In this episode of The Real Community Show, Peter and Liz chat with Mike, Matt & Frank, of Farm Field Table in Ferndale!
- [Peter] Situated in a quiet commercial district in North Ferndale, Farm Field Table has been connecting locally raised animals to consumers and top-rated chefs since late 2016.
- [Liz] Known for their amazing heritage meats and educational classes, we were excited to find out more about this family-operated butchery. So we decided to pay Farm Field Table a visit. And ask twin brothers, and co-owners, Matt and Mike Romine to share their story.
- All right so, Mike and Matt, why don't you tell us a little bit about Farm Field Table and how you guys got this whole thing started.
- Sure.
- Sure, so Mike and I opened a restaurant together called The Mulefoot Gastropub in 2013 and my wife at the time was pregnant and I started to realize that I wasn't going to be able to work 100 hours a week every night, every weekend, every holiday, and be a dad at the same time so I needed to find a way to continue to do what I loved, but also be able to be a dad at the same time. In our restaurant, we sourced probably 95% of our products from within about 20 miles and so we were surrounded by all of these farms that had any type of meat that you could imagine and it was an incredible challenge to bring those proteins into our restaurant. A lot of legalities, a lot of logistics. When you combine all these things together, we figure that there must be a great number of chefs out there who are having the same difficulties, so we were able to kind of build the life that we wanted to have, and also fill a gap in the marketplace.
- Yeah, you fill the need at that point, that you realize that you had yourselves, all right.
- And we grew up in a farming and hunting family so we've been butchering animals since we were little kids. So it wasn't a big leap for us to say look we'll just make this available to everybody, skip all the middleman and just focus on quality and do it right.
- So you mentioned that the legal issues of bringing in local proteins to your restaurant was a big inspiration for Farm Field Table, so what about the business model here is solving that issue for yourselves and other restaurants?
- Sure, so the way that the system works is that the farmer has to deliver their product to a slaughterhouse. But most of the slaughterhouses in the area are what's called custom-exempt which means that I can bring you my animal and you can give it back to me, but I cannot sell it to anybody else.
- Oh, interesting.
- Okay.
- And so what you have to have is a USDA-for-retail sales stamp. So for us, what a lot of people don't realize, is that we have a federal inspector in this building every single day of the week.
- Oh wow.
- If they're not here, we're not allowed to sell to somebody who is going to resell the product.
- Actually we have, on our team, a person whose full-time job is just to interface with the USDA.
- Wow.
- There's a ton of paperwork, there's a ton of rules which is why almost nobody does it.
- Mm-hmm.
- Yeah, for sure.
- So tell us what makes your meat different than what someone would find at like a grocery store or something like that.
- Absolutely. It starts first with how we source the animal. And of course you know that's what makes us so different being chefs really looking for a specific product. But it's not always necessarily how we treat it, but how they're raised. So we focus on heritage-breed animals which you know the commodity world doesn't work like that. They can raise a hog in six months, whereas these heritage pigs that we use take about 12 months to raise. But what's different about that is the slower they're growing, the more complex the flavor profiles you get to build in that time. But so a lot of what we do is actually convincing commodity farms to switch over into a heritage line, so that the supply is more prevalent, and so we have better access to that product.
- You're letting them know the demand is there from the consumers.
- Yeah, 100%.
- And it's worth it for them to make that swap.
- Yes, and when you eat a pork chop from Farm Field Table it will be entirely different than a pork chop you get at a mainline grocer. You know they're just totally different products and so--
- In a good way!
- Yeah, oh yeah! and some of my favorite experiences are when the little old ladies come in and they say, "Wow, this tastes like pork "that I remember as a child."
- Right.
- Because it is so different.
- Because that's how they used to do it back then.
- Yes, it's so different. So it's really all about you know small farms where people really pay attention to the animals, the amount of pasture land, the breeding, what they eat. It's how they're raised.
- Right, well that makes perfect sense.
- Makes a huge difference. Things people wouldn't think about that really impact what ends up on the plate and the quality.
- Absolutely, absolutely. We also think it's really important to note that we are basically the last generation that can even make this whole farm-to-table thing functional from the protein side. Because when we go around meeting other chefs or hiring new employees, no one knows how to do this.
- Right.
- So if we don't train another generation--
- It's a good thing there's two of you.
- Yeah, exactly!
- I wish there were like six of us.
- This is absolutely no slight to even the highest-end chefs but it's something that in the past was generational, you know you traded that information over the decades or whatever, but so many people have been lost over the last 20 or 30 years, that we're basically at the brink of extinction. And when that happens, when small people don't know how to do this, we're at the whims of the big companies who will make the choices for us.
- Yeah, you feel less sense of responsibility. Tell us a little bit about your classes and what those are like.
- Sure, we run a whole animal butchery class once a month. We've been doing it for about a year and a half now. So we cycled through forequarter beef, hindquarter beef, whole hog, whole lamb, and sausage making.
- So they're getting
- Almost anything.
- like the education of what you guys do while they're you know, chopping things apart.
- Yeah, we love to nerd out and we get a little edgy, we get a little political. It's a good time, both educational and--
- It's a pretty well-rounded course.
- Yeah, and also entertaining, yeah.
- Awesome.
- [Liz] Before heading out, we stopped to ask retail sales manager, Frank Taormina junior about the delicious cuts we could expect to find while perusing the cooler.
- Well, you know what we're really trying to offer everybody is the chance to make sure that you get the cut you're looking for, and get a chance to try something that you don't see everywhere. So you know, if you've hot grills and empty stomachs and you wanna fill it, meet the 30-day dry-aged ribeye. We love doing that, we call it holding meat court.
- I love it.
- Now, that being said, just about everybody's really comfortable with what a ribeye is, how to cook it. But there's so many jewels in our cows that people aren't aware of like, for example, the beautiful Denver steak. If you want to combine some flavors, think beef tenderloin with a little bit more flavor, you only get that from a whole animal butcher. Now we don't just do things that moo, but we specialize in things that oink as well. Get ready with heritage pork chops. Beautiful things about pigs that are raised proper is that fat doesn't stretch, it melts.
- [Liz] Nice. So if you want something that when you take that bite that you just cannot wait to take the second, you can definitely do that. And a Farm Field favorite, the pork leg fillet.
- Okay.
- This is going to be a larger pork tenderloin, you cook it the same way, but it is again, just gonna be so much more soft, so much more flavorful. So if you're looking for something, definitely feel free to give us a call. We can have anything ready within a day or two, or just come on in and see what we've got that day.
- That's good to know.
- We're ready to take care of you.
- That sounds awesome, thank you so much.
- Thank you guys, we appreciate you.
- So we'd like to thank all you guys here at Farm Field Table for having us out today. If you'd like to find out some more information about what they have, you can visit them on social media at Farm Field Table or their website farmfielddtable.com and be sure to stop by their retail store here in Ferndale.
- Until next time community.
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