Nov. 09, 2011 - Issue #838: From farm to plate
Home on the RGE RD 135
At one time we knew where our food came from—can we again?
This past summer I participated in a farm internship of sorts—volunteering myself to be part of a real dinner-from-scratch experience with Danny and Shannon Ruzicka of Nature's Green Acres and Chef Blair Lebsack (culinary instructor at NAIT, owner of farm-oriented catering company RGE RD and—in the interest of full disclosure—my boyfriend). It began on a particularly cold and wet Monday of the May long weekend with the planting of a vegetable garden in a swath of mud and culminated in a chicken slaughter at the end of August. In between, Blair and I made regular trips out to help with farm chores and prepare for the event. After long days working outside we gathered around the dinner table of the Ruzikas, owners of Nature's Green Acres farm, to discuss food philosophies, cooking and farming. As a member of Slow Food Edmonton and an avid farmer's market shopper, I have always talked the talk of local food advocacy; this summer was my opportunity to actually get my hands dirty. I never imagined that I would spend much of the summer hauling feed in the pasture and gutting still-warm chickens in the yard but, in an effort to get closer to the food source, I witnessed the real life cycle of a meal.
The inaugural Range Road Dinner took place July 23 on Rge Rd 135, just south of Viking, Alberta—a seven-course feast for 40 people on the land where everything served had been raised, foraged and planted in Nature's Green Acres' backyard. Even the ice tea was brewed using lemon balm and stinging nettle found beneath the front porch. Dishware was borrowed from the nearby church along with chairs and tables. If it wasn't found on the property, a neighbour filled in the gaps and generously lent a hand where needed. Danny Ruzicka's brother, Mike, welded old barrels together to make the wood burning stoves while another stove dating back to the early 1900s was liberated from the original homestead; it was beat up but still in working condition.The chickens were hauled off to slaughter and the pig was loaded up just days before, the fattest one handpicked and abruptly separated from his pack. Greens were harvested in the morning and a trio of chefs—Blair, Corey Maguire and Rob Ingram—worked tirelessly through seven courses from braising beef to whipping up stinging nettle ice cream. Volunteers Yen Chuang and Kevin Kossowan arrived in time to do yard work and erect an outhouse for guests. I took charge of setting the table and donned an apron for serving duties along with Chuang. In attendance were other local chefs, many food enthusiasts, friends and family, bloggers and media writers.
Preceding the dinner was a horseshoeing demonstration—Danny is a farrier as well—a tour of the pastures where the pigs, chickens and cows are raised and a trip to the nearby buffalo jump—an early example of hunting en masse. All this connected guests with the anticipated dinner while getting a glimpse of a day in the life. Early evening, guests cut a path to the scene of the meal—down by the creek at one long table, pristinely set, standing amidst the billowing wood smoke. Very appropriately, dinner was served in and around the remnants of a First Nations settlement—large rings of rock marking where the teepee's hides were once anchored to the ground. In the evening's golden light, guests were transported back to the source of our food—the open air, cattle and wildlife within earshot while we broke bread and savoured the range of flavours.
Farm-
to-table dinners are not a new phenomenon south of the border and are gaining steam throughout Canada, thanks in part to the expansion of the Slow Food movement. Edmonton's Slow Food chapter has a mandate to promote our unique "Northern Prairie Heritage." The movement was founded in 1989 by Italian Carlo Petrini and made famous in North America by American author and activist, Alice Waters in a book she co-authored with Petrini, Slow Food: The Case for Taste. According to Petrini, "Slow Food unites the pleasure of food with responsibility, sustainability and harmony with nature." This is tangibly represented by our urban farmers' markets and in our latest crop of restaurants, many of which are opting to showcase producers within a couple hundred kilometres. The word "local" has developed cultural currency—not only is this resurgence more environmentally and ethically sound, it has penetrated the esoteric foodie culture: local has become hip.Complementi
ng our consumer practices are organizations like the Edmonton Organic Grower's Guild and Operation Fruit Rescue Edmonton. Fully endorsed by local-food advocate and blogger Kevin Kossowan, these organizations provide access to an abundant and free food supply. The EOGG provides members with the land and tools to grow their own organic food at no charge at the University of Alberta farms. Volunteers with Operation Fruit Rescue are sent packing with thousands of kilos of fruit picked from other people's properties. As Kossowan puts it, "Eating local doesn't mean you have to pay top dollar." To him, local "can be very utilitarian, frugal and simple." Through his blog, Kossowan has captured the attention of various media outlets including Forbes and The Washington Post."I get asked regularly to sell someone's products or am given tickets to an event," Kevin continues, "but I'm trying to stay focused on what I do." Lately that includes writing about our indigenous wild foods for the Alberta Conservation Association. A musician, certified financial planner and father of three, he has no ambitions to profit from his life in food and chooses carefully where his time "can have some impact."
In addition to growing all his own vegetables, butchering his own meats, hunting, foraging and preparing food for his young family, Kossowan serves on the board of the Strathcona Farmer's Market, Slow Food Edmonton and is NAIT's resident local-food expert. Recently, he took culinary students foraging in the river valley for high bush cranberries, choke cherries and some wild horseradish. He warns that he "gets geeky" when going on about the varietals of edible mushrooms he amasses during the summer months. "One forage with the Alberta Mycological Society and I was done for," he says.
When pressed to summarize his approach to food, Kossowan calls it "cuisine du terroir"—even though he worries he'll be dismissed as pretentious for using such a term. According to Kossowan, what qualifies and quantifies our local terroir is really what grows in the wild, such as "The 150-some varieties of veg" grown on his small city lot. For protein, what he doesn't hunt comes mainly from Nature's Green Acres. He has "carved out the middle," teaching himself how to butcher via YouTube."The butchering thing is about as close to farm to plate as you can get," he says. "There's no intermediary."
The fact that Kossowan and his family lead a sustainable, ecologically conscious life is a happy byproduct of his interest in food: "I get into circles where slow food is an environmental or ethical issue. For me it's not: it's about quality of the ingredient—period. If I wanted the best quality pea, I had to grow it."
When asked about farm-to-plate dinners, Blair rolls his eyes. "I hate that term" he says. "Farm to plate could mean anything—factory farms, industrial farms ... it doesn't tell us anything about the products or where they come from."
The broad spectrum implied by the term allows for misappropriation and misinterpretation. This has already happened with the term, organic, he argues. "Organic industrial farming," he says, "it doesn't necessarily translate to good farming practices."
He uses the E coli breakout in July 2010 as an example, which was connected to organic spinach in California. He sources his ingredients from "specific range roads, specific farms ... [that] are qualifying what their food is through hard work and the natural way of farming." He calls small-production farmers "artisans," suggesting that their role in our food system is the most integral. His culinary philosophy is contingent on letting "the farm dictate the menu." As he puts it, "The ability to bring together workers, farmers and others to eat dinner in a pasture" proves that "people want food of this magnitude—that this is something viable that can happen in Edmonton."
According to Blair, the greatest success of the Rge Rd 135 dinner was the fulfilment of these personal philosophies—being so directly involved in where his food came from, his respect for the products and producers deepened. "This dinner was about ethics," he says. "Doing things the proper way ... to rejuvenate the land."
Blair first connected with the Ruzickas when they attended a producer's luncheon at his former work, Madison's Grill, two years ago. They brought with them a sample of their Nouveau Beef and, from there, both parties sought ways to collaborate further. The first thing that attracted Blair to the Ruzickas was the fact that, "They're young and vibrant ... they want to move ahead in their farming practices." Nature's Green Acres is a small, family-owned-and-operated farm hand-selling its products each week at the City Farmer's Market. As the farm's marketing states, it produces "grass-fed, pasture raised, hormone and antibiotic free, natural, farm fresh" chicken, pork and Nouveau Beef. The latter is their version of junior beef—which means the cow is slaughtered before it reaches maturity.
In addition to his farming duties, Danny Ruzicka works full time as a farrier—most farmers nowadays have to have a day job. Growing up on a cattle and horse ranch, Danny always knew he wanted to farm. When the economics of grain farming didn't quite pan out—"Well over $600 000 for a combine and a quarter section of land and that's not even putting the crop in," he says—he and Shannon turned to raising livestock instead.
Shannon's interest in food began early and, more than most, she had a "very food-steeped childhood." She recalls her grandfather being a very serious cook, sitting next to the oven for hours basting the turkey.
"He died very early because he was obese," she jokes. "Schwan's was his best friend and he was done in by butter brickle."
She, like Danny, grew up in a farming community that was a different world, uncomplicated by the economics of mass production. As Shannon says, "If grandpa did something for someone else he was sent home with a bucket of milk ... you'd be strung up if you gave someone raw milk today."
Together, their farming philosophy comes down to a desire to eat well. As Danny puts it, "We eat good food; why not share it with others?" The driving force is better food.
The Ruzicka's are continually educating themselves. Shannon reads voraciously and is cognizant of just about every health-related issue around food in addition to sustainable practices; she also just completed a butchering class at NAIT to better understand how the farm's products can and should be used. The couple admits that the best education has been trial and error and they're not shy about sharing their farming missteps. They began raising beef when cattle prices were in the toilet due to mad cow disease and have learned the hard way how vulnerable chickens can be. Danny talks about putting in an infirmary next year after successfully nursing sick chickens back to health by feeding them extra doses of stinging nettle—a weed that grows in abundance on the couple's property.Eschewing the pressures to produce chicken at unnatural rates, they keep their farming practices "as simple as possible and keep things as close to that animal's natural environment as possible ... we're not trying to mass-produce on any level and not trying to compete in any other market." Because the birds don't find soy in their natural environment they don't introduce soy to the chicken feed. As a result, their chickens are killed at nine-and-a-half weeks instead of the average commercial practice of five weeks.
By the end of August, only a few of these contentious chickens remained. Close to 17 weeks old by then, they were almost the size of Molly, Danny and Shannon's two-year-old. These birds were kept back for the family. As Danny unloaded the "killing cones" from the truck, his seven-year-old daughter Madalynne exclaimed, "I saw those in the movie, Food Inc!" Both she and her five-year-old brother Josh helped collect the chickens from their pen and kept them cool with the sprinkler in their final moments. We gathered one final time, for one final farm dinner around the Ruzicka dining room table. On the menu was roast chicken with vegetables and potatoes from the garden—at once simple and typical of any time and place. I couldn't help but feel nostalgic, but for what? The farm was never part of my childhood; I had never grown my own food, nor had a hand in killing my own dinner. Until now. Perhaps that narrative I had once imagined about unexploited farm life had actually come true.
Those of us living in Edmonton are never very far from the farm. The farm is a key component of our Alberta heritage; many of us are descended from homesteaders, ranchers and grain farmers. Prior to oil, gas and the tar sands, people came west for these wide-open spaces rich in game meats and fertile soil. It is not news that the progress of factory farming has somewhat skewed our nostalgia for the farm, and it's challenging to carve out an alternative amongst the trappings of the industrial food system. But something grew here before and perhaps it's growing again. vueweekly.com comments: powered by Disqus
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