This piece was originally published in Honest Cooking magazine.

My daughter Sophia and I visited Family Farms in Delano, Minnesota on a dun-gray day in late March.  The roads that wind through the countryside west of the Twin Cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis are dotted with small, anonymous farms, with families tending modest fields of crops or keeping horses, chickens, or a handful cows, mostly for their own pleasure.  In a time when eating seasonally has blurred from lost art to movement to near hackneyed, when restaurant menus have become almost silly in announcing the sources of their foodstuffs, and eating as we were meant to has become a badge of the pretentious, these are the people who inspire me most.  Ask them about the locavore movement and they’ll likely scratch their heads; they’re just eating off the land as the seasons turn, the way people in the country have been eating for generations, and without much fanfare.  The cedar farmhouse and big red barn of the Hoen family, Deb and Dan, and their three children, Robert, Larissa, and Jake, is this kind of unassuming place.  They butcher and eat about 250 chickens each year, bring their cows to be processed and share the meat amongst family, eat the eggs from the various birds on their farm, and put up jams and jellies from the orchard and gardens on the property.

I first met Deb last summer at her little table at the Excelsior Farmers’ Market when I bought some of her syrup and fresh eggs.  We talked about maple sugaring, and she invited me to stop out to the farm when the sap started running in the spring.  There are boutique kitchen shops in the Twin Cities that charge more than fifty dollars a head for this kind of adventure, so I was delighted by her offer and her generosity.

As we arrived, the Hoen’s farmyard was astir with chickens and ducks and peacocks, cows just chased home, dogs, and family members gathering for the day’s work in the woods.  We visited their small cow barn and the chicken and duck coop, where the Hoens also keep rabbits, and Sophia gathered the still-warm eggs into a pail.  Then we walked to the sugar shack, where a 100-gallon pan of maple sap was on its way to becoming maple syrup.  Dan passed a small common cup through the thick, sweet smoke of the room, to taste the sap, faintly sweet and still clear.

Syrupping is a backbreaking endeavor.  The Hoens begin by felling a tree deep in the snow-packed woods.  It’s hauled out, cut into logs, and stacked in the sugar shack.  Then they tap 150 maples, one family member drilling a hole into each of the trees, another cleaning sawdust from the holes with a twig, another to place the spigots, and another hanging five-gallon pails from the hooks on the trees.  Every day at about 5:30 they gather to collect the sap; if it’s running fast, the pails can overflow and require collection twice a day.  On the day we visited, Dan and Deb’s son Robert strapped the sap tank tightly to the back of the tractor, and we all piled on and headed across the road and into the woods.  Through deep mud and snow and buckthorn, past deer tracks and lost turkey feathers, we carried pails, fanning out across the acres.  The Hoens call to one another to make sure all of the trees have been canvassed as they work, and make their way back, trip after trip, carrying pails full of sap to eldest son Robert, who mans the collection tank on the tractor.  The pails are lifted up, high above heads, to be emptied into the tank; at 42 pounds apiece, it’s hard work.  When all of the sap for the day has been gathered, it’s brought back to the farmyard, where it is transported from the tank though a set of makeshift pipes to another holding tank in the sugar shack, and then into the cooking pan.  Dan keeps the fire burning, often around the clock, waking during the night to add more wood to the fire chamber, and a family friend tends the fire when the Hoens need to be away from the house.

It takes 40 gallons of sap to make a gallon of finished syrup.  This year, the family have gathered 500 gallons of sap so far; two years ago they processed a whopping 1500 gallons, working together the five of them, with occasional help from other family members who live nearby.  When all of the sap is boiled down, the Hoens strain it through specially made wool stockings and bottle it in their pine-lined garage, working together as a family.  The kids have been making syrup since they could walk, Deb told me as we flipped through her syrupping scrapbook together.  She hopes one day that they will look back fondly at the work.  I can’t imagine otherwise.

We cooked up some graham cracker pancakes as a vehicle for the Hoen family’s sweet syrup, and will be baking it into a maple pudding cake and a maple pie this week.  It’s the best and thickest pure maple syrup I’ve ever had, bar none, and we haggled and dickered over the griddle this afternoon for the last pancake to soak up more of it.  Spring in Minnesota is delicious, thanks to the hard work of people like the Hoens.

*Family Farms sells their maple syrup for $6.00 per pint.  The farm doesn’t have a website.  Look for Deb at the Family Farms table at the Farmers’ Market in Excelsior, Minnesota.  She also sells fresh eggs and a wide variety of homemade jams and jellies.

*RECIPES:

Graham Cracker Pancakes (here)

I visited Shepherd’s Way Farm on a 27-degree icy day in late November.  Jodi welcomed me and my dear friend Gracia in for tea and we talked for a long time around her table before she showed us around the farm.  She is a striking person, both vulnerable and incredibly strong, and her belief in what she does is clear.

Jodi Ohlsen Read, her husband Steven, and their four sons, Aidan, Elia, Isaiah, and Maitias, are sheep milk farmstead cheesemakers who practice sustainable farming in Nerstrand, Minnesota.  They take great care around every step of the process, from the diet they feed their ewes, to humane milking practices, to making every small batch of cheese by hand.

The Reads began having a series of conversations in 1994 around the question, How do we want to live?  They wanted a fulfilling life, one in which they could spend time with family and friends, take care of the land and animals, and do something they cared about.  They talked about what an ideal life might look like, and they talked through ways to make that life.  One defining day, Steven asked Jodi, “How do you feel about milking sheep?”   Weeks later they had 40.  They arranged a sweat equity exchange with a farmer whose land and buildings were in need of refurbishing, and eventually Jodi found a farm that they purchased as their own.  She placed an ad in local rural papers and one day a retired farmer called.  Their conversation went something like this: “You looking for a harvester?”   “No, I’m looking for a farm.”  “Oh, I have one of those.”  Jodi visited and, though the barn was unsuitable for lambing, she knew it would be home.  When Steven came the next day to look at the property, a rainbow appeared over the barn, the wind came up, and the For Sale sign blew away.  It became Shepherd’s Way Farms.  Through hardship that would have made most people crumple and walk away—financial challenges and the devastating loss of their barns and two thirds of their flock to an arson—Jodi and Steven have worked hard to continue to make artisanal cheeses and a life that is meaningful to them.

Making cheese is a physical pursuit, and one that has transformed Jodi.  Her hands are muscular and powerful, so much so that her wedding ring no longer fits.  Making a batch of Friesago requires lifting wheels of cheese weighing cumulatively almost two tons, and that’s just a day’s labor.  It’s one that Jodi clearly loves.  She became an award winning cheesemaker almost by accident.  In the early days of the farm she wanted to learn about the process before she hired someone to make the cheese.  But she was a natural cheesemaker, and her Friesago won a prize the first time they entered it in a contest, hoping only to receive formal feedback.

Jodi credits her teachers when she talks about her cheesemaking skills, but, as anyone who has cooked or baked knows, there is an alchemy and a kind of magic that separates two cooks or bakers following the same recipe.  It’s the way one intuitively knows a feel, a smell, a sound, and a moment that marks ingredients becoming something truly special.  Jodi has this gift and intuition with cheeses, and hers are products not only of the pastures she and her husband lovingly care for and the sheep they lovingly tend, but of her rare gift.

The Reads have added natural wool bedding, fine meats, and charcuterie to their cheese offerings, all with the same uncompromising attention to detail and pride as their award winning cheeses.  They raise heritage breed Large Black Pigs and Buckeye chickens in addition to their flock of sheep.

I couldn’t help but think as I sat over tea with Jodi about what a gift they have given not only those of us lucky enough to enjoy their cheeses in Minnesota, but to their four sons.  They have taught them that it’s possible to live your values, to be imaginative and creative, to be present in your own life, to work hard for something that’s important to you, and that making something beautiful is far more important than chasing wealth.  They’ve taught us, too.

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The Reads wonderful cheeses are available in the Twin Cities region at various restaurants and at Twin Cities Co-ops, Surdyks, Byerly’s, Lunds, Kowalskis and other specialty cheese shops, and at the Mill City Farmer’s Market and the St. Paul Indoor Farmers Market at Golden’s Deli.  Depending on availability, Shepherd’s Way cheeses can also be found in the Ferry Building in San Fransisco, Pike’s Place in Seattle, Clyde’s in Washington D.C., and Pastoral in Chicago.

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Shepherd’s Way Farms
http://www.shepherdswayfarms.com

Holiday Gift Baskets
Holiday Gift Baskets from Shepherd’s Way Farms include an assortment of carefully selected handcrafted cheeses and, if you’d like, their smoked lamb and pork Westlund sausage.  Holiday Gift Baskets can be preordered through the farm and picked up at the farm on December 12^th between noon and 5:00pm or at the Indoor Farmer’s Market at Local D’Lish or St. Paul on December 18^th at 10:00am.

CSA Shares
Shepherd’s Way Farms members will receive a monthly cheese share made up of an assortment – usually 4 – 6 pieces – of Shepherd’s Way Farms cheeses totaling one and a half pounds. Members also have unique opportunities to try new Shepherd’s Way products and receive invitations to special member events at the farm.  Pickups are available in Northfield, St. Paul, and Minneapolis at various locations.  Visit the Shepherd’s Way Farms website for more information or to sign up.

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Recipes:

Poached Pear & Fresh Ricotta Turnovers

Spinach Lasagne with Wild Boar Sausage, Olivada, Fresh Ricotta & Mozzarella, and Simple Tomato Sauce

Grilled Shepherd’s Way Farms’ Big Woods Blue Cheese Sandwich with Quince Paste and Raw Honey

Thin Crust Pizza with Shepherd’s Way Farms’ Friesago, Shepherd’s Way Farms’ Merguez Lamb Sausage, & Fresh Chanterelles and Thyme

Tuxedo Salad: Black Beluga Lentils, Black Trumpet Mushrooms, & Creamy White Shepherd’s Way Farms’ Shepherd’s Hope Cheese

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When I visited Shepherd’s Way Farms I snapped these eight pictures before I lost my balance on the ice and grabbed the electric fence to catch myself.  Yup.  Not the brainiest response.