 Welcome to Farming Matters, which is a program of the North Central Sare program that essentially we help elevate the stories and share projects from our farmer rancher grantees. I am one of the hosts, Aaron Schneider. I farm and I work for Sare. And I am excited to be with you all and as well as Marie Flanagan, our communication specialist. Hello. Hey, and we have a special guest with us today, Peter Schold with Waxwing Farm. And he is here to share a story of his farmer rancher project, which is Forcing Belgian Endive and Treviso Radigio in the Upper Midwest. Well, yeah, I can just give a quick introduction of myself. So I'm Peter Schold from I own Waxwing Farm together with my wife, Anna Racer. This coming season will be our 13th growing season, growing mixed vegetables, both for CSA and we sell probably half of our businesses selling to restaurants as well. We sell a little bit to the prior Lake School District and outside of the Twin Cities, but that's kind of the big breakdown. And yeah, we got through our restaurant work, we got interested in growing Radigio and kind of the logical extension of that has brought us to this project. So it was a desire to expand our options and diversify our winter offerings to our restaurants. And we thought it might fit the bill, but we needed a little help to get over the hump of the initial investment and trial period. So that's why we applied for the CERG Grant. And once we got it, we put the project into practice and had a few hiccups because of the COVID pandemic, but actually it was kind of nice. We delayed the project or extended the project by a year because of that. And we were able to put a lot of stuff that we had learned into practice. And I think the project was actually better for it. Okay, so yeah, this is just a little presentation I put together just to kind of hit the high points of what we learned. So as you can see, the whole thing was about diversifying our season extension. Season extension in the upper Midwest is really critical for vegetable farms. And so we just wanted to explore an option to give us something a little bit more higher value than some of the root crops, especially for us selling to restaurants. Root crops at smaller restaurant volumes are not super profitable. So having something that is a higher demand, higher value product was something that we've been pursuing for our winter restaurant sales. And we thought that these forcing chickeries would fit that bill pretty well. So what is a forcing chickery? It's chickeries are a crop that grows a lot like lettuce. So it's got a leafy top above ground and a single taproot down below. It's been used for thousands and thousands of years. It's originally from the Mediterranean area. And it includes, you know, forage crops and also crops for human consumption, humans and animals alike, both the leaves and the roots. The roots historically have been used as a coffee substitute. So it's a crop that is well known in certain parts of the world. And then radicchio and endive are the things that are the crops in the family that most people are familiar with. And so forcing chickeries are a certain variety that you plant them in the ground and you grow them like a regular chickery throughout the growing season. But then you dig them up and you bring them inside and you force them to grow inside a dark room or chamber which forces them to grow without chlorophyll. And so you get a totally different product than what grows in the field. So not only is it a unique kind of value added product for that reason, but it also tastes great too. It tastes a lot different than what you grow in the field. So yeah, this just kind of gets at why we wanted to grow these things. Again, like I mentioned, it's about extending our season or growing season and finding a way to increase the value of some of our winter sales to restaurants in particular. It worked really well with our farm infrastructure because we're able to use a walk-in cooler as our forcing chamber that is not used in the winter. And then it also just kind of gives us a little bit more work to do in the winter which in theory could take away some of the workload from the summer and it's all about diversifying those winter sales. So growing this stuff is, it's a lot like growing lettuce. It doesn't really, if you're set up to grow lettuce it doesn't require any additional equipment. You can either direct seed it in the field or transplant it. The biggest difference there is the impact on root shape. So this crop, even though a lot of people think of chickeries as a leafy crop, when you're growing them for forcing you really gotta think about it as you're growing a root crop. And so I'll get to it later in the presentation about why root shape can in certain situations make a difference. But once you seed them and get them in the field it's just, like I said, it's just like growing lettuce. So you gotta keep them weeded, keep them well watered. It's a long crop so they have to be seeded right around mid-summer or early July in order to get them in the ground and have them grow enough to produce a sizable root that can be forced. So for harvest, once you've grown them all up we used an undercutter bar to lift the bed and then pull the roots out just like we would if we were growing carrots. You trim the greens and you have to make sure that you leave the growing tip intact. You can see on the picture on the left a lot of those roots have about one to two inches of greens still left on top. That's critical for getting, especially for endive for getting the right shape of the final product. On the right you can see we threw them into feed sacks that we stored in our walk-in cooler to help keep them at the right humidity and they store just like any other root crop best at about 32, 35 with really high relative humidity. Here's a picture of the forcing chamber. So like I said, the forcing chamber is a we utilize a walk-in cooler that we use in the summer for storing cold sensitive things like tomatoes and eggplant and zucchini and cucumbers. But in the winter that infrastructure was idle. So this project was a really good way to utilize that idle space that was otherwise just sitting there. We had these galvanized steel tanks custom made for this project. And you can see kind of just there's red hoses connecting each of the tanks so that we can circulate water through the entire system. I think that's helpful to keep the water aerated and keep things healthy, but I don't think it's critical. I think you could get by with a much simpler system of just some Tupperwares with roots in them and a couple inches of water that maybe you changed every couple, maybe once a week or something like that. So it certainly doesn't have to be this sophisticated. I think that we just wanted to really have a system that fit the best like larger scale commercial systems that we could identify. And so a lot of the larger commercial systems had the same kind of water bath circulating water but I don't think it's critical. So this is the actual process for forcing them for Tardigo Raditio. You dig them up from the field and they pull them out of storage. And on the left, you can see that these plants were transplanted so you can see that the roots are a lot more kind of splayed out and gnarly. We trim off most of the greens. So on the left, you see the root with a lot of the greens attached still. And then on the right is what it looks like before we put it into the bulb crate for forcing. And then on the right hand side, you can see a bulb crate that's ready to go into the forcing chamber. So you peel off most of the greens because the green leaves eventually decay and die and become kind of a slimy mess. And so the less of that that you bring into the forcing chamber, the less cleanup you have to do on the backside. And then once you put them into the forcing chamber it takes about three weeks for them to grow. You can see these ones in this picture we trimmed all the greens off. So there's no decaying matter and that actually worked pretty well too. So, but once they're in there you just have to make sure that the water level is sufficient so that the roots have something to drink and that you don't accidentally leave the light on. That's the biggest thing is any light will cause the plants to start photosynthesizing, which degrades them. For harvest, you take the bulb crates out, trim off the root and you can see in the picture you leave kind of a little stub of the root. That's at least the traditional Italian way to do it. And you clean off all the bad leaves and then soak it in cold water to kind of let it rehydrate just a little bit. It does tend to get a little dried out in the forcing chamber. And then once you rinse it clean you can shake it dry and package it for sale and just keep it dark so it doesn't start photosynthesizing. So end dive is a little bit different. You can just trim them in the field and you wanna make sure, like I said before you leave the right amount of greens intact. On the left picture on the left, you can see the root on the bottom was trimmed too close and you can see that there's five or six small little sprouts that are coming off of the sides. So those aren't gonna be marketable cause they're gonna stay really, really small. Whereas the root on the top was trimmed properly and you can still see the growth tip of the greens intact. So that's gonna form a nice tight head growing from the middle of that root. So that's the critical thing that we learned and that was one of those things that we didn't learn that lesson the first year that we did it. And so extending the project by a second year allowed us to kind of learn from that mistake and have a lot more success the second year. End dive is grown more on a commercial scale. So it's more of a familiar crop than the forcing radicose. And so it's been bred to develop that really nice straight tap root. So if you direct seed to Belgian end dive it'll grow a nice straight tap root that then can be packed really tightly into the bulb crates. You can see on the picture on the right that we fit more than double the number of end dive roots into one bulb crate. So that's a much more efficient use of space. So then harvesting end dive grows a little bit slower it takes more closer to six weeks. You can see here this picture we've got on the top there's some chicons that are just about ready to be harvested. And underneath we have some roots that were started a couple of weeks after that so they're just starting to grow. So it's, but it's basically you can just cut them off of the root either with a knife or just by snapping them off trim off any leaves that are ill shaped or have any kind of tinge of green to them. And then you can pack them right from the forcing crate for sale. And again, keep them dark so they don't start photosynthesizing. We did notice that the end dive was more likely to start photosynthesizing than the radicose if you weren't careful. Marketing, the restaurants were our primary customers for this product. They're both definitely specialty products. The Tardivo is not commercially available anywhere in the US that we were available. So that helped it command a higher price but also because it's less familiar the market options are more limited. For sure specialty restaurants that either have an open mind or have previously worked with it are the easiest targets. Belgian Endive on the other hand is historically more of a large scale production. It's more of an industrial crop. So it's available from regular wholesalers, vegetable wholesalers. It shows up on a lot of winter restaurant market or restaurant menus. So because of that reason the market price is a lot lower. So you need to sell in a higher volume in order to make it work cost wise. I think the opportunity is definitely there for that but I think you would have to do it on a pretty significant volume. Other options are winter's farmers markets in the same way that for restaurants it's a really unique different crop to differentiate ourselves from the competition in the winter. If there's a winter farmers market just having these things on your stall is gonna just everyone's gonna come and at least take a look. So then you can tell the story and you have to do a lot of customer education I think but the opportunity certainly is there to get people to at least try this unique product. And then if there's specialty grocery stores I don't think that necessarily either of these products are gonna show up in regular everyday grocery stores but there's certainly a possibility for customers regular individual customers who either already know about these products or are interested in getting their hands on something unique and different. So there's other radicchio varieties that are either meant to be forcing varieties like this Isontina in the middle is grows really, really small and it's got a really vibrant cool color but is the market for that is probably pretty limited. We've been growing the chicory rosa on the left that is not specifically a forcing variety but in the upper Midwest it works that way. So we've had some success growing that crop as a forcing radicchio. And then like I mentioned the Belgian end dive I think for our scale we found that the forcing radicchos are more cost effective for us just because of the higher price that they command. But again, if you wanted to really scale up and do an acre or two of Belgian end dive and talk to a wholesaler and try to kind of corner the market I think that there's possibility there and I think that it could be cost effective. So I think there's definitely opportunities that have been illuminated by this project. Yeah, and so I mean couldn't have done it without North Central Sare. So just thank you for everything that the organization has done to support and fund this project. It was a lot of fun and we learned a lot and we certainly developed the practice that we're gonna keep using. So overall it's been a huge success. What does like so for someone experiencing radicchio or end dive for the first time how would you describe that taste or like? Yeah, it's definitely bitter. So I think that's the first thing that turns people off is that it's got a bitterness to it. Because we work with the restaurants we've been, they've been slowly nudging us to growing a lot of radicchos. A lot of restaurants are really excited about that. So there's kind of a spectrum of like the regular main season radicchos like with kind of Frise and, oh gosh, escarole, which are end dive crops that are on the milder side. And then there's kind of the, there's the kioja which are like the round softball red radicchos that you see in the grocery store or in the salad mixes. Those are kind of like less bitter in the middle. And then you can go all the way down and there's some really wacky ones that are like pungerelle is a, it's like basically you're harvesting the flour stock. So it's real bitter, real tough but then you soak it in cold water and it mellows it out. So bitterness is kind of the key, there is the main feature but it's kind of hard to describe the flavor unless you have it. And then the, the forcing varieties because they're just using, they're not using photosynthesis for their, they're just using cellular respiration. So there's a whole different metabolic pathway that's happening within the plant. And so it's just, they're different chemical compounds that are being formed within the leaves. So it's, the sweetness is like, it's less bitter, more sweet but it's not like sugary sweet. It's kind of, it's a, yeah, it's hard to describe. Did the crop find you or you found the crop? I guess what I mean by that is like, did you imagine yourself when you embarked on farming like, yeah, endives, it could be all about endives or like- No, no, it was, this is not at all on my radar at all. I mean, it's, I've always enjoyed radicchio but even, you know, prior to getting into growing it myself, you know, it was not like it was a staple on my dinner table as a Scandinavian heritage person from Minnesota, you know, it's not a part of my culinary background. But so it was definitely working with the restaurants that has kind of pushed us to broaden our scope of the crops that we grow, you know, every once in a while we sneak radicchio into our CSA but it doesn't usually go over super well. It's not a universally loved thing like potatoes or tomatoes or anything like that. You trim the leaves and then you have these leftover roots. What do you do with those? Yeah, so right now they're just going to compost but I think that, you know, again, being that they are historically have been a forage crop. There's some value for, I was just reading before this meeting that historically they were used as a substitute for oats for horses because there's a similar kind of nutrient breakdown. So for sure, you know, if you had livestock on the farm through the winter, when these spent roots could, you know, just go into the pig pasture or into the, you know, cow parlor or horse barn, whatever, I think that's actually how these first got discovered. They would dig them up and then stick them in the corner of a barn. And then in the spring, when things started warming up, they'd start to sprout or if like water was dripping on them, they'd start to sprout and grow but in the darkness of the back corner of the barn. And so then, you know, people as they're feeding the horses or whatever, like snap one off and take a bite and it's like, whoa, this is unique and different. Roasted chicory is a coffee substitute. So I think you could talk to coffee shops and see if that was something that they wanted to try getting locally. It's showed up in stouts and porters and from breweries. So I think you could talk to brewers about. So I do think that there's an opportunity for turning that into an additional revenue stream as well. And if nothing else, feeding it to livestock so that you, you know, recapture that value. Can you use the root more than once? There's some speculation that yes, you could. I read some in our initial research, I read some sources that said, yes, you can. I think maybe if you were to, the tricky part is like how you were would harvest that chicone because then if you cut it low enough to keep it as a nice tight chicone that doesn't just like all the leaves fall off, you're gonna cut it low enough that you're gonna damage that central growth tip. So I think, you know, maybe snapping it off you could, but it's not something that we explored. It's interesting. It's beautiful. It's like lots of sequencing and just like, I thank you for taking us through that whole process and for other farmers as well. Just like, and I can just feel your joy in this discovery of... Yeah, I mean, right, exactly. And it's, again, I think that for small scale agriculture, especially working with restaurants, a lot of the farmers that we know that are growing mixed vegetables in the winter, they switch to like large volumes of a couple root crops, selling to school districts or wholesalers or grocery stores, that kind of thing, which is certainly viable. But, you know, we as the farm that we are, we're sized a little different. And we found that every time we try to dip our toe into that really larger scale, like moving pallets of things at a time, it always, you know, we're just not geared for that. So we were really hoping that this would be something that would allow us to kind of keep that smaller scale, but just, you know, increase the value of those smaller deliveries to restaurants in the winter. And it really did pay off.