When we talk about farm-to-table in our Boulder County grocery stores and restaurants, we can sometimes take it for granted. The trend is national now. We expect a certain quality, but we forget that those same establishments need quantity in order to stay in business.
While local farms provide the quality, generally speaking, the larger farms provide the quantity necessary to fill menus and grocery aisles. It means chefs and farmers (and Boulder County consumers) need to be flexible, but it’s interesting to hear what people in the industry have to say about why when we look at small versus large farms. It is always a matter of quality versus quantity.
First, consider that a large-scale rancher may have as few as 50 heads of cattle and as many as 2,000. These cattle are usually kept out on the range for about a year before they are sold to a feedlot with thousands of other cattle. On the feedlots, the cattle’s diets are often changed from grass to grain, and are kept there for about three or four months before they are processed.
Eric Skokan, executive chef and owner of the Black Cat Bistro and Farm, says that when you pack thousands of cattle into one field in close proximity, you have no choice but to pump antibiotics through the whole herd every day because if there’s an outbreak in disease, they’re all sitting ducks, and they’ll die.
“No one wants to see sick and dying animals. So, you do it partially out of this feeling of wanting to relieve the suffering of the animals, but really the solution is, don’t put them in the feedlot to begin with,” Skokan says.
Once the cattle are processed, they are distributed through grocery stores and restaurants from specialty meat companies and broad line food distributors like Cisco and Lombardi Meats.
When raising cattle on a large scale, and sourcing from those production facilities, there are things that a farmer and chef must sacrifice in order to remain profitable.
“Quality, food safety, connection to the land, connection to your community; those are all things that you have to throw away,” Skokan says.
Skokan says that the length of time between harvest and the plate is only hours at the Black Cat, but when you buy something from Cisco, it’s days to weeks.
Because Skokan has his own farm just miles away from the restaurant, he is able to call in the food he needs for that day, which is produced up to his highest standard.
As a chef, having your own farm or relying on a local farmer definitely meets the freshness and quality many customers desire, but there are also many risks involved. Skokan says that since he started farming, his harvests have been a collection of spectacular successes and spectacular failures.
Last year during the floods, the Black Cat Farm lost $58,000 worth of produce, while companies like Cisco are hardly affected by these natural disasters because they can just buy from another part of the country.
Because of problems like this, a chef will have to meet on the farmer’s terms, because the farmer may not have what the chef wants to put on the menu.
Kyle Mendenhall, executive chef at The Kitchen says, “There is no doubt that the entire system is built on some sort of flexibility.”
For instance, when you need tomatoes in the middle of winter, you are most likely not going to be able to find any, so you can’t put tomatoes on the menu, Mendenhall says.
“It’s really, really rare that a chef and a farmer can get on the same page together such that the chef can have all of the things that they’re having in the restaurant,” Skokan agrees. “The specific varieties … just cost too much money from the farmer’s perspective.”
Skokan says that he has to change the menu every day to account for these inconsistencies. Similarly, Anne Cure, owner and farmer at Cure Organic Farm, says that they do not sell a lot of their meat to restaurants because they can’t provide a consistent supply if they want to continue raising their animals the way the want to, given the amount of land they have.
Mendenhall says that what a chef has to do is find efficient and creative ways of using products, and that is really where the talent of a chef lies.
Raising animals or produce on a smaller scale is typically fresh and sustainable, and consumers are aware of that and are willing to pay more for the extra heart and soul that went into pro ducing the food, says Andre Houssney, a farmer at Jacob Springs Farm.
“The big industries that we’re competing with are putting out a terrible product, and the people in Boulder are really aware of that and are ready to pay the premium, so our prices are a little bit more. So the customers are there, the market is there, everything is ready for us — we don’t need any help,” Houssney says.
The organic standard is important in maintaining quality, he adds, but it only tells farms what they can’t do. The standard says you cannot use hormones, pesticides or synthetic fertilizers, which he agrees with. However, Houssney says that his farm surpasses this standard and practices something which he calls “beyond organic.”
“Beyond organic to us is … thinking more about what we are doing proactively to make the best quality product and to find the synergy with also taking care of our planet,” Houssney says.
Chefs and farmers who contribute to this system seem to pride themselves on what they do, and instead of taking an easier route, they choose to stay loyal to their community and methods.
“Could we be more profitable doing it in a different way? “ Skokan says. “Yeah, but I’m a dad. I have four kids. I want to create the world that I want my kids to value. I don’t want my kids to see their father as a hypocrite. I’m not willing to do that.”
Of course, all this quality is reflected in the menu price that consumers have to pay at restaurants that only source food locally. But Houssney says the financial sacrifice runs through the system, from the first local producer to the final local consumer.
“It’s not the best financial choice I could be making for myself or my family. The reason I’m doing it is because the rewards are more than financial,” Houssney says. “One of the things I’m trying to show is that it can be done, and it can be done well.”
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