May 26
Getting Ready ...
I don't know how to prepare for a 40-day trip. It's so long a time to be away there does not seem any way to prepare. What's the use of shoring things up and thinking you can prevent bad things from happening when you are gone for as long as 40 days? Will my dog remember me when I return?
I am downsizing my existence. The ax is out and swinging. I picked out my favorite sleeveless shirts, brown boots, pair of blue jeans, white blazer and asked myself why I saddled myself with 100lbs of baggy pants and dress shirts that I never wear. This excess clothing has survived endless moves, Manhattan mini-storage rooms, backs of basements and now have finally ended their run as property of mine. I gave four bags of stuff to charity. Folders that have been crowding the surface of my desk have finally been opened to reveal their supreme irrelevance. They are out too. I feel lighter. - Patrick
May 29
NYC and the countdown begins ...
Its Memorial Day and we have 2 days before liftoff. I first felt the stress of departing on a 40-day journey when Thursday, the day we leave, first appeared on the 5-day weather forecast.
We saw our van and its trailer for the first time today. Sarah's future step-father loaned it to us for the entire journey. He sells "teak" furniture at shows around the country and already owns all the equipment we need for the 40-day affair: a van, hitch and trailer, first-aid kit, locks, spare tires, generator, even a cage for the pigs that would join our caravan in Kansas.
We met Donald at the best conceivable time - the perfection of it all leads me to believe the fates want this trip to happen. Donald just proposed to Sarah's Mother a few months ago but they haven't officially tied the knot so I think Donald wholeheartedly embraced the idea of getting good marks from Sarah and the rest of the family.
Donald collects many things that he finds on the road. He has a marvelous walking stick/cane collection made of ceramic, wood and porcelain. Some canes double as guns, others as guitars. He even has Bat Masterson's walking stick. He collects chairs, desks, refrigerators, imported foods, animal sculptures of giraffes, lions and tigers. As Sarah puts it, his garage looks like a Cotsco of Dean and Deluca and Pottery Barn He has a land deed signed by President Grover Cleveland for territory in South Dakota, which he gave to us to give the owner if we drove back that way. He even has a working mini-cannon, which he exploded for us as a sendoff in a ceremony that befit the one 202 years ago for the departure of Lewis, Clark and their team in a quest to find a continuous water route from the East to West coast.
The van and trailer are 32 feet long. We parked it in Long Island City, Queens and it takes up four spots. Driving it feels serious and plagued with responsibility. All of a sudden I have to fear things like jackknifing, fishtailing, sharp turns and big bumps. I find myself constantly looking back to make sure the trailer is following me. Reversing into a tight spot is harder than finishing a Rubic cube. - Patrick
 
Preparing the Trailer in NYC Saying Goodbye to La Frieda in NYC
June 1
South to Atlanta
We set out with 15,000 miles ahead of us, 32 feet of van and trailer behind us and we made our west cross-town NYC at 10:20am. The new Heritage office is between Patrick and me, housed in two laptops and a few attachés.
One of the delights of the trip is being away from a computer all day, but I still wondered how I'd get a groove on and unwind and feel on the road, away from my desk, the four telephones and the people dropping by the office throughout the day. Now, on the road, it's just us and our thoughts and the sights outside our windows. Today is Thursday and Thursdays are typically tricky and a bit difficult to define. On that day, chefs across the US have just received their deliveries ordered the week prior, so there's usually quite a bit of follow-up. Plus we've just finished selling the parts of 100 pigs, dozens of ducks, and cuts of lamb and beef for the week. We don't skip a beat in the van though - the calls start up right away with questions like: "why don't the frenched loins on your cutting sheet match your packing orders?," "how many slabs of fresh belly will feed 50 people?," "those Grade A pig heads will put us over the pallet weight limit?"
Nine hours into our trip, we get off in Archdale, North Carolina, for food. Aimless and searching for the family restaurant the gas guy recommended, we see a sign for 'Taqueria' and swing in. The Mexican grocery and taco shop opened just two weeks ago. The cook and his wife carefully and slowly make us the best chorizo taco probably ever served in Archdale. Rich with pepper oil and spiked with cinnamon and clove, it satisfies us immensely. We but hadn't asked for the chorizo taco, they'd given it to us for free because it was the house specialty and they wanted to make sure we tried it.
 
The van is a dream. We are blessed with a spacious, comfy ride and it hasn't taken long to turn the van into a home - it seems better than my apartment. It took a little adjusting to drive in traffic and open, curvy roads. But now, it is almost too easy to drive.
I remember when the four of us (Patrick and I and our filmmakers, David and Anthony) first started talking about a caravan cross-country. We posted the plan on our web site without really being certain it would happen. Then we began working on it; we broke the news to our Red Wattle farmer Larry that we wanted four of his pigs, joked about having to take books out on animal husbandry, started calculating mileage and confirmed chefs' and farmers' schedules. Hundreds of friends and colleagues are about to welcome us into their homes, walk-ins, milking stations, kitchens.... I've seen more of what is outside this country than within it and I know I'm about to be blown away. I'm not going to want to sleep - Sarah
***
874 miles to Atlanta! It wasn't pretty. Highway 95 doesn't provide much eye candy. But we made the 15-hour trip without trouble. Our only pleasure, besides the company, was in Archdale, North Carolina where we stopped at a taqueria. The huge sparsely filled room had a random assortment of imports from South America on Wall Mart shelves including colorful sodas in glass bottles, peppers and spices, FIFA soccer balls and Latin CDs. The owners, who are recently married and about to have their first kid together, were no where to be found when we entered because they worked behind a tiny window at the end of the shop which provided a glimpse of a sizzling grill and steaming kitchen which churned out tongue tacos and chicken quesadillas. The owners were so happy to see out-of-towners that they gave us a free chorizo taco. It was our first good food of the trip.
It is exciting to finally depart. There is electricity in the van - we left our wild vertical city for the open road and the unknown. The van is spacious and steady. Gas is expensive - $75 per tank and hauling the trailer we only get 15 miles per gallon. Good to know our administration is looking after us. I am sad the bio-diesel idea didn't work out. Where were you Willie Nelson when we needed you?!
 Work was conducted from the road for the first time. Our trusty Vassar intern Carrie relayed the messages with a skill beyond her years. It is weird that the work of farmers - such an old and honorable and life sustaining profession - can be supported and maintained through nothing more than a telephone and a Blackberry. Those, in the end, are the only tools you need to sell the food.
Tomorrow we prepare for our first event: a chef/press breakfast at Woodfire Grill with host Michael Tuohy and guests chef David Larkworthy (5 Seasons Brewing); Gerry Klaskala (Aria); Shaun Doty who also opened his house to us (Table 1280); Delia (Flying Biscuit); Todd Mussman (Muss and Turner's); and Linton Hopkins (Restaurant Eugene). The breakfast is followed by a meeting of our friends at Georgia Organics who are looking to organize a local food distribution service for small farmers. Then off to Restaurant Joel and the first big heritage evening event at Farm 255 in Athens! –Patrick
June 2
Good Eating at Farm 255
Georgia is a fertile hotbed of local, sustainable agriculture. In Atlanta, the chef scene is particularly diverse and wonderful and the guys there do their very best to support a healthy farming industry. This morning we pulled seven chefs together at Woodfire Grill for breakfast. We'd worried that an early morning round-table would turn out to be a groggy, boring mess. But the chefs are all good friends and the conversation was rich and flowing. We talked about schools serving foods that are worse than what they give in prisons and about how local farmers are dying off while there is a bastion of chefs who'd pay more for their foods. I realized that in my next life, I'd need to return to earth and fix all that is wrong with the lunch program in the Atlanta schools and then buy a refrigerated truck and travel the state looking for farmers who need to move their products..
 The weather's been 1/2 gorgeous and sunny and 1/2 rainy and annoying, it changes in the course of an hour. In the early evening we pulled onto the patio of Farm 255 in Athens GA as the city was just drying up. Farm 255 is more than a restaurant, it is a lifestyle. The people who work there and eat there are in constant celebration mode. They celebrate the day's harvest from the farm, the flowers on the bar that open with the sunshine, Lily's fresh-baked cookies and they celebrate each other. Nothing is taken for granted. We gave our first awards out to Olivia and Tamar who run the front of the house and the kitchen respectively. They are young, energetic, funny and edgy - a personality the whole city of Athens exhibits. They are part of a crew that manages a fruit and vegetable farm a few miles away that provides most of the restaurant's ingredients. The farm manager, Jason Mann, is a force of nature, I sat with him at dinner. He straddles the line between being fully alive, attentive, thought-provoking and hilarious, to being a little distant, contemplative and generally 'out there'. He is someone who is deeply affected by being on the farm, hosting tours and working on experiments - who wants to do good and only good, who seems weighed down the crap in life and who is constantly searching for ways to increase the quality of life in the world.
For their life-time achievement ceremony, we pinned a broach of a little Swiss-looking farm girl on Olivia and one of a tall regal-looking lady with a head dress for Tamar. The jewelry sparked laughter and joking, and while we did want to provide humor and entertainment through the presentation of the pins, we are truly sincere about it. These awards are dear to us. We spent several weekends strolling the flea markets in NYC choosing the perfect pin, pendant or statue for our friends across the country. When I explained this to Tamar, she thought her award was a little less ridiculous.- Sarah
*** I think its going to be hard to encounter a better experience on this trip than the night we spent in Athens, Georgia. It was so good and the people so beautiful that I couldn't help but think of the song "Midnight Train to Georgia" and how I would take that train direct to Athens if things ever get to be too much. The lyrics go: "L.A... Too much for the man... So he's leaving the life he's come to know. He said he's going - he's going back to find what's left of his world- the world he left behind. He's leaving, he's leaving on the midnight train to Georgia. He's going back to a simpler place and time."
The event was at Farm 255, a restaurant run by Olivia Sargeant and Tamar Adler and a slew of kids in their early thirties that serves as the primary outlet for Full Moon Farm, located just 3 miles away. The food was refined, it wasn't too heavy and it was tight. Being "tight" has turned into the ultimate word to define a great dish for me. Staying simple and sourcing the best ingredients, a la Alice Waters, is an easy way to keep it tight, with no lose ends. A guy like Mario Batali, whose father we will award a lifetime achievement award in three days in Cleveland, goes all out and makes some dishes very complicated yet still keeps it tight with no random tastes to annoy the taste buds.
Tamar is talented and Farm 255 is indeed a culinary destination. Her tight path was one that shot for simplicity on certain dishes like a strawberry soup (which I never thought I would like) and risked a taste mess in other dishes including one with a feta cheese sauce, potatoes and beef carpaccio. Pond raised Pekin duck was served two ways. In the end, it was all tight!
Olivia is a little force of nature and she is one of the few people in Athens who doesn't look like she could have just come out of the back of a smoky VW van. She is organized - - she might be the only one in town to wear a watch. She knows how to work the computers, set up email, print lovely menus and make guests smile. She is the backbone of the Farm 255.
Athens is a very hip town even though it consists of but a strip of music venues and an internet café. Michael Stipe lives there but didn't come to the event. The town has become even hipper thanks to the group of people who run the Farm 255 and the real farm that supplies it. The guy responsible for the energy behind both is a guy named Jason Mann. Jason is a prophet of sorts and I hope one day to meet him again. His words convinced a dozen of his West coast friends to pack their things and buy a one-way ticket to Georgia, And judging from the beauty of the restaurant and farm and the goodness of what is produced there I would say that everyone who came found the religion they sought. The people who work there make it successful; they are happy to be there. And sitting outside the restaurant after supper, drinking wine, listening to the music that emanated from basement windows around the town, there was part of me that would be happy there too.
That morning couldn't have boded better for the rest of the day and trip. Michael Tuohy of Atlanta's Woodfire Grill is a very generous man. He opened his restaurant for breakfast and hosted a round table of numerous great culinary energies in Atlanta to talk heritage and food distribution. Todd talked of the rare breed movement in the retail realm, Linton about it in schools, Gerry in the form of cured meats, David in terms of portion cost, Shaun about the tourist industry embracing it, and Delia about supporting the movement through franchises. In the end we learned much about food distribution and how to better the plight of small family farmers in the culinary Mecca that is Atlanta. Our meeting was followed by one of Georgia Organics and its Alice Rolls who if the sustainable food world would clone, would solve all woes. - Patrick
June 3
Life with the Keeners
Its hard to write about Bill Keener and what he helped create in the cove of Sequatchie. Sometimes I think Bill was placed on the earth to teach us through his farm but returns to the stars and the ages, which is ultimately where he resides. Any lover of small family farms and sustainability must visit Bill and his family. I do hope the Keeners open an agri-turismo there soon so that more can witness what exists.
 
In the Lord of the Rings Trilogy there was a scene that got cut from the movie version. It was about a tiny man who had the most bountiful garden in the universe. The life force that existed there was so powerful that even the dark forces of Modor could not affect it. The only reason Frodo Baggins could not leave the ring of power there was that the man, who I guess was a God or God, was forgetful and might have lost it to the dark forces. Not to say that Bill is forgetful, in fact he is more in tune and connected to many things than just about anyone I know.
Bill said about his rare breed herds, probably the largest and most diverse in the country, "when we lose a breed, we lose a part of our consciousness". He lets his pigs roam the forest and sleep under trees. At one point in our journey around his paddocks, he found a litter of Large Blacks who had been left alone by their mother who sought a meal. When Bill picked up one of the babies it squealed and the mother pig came racing to it, across the deep shrubs, to save it. That bond was awesome to behold. It is how all living creatures have come to be. And we saw it there in action. If only the mother knew how important that rescue mission was considering the Large Black is one of the rarest of all pork breeds, with fewer than 200 breeders left in the world.
Bill Keener and Sarah
That evening we saw a glimpse of true southern culture. Our friends Tom and Kincade and their circle of friends hosted a dinner to honor Bill and his family for their work. The award given to Bill was of a farmer on a buggy pulled by a horse and it looked like a constellation. The food served at Saint John's was Gloucestershire Old Spot and it rocked many worlds. The breed and the light touch of chef Daniel created a taste I will not soon forget. - Patrick
***
Last evening we'd met farmers Bill and Alice who run a grits mill powered by their mule behind their house. At 6am Bill picked David and me up at Farm 255 and drove us a few minutes outside of Athens to their humble home that sits on three acres. They have the mule and the mill and several garden patches and sell their foods at the local market. They build all their own farm equipment. Bill was called by God to till the earth and Alice seems to live this life out of necessity - she can't stand the controls put on her by commercial agriculture. I noticed her quirkiness as she explained how she re-marketed her grits as "Polenta de Georgia" because that makes better sense to her Latino neighbors than grits. Alice's birthday is on Tuesday, I hope I remember to call her. We'd visited two farms by 7:30am, Red Mule and Full Moon Farm (which supplies the restaurant Farm 255) before taking off for Tennessee three hours north.
 
Alice's Polenta de Georgia. Keener's chickens laying eggs.
Today, I was officially exhausted. Sleep deprivation is like a bad drug, my brain is cloudy and eyes are watery and twitchy. But I was able to sleep a bit on the way to Tennessee to be with one of America's greatest farming families. The Keeners live in a lush, pristine cove at the end of the town road dotted with Baptists churches, poor homes and kids walking back from swimming the creeks. We got to the farm in Sequatchie TN at noon and I wanted to head straight to the chicken coop and pick eggs. It's a therapeutic and peaceful chore: collecting eggs and handling them when they are still warm and glowing with their pastel colors. Last time here I took a carton home with me on the plane but no point in doing that this time.
The Keeners started planting about 15 years ago. They have an incredible farm with smart, sustainable systems that help them stay off the grid. They have rare breed pigs (Ossabaws, Large Blacks and Old Spots), Devon milking cows, Katahdin lamb, those egg-laying chickens, strawberry and blueberry patches, vegetables and shitakes growing in the dark forests of the farm. They use solar energy and bio-diesel and are starting to make cheese and cure meats - maximizing fermentation and culture on the farm.
Their punk rock teenage daughter Anne made lunch for all of us and the farm guys and interns: perfectly braised pulled pork, beet green salad, sweet roasted beets with sugar peas, eggplant and tahini and chocolate-beet bundt cake with apricot glaze. Bill, Miriam, their children and their friends that work the farm are preserving the core of humanity and protecting food as culture and consciousness. They continue agricultural practices and keep their foods diverse so that we don't loose our sense of self and place. Sequatchie Cove is magical.
At dinner in Chattanooga, at the restaurant St. John, we feasted on one of Bill's Old Spots. We awarded Bill a pin with a farmer sitting on what looks like a chariot. - Sarah
June 4
Off to see the Amish.
 On the road again to visit my old Amish friends in Berlin, Ohio. We left Chattanooga at 8am after Tom took us to the memorial for the Trail of Tears. I drove our trailer and van like a maniac because we had to be in Holmes County by supper and if we were late its not like we could call in. On my first cross- country trip in 1990, I read in Lets Go USA that Berlin was an Amish town. My friend Spencer and I stopped the first buggy we could find and asked where we could get work for the day. After numerous attempts to walk onto farms we were finally given directions to one owned and operated by one of the four ministers of the community. After much convincing that we were pure and meant no harm, Rob let us onto his fields, and into his home and life. He has 6 boys and 4 girls.
The next morning back in 1990 we arrived at 6am to begin work on the pepper patch. We hoed up and down the rows of peppers in a line that consisted of his entire family. We were in the middle of the line of workers with the rest of the family lined out in order of importance, which also seemed to correspond to age and height. We talked for hours asking each other questions. We talked about the movie Witness and how it portrayed the Amish. It was a glorious day and I remember thinking I had never been closer to God.
In 1997 I returned to Berlin with my graduate school friend Dan and again they accepted me into their home. This time we talked about religion partly because crazy Dan is a Russian Orthodox Catholic and wanted to try to convert them. Everyone seems to want to convert the Amish - especially in the movies. Even Harrison Ford converted Kelly McGillis for one night.
In 2004, on my way to pick up West from his Scottish terrier breeder in Toledo, I again stopped in and we continued our 14-year friendship. This time they told me they would soon be on their way to the Adirondacks to visit another Amish community (this community of Amish is not allowed to drive but they can be driven - they use few amenities but some of these include milking machines, rubber tires and indoor plumbing). I told them that the entire van load of them (13in all) had to stop for a visit to see me in Manhattan. They told me the chances were slim but sure enough last June I got a call from the driver's cellphone telling me they were heading south on FDR drive and careening to my apartment. The rest of the day was one that I can never forget.
 
Amish children in the chicken field Our Amish friends' home
I ran downstairs to find them a good parking spot. God must have been watching his peeps because one opened up right in front of my building. I stood in the spot looking for a grey van to make a right onto first avenue but as I waited my neighbor pulled up in his Jaguar and started to inch closer to my knees to push me out of what he thought would be his spot. I didn't move and he got angry. He opened his window and started yelling (good parking spots are hard to come by in NYC) despite the fact that I explained to him that a van load of Amish were about to pull up and that we needed to show them some love. He shouted something vulgar in my direction and pulled away, just as a van pulled up.
Every store owner on the block came out to see the 8 men dressed in black sporting long beards and the 9 women in dresses that fell to their feet wearing bonnets that made the features of their face hard to see. Three children were there too. We shook hands politely and reminisced about our prior meetings, filled the meter with quarters and walked to my place. Ramon the doorman agreed to feed the meter while were gone touring the city. Rob, the eldest son, asked if he could pay Ramon for this service but we explained to him that favors like these were included in my exorbitant rent. For many of them, the trip to the 10th floor was their first elevator ride. I gave them a tour of the apartment, they washed up and we descended to the city streets to begin our NYC adventure. On the way down, my angry neighbor with the Jaguar came in. To his amazement the elevator was awash in Amish. He was humbled. I really didn't need to say anything more but to spite my neighbor I thanked him in front of everybody.
Our journey around NY was efficient. We took 57th street west, past Dior and Hermes, and briefly entered the southern tip of Central Park, which they liked very much. We walked to Times Square where I was mortified to see the Naked Cowboy playing his guitar in front of the MTV studios. That image was one they would refer to as having been particularly troublesome when I next saw them in Berlin. They took the Ferris Wheel in Toys R US -not what I would have recommended but they insisted upon it. We soared to the top of the Empire State Building. While in line numerous of the security guards asked them questions like: do you have to be born Amish (no) and what % of Amish are farmers.
I was amazed to see the effect Amish had on New Yorkers. Never before had my fellow urban dwellers given such wide berth. This town sees absolutely everything to the point that nothing phases it - but when the Amish walk down 42nd street or into a subway car New Yorkers act generously, as if trying to make the city seem friendlier. Seeing Amish affects a person - dressed in somber clothing, looking so serious, they seem to come from a different place and time and that place seems closely connected to God. By forsaking so many amenities, they can make a person feel guilty about his priorities. On 33rd and Lexington we took the 6 train one stop. As it pulled up they riddled me with questions like, how many doors are there per car, how long do they have to make it inside before they close, where do we meet if one of us doesn't make it.
Walking back home we ordered 3 large pizza pies to be delivered with 13 Cokes, a drink they like very much but only drink occasionally. We feasted, while the youngest played with West. I felt the pressure of the world on my shoulders as I gave them directions to the George Washington Bridge and Highway 80.
Seeing them this year was nice, this time with Sarah, Anthony and David. The little girl remembered West from her trip to NYC. I am amused that my Scottish terrier is a household name among the Amish. They don't believe in having portraits taken of themselves feeling that it is not modest to do so, so we were not allowed to film them, but they did allow us to capture audio and film their feet - also their children who were "innocent" and not caught up in hubris related vices. We ate but I must admit that food is not so grand in communities that don't believe in pleasure - there was little to no seasoning in the mashed potatoes, meatloaf or gravy. Only the strawberry jam was superb. So much so that I think we should sell it.
Part of what excited me most was to see my travel companions interact with our hosts. They were in awe. We walked through their farm, asked questions and laughed about our preconceptions. Rob Sr. is one of four ministers of the congregation so he is used to teaching and enlightening those he talks with. Every time with him I learn something about farming, life, and religion. I have come to have a deep respect for this family who now have over 20 members, most recently a set of twins. In a way I think they respect me too, even though they don't agree with some aspects of my lifestyle. And I look forward to continuing our infrequent meetings over the rest of my life. Knowing that I will grounds me. Our meetings are one of the rites of passage at which I judge what I have accomplished, not just with my career but with who I am as a person. I am lucky to know them. - Patrick
***
We rushed out of Chattanooga at 7am racing through the 10-hour drive to meet the Amish in Berlin, Ohio by 5pm for supper. Great, I thought, we're driving like speed demons to get to a place where no one drives.
Having arrived safely and on time, we parked in front of the greenhouse and one of minister Rob Schlabach's sons appeared, as did another and then another. Together we walked to the stable built in 1820 where their father and other brother were at work milking cows. They didn't look up, speak or acknowledge us. The minister seemed solemn but maybe he was just driven by his work. Soon after, the two met us in front of the buggy garage, joined the conversation and brightened up. The father and his milking son turned out to be quite happy and the most enthusiastic and articulate of the family.
We were invited in for supper and after prayer we lined up at the stove with styrofoam trays in hand to serve ourselves some food. The meal was one of the worst I've ever suffered through; we had gelatinous mystery meatloaf, mashed potatoes greasy with burned brown butter, yellow gravy and a chopped-something salad. Their homemade strawberry preserve was the only thing that saved me from crying, so I slathered jam and butter on slices of plain bread.
Despite the strict rules and rigorous religious lifestyle that dictate their lives, the Amish have a surprising warmth, intelligence and sense of humor that makes it comforting and interesting to be around. It certainly helps that they trust Patrick and know him more and more now that he's visited this family many times over the years.
The Amish sell their milk to Organic Valley, a company I was not aware was as supportive of small-scale operations. They also have chicken, eggs, flower greenhouses and stone fruit trees on the land. The Schlabachs, just like all the other farmers we've visited, are constantly expanding their agriculture roots. Instead of blowing up one part of the farm, like raising five thousand chickens, they grow horizontally, produce diverse foods, more types of animals, and make farming a stronger, longer and more lasting part of their lives. All of them want more agricultural independence and more control over their food supply and their income.
This lifestyle requires exceptional hard work and hardship, but the fruits of their labor are so deeply rewarding. And it seems these farmers are safeguarded - for the time being - because what they are doing can not be replicated or co-opted by large-scale, industrial agriculture. They endure the great challenges and major frustrations of doing this kind of farming, it seems implausible to think other companies or big-guy farmers would stay with it for more than a little while.
We're doing business much in this way. We're not interested in selling herds of 700 pig heads a day. Instead, Heritage takes on interesting varieties of lamb, salmon, ducks, geese and other rare foods, we'll publish books and hold events before we rest our laurels on blowing up one aspect of agriculture. We too are diversifying in order to survive.
We left the Amish home after dark, in the pouring rain, and had to reckon with the horses and buggies on the road. - Sarah
June 5
A Fabulous Evening in Cleveland
At 8am we were off to Cleveland's NBC studios for an interview with host Fred Griffith, an old friend from my days with Slow Food. Fred has logged more TV hours then anyone, including people like Regis and Hugh Downs. He has interviewed the likes of Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford and introduced issues like abortion and the realities of living with cancer to Cleveland audiences years before anyone else would tackle these topics. There is a lot of smiling that goes on in morning shows. Everyone is happy in the studio even though everyone at home is just pulling themselves out of bed. We talked about saving rare breeds while the other guests rolled their eyes. The guy who put my mic under my shirt is the "You've Got Mail" voice for AOL.
On Cleveland's NBC Good Company
That night Linda, Fred's wife and a real force of nature, drove us to one of the largest heritage events of the tour. Dominic Cerrino owns a restaurant on the outskirts of Cleveland that is so large I am convinced that different dialects are spoken among the staff. I got lost many times trying to make my way from the reception area, to the kitchen where we interviewed the 5 chefs who cooked for us that night, to the main dining room which seated the 300 guests who attended the fundraiser for Terra Madre and Heritage Food.
 
Armandino Batali in Cleveland Fred and Linda on stage at Carrie Cerino's
Carrie Cerino's Ristorante (Dominic Cerino), Lola/Lolita (Michael Symon), Fahrenheit (Rocco Whalen), Baricelli Inn (Paul Minnillo), Moxie/Red (Jonathan Bennett), and Fire Food & Drink (Doug Katz) is who participated. The crowd was electric that night. Armandino Batali was there to receive a Heritage lifetime achievement award. Armandino is a gentle man but he also has a fire-like intensity just under the skin, like that of his son's which is not always under the skin, and that intensity makes him an intimidating presence. His wife is also intense. We tried to get her on camera but she said no and she only needed to say no once and we understood there was no chance of changing her mind.
After a reception of cured meats, the guests made their way through the kitchen to see what the chefs were up to and then into the main dining room where each chef served his creation, buffet style. Chef Michael from Lolita, who just opened the delicious Parea in NYC, which got 2 stars from Frank Bruni in the Times, was there and you could hear his bellow from across the vast room.
During dessert Fred and Linda got up to give thanks to the people who made that night possible. Together they seemed like an older version of Johnny Cash and June Carter - Fred the straight man and Linda the fiery energy that keeps Fred going. Fred is the consummate professional: he is elegant, funny and has a little ham in him. He is very American -proper and polite but with an edge. All those years on morning television means that absolutely everyone in the room knew Fred and he can't walk two steps or let his eyes wander without someone stopping him to shake his hand.
Fred and Linda turned the mic over to Sarah and I. It was the first speech of the trip in front of a huge crowd but seeing Fred act so smoothly calmed my nerves. I was on that night. I talked about our 40-day trip and the pigs that will come on the journey with us from Kansas to Napa. I explained how in the 1970s the backlash against pesticides led to the birth of the organic movement but also of seed saver exchanges that traced and documented all the fruits and vegetables so that they could be raised in greater numbers. I said that the 80s was the decade that rebelled against blandness. In that decade you saw the arrival of 400 artisan cheese-makers, 1500 micro-breweries and a bakery in every neighborhood of America but also cheese-making, bread and brewery guilds. These groups organized the new varieties of cheeses, beers and breads to document the various traditions they helped maintain or create. The 90s saw a rebellion against the major meat slaughter houses and the ethical problems with how our meat is raised. That led to the birth of businesses that raise better meat but it also led to Heritage Foods, which is like a seed saver for rare breeds so important to a safe food supply.
We talked about how Armandino is correct in his buying habits for paying above commodity pricing for above commodity quality food and how that in the end perhaps his greatest achievement was not in becoming a nationally renowned cured meats artisan but in creating such a neighborhood fixture in his home town of Seattle with the deli named Salumi. The award for Armandino was a pin of Paul Revere on his horse for just like Paul, Armandino is heralding this country's need for better food. We also gave an award to Linda for her work publishing 6 books and for helping create such a strong food community in Cleveland. Linda has not been well lately and we all pray for her for the world is a better place with her in it. The 300 people attending were there for her.
The night ended at a bar with the sous chef of Lolita, Matt. We drank through the night and at a certain point someone at the bar bet that Sarah couldn't run around the block in under 3 minutes (it was a very long block). I took on the bet because I believe in Sarah and she did it, in plenty of time, even though she is wore high heels. My $20 went to Johnny Walker black on the rocks. The cab ride back was long for Cleveland is vast but it was a ride I shall never forget. I am happy to be on this trip and I love my three travel companions. - Patrick
***
We got to Linda and Fred Griffith's in Cleveland real late last night. Their place is filled with wonderful things to look at, thousands of cookbooks (a few of them they wrote), food periodicals and artifacts from around the world. Their kitchen is stocked with fabulous ingredients, wild spices, flours and preserves. Outside the back deck are a bunch of bird feeders and while we worked outdoors on the phone and laptop today the sounds of cardinals, hummingbirds and blue jays calmed the senses. How fitting, since we'll be giving Fred and Linda a lifetime achievement award this evening which is a pin of a pair of golden birds perched on a branch. It's been great staying here.
In the early afternoon, Linda rushed us out of the house to drive to North Royalton to Carrie Cerino's Restaurant for the evening heritage celebration. We, along with hundreds of others, pulled up to the valet at the catering hall. I felt like I was at a sweet-sixteen party in the suburbs, everyone was dressed up and ready for a good time. The immense kitchen was buzzing with action, ten chefs with their sous, crowded the kitchen to work on their own dishes which included Heritage ham legs, small roaster pigs, Greek cured meats and Sockeye salmon which Dominic Cerino had a lot of trouble bringing back from a fishing trip in Washington the week before.
Dominic is moving mountains locally. He started to quietly weave in the best, freshest, most sustainable ingredients he could find on to his menu. But he's mindful of the expectations of his guests. They expect a certain routine and consistency at Carrie's and they don't like surprises so to make the changes Dominic wanted to make, he had to get the look of the product on the center of the plate exactly right. He's forwarded us pictures taken of our pork chops next to the ones he used to serve to show exactly how he wanted it trimmed.
Linda helped start the revolution in Ohio and introduced us to Dominic. In turn he's connected us with some of the friendliest chefs around. Everyone seemed to know each other that night and I was especially happy for Linda who seemed to radiate with happiness as she was surrounded with her foodie friends from Slow Food and from neighborhoods around Ohio. - Sarah
June 6
93 Hogs this week!
And on the sixth day we did sales. We sold 93 hogs this week. The chefs came through for us - they kept standing orders thus making our sales from the road not so bad.
We had dinner at Fire with Doug Katz. That account plus Lolita is almost enough to get a rare breed pallet into the city each week. -Patrick
June 7
Off to Ann Arbor
Off to Ann Arbor to visit Eve Restaurant, Earthshine Farm and my founding partner Todd Wickstrom and his wife Kristen. There are a lot of memories here.
Earthshine Farm is a farm I know through Todd. Frank and Laura Kay took us to see their chickens and slaughtered a bird before us. They are USDA exempt so they can kill on premises. They did not however let us film them doing it fearing PETA and all the other groups that try to deny the fact that people eat meat and who fight the short-sited and un-winnable battle of trying to stop meat eating rather than fighting for ethical meat husbandry standards on the farms that raise animals in the greatest numbers.
That night passed in downtown Ann Arbor, just next to the legendary Zingerman's deli. Chef Eve hosted us to a night of Red Wattle pork (Anthony said it was the best rib of the trip thus far) and wine. We feasted and awarded farmer Peter Stark and Eve Aranoff for bettering the food culture around them. Eve and her sous chef Asa Schwartz are two of the sweetest people on earth, an unusual trait those who spend their days in the heated bowels of restaurant kitchens. - Patrick
 
Earthshine's Frank and Laura Kay
Earth Shine farm is nestled in a lush residential area 45 minutes outside of Ann Arbor, MI. There isn't another farm nearby. Frank and Laura Kay started the chicken farm years ago and have dabbled with every breed of bird imaginable until they settled on raising the dark cornish. From its looks the farm is simple and rustic, but it's really quite fascinating. They had a few pens up around birds of different ages. They are one of the only farmers I know of that sets their birds out immediately, instead of waiting even a week before putting them outside. They're creative on their farm and recycle used vinyl signs as roofing on their chicken coops. They process their chickens on the farm and wrap the meat up in wax brown paper. They've engineered a small breeding room, with warmers and dozens of trays of eggs ready for hatching.
Frank used to work in the auto industry in Flint MI and Laura Kay used to be a designer until they switched to farming. They really stand out in their community. None of their daughter's friends have any parent in agriculture and no one is around them willing or able to help out. The group Future Farmers of America doesn't respond to their invitations to bring over school kids on a tour of the farm. So they are moving to western Michigan to an area where farmland is less expensive and labor is easier to find. It's sad that there is so little interest and few networks or services to help farmers as small as Frank and Laura Kay. - Sarah
June 8th
Chicago Turkey Rescue
Today turned out to be the most stressful leg of the trip thus far. Before heading to Chicago, we stopped by our cold storage facility in Trolley, Michigan where we rescued 2,000 lbs. of heritage turkeys (it's a long story). The bulkiest, toughest guys in Michigan pushed three pallets worth of frozen turkeys into the trailer and we escaped without getting our knees broken and we were off to Chicago where our delivery service there was willing to accept our shipment, hopefully forever.
 
Rescuing Heritage Turkeys in Michigan The Chicago Skyline
In Illinois, the boys exhibited zero self-restraint when they left me while I was in the bathroom at a gas station and blazed off to an unnamed burger joint (they knew I wouldn't eat the stuff). I was certain they wouldn't leave me in the middle of the state and that they'd be back for me soon but waiting the 15 minutes gave me time to steam up. They picked me up, I climbed in all pissed but they just laughed at me.
We were really running late though, stuck in traffic on W 94 in Chicago, 15 exits away and 5 minutes until our event at Nacional 27. There wasn't going to be any time to bring the turkeys to their rightful freezer. But Anthony, god bless his soul, offered to drop us off at the restaurant and go on to the cold freezer storage place alone.
We cleaned ourselves up in the back of the van and walked into Nacional 27 where a handful of Slow Food Chicago board members and press were there having Randy Zwebien's cocktails and heritage tapas together. Ellen Malloy who does publicity for Nacional 27 and for a bunch of the great restaurants in Chicago pulled together a group of fun people: freelance travel writers, columnists from the Chicago Tribune, brew masters and local agriculture connections. I had the best rhubarb cocktail of my life there. The fiesta got a little raucous but which was refreshing after a long day. Anthony showed up just about 10 minutes before we needed to head over to Blackbird for a Red Wattle and wine extravaganza.
Blackbird is a sleek place and everything came together beautifully there tonight. We finally got to meet the chef Paul Kahan who is 100% pork-centric. He's been excited about our work and our products since we met him on the phone a while back. Weeks before this event, Paul's right hand chefs, Jared and Dillon, ordered tons of Red Wattle to start their curing for tonight's party - all parts of the pig were represented. We were like giddy kids in the kitchen looking at the dishes on the menu that night. The bar area was filling up as the sun started to set and cast a cool bluish green light in the room.
 
Breaking Bacon at Blackbird (see the tattoo) Pile of Cured Red Wattle Pork
Paul is not only a talented chef, he is also a great speaker. He gave a warm introduction, talked about our products and pieced together his role in the whole heritage food chain. Blackbird did right by the wattle; they expertly wove pork into all five courses, including a little bacon with the sour cream coffee cake and peach ice cream. The pancetta wrapped sturgeon was outrageous. My cousin John and his wife Niki attended; it was great to have my extended family there to experience Heritage Foods first hand. Also, our new friend Chicago David who we'd met at Craft in NYC a few weeks prior showed up to say hello. The room was alive with laughter.
 
Valet parking at Blackbird Late Night at Avec
We spent the rest of the night partying next door at chef Paul's other place Avec, Blackbird's little sister restaurant. Happy people were pouring in and out; love was in the air. We headed back to my good friend Eileen Sweeney's place where we were staying, a block away from Nacional 27. – Sarah
***
Morning: The Fed Ex Guy, the Box Guy, and the stats man, Todd, pulled together a time line to pull off the 10,000 heritage turkey project this November. On the day this trip ends, the TURKEY PROJECT will dominate our every thought.
Today we rescued frozen turkeys from a bad cold storage facility in Michigan to move them 4 hours west to Chicago so that they could fulfill their destiny as food. We loaded the trailer and fishtailed to Chicago. Fishtailing is a slow process that builds and builds until you finally lose control of the vehicle. We survived by slamming on the brakes many a time and got to Nacional 27 for our Chicago press event 10 minutes late.
Chef Randy Zweiban uses our pork for a Latin American cuisine that he learned while spending time in Miami. Randy uses every part of the pig and my favorite dish was his fried cheek. Like with a growing number of chefs, Randy has mastered using secondary cuts from the pig so that he can keep his food costs down but still get a stellar product. For years, the loin was the only easily sellable cut of the pig. Now bellies, cheek, shoulder, feet, and even ears and tongue are selling like wildfire. Neck is a real diamond in the rough - one of the tastiest cuts, also one of the cheapest.
Ellen Malloy did a great PR job and a bunch of cool people showed up to Nacional. We talked about our trip and what we have seen thus far. Everyone seems interested in what will happen once we pick up the live pigs. How will they survive? Where will they sleep? How will we keep the van ventilated? A few Chicago Tribune people attended including an ex-Tribuner and mentor of sorts: Bill Rice who I first met in my Slow Food days. He made great points on camera about the Chicago food scene. He said that it is still a great meat town even though beef is not the industry it once was here. Because of how great a meat town it is, he says, Chicagoans already know on Wednesday what they want to eat that weekend: a good taste that's so reliably good, there is not much of a need to change. Chicago then is almost known for its lack of trends and for sticking to what works.
This point was a perfect setup for Paul Kahan who is one of the very few breaking new ground. Chef Paul owns Avec and Blackbird where we organized a 70 person-Red Wattle feast to raise money for Slow Food's Terra Madre and for Heritage Foods. Jared the sous chef has a whole pig tattoo on his arm - a good sign for a pig event. This is the fourth pig tattoo we've seen since the trip began. Paul is pumping with energy and his flowing hair waves as he jumps from room to room at his neighboring restaurants. He welcomed us into his kitchen to film as he prepped and plated the food, an unusual lens into the kitchen. An array of cured meats made their way onto the menu. It is amazing to see all the curing experiments happening in the basements of kitchens throughout the country. There is a definite pig cult in the USA and Paul is at the forefront.
Paul's energy breaks down the divide that separates the back of the house from the front. His Q&A created great laughter from the crowd and prepared them even more for the feast. It's amazing he and his staff even had the time to speak to the diners before dinner much less have a camera crew running around while they prep. The meal was awesome and I strongly encourage any Chicago bound visitor to reserve now at Paul's two places, soon to be three.
The Team at Blackbird
During the festivities an interesting question was brought up: why is such a great meat like pork prohibited by the Muslims and the Jews. I ventured a theory, which I learned in school. When the Muslims and Jews were first starting their religion and looking for converts they wanted to differentiate themselves from other groups but probably didn't want to make it too painful for the potential converts to convert. So a strategy was to prohibit certain foods but not any foods that people would hate to lose. So the pig, which did not fair well in the dessert (along with other foods like lobster) seemed perfect to make illegal - they didn't really exist so being a Jew or Muslim really wasn't that bad!
The night ended at Avec with long conversations that went into the night about issues like food, life and agriculture. Everywhere I travel I try to figure what place I would frequent if I lived there. There is no doubt that most of my nights should I find myself in Chicago would be spent at the Avec bar, hopefully with Paul and his lovely team. - Patrick
June 9
Chicago's Powerhouse of Food Culture
Frontera Grill is an impressive empire. We visited Brian Enyart, Rick Bayless's side kick, early this morning. Brian's been with the restaurant for 10 years since his late teens and now he runs this massive operation. Frontera is a maze of dining rooms and storage rooms. They have a most unique way of buying produce and preparing seasonal dishes that last them the entire year, like the strong limes they use for their margaritas and creamy avocados for the guacamole they get from Mexico. They've put our bison, tepary beans and cholla buds on the menu. Frontera uses recipes from some of their workers who were born and raised in Mexico, the place keeps their prices in check and appeals to the masses without whipping their guests over the head with their edge toward sustainability.
We walked over to Naha across the way to see our friend Carrie Nahabedian from restaurant Naha. She's got great energy and a thick endearing Chicago accent. Carrie runs the restaurant with her family, her sisters and her cousin - they are second generation from Armenia. When we asked her why it's important to preserve diversity in our food supply, she said that loosing something is like ripping a page out of a book, it's gone forever. When something replaces what's old and traditional, with time, we forget it forever. I welled up a bit during Carrie's interview.
When a farm shuts down and is paved over it's never turned back to a field. When a shiny new supermarket closes out a block of small mom and pop shops, we're up in arms but eventually we forget what was there and accept the new neighborhood landscape.
I left the boys and walked from Naha over to Avec to meet my brother Michael and his family for lunch. There's something very different, very clean and organized about Chicago, it seems odd. For one thing, they don't allow food carts on the streets.
I was so happy to see Michael my brother, Connie (sister-in-law), Dominic (3 year old nephew), Mia Isabela (newborn niece). I miss them, they should be in NYC but Michael's working on building his toy business in Chicago. We had a fabulous lunch at Avec, a testament to its ability to cater to both hipsters and families with kids. Plus Avec has hooks under the bar - very important.
 
Carrie at Naha Sarah's family feasting over pork shoulder at Avec.
Tonight, David and Anthony put together a 10 minute rough trailer of the footage we took with the Amish to show Eileen Sweeney, her daughters and friends she invited over for drinks. Hanging out with Eileen is like getting an infusion of excitement and enthusiasm. This season she's fond of saying "it's going to be the best summer ever." And I believe it.
The film short was powerful, the boys had to get creative with editing especially because there were shots of the Amish, who are not able to be photographed. The screening was well received. It also reinforced just how huge a project this documentary is going to be. We've shot about 30 hours of footage thus far and have gone only 1/5 of the way. We have the job of distilling the content and images and rebuilding it into a cohesive story that entertains and has great impact. - Sarah
***
Our lovely host Eileen Sweeny sent us off into the Chicago morning with bagels and coffee. First we visited European Imports, our current distributor in Chicago.
Then we went to meet a powerhouse in the food culture of this country: Carrie Nahabedian of Naha Restaurant. We got there at 1130am, that awkward time where hunger pangs have started but where it's still not entirely socially acceptable to begin lunch. But we were there, and the restaurant is beautiful and the menu had about 10 items that jump out at you like lamb and yogurt from Carrie's native Armenia, the number 2 rated hamburger in Chicago, and a Heritage Food pork chop. So we ate and we were happy we did. Carrie arrived at around 130 and we sat outside to do an interview on film. Few interviews created as much emotion in me as the one with Carrie. There is something about her that nourishes and I didn't want our time together to end for everything she says lasts and spawns new thoughts. When we asked her why preserving biodiversity was important, she responded that when we lose something we rip a page out of the book and it is lost forever. There was something about the way she said it, but I will never forget it.
Carrie is one of those people that seems to have lived longer than most -centuries more. She has a calm about her that connects to a more peaceful natural and spiritual world. She seems wise and I wish that many people might pass through the realm of her restaurant so that they too might be connected to the foundations of the universe.- Patrick
June 10
Onward to Kansas City
Travel day. Travel can be hard but my companions make it fun. Sadly I am so tempted to eat fast food and there is little else to choose from. But I resist despite what other writers on this website might say. We got to KC around 6pm and met Lidia Bastianich, the grande dame of Italian cuisine, for the first time.
Lidia is the kind person who has done everything you have only better. When you tell her that you plan to visit an abetoir, she will respond that she used to slaughter animals as a child when she grew up on a farm near Friuli. When we named the breeds we have seen on the trip thus far, she responds with a laundry list of breeds she has seen over the years including taste differences between each cut of each breed. When we told her we planned to edit the footage of this documentary on our own, she told us that her PBS show is entirely self-produced. She has done so much I was even tempted to tell her something absurd, just to see if she if she could top it. If I told her my father was an astronaut perhaps she would respond that Sputnick was her dog! - Patrick
***
We took off for Kansas City this morning, which marks the middle and most important phase of the trip: spending a week with our slaughterhouse and a week on a handful of our farms throughout Kansas and Missouri that are the backbone of Heritage Foods.
Our van has become much like Air Force One. We have electric strips, camera and editing equipment and computers plugged in every possible power source. It's pretty cool that we're able to keep the business running smoothly from the van. We're better at keeping everything well organized, respecting each other's set-ups and individual spaces; and that's imperative given the tight quarters we're in and all the that we each need to work on and accomplish every single day. - Sarah
Back to Top
June 11
Dinner with Lidia
Lidia is very smart and is so seasoned at interacting with people - she is used to being the center of attention. When we arrived to Lidia's, she was doing a Q&A with a few dozen guests who embraced the opportunity to ask this Italian food powerhouse questions. Lidia was very generous with her time and granted us numerous on camera interviews even though she was busy with events throughout the weekend.
The events on this Sunday were spectacular and offered Heritage an ideal opportunity to celebrate the farms who make what we do possible. Lidia's was the first restaurant to embrace Heritage Foods and we could not have hoped for anyone more important to honor the farmers we work with than the queen of Italian cuisine in this country. The first event was a lunch and it was attended by almost all the Kansas and Missouri farmers we work with: Craig and Amy Good, Doug and Betty Metzger, Danny Williamson, and numerous of Mark Newman's consortium members. The panel discussion was led by Frank Reese, Larry Sorrel and Mark Newman. Frank led the guests through a tasting of Bronze turkey which Lidia had prepared in a veal tonnato sauce. Then Larry and Mark took us through a tasting of two breeds of pork shanks: the Wattle and Berkshire. After the tasting concluded we awarded each farmer a Heritage certificate and then Lidia gave a lifetime achievement award and pin to Frank Reese for his efforts to preserve poultry genetics and to the Fantasma family for their efforts to maintain the lost art-form of butchering. There were a few tears shed that afternoon. Frank was moved when he told of a promise he had made to an old dying friend that he would preserve the turkey line that his friend had dedicated his life to raising. Frank was awarded a Viking shield pin which we chose because Frank's defense of poultry happens in a hometown of Lindsborg, also known as Little Sweden. Lou Fantasma was moved to tears when Lidia explained why he received his award for working so hard to cut meat for this country's great restaurants.
That night 15 remained for a spectacular dinner where Lidia again introduced the heritage farmers by name so that they could receive the applause they deserved from everyone dining in the restaurant. We could not have hoped for any better way to thank the people who raise our food in a healthy and sustainable manner. Each one is a hero in his or her own way and to be in their local major city, at its best restaurant with a food figure of the caliber of Lidia was a dream come true.
I must say the Lidia event was the most stressful stop thus far. Unlike in other cities where we knew almost no one, in KC we knew almost everyone and most all of the people we knew we do business with. One of the things we work hard not to forget is that the only thing that really matters for the farms we work with is that we pay them what they deserve. - Patrick
 
Mario Fantasma and Lidia Bastianich Farmers Frank, Larry and Mark at Lidia's
The farmers that were on the panel and there today for the heritage tasting lunch at Lidia's KC rarely leave their farms. Many of them had arrived in the city the night before and since most work alone on the farm they had to plan ahead and get someone nearby to come over and help with chores while they were away from the fields. The tasting was a huge deal for them all and I was proud to introduce Lidia to the most important and traditional producers in her backyard.
The godfather of American poultry, Frank Reese, the king of Berkshire pork, Mark Newman, and the savior of the Red Wattle, Larry Sorell, were on a speakers panel with Lidia and Patrick. These farmers have never been on center stage together with an audience of their own (many guests were farmers), other chefs and one of the most influential food buyers in the country, Lidia Bastianich. It was a summit of sorts. The farmers spoke about themselves, their families, their animals, the genetics, the meat quality, etc. Lidia spoke about growing up with animals that she butchered herself, about the flavor-sticking quality of pork cartilage and how it melts into sauces and about the virtues of cheaper, less premium cuts like shanks. For lunch, the heritage turkey was sliced with a tonnato and caper dressing and the Berkshire and Red Wattle braised shanks went head to head on the plate (the Berk to me is buttery and sweeter and the Wattle has a sharper, stronger flavor.)
We gave out certificates that said, "For your endless pursuit to enrich America's food culture, Heritage Foods awards," to individual farmers and we gave Frank a life time achievement award which was of a Swedish-looking shield to signify the protection of heritage poultry and we awarded the Fantasmas of Paradise Locker Meats, the family that runs the slaughterhouse 20 miles down the road in Trimble, MO, a carved wooden sculpture of a pig. Mario and Teresa Fantasma own the locker and they have two sons, Louis and Nick, in their mid-twenties, who were born into the business. There with them was Mary, a good family friend who works at the locker too. Their profession is not sexy or high profile, it is rarely celebrated so we needed to find a way to thank them for making it possible for us to bring in every week 60-80 pigs and some lamb. They keep things small scale and respect the family farmer, the animal and the art of their trade. Lidia presented them the pig to the Fantasmas and I think they were more than touched.
Everyone got face-time with Lidia and she, in turn, got to know the farmers and guests quite well. She gave Mario advice on where in Northern Italy to go to master the art of curing and she encouraged him to train. The afternoon ended with an early dinner where dozens more heritage foods were featured including our lamb, duck, albacore tuna, syrups and heirloom chocolate.
Back at the Fantasma's for the evening, at midnight Nick remembered he had to turn the scalder on and prepare it for the next day's work. So I went over to the plant with him. One of our farmers had already dropped off his load of pigs, so we checked on them. They were sleeping and seemed cozy, not knowing what was in store. - Sarah
Back to Top
June 12
The Fantasmas
 
Hauling into Missouri
Alas, we have parked the car for 5 days and even unhitched the trailer! This is the week we spend at the Fantasma house and slaughterhouse. I am writing these entries now from the farms that support Heritage Foods. It is good to write about the Fantasma family from the peaceful pastures of Kansas and Missouri for what they do is very important.
Mario Fantasma is the head of the family. He is a large man with a thick neck and bone-in hams for arms. You can tell that he has earned his position as head of the family through years of hard work pulling pigs, cows and lamb in from the pen and lifting them onto meat hooks for cutting. Now that Mario is getting up there in years and thanks to his two strong sons, he chooses to work less than the others in the family. But his experience and knowledge allows him to accomplish more in less time. His subtle touch goes a long way. That is not to say that Mario won't keep you on the phone to tell you a story like how he killed that cow that escaped from his plant in the summer of 1998. Actually the cow ran for miles until it came to the Smithville Lake where it jumped in to swim even further towards safety. Mario received a phone call from a friend who saw it take the dive. The great escape finally ended when Mario caught up to it on the other side of the lake. The next week he opened the local paper to the headline "Lock Ness Monster Seen in Smithville Lake".
Mario is the person you deal with when you talk about big things like labeling, boxes, price increases, packaging issues, USDA regulations etc. He is the big gun that gets brought in to close deals or open new ones. Mario's first great decision that I saw him make was taking the risk of upgrading his facility to USDA once he met Heritage status so that he could ship across state lines.
Teresa is the mother. She has a lot on her plate and being the only woman in a family of four. She is in a male dominated line of work so she has developed a tough skin. She can tell someone off with the best of them and she can make her voice carry over that of others. She pounds beers after work, she parties until late. But she is also sweet and considerate and maternal, making sure that everyone is accounted for, with clean clothes and money in their pocket. She is a great cook, although there is absolutely no fresh food to be found in Trimble. Teresa is in charge of everything in the front of the house including running the retail store (the biggest Heritage Foods retail presence in the country!) invoicing, and keeping track of the millions of documents that a USDA plant has to deal with on a daily basis.
Nick is the youngest son. He is steady and strong. His primary job consists of breaking down the pig so that it can be further processed into its individual cuts. He wields big saws and moves carcasses around the cutting floor using huge chains. He is no doubt the quiet one in the family. Nothing phases him. When not on the kill room floor Nick can be found on the golf course. Nick is a very thoughtful chef and prides himself on his culinary skill more than anyone in the family. He is even a master at making delicious food from products that everyone else ignores. Nick once called us to say that he had discovered a succulent part of the pig that they had been throwing into the trim pile for sausage: it was a 6oz piece that results when you cut the small piece of meat off the loin to french it. These "riblettes" turned out to be the biggest seller for our mail order business ever besides our turkeys.
 
Nick Fantasma at work Patrick listening to Teresa and Mario
Lou is the son who runs the plant. He does it much in the same way that Heathcliff ran the homestead at Wuthering Heights. He is moody and his stormy personality keeps everyone on their toes. But he is talented - perhaps the best butcher in the land. Certainly no one suffers more for his craft and takes more pride in his butchering work. Each week 90-100 heritage pigs make their way though Paradise and each and every one has specific cutting orders: some are frenched with a long bone, others with a short bone, some ribs are st louis while others are baby back and spare, some shanks are center-cut, others are made into osso-bucco and others still come whole with the hoof attached.
Unfortunately Lou does not have much time to bask in his fame among the great chefs of this country because the pieces come flying off Nick's table at an amazing pace and he only has 2 days to complete all his work to get the product onto the Cannonball truck by Friday. It is amazing how Lou can do such sophisticated work in such an abrupt environment so quickly. The final customers are very demanding yet we almost never get a complaint - it is an amazing feat. Additionally amazing is that Lou and his team have allowed Heritage to resist becoming completely standardized in the cuts we offer: each and every week the cut orders change for the pigs yet they are able to cope. This is a crucial point when you cater to the great restaurants of the world. I admire Lou's work ethic. When Sarah and I send off the cut sheets each Tuesday night we almost always make a mistake or two, which could bring numerous headaches down the line, but Lou always catches it. His understanding of the pig and his ability to work on the fly make him one of a kind.
The best of the rest of the crew is no doubt Doc the USDA inspector and Mary - also known as Murray - one of my favorite people to hang out with. Mary could sink Heritage if she really wanted to for she is the lady who cryos our food, packs it in the appropriate boxes and registers the weights (a very crucial step so that we don't over or under charge our clients). Mary has a tool shed in the back of her pickup - sometimes I ask her for the most random garden tools like weed-whackers or chainsaws just to see if she has them with her. She almost always does.
Doc is the USDA inspector - he is serious and thoughtful. The USDA inspector is much like a pro-sports referee. He has numerous infractions that he must remember and when he sees one he yells it out. I thought of buying him a whistle and a black and white striped shirt. I wonder if he has all the potential infractions running through his head at all times or if he just makes rounds looking for one that is at the forefront of his mind. Either way, Paradise almost never gets a dock from Doc.
The rest of the team is a rag tag group of individuals. It is hard to find consistent group of workers when you pay little and are in that line of work. Bonding with everyone at Paradise takes place during cigarette breaks every 3 hours. They last for 15 minutes and there is much laughter all around.
The PLANT.
Paradise Locker Meats is located about 20 minutes north of Kansas City up highway 69 in the town of Trimble. Its sits on top a hill surrounded by cornfields. Paradise used to be located closer to the lake but it burned down when a fire broke out while smoking a ham. They have a painting of the old plant made of wood depicting a cow escaping from the back. It's amazing how many people root for a great escape. I am perfectly comfortable eating meat yet there is part of me that wants to hear of a pig that made it out and maybe even settled down in the forest to start a colony of free feral pigs.
I am amazed about how much work gets done at Paradise each week. Running heritage requires little manual labor so I am quick to forget just how much sweat goes into making what we do possible from the farm to the slaughter end. The pigs are wrestled into pens and then again into the kill stall. They are lifted onto hooks, flipped around and cut with heavy saws. And the pace is frantic.
The schedule at the plant is busy. Monday and Tuesdays are kill days. Wednesday and Thursday are cut/pack days and Friday is a day when local customers slaughter their animals. Spending the week at Paradise I found the first two days of the week to be stressful and hard. Wednesday and Thursday is when the organization of the plant becomes most obvious. These are the days when everything gets pulled together and when the most mistakes can be made. A hundred pigs creates about 2,000 cuts, each of which has to be sent to a specific place.
There is a special feeling you have Thursday afternoon when you peek into the cooler to see piles of boxes stacked high, ready to go out to restaurants across the USA. Even at the slaughter house, it's easy to forget that the contents of those boxes were running around on a farm just four days earlier.
Homelife
The Fantasmas can see the Locker from their porch. If any unusual vehicles appear Mario will drive over. The four of us spent 5 days there eating them out of house and home. Throughout the trip our friends have been very generous to put us up. Nights at the Fantasmas are spent eating meat and watching an immense flat screen TV. I cooked my famous tomato and mozerella pasta on the last night. They were amazed that meat wasn't on the menu.
Just before we left Mario walked up to me and gave me a $400 donation for gas money. He believes in what we are trying to accomplish on this trip. My eyes welled up with tears for gestures like these are hard to come by. Sometimes I wonder if this trip was a mistake since we are trying to run a business. But when Mario did that I felt that we are doing something right. - Patrick
 
Mary: Employee of the Month The UDSA doc
I admit to being a bit anxious about picking up the four pigs next week at the end of our tour through Kansas and Missouri. Most everyone at Lidia's yesterday laughed out loud when we told them we were to bring four piglets westward with us, a 10-day trip in the van. But most seems to be more worried about us than they are about the little ones.
We are spending this week at Paradise Locker Meats, the best thing that ever happened to Trimble, Missouri. The Fantasma family runs the locker about a mile from their home. They are one of the last bastions of truly independent slaughterhouses in the Midwest and they help the local farming community tremendously. They get calls for help in the middle of the night from neighbors who've shot deer during hunting season. Their retail shop offers things no longer available in supermarkets like bone-in cuts, custom butchering, and a smoke house. They process our pigs and lamb. We're lucky to have Paradise; we know that their profession is just as endangered as the animals they process.
The Fantasmas have become very good friends of ours. Mario, Teresa, Nick, Louis and Mary (Mary's like family) came to NYC together in May and we had a blast bringing them to restaurants they'd only heard about. The Fantasma boys have taught us a ton about butchering, And Teresa knows what she's talking about. They gave us advice on why the country 4-rib rack is so awesome, what we could do with the riblets that come off the frenched loins and how many tenders, strip loins and porterhouse chops you can get out of a hog.
This week we'll witness first-hand one of the most important aspects of our business. The pig delivery schedule was screwed up a bit because only about 10 hogs were dropped off at Paradise last night so tomorrow will be especially crazy at the locker because there will ten times that coming in at once. Paradise is small potatoes compared to the majority of the packers that cut up tens of thousand of animals a day and this kind of flexibility would never be tolerated at the corporate meat lockers.
At Paradise, the pigs are processed one at a time. They get stunned quickly and get drained of their blood, before being placed into the scalder which has tire flaps that pulls the hair off. Then guys are there to set the pig down and scrap off the remaining hair. The heads are particularly labor-intensive to clean, but it's important to do it right since the heads are coveted by so many chefs. Then out come the insides, and if we need caul fat that day for instance, Lou is there to pull it out and wash it clean.
Someone else pulls the pig up onto hooks by its hind feet and takes a saw perfectly down the middle right to its butt. They are identified and tagged, and the line of pigs is pulled into the cooler, glistening and looking beautiful. Tomorrow and Wednesday I'll be there when they break down the hogs.
Tonight, I went back over to the slaughterhouse to take the hams out of the smoke house with one of them. There's always work that needs to be done at Paradise. - Sarah
Back to Top
June 14
Back at Work
Teresa got me up early today to go walking around Smithville Lake, which is 16 miles long and is surrounded by thousands of acres of rolling hills and trails. The birds swinging around the treetops we walked under put me in a great mood.
At the slaughterhouse, David and I spent the day with the crew on the cutting floor. It took some maneuvering to figure out how to film the commotion and keep the noise from drowning out Lou's explanations. Paradise was short-handed, which is typical and frustrating for them, so even Mario had his hardhat on and was working the floor. Nick begins by sawing through the rest of all the hogs; he cuts off the sirloin from the loin and belly and separates the shoulder out. That way, they can work on the same cut from all pigs at once. It's up to Lou to organize the day and make sense of our cutting orders which get quite specific: Tamworth belly with ribs, 12 oz. chops with no fat cap, 20 lbs. of 80% trim.
Lou is a particularly good teacher. He spent time going over every piece of the pig, pulling out the neck, showing us where the shoulder blade is in the boston butt, how they use the skinner on the bellies. He'd stick his gloved finger deep into the meat to demonstrate how healthy our farmers' meats are, due to strong muscle fibers and cells; commodity meat is mealy and would tear if you poked at it. Every once in a while, someone will get over the loudspeaker and say "keep on cutting" in Lidia Bastianich's thick accent. It's what she said to them once a while back when they'd first met at her restaurant in KC.
Lou
Fantasma
Mary is there to manage the packaging, weighing and dividing out for Fed Ex deliveries and pallets that go to NYC, Los Angeles, San Francisco and sometimes Phoenix, Cleveland and Chicago. Now I know what she's got to go through when we have last minute changes and she has to find a few extra packs of jowls (skin off!) at the bottom of one of those pallets.
Tonight we went back to the lake and cruised around in one of their friend's speed boat. We had beers and fried food at the marina afterwards and bickered about business. Lou insists that you have to be sick to be in his line of work, and maybe you do but they are like family to us and I cherish our friendship. They couldn't be more different than us New Yorkers but together we don't skip a beat. They are hilarious and opinionated and have great respect for the small farmers of this country, and for the animals themselves. As Lou puts it, you'd be dumb if you didn't respect and treat well that which provides you your livelihood. - Sarah
Back to Top
June 15
Reality Canine and Sheep Center
We visited a local lamb farmer in Cameron, MO we had been working with on and off. Bridget raises horned dorsets, a beautiful lamb that has thick, strong, beveled horns that curl like Princess Leah braids. Bridget's lambs run the wide pastures and she uses them to train her boarder collie. She blows a special whistle that commands the dog around the farm and, like magic, the collie moves the lamb into the shed or to another part of the farm or away from coyotes. The coyotes are vicious and conniving though and still get to some of the lamb every once in a while. Aside from her dog, Bridget works alone though she has the companionship of her husband Sug, who's corny but very funny.
 
Bridget & the Horned Dorsets Sug and his watch dog
We've bought a few of her lamb whole for chefs in NYC, but we wanted to try offering cuts to individuals and chefs. We always thought the pig was the best animal to work with in primals (that is, in major cuts: shoulder, loin, legs, shanks, etc.) because it was the easiest animal to find outlets for all parts of its body. We've been waiting for the right opportunity to do something similar with beef or lamb so we're bringing in five horned dorsets a week from Bridget's Sheep Station and we'll weave them into our mail order and wholesale business. It's nice being able to make decisions to bring on new products and start new projects at the snap of a finger.
We went back to the Locker and witnessed what it's like on a busy late Thursday night when everyone is packing and preparing the pallets for delivery to their destinations. There's so much paperwork: total weights, USDA docs, bills of laiding. Before dinner (Patrick was making a last supper of pasta and mozzarella dish with salad), I went for out for a walk with Mario and took off jogging. I messed up Mario's cryptic directions and got lost. I was running for over an hour before I finally ran into someone who could tell me where I was. Since I was miles away from home, I hitched a ride back home. When I finally arrived to the Fantasma's, dinner was ready but not everyone was together, Nick had gone back to Paradise Locker for meat, because there was none on the menu. - Sarah
***
Today we took some time off to find a new lamb farmer. And we met a dandy. Bridgit had called us often trying to get us to buy her lamb. We were reluctant since lamb is a hard market to break into. Its funny that pigs are not easy animals to sell in the entirety but when we started selling them everything fell into place - it all made sense. With the lamb we did not have the same luck. The lamb market is harder to conquer and selling all the cuts of an animal can be quite tough. Another issue is yield. A 60lb living animal only yields 20-22 of sellable meat when you do fancy cuts. With the pig on the other hand you only lose 30%. This loss must be taken into account as you calculate costs.
Reality Canine and Sheep Center doubles as a training ground for Boarder Collies that run up and down the rolling hills of the farm herding sheep according the instructions that come from Bridgit via her high pitched whistle. These beautiful dogs are swift and glide in and out and around dozens of sheep moving them here and there. A new generation of these dogs had just been born and I was tempted to buy one. All but three had already been sold to various farmers and sportmen.
 
The lamb on the farm are Horned Dorsets - a very rare breed. Reality is the second largest grower of the breed in the USA. Its unusual to drive for days through farmland and urban sprawl and then all of a sudden come upon one of the last refuges of an animal type. One of the advantages of the relationship between Heritage Foods and the last farmers who raise certain foods is that there is little bureaucracy that holds us back from making agreements together. The contract between the two of us was written on the back of a piece of paper and made official by a handshake. We agreed to buy five lamb a week and went over the how best to break the animal down. And now we will wait to see if the product and the story behind it sells.
Sug, Bridgit's much older husband, is a riot, one of my favorite encounters so far. Sug is short for Sugar, a name his mother gave him because he was so sweet. Sug is old and frail but has great energy and a superb sense of humor. He invited us to lunch at a local pub and had us in stitches the entire time. He would talk about regular things like going to the salad bar, or walking to the bank and it was hilarious. We got some great footage of him cracking one liners about our trip with the pigs in the back of the van. I hope Sug comes to NYC - I would take him around and be sure that all the chefs would love to hear him weave a merry tale. - Patrick
Back to Top
June 16
Off to Omaha's Cannonball Trucking Facility
We had the great idea of following our meat out of Paradise Locker on the Cannonball Express big rig as it made its way to the hub in Omaha, Nebraska for distribution. I'd gotten very comfortable in Trimble MO so it was hard to pick up and say goodbye to our dear friends at the locker. We pulled into Paradise Meats and Dale from Cannonball was there cleaning his 48 foot truck. Mario and Nick brought the forklift out and started to load our product. They'd only just gotten the forklift, before that they had to pile the pallets into the trailer by hand.
 
Mario and his Forklift
As we prepared to go the USDA inspector (every meat locker has one in house), frustrated that we'd spent the week cornering him with interviews, made a point to stop us in front of the Fantasmas and plug us with a few questions. He did a fine job of upholding his government duty and now, he said, we should review those HACCP guidebooks and USDA guidelines he referred to.
David and I pulled out of the Locker in the Cannonball cab with Dale, and Patrick and Anthony filmed the trip from the van. Dale, like everyone else I've met thus far, loves his job. He's been driving a truck on and off for 30 years. He has kids and grandkids and a wife who sometimes comes with him on his tours, but otherwise it's just him in his cab. It's clean and spacious and has a big bed and storage like you'd find in a home. Dale is a real straight shooter, he's tough but real; he's thoughtful and informative. He remembers little vistas and specific spots from his trucking travels that he'd like to revisit. We had lunch, appropriately, at a truck stop and we talked about the underbelly of his trade. Though things are tamer than ever, we asked him about the drugs, the "lot lizards" and fixing the log books. But the Cannonball truckers are generally safe, well-paid, loyal and work for the company for decades.
It was too early to see height of action at the depot, so went downtown with Larry Bokal and other Cannonballers and come back to the station later when things were buzzing. Omaha is a neat town, it's got style and edge. It's also the home to some of this country's biggest corporations, like Tyson, Kellogg's, many credit companies and Con Agra whose arched spray of fountain water can be seen from any balcony in Omaha (see picture below).
Top of Omaha
We met up with a new friend, Brian O'Malley, who heads the Institute for the Culinary Arts here in the city. He's a rare breed, a native Nebraskan who came back home after stints as a chef in cities elsewhere. The Cannonball team came with us to meet Brian in the Old Market; we invited him back to the trucks and he joined us. The parking lots and bays were lit with the organized chaos of 50 plus trucks moving in and out. The trucks tend to be beautiful and colorful and have just as much character as the truckers themselves. Like tattoos, the detailing and painting give off a personality.
Cannonball is like a Fed Ex hub or a central post office, where cargo arrives and is repacked for redistribution across the country. It was fascinating to see the wide spectrum of designs and language on the all packaging of products from the diverse companies Cannonball services, many are small, unique businesses. By 4 or 5 am on Saturday morning, the warehouses are completely empty once again. This business is tangible, and there must be a great sense of accomplishment and satisfaction to know that the week has ended successfully when there's not one single box left in the warehouse.
It was nice to be able to show Brian to the backend work of Cannonball he no idea existed. It couldn't have been a better introduction. Brian is looking to set up a local distribution center for the farmers in Nebraska and now it looked like we could help spawn a local project from our own.
After the tour, we left for Seneca, KS where farmers Doug and Betty Metzger live. When we arrived at 3am, Doug and Betty were still on the road coming back with hundreds of newborn turkey chicks. They got in after 4am and immediately woke up poor Anthony to get him to film them bringing in the babies! - Sarah
 
Paradise, Heritage and Dale Superstar
Trucker
Dale
Dale pulled up the trailer around 9am. We loaded 6 pallets onto the back of it and Sarah and he pulled out of the Paradise parking lot with Sarah and David filming in the cab and me and Anthony following in the van. We were off to Omaha to unite our meat with another 2 million pounds of product for points across the USA at the Cannonball trucking facility. Considering we represent less than .1% of their weekly shipping merchandise the folks at Cannonball were awfully hospitable, allowing us to film in the truck and eventually giving us a private tour of the facility and even taking us out to a free steak dinner!
Dale gave us a fascinating lens into the life of the trucker. For one truckers are never in a rush. There is no way to speed up what they do. They drive long distances at speeds that are predetermined by the weight of what they are hauling. In fact Dale's greatest pet peeve is drivers who cut in front of him when he is stopped at a red light because they don't want to get stuck behind him. Where do they need to get to so fast he wonders. And how much of a delay would driving behind him for a few miles be anyway? He doesn't drive that slowly. This next one is me speaking, not Dale: Attention All Drivers: the left lane is the passing lane!
Dale reminds us that everything we can think of has been on a truck at some point. Name something - just name something. Sun glasses, an apple, your desk, a toothbrush -its all been on a truck at some point. It's easy to forget how important the truck and trucker are to American commerce. Dale laments the lack of camaraderie with his fellow drivers. He says when he started in the business 30 years ago he might pass 500 trucks on the road each day and that he knew half those truckers by name or sight. He enjoyed meeting them and catching up at the various truck stops that dot the roads of our highways. Today sadly there are thousands of trucks and he knows but a small percentage of them. As a result much of the trucker culture has been lost including that of the CB Radio parlance and driving etiquette where drivers look out for one another on the roads and make sure they help everyone along to get to their destination. Dale does not own his truck as many drivers do. Those that do are entrepreneurs and they go around marketing themselves to various trucking firms. They invest over $100,000 in their cabs and keep them shiny. Dale works for Cannonball and enjoys being part of the team there. After working with the folks there and now that I have visited their facility, I would too.
What strikes me most about Cannonball is how important they are to helping so many small family businesses succeed. Three things they do which few others do is that they deliver anywhere in the country within five days (thus allowing you to ship food fresh), they allow you to control the temperature (they have dividers in each truck so that you can ship room temperature, refrigerated or frozen), and their minimum shipment is one pallet (no matter how small your business, you have a friend in Cannonball). So anyone can ship anything, even as little as 50lbs. And the cost is cheap.
Cannonball's great achievement is their organization. Product is accumulated in the warehouse on Friday and divided into dozens of rows and eventually re-loaded onto trucks that depart for destinations in all 50 states. The product arrives anywhere usually on Monday but never later than Wednesday. Each truck delivers product within a 200 mile radius ensuring that drivers don't have to be on the road longer than necessary. In over a year of working with them, they have never made a mistake.
Our tour guide at Cannonball was also the captain of the ship: Larry Bokal. He and his office staff of 6 or 7 keep the business afloat. When they were done working Larry and the owners of Cannonball invited Sarah and me and our two-man crew to a steak dinner at Anthony's, an Omaha institution. The T-bone was succulent. Dave said the pasta had ketchup in it. But few places that excel in steak also excel in the spaghetti family. After dinner we went to Larry's apartment in the downtown district. It was in his home that we realized that there are dimensions to Larry that are not immediately apparent at first impression. Larry has the most diverse collection of random things I have ever seen and the only thing that unite his collection is that he likes it. He collects antique model cars. He keeps a working Pepsi machine where soda costs a quarter. His living room has a huge door in it that leads nowhere but is dedicated to Jepeto, of Pinocchio fame. His wall art is Betty Boop serving a burger to someone in a car. Every couch and lamp in the place is a 60's motif with various bright colors. It's amazing what lives behind each window and door you pass in the city and on the road: the stories, the people, the collections.
Inside Larry and Linda Bokel's Home
Larry took us all out for ice-cream and beer in downtown Omaha which is absolutely fun and I would argue even a destination city. It boasts great cafes, music stores, antique shops and old-school loft architecture. We met up with Brian O'Malley, friends with Shane Coffee of Alias Restaurant in NYC. It was like a blind date. We met at a bar and talked about his culinary school. One of his big projects is developing a local distribution system for small family farms through the schools in Omaha so who better could he have met than Larry Bokal. We hope Brain puts Larry on his Advisory Board. Its obvious that the great fault of so many organizations that claim to want to help local agriculture is that all they do is talk when they should be out finding a van, a driver and a sales person. The non-profit world and the Cannonballs do not combine forces as much as they should.
We left for Doug Metzger's Farm that night - we wanted to start there early. We pulled up around 2am (like an ass I realized I forgot my computer at the Cannonball headquarters after driving an hour towards Doug's). Doug was picking up turkey poults so we had to find our way to the trailer he reserved for us by ourselves. We took one step in and thought we were in a Blair Witch Project. It was dark, there was no electricity, there were numerous rooms, it was 100 degrees - we were scared. I slept in the van that night with bent knees. - Patrick
Back to Top
June 17
Meet the Metzgers of Kansas
Doug and Betty run the last truly diversified large farm in Kansas. I love it. Most farms struggle to excel in one aspect of agriculture like pork or cattle or sorghum or dairy production. The Metzgers choose to excel in all of them. I don't know how they do it but I do know that they react to the market and push production in whichever aspect of agriculture that is peaking at the time. They use tactics to react to the moment and there is something about that that I find refreshing. My work at Slow Food and Heritage always involved juggling many balls at once and this keeps me engaged and interested and forces me to rely on my ability to react, to think on my toes. I can't even imagine how they can do this with agriculture, which is riddled with secrets of the natural world.
Its amazing how much conjecture goes into running a farm. No one really ever knows exactly why an animal gets sick or what the best feed combination is other than through trial and error. Everyday new issues arise that force the farmer to call upon years of experience and there is never only one answer and every farmer reacts to situations differently. Doug knows so much and deals with so many issues. He even excels in fixing farm equipment!
He also manages to avoid falling into the sad pit that so many of his colleagues fell into: partnering with commodity businesses that underpay and have no care for the destiny of the small family farm. He sells all his foods independently to groups like Heritage and he keeps all the business deals going from his cell phone on the fields. No one really knows how he survives but he is one of the last ones left.
Despite his success, Doug leads a hard home life. His house is small and is as messy as his farm. He benefits from few amenities except for this energy potion, which I see in delis around NYC. I hear he buys it by the case. He works mostly at night and sleeps much of the day. Betty has many wrinkles on her face from driving pigs to market and raising the turkeys for over 50 years. The night we arrived she had pulled an all-nighter. I can barely pull an all-nighter at 34. I don't know how she does it at 69. They are both strong.
Doug and Betty have also resisted one of the greatest phenomena to me. They buy regular old shoes that look like the ones Pa and Ma Ingells would have worn in Little House on the Prairie. That is so unusual - in my experience no matter how out of the way some of the characters are that we have crossed paths with, they all have the fanciest most comfortable sneakers. Even the Amish resist electricity but have embraced comfortable and expensive shoeware.
Before we left Oneida proper, Doug took us to visit a commodity hog farmer. What struck me at his farm was how clean his pigs were - an unnatural clean for pigs like to roll in the dirt. These pigs lived their lives on wood planks. There was a lot of squealing going on, much more than at any of the other farms we visited. The pristine pink pigs ran from us when we arrived. At the Heritage farms we visit, the pigs come to you and let you touch them. They are more familiar with the hand of man. Finally, Doug and the farmer were talking about where they house their pigs. The farmer had invested thousands in a new separator that divides the pigs so that they get to the feed bin at different times. He was frustrated with it because it didn't really work as promised. You could hear the pig screams when they got stuck in the turn style. Doug has had his barn for 30 years and it works perfectly to this day. Even with all the fancy technology, it's obvious they don't make things the way they used to.
We were silent for the first part of the journey. We knew we had a long way ahead of us. Newman Farm, the primary supplier of Heritage Food, was 8 hours away. We found out that day that the farm was on the boarder of southeast Missouri and Arkansas - the furthest point from where we were in Missouri. We treated ourselves to a fancy dinner in the town square of Springfield. We wondered if it was the true home of the Simpson family. We dined at Bruno's, a Sicilian themed restaurant that made us feel like we were back in NYC. We pulled into Myrtle and Mark's farm at 2am. They were up and waiting and showed us to our room in their beautiful wood cabin home. - Patrick
 
Doug at Home Doug and Betty
I slept outside in the tent for the first time, which was quite uncomfortable but better than the alternative which was to sleep in Doug and Betty Metzger's extra trailer with no lights, no running water and no air circulation (it will be fixed up soon for a few farm workers from Eastern Europe who have been "on their way" for months).
This morning, we found Betty tending to the new baby turkeys; she was standing over two circus rings that were filled with a low light making sure the babies were warm enough and not crowding each other. Betty absolutely loves turkeys and truly mothers them. She's an extremely early riser, especially now that she milks in the morning. Doug never really seems like he's working, but in fact he always is. He works late and gets up late, an odd schedule for a farmer. He's old-school and looks only a bit older than his high school picture but he's got the unique habit of drinking water with Emergen-C powder packets.
Doug and Betty's farm is very rustic and appears disorganized and messy. Things haven't seemed to have changed in the last few decades. There are numerous cars on the property that are filled to the gills with stuff, pressed up against the windows, right up to the ceiling. Doug bought a decrepit van without doors and placed it in the middle of the turkey range; he thought he'd sleep in it to protect the turkeys from predators. He never does, he's just addicted to junk. Inside the house, they have a line of dusty Fischer Price barns and farm animals along their windowsill. Betty and Doug are real talkers, they're very funny, self deprecating and quirky.
Metzger's farm is complicated to maneuver in, alley ways between silos and garages lead to different animal pastures and open plots. It seems inefficiently run, but that's not to say there's any better way to farm - it works for the Metzgers. If ever the farm were bought Betty says surely they'd take down all the buildings and sheds and combine all the plots to plant a single crop. Marilyn, their daughter, has a penchant for turkeys too and there's hope she'll continue the plight of the small farmer in Kansas.
Before we left, Doug called his neighbor, a 1000-head confinement farmer, to see if he could check out his new building and asked him if we could we come along. I'm not sure whether or not Doug had a real interest in the guy's pig building or not, but it was obvious he was giving us a chance to see the conventional way pigs are raised. The pigs are pinkish white, seem a little bloated and are very skittish. Doug told his neighbor a little bit about what he does with Heritage and emphasized the right way to raise pigs, no antibiotics and outdoors. I was surprised but I admired Doug's way of putting the commercial guy on the spot. The farmer didn't see there being a realistic way of staying in business without high numbers and loads of inputs. A bit defensive, he ended the visit by saying, ah, isn't this a great country we live in?
As we left the farm, Betty got a call from Marilyn that we'd just missed her turkey eggs hatching in the basement where she'd set them out.
We got directions from Doug on how to get to Mark Newman's farm. He accidentally sent us 80 miles out of the way, because everything - to him - was in relation to where he got his knee operated somewhere kinda near the Newman's. Many hours later, in a torrential downpour, we pulled into the Newman's log cabin in Myrtle MO. - Sarah
Back to Top
June 18
Life at the Newman Farm
The sky over Mark and Rita Newman's farm was filled with big, billowing clouds cast in silver lining. The day was gorgeous. It had rained buckets mid-day for about 15 minutes and then settled down. We're at the top of the Ozarks and just above the Arkansas border and the delta; it's a lush, green haven. The Beatles hid out just down the road from Newman's place when they needed some respite in the sixties.
Touring Mark's farm is like going to class. Mark is a pig professor; he knows just about everything on hog production because he's lived through it all. He's worked for the huge confinement plants, consulted for the World Bank, developed supply in Jamaica and China, studied outdoor production methods in England and finally he settled on having the best and only 100% pasture-raised, pure-bred Six-spotted Berkshire pigs in America.
His family is wonderful. They eat drink and are very merry (and sarcastic!). All four kids and their families came to the event at Lidia's in KC and when we visited them today, Father's Day, we were able to hang out some more with his son Chris. Chris talked about wanting to come back to the farm one day and work it. Hopefully his brother, David, will too. He's getting his PhD in animal and meat science and has been sought after by the likes of Cargill. I'm crossing my fingers that Mark's boys continue the heritage on Newman farm.
They have a small house behind their own that used to be the Meat Shop where they retailed cuts from their pigs and other homemade products from local communes and farms. The place is filled with nifty knick knacks and the walls are papered with old-school signs promoting pork. Later in life I'm going to insist I come back and reopen the shop.
The Meat Shop
There's a huge sign at the gate for Newman's Heritage Berkshire Pork inviting people in and so many of their friends came to know the Newmans just from stopping by. Their farm and their home are so welcoming, they belong in the pages of Country Living and the Father Day's BBQ they hosted was out of Saveur or Gourmet magazine celebrating Americana, good times and comfort foods. A beautiful mix of folksy people, military veterans and musicians came over. A guy named George played with Neil Diamond decades ago and a great fiddler from Mountain View, AK came with her instrument and played with David and Anthony while we all sang along.
It feels like we are being parented by the best farmers of the country. We're staying in their kids' rooms, grabbing food from their fridges, listening to their stories and gaining their wisdom. We're so fortunate to be here in the heart of America, where farming and rewarding yourself with a good time are the essences of life. - Sarah
 
Newman in his glory Music Making at Newman Farm
If I were a pig I would need to be a pig on Newman farm. Defining happiness for a beast is not easy- what makes an animal happy? The answer to that question is to be a pig on Newman Farm. Newman pigs live on a series of bushy, Moorish fields divided by electric fences that can't be seen through the thicket. They spend their days in huts and mud ponds and wait for Mark to deliver food once a day. The pigs boarder on being feral but in the end they are food. These animals are the only 100% Berkshires raised 100% on pasture for their entire lives.
After a tour of the farm, Sarah and I finished invoicing for the week as Mark, Rita and their bulky son Chris prepared for a Southern Feast. When it began there was part of me that felt like I was in a Dukes of Hazard episode. We were in the true South in the heart of the Ozarks. Guests at the event included a guitar player who played with the likes of Neil Diamond and Bob Dylan and Elvis Presley; a four star general who was in charge of 12 of the 18 divisions of the US army under Reagan; young Phillip who cried because Daddy didn't invite him out for a Sunday armadillo hunt; the head folklorist for the state of Arkansas, also a Slow Food member; a fiddler from Alabama; and numerous other friends who sang as the crew played the harmonica and the guitar. Baseball and Frisbee were played in the fields while mangy dogs nipped at bare feet. The whole hog BBQ was superb and ended with homemade vanilla ice cream. Rita is a most gracious host and leaves you needing nothing. The whole event lasted 8 hours but it felt like 8 minutes. Sleep is intense at Newman | 
