Many of the field-to-plate events hosted these days command a fee of more than $100 per person.
Round Hill, Alberta: it’s a sunny day in late August and we’re watching some massive black pigs loll around a large, dusty corral. My cattle-ranching father points to the pigs, explaining the finer points of ‘mud wallowing’ to my toddler son. As the pigs have their bath, Alan Irving, in his thick Cumbrian-turned-Canuck accent, tells us about the eating, sleeping and living habits of his Berkshires.
During a visit to Irving’s Farm Fresh workshop, Alan’s wife Nicola walks us through their sausage-making, bacon-curing and pork-selling processes. Then my family — dad, step-mom, fiancé and son — all settle onto the Irvings’ lawn for a free lunch. Today’s meal is sweet/spicy pulled pork sandwiches, addictive apple cider coleslaw, lemon pie squares and citrus-spiked water. The nosh is simple, filling and all the more delicious now that we know our pulled pork was a happy, muddy pig with room to roam.
As local food loving voyeurs, we’re here at the Irvings’ farm along with 70 others for Alberta Open Farm Days. Each August, dozens of Alberta agriculturalists open their doors so we townies can check out the origins of our food.
Increasingly, outdoor farm meals like this are on offer. Restauranteurs, farmers and agricultural marketing types are latching on to this trend like a newborn calf to cow. As Canadians continue to ask questions about the provenance of their food, the popularity of farm meals en plein air grow. From Pemberton, B.C’s Araxi Long Table Dinner to Kleefeld, Manitoba’s Grazing in the Field, chefs and farmers are uniting over summer to organise unique, delectable and at times, utterly educational dinners. Some of the folks behind this cross-Canada dining inclination shared their anecdotes and advice on the growing movement.
Perhaps my take, as an informed outsider, might be of interest to you, the producer.
Plan, plan, plan
Chef Blair Lebsack and partner Caitlyn Fulton of Edmonton’s RGE Rd prepare eight to 10 gourmet farm dinners each summer at Prairie Gardens, a farmstead located in Bon Accord, Alberta. Though the first meal of the season isn’t until later in June, Fulton and Lebsack start planning the dinner series with Prairie Gardens owner, Tam Anderson, in the cold days of winter. Talking to them about their long table dinner process is a lesson in mutual respect and admiration.
“Tam is just a brilliant source of knowledge. She knows so much about what grows on her land. She’s really good at (hosting)… She’ll have 30 different types of tomato plants for people to look at,” explains Lebsack, whose business was named En Route/Air Canada’s number four restaurant in Canada of 2015.
Prairie Gardens owner Tam Anderson.
“We’ve cultivated an amazing collaboration with the best chef in the country,” explains Anderson. “The dinners happen with luck and hard work. Planning starts in February. These are not something you just do.”
Their February conversations influence Anderson’s seed orders, what she plants and when she plants it. Prairie Gardens also happens to be one of RGE Rd’s many suppliers, so they work closely together over and above the gourmet farm dinners.
“The farm dictates the menu,” explains Anderson. “Lebsack and his team really have a whole-farm sense of what’s happening.”
In the days prior to the outdoor occasion, Lebsack will again visit Prairie Gardens to check on what will be ripe, adjusting and tweaking his meal plan. Meanwhile, Anderson scouts an ideal dinner location as this changes through the year because of the state of various crops. Prairie Gardens is an agri-tourism destination as well as a working farm, so they have barn and greenhouse space that can accommodate large groups if necessary.
Staffing wise, Anderson supplies three to four of her staff to do set up, decor, etc., while the RGE Rd folks bring out about four servers and six chefs.
“Almost every course is a collaboration; when the courses come out everybody serves,” explains Lebsack.
Farm meals as marketing channel
“As a fellow dairyman, I’m focused on the little things when I go to Grazing in the Field,” explains Henry Holtmann over the phone, on a break from milking Holsteins, Jerseys and Brown Swiss on his Rosser, Manitoba dairy farm. “The farm hosts do such as good job at cleaning up for the event. Not a blade of grass is out of order.”
Holtman, a third generation dairy farmer, also happens to be Vice Chair of the Manitoba Dairy Producers and has attended three iterations of Grazing in the Field. Every fall, the dairy marketing consortium organises the farm dinner event alongside Winnipeg’s Diversity Catering. Tickets are $150 and attendees are delivered to the farm by motor coach. Martinis and appetizers are served in a field, while the dinner is in a tent.
Since 2012, Grazing in the Field has exposed over 400 Manitobans each September to regional food such as a creamy Northern Pike chowder or ricotta gnocchi with local chicken, and of course, Manitoba aged-cheddar.
Holtman sees Grazing in the Field, as not just an entertaining night out filled with great food and new people, but also as a way to educate Manitobans about dairy farming. Before dinner, attendees are split into small groups and toured through the various ‘stations’ on the farm. They are welcome to ask questions and try equipment out, including sticking their thumb in the milking machine to feel what it’s like to be a cow. Surprisingly, says Holtman, people are always shy.
There might even be a birth — a calf birth that is. At the end of the first dinner in 2012, nearly everybody was gone except the event staff when a cow went into labour, delivering twins in front of the dazzled dairy marketing folks.
Jason Brandes, Director of Market development for the Manitoba Dairy Producers agrees with Holtman. “It’s a feel good experience for both guests and the host farm family. After seeing a modern-day dairy farm, we hope guests become advocates for Canadian dairy farm families and dairy farming in Canada.”
Great views, tricky loos
“We arrived at North Arm Farm, walked through the barn, its ceiling adorned with twinkling lights, grabbed our welcome cocktail, and stepped out into the fields. We can just make out over 300 continuous place settings stretched across the long, white table, the centre of it sparkling with more than 1,000 wine glasses,” says wellness coach and writer Catherine Roscoe-Barr, a two-time veteran of Araxi’s Long Table Dinner held at North Arm Farm in Pemberton, B.C.
Each August, city folk like Roscoe-Barr and her husband make the trek up from Whistler and Vancouver for the Araxi Long Table Dinner Series. Though the Araxi events are one of the best known dinners, North Arm hosts a number of events and weddings throughout the year.
North Arm Farm’s Jordan and Trish Sturdy, are one of Canada’s veteran farm dinner hosts thanks to a chance phone call from Jim Denevan from Outstanding in the Field a few years back. According to Trish Sturdy, Denevan is the father of the farm-to-fork outdoor dining movement. Since 2003, Denevan has worked with localist restaurants and their farm suppliers to put on hundreds of dinners across America. Denevan contacted North Arm farm to host an Outstanding on the Field on their picturesque property in the late 2000s.
According to Roscoe-Barr, North Arm farm’s view complements the evening’s cuisine and libations. “The table is nestled between rows of organic produce. The final touch of the dinner’s backdrop: magnificent Mount Currie soaring up and up from behind, the buzz of hundreds of people laughing and clinking glasses making our massive table seem tiny in the grand expanse of nature,” says Roscoe-Barr.
Besides weather, one major matter of logistics according to Sturdy is the bathroom situation. The Sturdys have two public washrooms attached to their farm store, but that’s not enough for large events.
“Anything over 50-60 people, you’re going to have a perpetual line up. We don’t want people going away thinking, ‘Wow, good event but they need more washrooms.’ That can be an issue for sure, you just have to plan ahead,” explains Sturdy.
It’s a curiosity to Sturdy. Over the years, a number of high-end restaurants have worked with North Arm Farm to rent it out for these dinner parties. Sturdy laughs when she recalls the juxtaposition of the well-heeled diners lining up to use construction-site grade blue port-a-potties.
“People are sitting down to a $175-a-plate dinner; you should afford them something a little better. You know, you should be renting the washroom trailers. They are heated; they have their own stalls and running water. People show up, they’re well dressed and you expect them to go into those blue things?”
In the future, Sturdy says they might remedy the awkwardness by just buying one of the bathroom trailers and including an add-on fee for their farm rental.
Outdoor feasts are here to stay
Many of the field-to-plate events hosted these days command a fee of more than $100 per person. And people are willing to pay — as evidenced by the sold-out nature of the RGE Rd or Araxi dinners — for an evening of good food, drink and farm education (not to mention the odd bathroom queue).
In Alberta, those who do seek out farm-based adventures said in a 2013 survey commissioned by Travel Alberta that they would like to, “learn about agriculture/experience agricultural lifestyle/experience immersive activities.” During this year’s Alberta Open Farm Days, there were 18 culinary events (up from 17 in 2014) and 72 host farms (up from 61 in 2014).
As the farm-to-fork movement grows, so does the opportunity for restaurants and farms to showcase their talents and goods somewhere other than a trendy, urban nook. More chefs like Lebsack are willing to cook their meals in wood-fired, steel barrels or help pull some weeds if it means sharing their love of local food with an appreciative audience.
My family’s takeaway from our modest outdoor farm meal this summer: spending time on a farm, talking to the people who raised your bacon and made your salad is just plain fun. Just ask my toddler, who now snorts every time he sees a pig and has developed a pulled pork habit thanks to our afternoon at the Irvings’.
When customers are paying top dollar for a meal, even if on a farm, they still expect elegance.
RGE Rd Gourmet Farm Dinner at Prairie Gardens
Sample July dinner menu
Hor D’Oeuvres
Wood Roasted Nonay Farm Hip of Beef
red fife tartine, horseradish chermoula
Potato Bravas
spicy tomatoes, green onion, chili oil
Linden Tree Leaf
black barley, choi & arugula tabbouleh
Dinner
Course 1 (all flowers garnish)
Edible Farm Long Board
Salad of field grown greens, flowers, cucumber, spruce tip vinaigrette, rillette
ricotta stuffed squash blossom, basil puree
Course 2
Vol au Vent
Duck leg ragu, creamy onions, carrots, herbs
Course 3
Green Gnocchi
swiss chard, kale, peas, egg yolk, Cheesiry pecorino
with gold forest grains rolls, marigold butter
Course 4
Lamb Loin & Crepinette
sorrel sweet & sour spinach, grilled baby zucchini, oxalis
Course 5
Strawberries From Heaven
Advice to farmers
--“You can’t treat it as a dinner party. Don’t think that you’re having some friends over. You have to understand that people are paying for really good food, really good service and a really good time. You have to still take that approach — you’re having guests over at your house who are going to look at everything. They’re going to pick up plants; they’re going to touch everything . . . The things that people will pick up still amazes me. Is that an electric fence? Yep it is, then they touch it.”~Blair Lebsack, RGE Rd, Edmonton, AB
--“Make sure you are getting a portion of the proceeds. You know they’re only having the event because you have the space. I don’t really know what the percentage is or anything. . . For us we don’t charge as much as say for a wedding. I find it’s about exposure for the farm. We’ve had a lot of people who’ve phoned up months later and said, ‘We were at a long table dinner there a few months back. Now we’d like to get married at your farm.’”~Trish Sturdy, North Arm Farm, Pemberton, B.C.
--“Be ready for questions. People ask all kinds of questions from tough ones about animal welfare to sweet ones about the farm family. Be prepared,” ~Henry Holtman, Rosser Holsteins/Manitoba Dairy Producers, Rosser, Manitoba.
- Miranda Post