Who’s Your Farmer?

We’re pretty sure though, that some of our favorite people did not miss that transition. It may have snuck up on us, as we glance out of our office windows at the great outdoors, but our local farmers have been gearing up for the season for months. They’ve been building chicken runs, welcoming baby animals into the world, nurturing seedlings, and waiting for just the right moment to get things going out in the fields. After the rains a couple weeks ago, the gorgeous days this week, and the rain in the forecast for tomorrow, many farmers are out planting right now!

You could win tickets to Green Festival!

We won’t be out in the fields in the next few weeks, but we will be at Green Festival! We’ll be on Navy Pier at Green Festival Chicago on May 18^th and 19^th, talking about all of the work we do with small farmers in the Midwest and around the country.  We’ll be sharing a pavilion with some of our awesome Good Food Festival exhibitors: Edible Alchemy Foods Co-op, Irv & Shelly’s Fresh Picks, The Scrumptious Pantry, Wind Ridge Herb Farm, Esther’s Place Fiber, and Abbey Brown Soap Artisan.  We’ll also have some local farmers stopping by to talk about Community Supported Agriculture!

Green Festival is a great weekend, packed with opportunities to learn, network, eat, drink, and visit all your favorite green businesses and non-profits from the Chicago area.  It’s only $10 to go, but if you read this blog, you could get in for free!

We’re giving away a pair of day passes to one of you lucky readers! These tickets are good for one day admittance to Green Festival, either on Saturday May 18^th or Sunday May 19^th.  All you have to do is tell us a story about your favorite local farmer or Good Food producer. Why do you love them?  And, if they’re a Chicago area producer, we might even offer them a pair of tickets, too!

Future farmers? Maybe!

How to enter:

Leave a comment here telling us about your favorite local farmer or Good Food producer.  Then go on over to twitter and publish the following tweet:

I shared my #GoodFood story on @GoodFoodFestChi‘s blog to win @GreenFestival tix. What’s yours? http://goodfoodfestivals.com/?p=8217

(If you don’t have a Twitter account, you can also spread the word by tagging our Facebook Page and the FamilyFarmed.org Facebook Page with the same message!)

You’ve got until Monday May 6^th to post your response! We’ll be posting the winners on our blog next Tuesday.  And if you don’t win, you can head on over to the Green Festival site to get tickets of your own.  Kids under 18 are free, so bring the whole family!

See you there!

The adults have been historically the protectors of our food selections; but what about the future of our food? The children these days are skipping their way into the classroom, doing obscene amounts of homework and are left with little time for actual outdoor play. That is the next generation who will take over the production of our edibles.

If they grow up exposed to factory farms, where it’s ok for a gazillion chickens to be crammed into a single crate, how will they in turn know that it’s really better for animals to live humanely? That it’s possible for animals to still be productive at the same time as being healthy. The same goes for our crops. If children learn that it is industry standard to spray before you even have a problem, they too will follow right along.

Granted not all modern day farmers are in this profession to contaminate our food supply with hazardous chemicals or by pumping animals full of hormones. There are farmers that do what they do simply because it’s the right thing. And their numbers are growing daily. Some of us do it just because we enjoy growing things that others will in turn appreciate and they nourish their minds along with their bodies. Some of us continue only to prove to those that don’t believe it is possible to raise food respectfully with a conscience that it can be done.

The children of today, mine, yours, those kids down the street, they are the ones that need the proper influence from which to develop their own set of values. Tell a child that something can’t be done, and they will prove to you how it can be in an even better way. It’s amazing what children will absorb and keep just below the surface in their arsenal of adaptability.  In March my oldest daughter, Lexi and I attended the Good Food Festival in Chicago, Illinois.

Lexi is at the great age of ten. At this age it seems you are discovering yourself and all that you are capable of. So Miss Lexi came along as she says, “Just for something to do.” Because truly what would a ten year old find exciting about a food conference? It turns out a great deal.

Lexi and a baby chick from Faith’s Farm
photo: Sacha Gee-Burns

First we started in the Commons area where volunteers from the Peterson Garden Project were on hand to talk about the importance of seed preservation and how you can maintain your own seed stocks. Lexi found this interesting only in the fact that it made her mom seem a bit more normal. There are other people that spend countless hours each season drying and fermenting seeds just for the chance to grow them again the next year.

Further along the way we were nearly caught up in a mad rush of folks wanting to take in Faith’s Farm’s “Backyard Chickens” presentation by Kim Snyder. She even came complete with little chicks that anyone who wanted to could hold. There were presentations of all sorts throughout the day that aimed to educate as well as entertain. It turns out that gardeners, farmers, advocates all are interested in the same thing – helping others to learn to grow themselves. Lexi suddenly had an aha! moment.

Inside the Festival hall were hundreds of small farms, restaurants and environmental groups. There were plenty of friendly people to talk to and activities for all to participate in. Lexi practically ran to the area where you could plant your own basil to take home. A sweet woman explained how soil and water provided the essentials in order to make the basil seeds grow. She explained it in a manner that would instantly hook anyone on the idea of seed planting.

Granted we have a small farm of our own and produce a wide array of heirlooms that my children seem to have absolutely zero interest in. I try my best to make gardening fun for her and her younger sister, with no success. Sometimes they will humor me and pretend to be interested. Perhaps this is what happens when you are fully saturated in life with a mother that is borderline obsessive about how food is produced. You just consider it normal and go about your day.

Then when you think that for all those years you have been teaching them tips and tricks on nearly everything, they let you in on a little secret. They’ve been watching all along. They have been taking it all in, absorbing and forming their own opinions. I notice it when I hear my daughters talk to their school-age friends. When they think the adults aren’t listening Lexi will hold what seems to be her own little school on beneficial insects. Other days it’s on how easy it is to have pet chickens and all the neat things they do. Topics that there is no way at the cool age of 10 you would ever talk to your organic, tree-hugging mama about.

I watch as her eyes shine brightly and realize that she too will eventually follow in my footsteps in some capacity. Whether she becomes a farmer herself or just promotes what needs to be done to keep our food system healthy , she, along with every other child in the world has the potential to further the future of our food systems.

Pay attention to the little ones that cross your path. Take a moment to explain what it is you’re doing and why. They may seem uninterested at the time, but believe me they are just compiling it all together for when the time is just right. And one day when the timing is just right, that is when they will stand on their own and do the same as we are doing now – influencing the future generations about what is possible when you truly believe in something enough to make it work.

- written by Sacha Gee-Burns

Post by Bob Benenson

Kari and her James Beard Award nominated book, The Art of Beef Cutting
Photo: Range Meat Partners

Kari Underly, an Indiana native and Chicago resident, is known nationally for her mastery of meat cutting. Her skill at butchery led her in 2002 to start Range, a consulting firm based in Chicago’s West Loop neighborhood that provides education and training, research and development, merchandising, and creative services for the fresh meat and perishable food industries.

Now Underly has drawn up a business plan and is seeking to raise money to create the Range Meat Academy, which she says will be “the most comprehensive butcher training program in the industry.”

Underly made her case for this project at the Financing Fair staged by FamilyFarmed.org during its Good Food Festival and Conference held March 14-16 in Chicago, and said she gained confidence from the fact that a number of people stayed after the presentations to learn more about her project. “It’s more affirmation that this concept is right on target,” she says.

Underly plans to reach out to angel investors who put capital into new business, and says she will also inquire to see if there are restaurant groups that will want to put some money into the Academy. She is all ears if someone wants to partner on the project: “This is bigger than myself. So if somebody shares the passion and wants to partner, I’m also looking for that too. I need like-minded people who can help.”

And Underly hopes the project might attract public grants and/or tax concessions because of its educational mission, its job-producing potential and its link to the heritage of a city long known, through the poetry of Carl Sandburg, as “hog butcher to the world.”

She says, “I’d like to find a way to get to the mayor [and] Michelle Obama. People say, ‘Kari, you’re crazy.’ But I say, ‘No, this is a big idea.’”

Her goal is nothing less than setting the gold standard for butcher training, while helping to revive a trade that for many years appeared to be dying out as small, independent shops (like the one once owned by her father and grandparents) were replaced by supermarkets that increasingly obtained meat pre-cut and pre-packaged from big industrial packing houses.

Underly says there is no institution in the United States providing the kind of intensive, full-on training for butchers that she proposes for her Academy. She says even top culinary schools, whose core purpose is to train master chefs, lack the resources and space to provide training in ongoing whole-animal butchery.

“These kids coming out of culinary school, paying 50 grand and they’re slinging burgers for 12 bucks an hour, I’d like to offer them an alternative and focus on bringing back the trade,” Underly said. “That means butchery, hanging beef, being able to take that hanging beef, pork, process by hand, and learn different ways of preparing meat. Charcuterie, salumi, smoking brisket.”

Underly’s vision for the Academy includes a restaurant at which students would learn how to cook the meat they cut, and a retail meat counter. In each of these facilities, students would learn how to interact with customers, a skill that ultimately would help them succeed if they go into business for themselves.

Underly also says supporting a sustainable meat industry is one of her three goals for the Range Meat Academy, along with establishing the industry’s premier butcher training and certification program and elevating the value of the butcher’s trade.

She wants to build her school in the West Loop neighborhood in part to help preserve the area’s history as a food processing and wholesaling center, which in recent years has been challenged by gentrification. But she also foresees a possibility of providing economic development, jobs and healthful food options to distressed parts of the city, including some that have been labeled “food deserts.”

Says Underly, “The school could produce some of the products and then open up satellite businesses on the South Side and the West Side and bring these good quality meats and skills into these neighborhoods.”

The star of Grrls Meat Camp, Chicago: A 205lb Duroc Hog
Photo: Lily Baker

There are few butchers today of either gender who have the experience or family history in meat processing as does Underly. She is a third-generation meat cutter and learned the trade from her father at the family-owned Underly’s Market, which was located in Lydick, Indiana, just west of South Bend and about 90 miles from Chicago. Underly put her skills to print with a book titled The Art of Beef Cutting (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2011), and has made numerous television and radio appearances.

And while butchery has long been a trade made up mostly of men, Underly is in the forefront of the increasing number of women who have gained prominence in the field and she is actively trying to recruit more women to consider careers in butchering. She has become a featured teacher at the Grrls Meat Camp, described as a “modern butchery for women masterclass and workshop,” along with Kate Hill, who runs the Kitchen-at-Camont, a culinary retreat in southwest France.

The latest Grrls Meat Camp took place April 12-14 at Napoleon Ridge Farm in Napoleon, Kentucky, located about 40 miles southwest of Cincinnati. Underly is also scheduled to lead a Women Working in the Meat Business Retreat in Chapel Hill, N.C., May 20-22, which is being presented by the organization NC Choices and sponsored by the Farm Credit Associations of North Carolina.

Despite her family’s history in meat cutting, Underly said she faced varying degrees of sexism when she started on her own working for a supermarket chain near where she grew up — from relatively benign (suggestions she focus on ‘women’s jobs’ like the deli) to passive-aggressive (male co-workers who would not speak to her) to hostile, including inappropriate touching and “men who dropped trou in the cooler.”

But her triumphs over retrograde attitudes have helped establish her as a role model for an increasing number of women showing interest in the butchery trade, including younger aspirants who “don’t see ‘man’ and ‘woman’ as much as my generation does… The perceived stereotype is a little less for them.” Underly said she knew of five butcher shops that have been recently opened around the nation, and they’ve all been opened by women.

Want to know more about Kari Underly and her plans for Range Meat Academy?  Get in touch with her for more information!

We at FamilyFarmed.org and the Good Food Festival & Conference are proud to support her efforts to reinvigorate the art of butchery in the Midwest and around the country!

And what a Festival it was!  Instead of telling you about it ourselves, we’ll let the scholarship recipients share their experiences in their own words:

“I gained everything I was looking for and more. I found information about midwest CSA’s, informational pieces about the origin of foods, healthy green companies, and got the opportunity to attend a couple workshops. The workshops were enlightening and inspiring. They gave me a base for which to begin further research and the drive to get involved…The How to Grow a Community Garden workshop inspired me to want to find or start similar gardens in my own neighborhood.”

- Zach Martin, Illinois Institute of Art, Chicago

“I teach Sustainable Design: Topics and Issues and was able to gain information to share with my students as well as bring back printed collateral for the class. We intended to network for potential workshops and guest speakers for our [Students for Sustainability] group. We met Deborah Kraemer from Abbey Brown Soap Co. and have an opportunity for our student group to design a new line of packaging for her…The Good Food Festival was a great event and learning experience for our entire group.”

- Cynthia Kerby, Professor of Sustainable Design, Illinois Institute of Art, Chicago

Cynthia Kerby and her students from the Illinois Institute of Art, Chicago  I  Photo: Lori Martin

“The most inspiring person I met was Sandor Katz because of his love of fermenting. He took it in his own hands to make this sustainable way of living…I have taken this new way of living into my own home and am now practicing fermenting myself.”

-Taylor Reaves, Illinois Institute of Art, Chicago

“My experience at the Festival was excellent! I think my attendance was very beneficial to my overall studies as it allowed me to hear and learn a vast amount about an area of commerce that I am very interested in pursuing opportunities within.  As an MBA student, this learning is hugely valuable as I think about the next steps in my career – and more importantly my life.”

- John Block, University of Chicago Booth School of Business

Wow! It was wonderful to meet some of the scholarship recipients at the Festival and share their enthusiasm about Good Food. The Good Food Festival & Conference may be a three day long event that happens only once a year, but we hope that everyone who attends makes connections that last far longer. Sounds like most of the scholarship recipients did just that! Thanks again to Ball Horticultural for allowing us to provide so many scholarships this year. We hope to have just as many openings for our 10th Anniversary Festival, March 15th 2014.

 See you there!

Do you remember the first time you ate a fresh tomato just days, or even minutes, from when it was picked? What about when you learned about backyard chickens, or met a farmer? Here at the Good Food Festival we believe that if kids get excited about Good Food early, they’re more likely to be healthy, responsible eaters for their whole lives. We work hard to make sure the Festival is filled with opportunities for kids to make just those kinds of connections!

This year the Festival was packed with families. We were especially happy to welcome our friends at Fooditude back to the Festival again. Fooditude is a great group that empowers kids to learn more about food and health, and engages them to write, develop recipes, and star in their own TV show. These awesome kids interviewed a bunch of our exhibitors and produced a fantastic video! We’re thrilled that these kids got to learn about Good Food straight from some of our favorite farmers and producers.

Video Courtesy of Fooditude: Kids’ TV with a Bite

Thanks to Kilgus Farmstead, Red Meat Market, Chicago VeganMania, FarmedHere, Testa Produce, Irv and Shelly’s Fresh Picks, Theo Chocolate, and of course, the cast and crew of Fooditude for this great video!

The Festival was also full of opportunities for kids to learn, play, and even get their hands a little dirty.  Check out some of the highlights!

Photos: Amanda Areias, give me flour. Click the ‘i’ for more info!

Hope to see you all again at the 10th Anniversary Good Food Festival & Conference, March 13th-15th, 2014

Start warming up now, because this is an event for all your senses! Here’s how.

Sight

Look straight into the eyes of Good Food: You can meet the local farmers and producers who actually create the foods we’re all so excited about, and see their products and processes firsthand!

Smell

If you’ve bought a pass for our sold out Urban Farm Bus Tour, you’ll get out in the fresh air and experience all the sights, sounds and most of all, scents of where our Good Food grows!

Touch

Get hands-on training in plenty of areas with 72 free microsessions in the Good Food Commons, included in your festival admission.

Topics include DIY composting as well as canning, freezing and drying. Little ones will especially enjoy the chance to pet live goats and baby chicks!

Hearing

Listen to Good Food experts from throughout the industry talking about their passions for local production, sustainability and more. Enjoy three live Chefs at Play demos, free with your festival admission!

Or, upgrade your ticket to a workshop pass and attend longer, more in-depth sessions with some of the finest minds in Good Food.

And, of course… Taste!

What good is a festival based entirely on Good Food if you can’t give your taste buds a treat? All over the festival floor, you’ll have opportunities to sample our exhibitors’ wares.

If you attend Localicious on Friday night, you’ll enjoy fabulous food and drinks that bring together the products of local family farmers with the culinary talents of acclaimed local chefs.

And don’t forget the Good Food Court, full of vendors that support local farms and use healthy ingredients — in eating with them, you’re helping to continue growing the Good Food movement. New this year: Buy Good Food Bucks from us (at Registration and Booth #129) and redeem them for food. Vendors include Big Fork, Birky Family Farms, Local Root, Peeled Chicago, Chicago Diner, B’Gabs Goodies, Sauce and Bread Kitchen, Tiny But Mighty Popcorn and Crop to Cup Coffee.

Don’t miss the event that will bring all your senses to life. Tickets to the Good Food Festival are still just $10 until the day of the festival. (Door price goes up by $5!) Join us this weekend for a Good Food experience!

Join us for this special screening at 5:30 pm this Friday, March 15 – entry with either your Conference admission or your Localicious ticket!

One of last year’s live chef demonstrations (Photo: Kaitlyn McQuaid)

There are plenty of reasons to get excited about this Saturday’s Good Food Festival, but chief among them is the opportunity to experience creations from Chicagoland’s finest chefs — with no reservations!

Here’s a look at what foodies and dining-out aficionados can expect at the Good Food Festival.

Chefs at Play

First up: Chefs at Play. This is not only a spotlight on three excellent Chicago chefs, but it’s also your chance to see how they work in the kitchen with the freshest ingredients available.

Paul Virant from Vie and Perennial Virant will demonstrate how to make lemon pickled turnips with ingredients from a local farmer.

Carrie Nahabedian of Naha and the forthcoming Brindille is finalizing her demonstration menu, and Rick Bayless of XOCO, Frontera and Topalobampo will also be demonstrating his skills using ingredients from local producers.

Workshops

Kim Leali, sous chef at The Publican, will offer a sausage-making workshop and demonstrate how to make Toulouse sausage — a rustic French sausage typically made with pork, smoked bacon, wine and garlic. She’ll partner with Kim Snyder from Faith’s Farm, who raised the animal that will be used to make the sausage, and the workshop will be moderated by Kari Underly of Range.

Don’t forget: To attend this session and others, you’ll need to purchase a $35 workshop pass to the festival!

Kimchi Challenge

But the biggest draw by far for chefs at the Good Food Festival is our first-ever Kimchi Challenge, where they’ll submit samples of their gourmet spin on the classic Korean fermented food and compete for bragging rights and other prizes.

Here’s the full rundown of who will be competing in the Kimchi Challenge:

• Mary Aregoni (Saigon Sisters)
• John Asbaty (Panozzo’s Italian Market)
• Jill Barron (Mana Food Bar)
• Matthew Cyr (Etno Village Grill/ Machine/King’s County Tap)
• Thai Dang (Embeya)
• Elisabeth David (Green Zebra)
• Troy Graves (Red Door)
• Mark Grosz (Oceanique)
• Yunjin Hong (Jin Ju)
• Beverly Kim (Kendall College)
• Melanie Molnar (Southport Grocery & Café)
• Sean Sanders (Browntrout)
• Paul Virant (Perennial Virant/Vie)
• Jesse Williams (Birchwood Kitchen)

Did your favorite chef make the cut? Whose kimchi would you most like to try?

Out and about

And, of course, you never know who you’ll see on the exhibition floor!

Iliana Regan of Elizabeth Restaurant will moderate a panel discussion Saturday morning on foraging wild edibles, and you could spot other chefs simply roaming, looking for new local, sustainable producers to partner with for future menus. (Let us know who you spot: Tweet us Saturday using the #GFFChi hashtag.)

Tickets are still available

Be sure to join us this weekend for the Good Food Festival, where Chicago’s best chefs and local, sustainable producers come together to create unbelievable flavors — and help make the world better for us all through Good Food.

Get your tickets through Eventbrite — they’re still just $10 when you buy in advance — for this exclusive opportunity to see Chicago chefs in action!

(Photo: Flickr user Hans E Hyttinen)

When the weather warms up, people’s social calendars start to fill up, too — especially in Chicago, where there’s more and more to do as summer approaches. And there’s no crazier weekend than March 14 to 16, most notably because it’s St. Patrick’s Day weekend.

But with the Good Food Festival also taking place that weekend, we’d like to offer a few compelling reasons you should spend the day enjoying Good Food and locavore culture with us — instead of bar hopping the city all day.

1. The river should not be that color.

We’re all about clean, local and sustainably produced food with no artificial flavors…or colors. And so are the more than 150 exhibitors who will be at Saturday’s Good Food Festival!

2. No one will pinch you for not wearing green.

The Good Food Festival is as green as events can be — everyone exhibiting, speaking and leading workshops is all about green living and Good Food.

3. Kimchi beats kegs ‘n’ eggs any day.

There are nothing but health benefits to kimchi — and we’ll have some of the best chefs in the city competing at the festival for Best Kimchi bragging rights at our first-ever Kimchi Challenge.

Plus, fermented foods won’t get you drunk like that awful green beer will…unless you’re this bear.

4. You can take the kids.

We’ll have plenty of family-friendly activities available at Saturday’s Good Food Festival, including a Fooditude.tv studio and Kids Corner sponsored by Purple Asparagus! Read more about it in our blog.

5. Craft beer and locally distilled spirits just taste better.

Watered-down keg beer with green food coloring? Absolutely not. Check out our Localicious event on Friday night, where celebrated chefs will collaborate with local Good Food producers, and you’ll sample beer from breweries like Greenbush Brewery and spirits from Death’s Door and Journeyman Distillery.

6. The UIC Forum is warm and cozy.

Why stumble from bar to bar in Wrigleyville, huddled inside your coat, when you could have all your fun for the day under one roof?

7. No hangover!

If anything, you’ll wake up the next day feeling renewed and even more enthusiastic about supporting Good Food. And we’ll be sure to give you plenty of ways to do that — it’s what FamilyFarmed.org is all about!

How will you be spending St. Patrick’s weekend? You can still snag tickets to spend it with us — just visit our Eventbrite page.

(Photo: Kaitlyn McQuaid)

You probably know by now that the theme for this year’s Good Food Festival is “your choices matter.” But it’s not just about the choices you make for yourself — if you have a family, your choice to teach your children to appreciate Good Food matters even more. You could help raise the next generation of conscious consumers.

This year’s Good Food Festival isn’t just for adults making those Good Food decisions; it’s also for families — and especially kids. And because we’re so excited to welcome children to the Good Food Festival, we’re offering FREE admission to everyone 12 and under!

What We’re Offering

We’ll again be offering the Kids Corner, sponsored by Purple Asparagus, the organization working to educate children, families and the community by bringing delicious, nutritious hands-on adventures to schools, community organizations and farmers’ markets throughout the Chicago area.

Our friends from Fooditude will be setting up a mini-studio where kids can be stars of their own Good Food story — and the video clips will be posted to Fooditude’s website after the event.

And, of course, all of our exhibitors will be thrilled to see kids out on the floor, and many will be eager to offer demonstrations of their services or samples of their delicious Good Food. (We hear Kim Snyder from Faith’s Farm will have baby chicks for kids to hold and learn about in the Good Food Commons!)

Kids Get in Free!

Start ‘em young, they always say…and we agree! Teach your children that their choices matter too, by bringing them for a fun Saturday at the UIC Forum for the 2013 Good Food Festival. Don’t forget — all kids 12 and under get in free!

Get tickets for your whole family today on our Eventbrite page.

Have your kids made any Good Food choices lately? Tell us about it in the comments!