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FACES OF THE FA FOR THESE FARMERS, THE SECRET TO DELICIOUS FOOD ISN’T CLOSE TO HOME— IT IS HOME

BY MADI SKAHILL

PHOTOS BY JORDAN KODNER, OLIVIA LIU, JENNIFER MOSBRUCKER AND PHU NGUYEN

PHOTO BY JENNIFER MOSBRUCKER

FACES OF THE FA RMS

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GOOD FEED AND ROOM TO BREATHE

ALTAI MEADOWS CARES FOR CATTLE THROUGH GRASS FEEDINGhe words “grass-fed” on a package of beef might

sound promising, but the label alone doesn’t guarantee that grass was the only thing the herd munched on. That said, the cattle raised at Altai Meadows in Higbee, Missouri, are 100-percent grass-fed and grass-finished, and the difference can be found in the flavor.

Jeff Cook, owner of Altai Meadows, says different producers often feed their cattle grass in the early part of their lifespans but then switch them over to grain. Grass-finished means grain is never introduced into the cattle’s diet. “Grain changes the fatty acid profiles, and it’s just not the real thing,” Cook says. Cook rotates his mob of cattle across 310 acres, where he ensures the herd always has fresh greens to feed on.

In the commercial industry, it is common to raise cattle for roughly a year and a half, Cook says. Instead, Cook raises his cattle for about two-and-a-half years, rotating them among 30 different paddocks on the farm every other day. This creates constant growth on the pasture and also helps avoid trouble with worms or illness among the cattle. When worms crawl up through the grass but don’t have a host take them in within a certain amount of time, these parasites naturally die off.

“People who aren’t moving cattle around much, and they’re just in this pasture, their animals are exposed to that parasite constantly,” Cook says. He compares his own process with producers who might use chemical dewormers, saying it is important to keep in mind that while chemical dewormers might solve the internal problem, the chemicals still have to go through the animal’s muscles. His method of rotational grazing poses a natural solution to the hassle of parasites and also means less stress for the cattle.

“I think it just makes for a healthy product and a healthy animal,” Cook says. “Just keep ’em moving. It’s really simple.”

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PHOTOS BY OR COURTESY OF

ABOVE: The chicken pens at Altai Meadows are moved daily so the birds have a clean and fresh environment.

ALTAI MEADOWS CARES FOR CATTLE THROUGH GRASS FEEDING

LEFT: Altai Meadows uses rotational grazing to ensure the cattle have fresh greens to eat and don’t pick up parasites.

FAR LEFT: Raising cattle is a difficult task, and owner Jeff Cook says he admires anyone willing to take on the challenge.

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Altai MeadowsLocated Higbee, MissouriContact 660-651-9189Website altaimeadows.comWhat it brings to the table Eggs, grass-finished beef and pasture-raised chicken

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THEY’VE GOT YOU COVEREDHAPPY HOLLOW FARM FOCUSES ON HEALTHY SOIL

t USDA-certified organic Happy Hollow Farm in

Jamestown, Missouri, robust soil is the key to nourishing food. Nearly every decision that Liz Graznak, owner of Happy Hollow Farm, makes is focused on ensuring that her soil is healthy.

“There’s a huge difference in the flavor of vegetables that have grown in soil like around here, in healthy soil,” Graznak says.

Planting vegetables back-to-back is detrimental to the health of the soil, Graznak says. The soil will be depleted of nutrients if nothing is planted in it, and poor soil health threatens the nutritional value of vegetables. To avoid this issue, Graznak intentionally grows plants that people won’t eat, known as cover crops, before she plants the

actual crops that she plans to sell. These crops provide cover for the soil in the winter, and then Graznak tills them back into the dirt before season so the microorganisms can feed on them and, in turn, provide nutrients for future vegetables. Examples of some common cover crops include oats, buckwheat and winter rye.

Applying synthetic fertilizers to the soil is one method of trying to boost the nutrients in soil, but Graznak says she believes cover crops are a much better and simpler method than using chemicals.

Growing a variety of over 100 veggies, fruits and flowers on seven acres throughout the year sounds like a lot of work, but Graznak gets a little help from some eager hands. Happy Hollow

Farm operates under a Community Supported Agriculture system. This means people interested in her produce buy shares, guaranteeing they will get mixed boxes of her produce every week, while also committing to helping with the harvesting and distribution of the produce once or twice a season.

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Cover crops such as buckwheat and winter rye help protect soil in the winter and enrich it with nutrients.

Happy Hollow Farm transfers snapdragon

seedlings into the ground for further

growth.

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Happy Hollow FarmLocated Jamestown, MissouriContact 660-849-2430Website happyhollowfarm-mo.comWhat it brings to the table Vegetables, eggs, flowers and fruits

LEFT: Employee Erin Grueneberg and Sylvia Graznak work to plant seedlings in the ground.

BELOW: Liz Graznak and her daughter Sylvia spend time working on the farm, along with employees and apprentices.

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Buttonwood Farm rotates its poultry pens regularly to keep the turkeys’

environment clean.

OUT OF THE COOPBUTTONWOOD FARM GIVES ITS POULTRY ROOM TO MOVE

Matt Tiefenbrun doesn’t use antibiotics

or hormones and keeps the poultry on

an all-natural diet.

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Buttonwood Farm

Located California, Missouri

Contact 314-402-6756

Website buttonwoodfarms.com

What it brings to the table

Eggs, pasture-raised chickens and turkeys

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itting amid the ranks of food trends such as the ketogenic diet and Whole30, the farm-to-table

movement has gained traction for people in all pockets of the nation. However, unlike with other “trendy” diets, there is little reason to believe that the fascination with organic and local food will die down anytime soon.

There is more to the farm-to-table trend than roadside stands selling fresh produce. The trend centers on an appetite for food that’s fresh, free of additives and produced or grown locally. Its seemingly newfound popularity can be understood by a shift in nutritional knowledge across the country since the early 2000s. This has coupled with a heightened interest in animal rights, as farmers are rethinking the use of cages and antibiotics in livestock practices. Many consumers commend participants of the trend for their ability to provide fresher and healthier food.

Evidence of the farm-to-table movement has also blossomed in and around Columbia. One of the “founding fathers” of the farm-to-table shift in Columbia is the Columbia Farmers Market. Started in 1980 by a group of farmers who had been selling their produce from pickup trucks, it has since grown in both size and reach in the community. However, what remains at the core of the market is the organization’s mission statement: “to provide both the local farmer and the consumer a reliable, regulated marketplace for the direct exchange of high-quality and safe food.”

In 2015, Missouri had over 300 farmers markets up and running. In the 2015 edition of the AgriMissouri Farmers’ Market Handbook, Missouri was dubbed “one of the top states for farmers’ markets in the nation.” Columbia is just one of the many Missouri cities that has embraced this trend. The farm-to-table shift not only promotes food that is fresher and better-

tasting — its impact goes much deeper.Although farmers markets seem to

be an obvious reflection of the change, the farm-to-table movement has also been adopted by some of the nation’s most acclaimed restaurants. Chefs adjust the menus to fit what’s available and fresh. A handful of Columbia restaurants have adopted these seasonal menu adjustments. Sycamore, an upscale restaurant on Broadway, boasts a menu derived from locally grown ingredients.

Columbia is also home to a handful of local gardens, providing yet another avenue to access fresh food. Organizations such as the Columbia Center for Urban Agriculture and farms such as Honey Creek Farm strive to provide natural, locally grown produce to mid-Missouri. Dan Pugh, owner and founder of Honey Creek Farm, left his job of 15 years and purchased 50 acres of land with hopes to jump-start the farm-to-table movement in Columbia by taking the responsibility into his own hands. In an article on the Columbia Farmers Market website, Pugh says he took the job of plowing himself to confirm that the food he grew for his community was made with quality and health as a top priority, something he believed corporate producers often overlooked. One of the largest benefits of the farm-to-table trend is the financial boost it can provide to a community. Studies conducted by Iowa State University and Project for Public Spaces, a New York-based nonprofit, indicate that a local focus on food acts as a crutch to the economic well-being of small communities. Farmers markets bolster interest for surrounding local businesses by up to 60 percent, according to the New Economics Foundation. Twice as many jobs are created in a market atmosphere relative to the space of traditional retail, and an 80 percent increase in economic impact has been found in market sales, according to the AgriMissouri Farmers’ Market Handbook.

HEALTHY DIET, HEALTHY COMMUNITYLOCAL PRODUCE MOVEMENT HELPS BOLSTER COMMUNITY ECONOMIES BY CAROLINE KEALY

S“If something

is sick, you can treat it. But if (the animals) are in a crummy environment to begin with, and they’re just prone to getting sick, so you always have to treat them, that’s not cool.— Matt Tiefenbrun ”

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over the land, with access to all the grass and crickets their hearts desire. The farm hosts roughly 5,500 chickens, and each bird gets about 120 square feet of living space. In typical commercial farms, chickens usually have less than one square foot to themselves, according to an article from The New York Times.

Along with raising chickens and turkeys in a humane way, Tiefenbrun feeds the birds an all-natural diet of corn-soybean meal without any added antibiotics or hormones. “It’s not a very good practice to rely on antibiotics,” Tiefenbrun says. “If something is sick, you can treat it. But if (the animals) are in a crummy environment to begin with, and they’re just prone to getting sick, so you always have to treat them, that’s not cool.”

By feeding the birds a simple diet and rotating them in 40-by-50 foot shelters on the farm to live off the pasture, Tiefenbrun is able to raise healthier birds — and the difference shows for the consumer, too. “The biggest thing for me, I think, is the texture of the meat, and I’ve had people say that the flavor of the meat is different,” Tiefenbrun says. “I think that just a slower-growing bird helps, and it’s not just sitting in its own poop all the time; it’s out on actual grass.”

t Buttonwood Farm in California, Missouri, Matt Tiefenbrun, owner of the 160-acre farm, says he believes in real-deal, pasture-raised poultry. Tiefenbrun sells

pasture-raised poultry and eggs to restaurants and stores across Missouri. Rather than caging his broiler chickens and laying hens or confining them to a single building, Tiefenbrun gives them free rein

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MICRO VEGGIES PACK MACRO NUTRIENTSLP URBAN FARM SAVES WATER AND SOIL BY GROWING IN A GARAGES

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ustainability isn’t just something that can be

practiced across acres of land. At LP Urban Farm in Columbia, owner Seth Allen is proving that conscious farming can exist on a smaller but equally productive scale.

LP Urban Farm specializes in microgreens, a vegetable green such as radish or broccoli, that is harvested early in the growth process before any vegetable fully forms. But these tiny shoots are not to be confused with sprouts. “A microgreen is just the big brother of a traditional sprout,” Allen says. “But a microgreen is grown in soil, opposed to a sprout, which is grown in a hydroponic environment, where you eat the whole root and stem and little leaf and often the seed skin, too.” Microgreens are picked after only seven to 15 days of growing; Allen then removes the greens from the root, so consumers are only getting the stem and

the first two leaves of a plant to eat.Although they’re small, they are

mighty. Microgreens typically have several times the nutrient density of their intended vegetables, or “big brothers,” as Allen calls them. “So think of eating a giant salad, and imagine just a quarter of that salad is really what you can get with the microgreens,” Allen says. “What you’re getting otherwise is a lot of fiber and a lot of water in the larger greens.”

Allen points out that growing microgreens is sustainable in its nature because of the small amount of physical space it requires. Compared to farming that takes up many acres of land, Allen is able to grow all of his microgreens in his garage, which he converted to his in-home farm two years ago with vertical shelves of trays where the plants grow.

Because the microgreens reach their prime so quickly and are harvested within such a short time frame, Allen admits that he uses more seeds and a

lot of electricity to produce at that rate. However, growing the microgreens means much less waste of soil substrate. Allen also finds other ways to reduce his business’ footprint. For example, he composts all of his leftover materials and recycles the plastic bins he uses. Contributing to the local food market also means less expenditure for distribution. “To some of my customers, I can deliver greens on foot,” Allen says about the benefit of selling in the community. “I can literally walk it next door or across the street.”

By keeping the business close to home, consumers can also know more about the food they’re buying and feel confident that the proper nutrients are going into it. Allen says that when your food has gone through seven to 10 sets of hands, it’s harder to pin down clear information on how something was grown. “The best thing you can do is get to know a farmer,” Allen says.

Seth Allen from LP Urban Farm sells his microgreens at the Columbia Farmers

Market.

LP Urban Farm

Located Columbia, Missouri

Contact 424-8121Website

lpurbanfarm.comWhat it brings

to the table Microgreens