Directions to Henry's Farm

There is a great event coming up, a tour of several farms. See here: viewtopic.php?t=152

As promised, here are the directions to Henry's Farm:

Directions to Henry's Farm (Starting Point of the Sustainable Farms Tour)

We are 2 1/2 hours south of Chicago (depending on your starting point and how fast you drive we suggest leaving by 8am).
Take Interstate 55 south towards St. Louis.
After about 100 miles, take the exit for Route 24 (Chenoa, El Paso).
Turn left off the ramp.
Go west on Route 24 for about 30 miles, passing through Gridley and El Paso.
When you get to Eureka, turn left at the stop-light (the courthouse is on your right). Continue on this road (Route 117) through town.
Going out of Eureka, you go up a hill and around a lazy S-curve, then down and up another hill and into another lazy S-curve. Slow down as you come out of this curve and look for a small country road (475N) down to your left. (If you come to the town of Goodfield, simply turn around and come back to 475N).
Make the left off of Rt. 117 onto 475N.
Go one mile to the T junction. Turn right onto 1500E.
Go about 2 miles until you come to the first hard road to your left (400N). Turn left.
Go down the big hill and up the big hill. At the crest of the hill, you'll see a small blue sign to your left that says 1566. Turn left into this lane and go all the way back. Park near the mobile home and continue walking down the lane to the fields. See you there!

Before Sophia and I had a chance to dig into the pot luck lunch, a documentarian from Farm Aid asked if we could talk for his camera. He wanted to know what everyone was looking to get out of Saturday's tour. I told him that since I was so into eating, I might as well understand a bit about the start of the whole cooking process. I never got a chance to tell him how great the day was and how much I learned.

As our tour guide, Tara (Henry's sister) correctly told us, we were in a bit of Eden in the middle of Illinois. The bulk of the ride down I-57 contains what you mostly expect of Illinois, a lot of nothing, and faux farms as Tara would tell us again and again, the huge anti-agriculture, bio-tech dependent, soil-less (and soul-less) farms planted with endless rows of soy and corn. The world changes as you approach Henry's Farm. You first encounter the county seat of Eureka. College home of RR, and if this town did not already exist, those endless processions would have surely created it. Outside of Eureka, the grounds turn decidedly un-Illinos, with many a rolling hill. Seems one of the last glaciers spent a few extra years here and carved up this land to look more like our state to the north. This accident of nature is one of the primary factors for Henry's Farm. One of the first things I learned on Saturday.

Hills and valleys are not very condusive to large scale agri-business. Perhaps even out of necessity, this county has been organic for a while. In fact, the second thing I learned was that neighborhing Henry's Farm was several acres of organic wheat farmed by an Octagenarian and his son. Now, did you even know that anyone grew wheat in Illinois, let along organic wheat. Oddly, though, the entire production of this organic wheat went last year to Canada. We did learn that a portion of Henry's farm, the upper, flatter fields, had once been farmed in the Illinois way. This is when we really learned what soil-less and souless soil meant. All our cides used by farmers drive the life out of their soul. With all the nasty crittes and fungi and weeds go all the earthworms and bacteria and such that make the soil alive. Tara told us that when Henry first sought to plow his field for organic crops, he could not get an contraption through the hard soil. He had to use nature, hay crops with deep seeking roots, to turn the soil, bring it back to life. Henry's lower field, isolated by a stream and forest, never saw hard agriculture.

What a vista when you end the deerpath and gaze up the lower 40. My mind instantly replaced the crops with rows of grapes because this field looked like a classic European vineyard. Instead it was full of a portion of the 450 varieties grown yearly by Henry. As we poked around the fields we learned how the crops are rotated yearly, that nothing stays in the same spot, and that hay--which we learned was a generic term for any grass fed to animals in the winter--was included in the rotation. Firstly, the crops were moved to control pests. If certain worms attacked the tomatoes one year, they could be well controled by planting the tomatoes somewhere else, fooling the dormant larvae when they arrived the next year. The hay attacked as fertilizer, getting that patch of soil rich in nitrogen for next year's vegetables. We got to sample some of the more unusal things growing down there including the peppery Madras podding radish (as it sounds you eat the pod not the root) and weeds like amaranth and lamb's quarter. We also learned, new to me at least, that cultivated dandelion was actually chicory bred to look like dandelion, but since this was totally organic pastures, we also got to try actual wild dandelion (as well as much more delicious actual wild raspberries). Another in the long line of things we learned was the reason for the dog houses around the fields. Come harvest time, spot and fido and the rest would be keeping the fields free of any unwanted guests.

We went up and down some of the biggest hills in Illinois to get to the storybook farm of the Wettstein's. With their 8 kids, 18 goats, tree swing, free-roaming chickens, pet racoon (an interesting story), flock of sheep, flock of sheep protector llama, stray kitten, heards of cattle, boxes of bees, cages of rabbits, grain towers filled with their own organic feed, wandering ducks, suckling pigs and angry sows, barns a plenty, a few gardens, wells with nasty water, and assorted tractors parked here and there, this was THE storybook farm. I so admire what they are doing, and as Sophia and I later worked out, these folks could pretty much live off of their farm, needing perhaps salt and coffee extra. Even the fuel for their outdoor grill could come from their timber fields.

For me, the chowhound, it seemed like one big buffet. What did I want for supper? It was there. Incredolous that they simply released the guinea fowl and quail, I asked twice, about them. Do not you know guinea would command big bucks back in Chicago? I am going to do my best to order and eat their beef, chicken, turkey, eggs (what Henry's Farm sells at the Evanston Farmer's market), maybe even roast a goat. The Condiment Queen, will not, so far, agree to make me headcheese from one of their piggies even though there is a recipe in a Diana Kennedy book she just got at the Brandeiss bookfair. I'll post later on some ways to obtain the Wettstein's organic meat in Chicago.

I did not pay attention to your earlier post because when I saw the directions starting with I-55, I put the idea out of my head, that's too "east" for me. Well Saturday I was driving to Morton Il for a wedding, I take I-39 south because I live west of the Fox River and to avoid construction in Bloomington, we got off I-39 at El Paso, went to Eureka and took 117 down to I-74....if I had known! (slapping forehead) We were in a hurry Saturday but we could have stopped Sunday....sigh. Yes, interesting terrain for Illinois but not unusual by any means if you follow along the Illinois River valley area.

http://www.thelandconnection.org/index.html

Going back ten years or so, Iowa had one of the first demo projects in the country about farming organically to scale. By scale, was meant that the traditional family-sized farm, which had some corn, some beans, some pigs, and was increasingly endangered, could develop markets and strategies to remain sustainable on a quarter, or more probably, a half-section.

This was a grass-roots effort coming out of family farms, and was coupled with growing knowledge about the factory pig farms that were then emerging.

They came up with some great crop rotations in Iowa, and some great hard (quantitative) data about how this actually improved the position of family farms in the market.

As part of their organizing campaign, they took the words of an herbicide salesman and turned it on its head, harking back to the reason why PEOPLE farm, a love of the land. The salesman said: "With this, all you need is a plow and a jug." The jug references the herbicide. No concept of tilth, soil health, people health, etc.

If all food means to you is a plow and a jug, I would encourage you to extend your horizons to meat production. I eat meat, and I like it. But I eat less because I no longer choose to buy cryo-vac, sale, etc. I choose my meat vendors with care, as I do my vegetable vendors.

After all, there's a difference between a Kobe beef, fed beer and massaged, and a cryovac pork loin or beef shell roast or whatever at Costco.

I'll take a small slice of the former over a big hunk of the latter, but that's just me. Others may disagree.

annieb wrote:If all food means to you is a plow and a jug, I would encourage you to extend your horizons to meat production. I eat meat, and I like it. But I eat less because I no longer choose to buy cryo-vac, sale, etc. I choose my meat vendors with care, as I do my vegetable vendors.

After all, there's a difference between a Kobe beef, fed beer and massaged, and a cryovac pork loin or beef shell roast or whatever at Costco.

I'll take a small slice of the former over a big hunk of the latter, but that's just me. Others may disagree.

Organic and local meat is easily available in Chicago.

The best bet, probably, is the weekly Green City Market on Wednesday's in Lincoln Park. On any given week, there are at least a few organic meat vendors such as Heartland and Joel Rissman. Last year, the product tended to be a lot of hamburger, but this year there are more vendors and the vendors are bringing more varieties of stuff.

The Wettstein's, who I mention above, make a few trips up to Chicago and Oak Park to deliver the meat. You can order in advance what you want or you can take what they have. They sell beef, pork, lamb, chicken (available June through December), turkey, duck and I bet if you plead your case, one of those guinea hens. They also make pork patties, pork sausage, brats, bacon and ham. Alternatively, instead of picking as you go, they are initiating a monthly CSA. Each package would contain a month or so worth of meat. Each month differs in what they bring, although I have to say, you're gonna have to like hamburger. Finally, you can purchase 1/2 cow or a 1/4 cow and get it processed yourself--they deliver it to one of 4 lockers in central Illinois, the rest is up to you. They will be at the Green City Market this week, but are not there every week. There number, BTW, is 309-376-7291

Rissman does a monthly delivery to Oak Park.

One of my fetishes/fantasies is to obtain the parts as well as the meat in this process. I've made the argument before about respecting the beast, but I also believe that if we order and eat the Fergus parts, nose to tail, we increase the profit for the farmers. Otherwise this stuff would probably just be sloughed off to the dog food people. I've got the Condiment Queen agreeing to make me chopped liver and perhaps even some pate--I know the same thing, but think of them as different recipes and different animals, but as I mentioned in another post, she's balking at the headcheese.

Rob

Headcheese is a pain to make especially in the summer. It's so sticky to get that meat off. When I was a small child it was one of the jobs to help my grandfather with, because we had such small fingers:-)

I had a hilarious conversation about this once with a friend who at the same age (about 4-6) used to have to stick her hand inside and get the eggs out of the chickens, after butchering, because she was the first grandchild and all the adults' hands were too big.