From Taste of the Apostles Trip Leader, Beth Dooley:
Our Taste of the Apostles trips are a summer sampler of the best in a glorious season. On these trips, we highlight local ingredients, tour organic farms, pick berries, and meet some of the area farmers who are doing amazing things with food. Here are a few of the farms we love to work with:
Tucked back off the rolling hills in the orchard area just outside Bayfield, Northwinds Organic is down a rutted dirt road, nestled into a mixed forest of pine and birch. Its rows of neat kale, drooping raspberry bushes, and shocks of corn lead to the farm stand, a slanted shelter stacked with wooden baskets of blueberries, purple gooseberries, bundles of garlic, farmstead jam, maple syrup, and a shelf of books. The farmhouse is surrounded with solar panels, behind it a wind turbine, up the slope, near the orchard, a few penned turkeys gobble at the chickens that run free, pecking at patches of grass and scraps of melon rind.
Northwinds is completely off the grid. Farmers Tom Glazen and Ann Rosenquist rely on the sun, the wind and their blend of innovative technology and old fashioned grit to wrest from this verdant earth remarkably flavorful strawberries, raspberries, tomatoes, baby greens, melons, and even cold-hardy kiwi. The jams, jellies and preserves, they make on a wood burning stove in the back of the shed.
The land has been in Tom’s family for three generations, and in his methods, he farms using the wisdom of the past with a eye to preserving the land for the future.
FLYING SNAKE FARM
It’s not easy to find this place, off Fish Hatchery Road, just outside Bayfield. The sign is faded, the entrance hidden. The dirt road leading into the farm is narrow and bumpy, and I’m always worried I’ll hit one of the Poulet Rouge chickens or fat white geese as I pull into the drive. If Hagrid of Harry Potter had a cousin, it would be Richard, farmer / owner with is wife Crystal. He is broad, bearded, twinkly blue eyes shine, his arms are leathery from sun and dirt. If I could find one word could describe the the small tilted packing shed, stacked with antique baskets and lined with drying herbs and flowers, the hogs in their pens, the ducks that puddle in the field, it would be enchanted. Richard makes farmstead kimchee and kraut and pickles (all lacto-fermented), sausages and bacon from his heritage Black Tam hogs. Chantrell and trumpet mushrooms grow in those deep dark woods, and he sells them, along with wild greens, herbs, and the yogurt and cheeses he makes from his goat milk.
Why Flying Snake? Richard trained as a Jungian psychologist, worked as a counselor in the public school system, and then, one night dreamed of a huge snake that lead him to the fields where he then planted a labyrinth of herbs and flowers. It wasn’t long before he left his office job to dig in and create this farm.
If you’re serious about fish — smoked lake trout (either sugar cured or simply smoked) and smoked white fish and smoked salmon, and of course, herring. This is the place. There’s plenty of fresh, too — whole or fillet lake trout, whitefish, burdot (aka lawyers because they’re sneaky to catch). Buy them whole or fillet, skin on or off, fresh every day. The big boats head out while we’re dreaming. For four generations, Bodin’s has hauled in fresh fish from the lake. The place is all business, it’s damp and cold and the guys in the back, cleaning fish in their rubber overalls, finish what they’re doing before they come to answer the old iron bell hanging over the cooler. Be patient. This fresh fish, with its sweetly metallic taste of the big lake, is certainly worth the wait.
[…] about local food in the Northern Heartland, Beth guides local food trips for Wilderness Inquiry via Taste of the Apostles. She has presented to college students and community groups, and teaches cooking classes at the […]