For over 18 years, Food Dance has touted their commitment to farm-to-table freshness. They are now prepared to put their pitchfork where their mouth is.

 

Food Dance is partnering with local farmers, Mark Schieber & Misty Klotz, to start a collaboration of businesses that further support locally-produced foods that will make their way onto Food Dance’s menu. The first of these partnerships is a small-scale farm, hopefully in the Kalamazoo area.

 

“Hopefully” because the first step is finding good, tillable 20-40 acres to farm.

 

“Ideally, we’re looking for a farmer or land owner who wants to see their land continue to be farmed or returned to agriculture,” says Julie Stanley, owner of Food Dance, “This could be an active farm or fallow fields that can be returned to active use.”

 

Julie, Mark and Misty are hoping to get the word out to these potential farmers and land owners to talk about creating a sustainable food source.

 

“It’s important for us to identify some potential individuals and talk to them about our vision of fresh, local food,” says Schieber, “We’re fully committed to sustaining the land, the community and the farm as a business.”

 

Education is a key component of the venture. Stanley says there are plans for an Edible Schoolyard children’s program to teach kids about farming and where food comes from. There will also be adult agriculture and cooking classes as well as a CSA (crop sharing) program for local residents to benefit from the bounty. Luckily, the food experts at Food Dance will have great cooking tips and recipes to share with all participants.

 

“We want to stress how locally-produced foods help to sustain our community,” says Stanley, “Not only is it important, but it’s fascinating to see the food cycle – from seeds to a completely-prepared meal.”

 

Farmers or landowners interested in discussing the opportunity are encouraged to contact Julie Stanley at 269-382-1888.

 

For more information about Food Dance and their commitment to local, sustainable agriculture, visit www.fooddance.net.

The Mattawan Artisan Creamery is part of Kal Carbon Acres in Mattawan Michigan. Their mission, to deliver quality natural farm products at a fair price, and they do this without the use chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides. MAC employs an integrated, natural approach to farming. The farm is owned and operated by Anne and Steve Cavanagh, with a little help from their donkeys Clifford and Bo, who watch over the La Mancha goats protecting them from wondering coyotes. All the goats, doelings and bucklings were born and raised on the farm. All animals on the farm graze naturally and are fed untreated grain. MAC takes pride in natural sustainable farming and top quality dairy products.

The milk used for the yogurt comes from the grass fed Jersey cows at Moonique Dairy, a family farm in Vandalia Michigan. The milk is delivered in the evening to our on-farm dairy in Mattawan, where Ty (Moonique owner) helps load the pasteurizer. The milk is pasteurized then cultured overnight. In the morning, Steve drains whey from the yogurt and pours the yogurt from the drain bags into the containers for delivery to us. The whey goes back to Ty on his next trip and is a high protein treat for their pigs.

Compare the ingredients to store bought yogurt.  MAC’s has only milk and culture. The delicious taste, just like everything at Food Dance, comes from high quality ingredients.


For more information you can follow the links below.

Mattawan Artisan Creamery

Moonique Dairy

Community Event, Saturday January 15th 2011
“Rising to the Challenges- Local Farmers, Local Food, Local Pride!"

Food Dance owner Julie Stanley will be co-speaking about buying from local farms as a restaurant. The Michigan Family Farms Conference is a forum for beginning, small-scale, and culturally diverse farmers to network, learn and build sustainable family farms.

Join us for the 8th annual Michigan Family Farms Conference on Saturday, January 15, 2011 at Lakeview High School in Battle Creek to discuss challenges and growth opportunities for family farms. Connect with other growers and great resources, network, and learn about organic certification, hoophouses, agritourism and local markets, urban school gardening, food safety, niche marketing, alternative energy, CSAs and much more!

 

more information can be found here

I thought the best part of breaking down a couple of hogs in my kitchen would be… well breaking down a couple of hogs in my kitchen. If any kitchen in Kalamazoo is set-up to butcher two whole hogs at once, it's ours. With sheer size, equipment, and staff experience we were able to butcher them in four hours down to the usable cut. It's been a long time for me, at least six years, but that’s pretty impressive for 450lbs of porky goodness. The best part turned out to be my staff’s enthusiasm, knowledge, and overall love of learning the lost craft of butchery.

 

Most of us were on the back end of a long week, a couple of our staff came down with illness but like sand, we always fill the cracks. By the end of Sunday’s brunch, the anticipation started to give us the energy the long week had stripped from us. Zach had worked seven days with no break, and by the start of the second pig we had to stop him. He was shaking with exhaustion. At this point where most people would have gone home and slept, he grabbed himself a milk crate and granola bar and watched till the last chop was cut. He even then helped clean up.

            

Tony “Slasher” (not “Big Tone”) saved us with the chine bone. Pork Chine is a square shaped area across the backbone between the shoulder blades that holds tender meat, which can be sort of a bear without a bandsaw. As we struggled to saw it with our large bone saw, Tony suggested a method that included a cleaver and a meat mallet. We blew him off the first couple of times, because tony is a super ambitious kid but lacks a lot of knowledge due to the fact that he is 21 and is very much in the learning stage of his early career. Little did I know that Bistro Rio, where Tony previously had worked, they had done this and he remembered it all pretty well. Pat and Ryan both served 600 guests for brunch this day and stayed ‘til the end, peeling skin and washing down the butcher blocks. I’m not sure what I did to deserve such an amazing and dedicated staff but I got one.

-Robb "Chef" Hammond

 

            

        

            

The list of items we are making with the two hogs are:

BBQ Pulled Pork

Pork Chops

Breakfast Sausage for Biscuits and gravy

Chorizo

Pancetta

Coppa

Lardo

Guanciale

Ribs for staff meal

Jagdwurst (Hunter Sausage)

Sopressata

 

I will update each one of these as they come out of the salt, or go into the casings.

Our pork chops are now on the menu, look for the rest in the coming weeks.

Confinement raised animals are not called farm raised for a reason. They are from factories. I want to have relationships with the people who raise the food I eat. — and the food we make for you. Artificially cheap food is a fundamental problem in American Society — it allows us not to face reality. In the quest for modernization we have created factories that pollute, treat our resources with little respect and eliminate the very farms that have provided our society with clean fresh food for centuries. In the restaurant industry finding great tasting yet humanely raised meat in cuts people would buy was scarce to none. Finding Niman (Nye-man) Ranch as a source about 6 years back changed our options. Niman Ranch contracts with small family farms to raise animals with a strict set of rules: grassed on open pasture, clean water, no antibiotics or growth hormones, stewardship of the land, organic feed and humane treatment. The Niman family of farms are dedicated to sustainable husbandry.

Pigs in Decatur

We pulled up behind Dave Warkentien, at Young Earth Farm, in his bright baby blue truck loaded with 5 gallon buckets of corn meal as these beautiful happy hogs came running, yes really running at 350 lbs, up to the fence. Dave hops over and spreads out the feed, corn and soybean, on a patch of cement while we watch them go to town. Well, I am not sure if you would ever guess this is a hog farm, at least none that I have ever seen. There aren’t even any pig huts, that we saw. The pigs forage from the land eating alfalfa, clover, grubs, some acorns and when they want to cool down, they saunter on over to the woods in the shade. Dave tells us he knew the moment he was sitting in his high school drafting class — the windows open, a nice cool breeze coming in and birds chirping — that he couldn’t sit inside for the rest of his life. He was going to raise hogs just like his father. Dave wouldn’t have it any other way but to care for his pigs with respect while letting them live naturally in the elements. Dave says you can taste the difference in animals that are cared for and I agree. It costs more to raise animals this way but it is definitely worth it.

Take Norm Carlson, of Carlson Farms,

he and his wife deliver eggs and pastured chickens to us each week from their farm outside of Decatur, Michigan. Their farm is just like the Norman Rockwell pictures of the 50’s, clean, rolling hills, woods and lots of open pasture. Their chickens just strut around and look happy. Running into Norm on his weekly delivery to us always brings out some great stories about the farm and his flock.

Norm backs his truck into our loading area, grabs one of our handcarts, loads the 6-8 cases of eggs (that’s about 240 dozen) and stacks them in one of our coolers. Now that’s great service! “Pastured” means just that — the chickens run around on the farm in the fresh air pecking there way across the fields, eating and doing what comes natural to chickens. Those grubs they come by have lots of beta-carotene that gives the yolks and their fat a beautiful rich golden hue, with great taste and healthy benefits. Pastured chickens are also so busy exercising, their meat becomes naturally dark from the increased blood flow which also yields a more old fashion chicken flavor. You might compare it to the difference between a garden fresh tomato and a hothouse tomato. Both have good flavor but the one grown in the earth, with nature’s elements, will taste more “tomatoey”. Pasture raised chicken has a slightly firmer meat texture (not tough) and is never mushy. In addition to eating as they please Norm gives them certified organic feed just to make sure they’re happy.

Anson Mills Polenta Located in South Carolina.

Glenn Roberts is committed to growing heirloom varieties of  rice, corn and wheat using certified organic practices and milling the grains at the time of ordering. They mill using a traditional method called cold milling, keeping the damaging heat away from the grain produces a much more full flavored product. Taste our polenta and you might not want to eat any other.

Sustainable fishing practices

Wild Alaskan salmon tastes totally different than farmed raised salmon. This fish is pretty lean, dark orange in color and tastes sweet not “fishy.” We buy fresh when we can or frozen-on-the-boats, when the salmon stop running. The scallops we use are “dry packed.” What does this mean you might ask? Most scallops are pumped full of salt water to add more weight to them, thus yielding a better price. But we use just-picked whole scallops that are packed right after they are caught. When you pan sear a scallop that isn’t dry packed it never gets a great-caramelized crust on it because the water keeps steaming out. But, searing a dry packed scallop yields a sweet tender morsel that melts in your mouth. We definitely can taste the difference.