By Nancy Christy and Neil Heinen
Madison Magazine
Special To Channel 3000

If the genuine article is organic food, locally and sustainably produced, and the key to getting these products on the menus of high-quality restaurants is the relationship between grower and chef, then Homegrown Wisconsin is the matchmaker. And the recent Homegrown Wisconsin Farm Tour, on a gorgeous, warm summer Monday in August, was a match made in heaven.

Founded in 1996, Homegrown Wisconsin is a cooperative of twenty-five family farms in south central and southeastern Wisconsin. All employ organic and sustainable agricultural practices, growing hundreds of kinds of vegetables, micro greens, herbs, fruits and edible flowers, including many antique and heirloom varieties. These products are then delivered, year-round, to restaurants in Chicago, Milwaukee and Madison. During the summer months they also are shipped to Chicago's Green City Market in Lincoln Park. The Homegrown Wisconsin farm-to-restaurant operation aims to build relationships between the farmers and the chefs. It isn't new. Alice Waters, of Berkeley's famed Chez Panisse, and her growers have been an inseparable team for more than thirty years. Locally, Odessa Piper (and now Tory Miller, a fellow "tourist" on this day's visit to member farms) of L'Etoile has long featured the grower on the downtown Madison restaurant's menus.

For our part, the former Wilson Street Grill touted meats from Lange Farms, special "chip" potatoes from Brodhead, and cheese from Allen Henning. The restaurant also served raspberries from Paul and Louise Maki's Blue Skies Berry Farm, the farm where we started our day with organic melon, exceptional coffee from Just Coffee, fresh loaves of bread from the kitchen of the Washington Hotel in Door County, and organic fruit preserves from Future Fruit Farm.

In fact, here's a story we reminded Paul Maki of that might best illustrate the significance of the relationship between grower and restaurant. One spring several years ago, the Wilson Street Grill renewed a contract with Maki to supply the restaurant with his organic raspberries. The first delivery came with no bill. In reviewing his books, Maki told us, he realized he had overcharged us the previous fall and wanted to rectify the mistake.

During our day's tour with Maki and others, we picked and enjoyed a half-dozen varieties of raspberries, shared a heritage yellow pepper grown from seeds found near Turin in Italy, and compared organic purple and yellow carrots. We sampled micro radish greens at Garden to Be just outside of New Glarus (in a greenhouse warmed in the winter by a heater that burned corn kernels rather than propane), and ate lunch at West Star Farm near Cottage Grove. The meal included the farm specialty salsify, sliced and sautéed. Its taste is similar to that of an artichoke heart.

It was lovely to see the chefs from some of the best restaurants in the Chicago-Milwaukee region connecting with the producers of ingredients they proudly present in their restaurants. Chefs from Nomi, Moto, Green Zebra, Spring, Bacchus, Vella Café and Thyme. They were mostly young, talented, tatooed, and eager. Some were quiet and thoughtful. Others, frankly, were a little cocky.

Together, we traveled the back-country roads. Our tour guides, it seemed, had carefully choreographed this sublime welcome to some of the most glorious, lush, fertile, and productive agriculture land on the planet. The earth was dressed for the occasion. Food for thought was plentiful. Berry farmer Maki spoke to us about the importance of healthy local farms and their ripple effect on local economies, as well as the challenges of staying in business as neighbors sell off parcels for development. There was a bit of a clash of cultures, these organic farmers with their deep roots and commitments mixing with city kids who mesh their creativity with their consciences, their ethics with their fine diners. But that's the point of Homegrown Wisconsin. It is Community Supported Agriculture, bringing the farm to the table, but also bringing the practice of farming to the kitchen and to the menu. There are many reasons why local is best. And no where is that more apparent than on the farm, in the field, where the health of the food, the farmer, the land and the co-op is homegrown.

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