. And she had all of us up.
We'd have to go out and pick the corn, shuck the corn,
and then we'd toss it into these big boiling vats of water,
take it out, and then we'd just cut it
right off the cob there and freeze it.
And then we'd eat frozen creamed corn at every single meal
throughout the winter time.
I still love it and I still think it was a good idea
that she got all of us together
to help feed the family over the wintertime.
What I'm gonna do with the corn here
is cut 'em into little coins,
maybe.
You know what? I'm not, they're gonna be too hard to cut.
And that's how you have to cook.
If you can't cut 'em you just cut 'em in half like that.
Next is gonna be the onions.
I want them to be in wedges.
So what I mean by that is that I'm just gonna sort of
leave the onion intact at the bottom here.
And that'll help hold the onion together,
so it'll just be in a little wedge.
This recipe, like most of the things I cook, is very versatile.
You can use whatever you have on hand.
If you want to throw some squash in or some sweet potatoes
that'd be fine too, anything that you have in the garden.
You can put a lot of fresh herbs in this.
Some fennel might be nice if you're into fennel.
So like with everything I cook
I just like to use my imagination.
And this'll be a nice aromatic that we're working with here.
And the next thing we're gonna add
is some of Chris's carrots.
Carrots and onions, you can't go wrong with that.
This is kind of a summertime stew.
I suppose you can always do it in the fall too,
and just warm your hands over the steam of the milk can.
But it's a nice thing to do in the summertime.
And then, in they go.
And next goes in the potatoes. They're a new potato.
They're a smaller variety, so I don't need to cut 'em up.
If you're gonna use a bigger potato
then you wanna quarter 'em or half 'em at least
so that they all cook correctly with the same time
as all the other vegetables.
I kept one potato out to put on top.
And this is how I'm gonna check to see if the stew is done.
Next I brought with me some garlic from my farm.
So this variety of garlic I have here is a Hardneck variety
and that grows really well in Wisconsin.
It's good for cold weather climates.
And that's why I chose it for my garden.
And with this I'm just gonna take off the outer skins.
And I love this garlic.
I love the beautiful purple streaks that it has in it.
And it's kind of an all-purpose. It's good for everything.
The next thing you're gonna add to this is some brats.
Now I pre-grilled the brats a little bit.
That's to get the juices coming out of them
and get everything flowing, and to add the flavor.
And I'm putting them on top of all the other vegetables
so that the juices from the brats can flow down
and sink into everything.
So I'm gonna quarter these up.
They smell delicious.
And these are a local brat from right up here in Ashland.
This is a very Ashland meal.
So the sausages go right in the pot here.
All right, season it with a little salt and pepper.
And if you wanna add some other herbs,
like rosemary and thyme would be fantastic in here.
And then finally, our steaming liquid is gonna be beer.
If you don't wanna use beer you can use water, that's fine.
But the beer adds a little bit more flavor.
And our potato for the top.
Now I'll just put the top back on the can.
I'm gonna light up my torch.
Once this gets steaming, I'm gonna put a timer on.
And a half an hour after it starts steaming,
30 to 40 minutes, it'll be ready for us to eat.
(lively music)
Looks like the potato's done. We're ready to go.
(lively music)
A starter of colorful, local, heirloom tomatoes
with a dash of balsamic vinaigrette.
A special honey mead, made just up the road.
It's the perfect summer libation.
A plethora of Northwoods veggies and local brats
steamed in a cream can, a perfect Wisconsin supper
with farm friends.
A yummy dessert, flakey homemade cringle,
smothered with a Bayfield berry compote.
Well I hope this has inspired you
to come up to Ashland and meet all of these wonderful farmers.
And I hope you'll gather with us next time
Around the Farm Table.
I'm your host Inga Witscher.
Thanks for coming.
(lively music)
- [Announcer] 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.