- [Announcer] "tasteMAKERS" is brought to you with support from Global Foods Market and Midwest Dairy.

(mellow music) (upbeat music) - Great things come from collaboration.

At Such and Such Farm, two couples work side by side, one running the farm and the other creating delicious feasts from the bounty growing right outside the kitchen door.

(upbeat music) (uplifting music) I'm Cat Neville, and for the past two decades, I've been telling the story of local food.

In that time, American food culture has exploded, in tiny towns and big cities, from coast to coast.

In "tasteMAKERS," I explore the maker movement and take you along for the journey to meet the makers who define the flavor of American cuisine.

(uplifting music) So we're about to head off to Such and Such Farm for a wood-fired feast, and when we come back, I'm gonna cook up some of their massive pork chops with a cherry sauce.

(lighthearted music) - We got this property right after the Great Recession, like in 2009.

If you wanted to get land, that was a good time to do it 'cause it was, no one was buying it.

And so we wound up getting this farm on a sweetheart deal and we're just like, "Well, we'll give it a shot."

(lighthearted music) - Dave and I were both living and working in the city, and also working for other people, working really hard every day to build somebody else's dream.

We were younger, in our 20s, we're like, "You know what?

We have dreams too and we wanna build our own dreams, and our own futures, and also live hand in mouth the way that instead of working a full-time job to get money to pay the electric bill or the heating bill in the wintertime.

We'll just work really hard and heat the house ourselves, and feed ourselves food too."

(birds chirping) - I first met Dave and Autumn about 11 or 12 years ago now.

They had just kind of quit their jobs in the city and bought the property here and started farming.

I was a corporate chef, and so that kind of started off a long farmer-chef relationship, as well as friends.

- We just started growing vegetables just for ourself, but we had a bunch of friends like Ryan that were chefs, and so we started trying to sell them.

Then, the pandemic came.

(mellow music) 85% of our business was all restaurant sales, and that evaporated to nothing.

The animals still got to eat, plants still gotta get watered, we still have to eat.

And so we had to figure something out.

But that's kind of farming, is like, improvise, adapt, and overcome.

(country music) - The restaurants shut down, farmers' markets shut down.

I was pregnant and we're like, "We need to do something."

And I got really scared.

I wanted to quit and we're like, "You know what?

Last ditch effort, let's reach out to some people to see if we can do a partnership or bring in some new business partners."

And we reached out to Ryan and Ashley.

- We've been working with Ryan for years doing private custom chef stuff and we had done dinners together, so I was just like, "Hey, bro, we're looking to see if someone wants to come on and work with us on the farm in some capacity, to partner and maybe do dinner series or whatever.

Like, do you know anybody who would want to do that?"

He was like, "Yeah, me!"

And I was like, "Yeah, how you do that?"

He's like, "I'm gonna quit my job and come do it with you right now."

And I was like, "Okay."

(uplifting music) - During the pandemic, I wasn't able to cook, which is my favorite thing in the world.

And so I just wasn't the happiest I could be.

When this opportunity came from Dave, I sort of couldn't pass it up, you know?

I had worked on farms in the past and always grown a garden and had really missed that direct connection with my food source.

And having the opportunity to partner with the farm and do a bit of everything, from building, to gardening, to learning about livestock practices, and just being generally more connected to the land and the food source and being able to present that in a package here is just a really special thing.

(uplifting music) - Whenever Dave and Autumn gave us a call to see what we might all be capable of doing, we weren't sure what capacity we were gonna move forward in, but we decided, "Let's do a pop-up dinner something that we've all done before."

The foods from the farm.

We've hosted dinners before, it'd be kind of cool to do something out here.

And so we put some tables up and hosted dinner in a barn and tried to figure out, "Well, is this something that we really like?

And well, let's try it again."

So we did a second one and it sold out in six hours.

And after it sold out, we had a waiting list of 35 people.

So we're like, "Okay, there's something.

We got something going here."

And then the next one came along and that one sold out too.

(lighthearted music) It was a happy accident.

We really stumbled on something that makes you feel a certain kind of way being out here and being a part of something bigger than yourself.

(country music) You go to a restaurant and you get served a beautiful plate of food, but you're still not seeing where it's coming from.

So when you come out here, you get to go during cocktail hour, and you see the pigs, and you go and you see the chickens and the garden.

And not only are you seeing all these ingredients, but you're then able to watch them being cooked over fire right in front of you before you sit down and enjoy all of it.

So there are these components that all really come together when you're out here that you're otherwise missing in everyday life.

- It's kind of primal in a way.

She really saw the potential in the farm.

Ryan and Ashley both did, but Ashley just has like big dreams, and ideas, and wonderful vision for how everything can come together.

And I'm grateful for that because during COVID, when we didn't know what to do and I wanted to give up, she came here and kind of lit a fire and got me reinspired into our own farm again.

(mellow music) - Such and Such is a diversified farm, and that means that there's lots of stuff that's growing, from pigs and goats to chickens and all kinds of produce.

(country music) - A lot of farms just do either produce or livestock, not a lot of the other.

And I can see why because it is really hard.

You have a lot of irons in the fire, but that's what we wanted to do.

We want to be the most diversified farm that's like a one-stop shop.

- The farm is roughly 140-ish acres now.

We find all sorts of stuff out here, from small greens like sorrel, spice bush, chicken of the woods, coral mushrooms, morels, you name it.

I mean, with this much wooded land in Missouri, you're bound to find something for sure.

And then, we plant the vegetables.

On top of vegetables, we're doing meat chickens, we're doing chickens for eggs, we're doing goats for dairy, pigs for pork.

The way they're pastured here, the feeding of produce and all the cool things that the pigs get to eat and the life to live is a great start to the charcuterie we'll make with it.

- We have the produce, we have the proteins, we have dairy, we have eggs, we have value-added items, like our maple syrup from the woods, and then all of Ryan and Ashley's culinary skills to make everything better.

(country music) This is Judy Garland.

She was one of the first two goats that we ever got.

- [Cat] So Rosemary Clooney, Judy Garland.

- Judy Garland.

Yeah, we have Lucy Ricardo, we have Marilyn Monroe, Ingrid Bergman, Lauren Bacall.

I grew up watching all those awesome old Hollywood movies, yes.

- Classic films.

I love it.

- If goat number 32 gets sick, then, "Oh, whatever."

But if Marilyn Monroe gets sick, like, "Oh, no, Marilyn?"

- Not Marilyn.

- [Autumn] Good girl.

- So you hand milk the goats twice a day?

- Twice a day, yeah.

So it takes an hour or so to milk eight goats in the morning.

It is a lot of like dilly-dallying, and loves, and cuddles, and doing all the health checkups too.

- [Cat] You're out here every single day, whether it's 100 degrees or negative 10.

- [Autumn] Oh, yeah, absolutely.

- [Cat] Because they have to be milked like a cow.

- At our peak, we do about three gallons of milk each day.

- And you're making soap with that?

- We do, yes.

We started doing that because we needed a shelf-stable item to sell at the markets over winter, and then we had an overproduction of milk one year, and we're like, "Hey, let's freeze it and we'll figure out what to do with it later."

And then we just started making soap, and we use a lot of the botanicals and ingredients from the farm, too.

It's just great to be able to make products and have nothing go to waste 'cause they work so hard and it takes a lot to make so much milk.

We use a lot of vertical integration at the farm.

We'll raise up the pigs, we'll butcher them, then we take the lard, we make soap with that.

So that's a great shelf-stable product.

And then recently, we started smoking the skins and the bones, making stock with that, but then also selling them as dog treats.

Financially, it makes a lot of sense to get as much use nose-to-tail out of the entire animal or a single product.

But also in terms of pigs, the animals give us the biggest sacrifice, right?

They're giving us their lives, and so it's our duty to honor what they're giving us.

Whether it's milk from the goats or pork from our pigs, we need to do right by these animals and honor them the best way that we can.

(mellow music) - Did you ever envision yourself doing this work when you were growing up?

- Never.

Before we got the farm, I was a a fashion writer for a local St. Louis magazine.

I was a manager at a hair salon.

I taught dance, so nothing in this kind of wheelhouse.

And I grew up in the suburbs, so it's not like we lived out in the country or I had any land.

But my mom comes from some farming family and farming background, so maybe that's in my DNA.

- A little bit.

- Yeah, mm-hmm.

- Yeah.

(mellow music) Is all of the physical effort that you put into it something that you enjoy, or is it something that feels like it's true labor?

- Like a toil?

- Yeah.

- I mean, it's great.

I never have to join a gym ever again.

That's one expense I can cross off my list.

And a lot of times, whenever you're in it, you're in the mix of it, you don't feel like you're working that hard because after a certain point it just becomes muscle memory.

And I'm glad that I feel so healthy and strong in doing this work too.

(mellow music) - Farming has problems, tons of problems that you have to solve all the time, and that we as a family will have to solve all the time.

(mellow music) Like farming, just in general, is sort of like the thrill of victory and the crushing agony of defeat on a moment by moment basis.

Like, it's hard.

And so I think farming instills in you a wide skillset.

You have to learn to do it yourself.

(mellow music) There's something about being outside, out in the field, and doing things that are really difficult.

Like, it's good to do things that are hard and power through them.

(mellow music) - Dave is an anomaly.

He's a crazy dude.

He just has a wild background of working at the city museum and doing all sorts of industrial design, and metal fabrication, and building.

One thing that me and Dave really bond over is just the DIY nature of everything.

You'd be hard-pressed to come to the farm and find something that hasn't been built here ourselves.

It's caused this craziness between me and Dave where it's like we need wood, we're gonna go cut down trees.

We need equipment to cook on, we're gonna build it and weld it ourselves, which is leading to a product line we're trying to release here in the next six months to a year probably.

All the food is produced here, and we're doing all of that.

We built the kitchen ourselves last year.

(welding tool crackling) Everything's possible today, right?

If you want it, we can build it, you know?

(welding tool crackling) (community chattering) - Here at Tower Grove Farmers' Market, Such and Such and Farm Spirit are still side by side.

They're able to create connections with their community, but it's also just a lot of fun.

(upbeat music) Ryan, obviously, is crazy busy.

There is a line of quite literally 30, 40 people.

- Oh, yeah, they keep rolling in.

- Yeah.

Smash burgers.

- [Ryan] Smash burgers.

- To me, smash burgers are the best burgers because you get those crispy edges.

- [Ryan] Absolutely.

- [Cat] And you're using the Price Family Farms beef.

- Yep, out of Troy, Missouri.

People want beef, they want fatty stuff, and so we did smash burgers one time, it was sold out immediately.

We did it another time, sold out immediately, and then it was like, "Okay, I guess we just fell into the burger bracket."

(upbeat music) - We set up at about 7:00 AM.

Market starts at 8:00, and people come walking through with their bags of goodies from all their different places, and it's really exciting 'cause then you have people come every single week and love to eat and love to say, "Hi."

And we've really gotten to know a lot of our community through being at market.

(upbeat music) - We usually use markets as a way to tell people more about what we do at the farm, and ethos, and just get to speak passionately about the things that we really believe in doing, you know?

(upbeat music) - Right next door to the smoke signals that Ryan is letting off at the Farm Spirit tent, you've got the Such and Such tent right here.

You're so much stronger as this united collaboration.

It's like you and Dave run the farm, Ashley and Ryan kind of run the food aspect of it.

Like, you couldn't have asked for something more perfect in terms of creating those connections.

- Exactly, and it's really fun to see the customers connect that too.

So whenever they're having amazing breakfast sandwich from Farm Spirit, they can be like, "Oh, hey, if you like the the pork on your breakfast sandwich, we have pork and eggs over here."

And then they'll buy vegetables and like, "Oh, you know what?

There's some excellent chili crisp that Farm Spirit has over there.

They would go perfect on your vegetables and things like that."

So we just kind of bounce ideas, and products, and collaborations off of each other all the time.

- What is it like for you to be here interacting with people?

- Well, especially on the Saturday farmer markets, it's great to connect with people on a high-energy level and it's great to bring the whole family.

- [Cat] And that's really what food is about, especially with the way that you are running Such and Such Farm.

- It is, and we try to make everybody our family, like that's kind of why we named it Homie Hospitality.

So people that come up to see us at the farmers' market and people that come to the farm for our farm dinners, like, you're family to us.

We're inviting you into our home, into our lives.

And you're family, we're gonna treat you like family, too.

(people chattering) - Hey guys, how are you?

- [Customer] Good, how are you?

- Doing very well.

At this point in my life, I've cooked for a lot of other people.

I've cooked so many menus that weren't mine and learned a ton from that.

But I think right now, what I love about cooking is the community of people I get to work with every day.

And come help you.

Being able to be creative with the food source and present it in whatever package you want to that day.

Just trying to take the ingredients that we have here on the farm and turning them to as many different things as we can.

(country music) So these sweet breads have been brined already for 24 hours, and then they're very gently poached in the milk with a bunch of aromatics.

So onions, garlic, juniper, black peppercorns, bay leaf.

Now, we're just kind of like gently warming them in the butter as it's starting to brown, and then we'll kind of crank the heat up, and then we'll actually get a nice solid sear on them in the brown butter.

- And so if you've never had a sweet bread, when you have a chef like Ryan making them, see them on the menu, definitely get them.

They're like, they're super mild, and the texture is almost kind of custardy in a way.

- Totally.

And cabbage has been hanging in the bird cage all day, roasting nice, low, and slow to kind of make the inside tender.

We just cut into one-inch steaks basically and got a really nice char in it too.

So it just develops lots of smoky, delicious char flavor.

(country music) When I was young, I always liked to make really complicated food, and the older I get, the more simple the food gets.

I think it just gets better and better, personally.

- [Cat] I prefer simple food 'cause then you can really taste the ingredients.

- Yeah.

(country music) We're doing a charred brassicas, so we have beautiful cauliflower, and broccoli, and romanesco.

We're gonna slow roast that for hours over low coals, flash it, and get really nice charring at the end.

It's sort of a play on cheesy broccoli.

So we're using goat cheese and a little bit of fontina to create a cheese whiz.

It'll be charred brassica on top of the cheese whiz with a chili and garlic vinaigrette.

(country music) - It was what, 98 degrees today ish?

- Something like that.

- Yeah, it's definitely warm.

And now, we're standing in front of one, two, three live fires.

- [Ryan] Lots of fires.

- Yes.

How do you handle it?

I mean do you just kind of get into it, just enjoy it?

- Yeah, I guess it's embrace it, right?

I'm here to do this dinner no matter what.

Rain, rain, snow, heat, you name it.

We're here to cook.

(country music) The main course tonight is gonna be a porchetta made with pigs here from the farm.

We've butchered it and removed all the bones to create two Roman-style porchettas.

So we'll smoke those low temperature for a long time and flash at the end and get the skin nice and crispy.

That's gonna be served on white grits with beets, confit in lard, and some radishes, and those will be grilled as well.

(country music) Well, thanks for coming out guys.

(community applauding) So a lot of you have been here.

For the folks who haven't, we just started doing this a couple years ago.

Ashley and I own our own company called Farm Spirit.

Dave and I have been running the farm here at Such and Such for 10 years.

(community hollering and applauding) - Pork was all raised up there.

The goat cheese is from our goats that I think a lot of you met, and held, and snuggled.

I mean we have brassicas, the mint, and cauliflower all from here.

As far as farm-to-table, I mean, the table is on the farm.

(community laughing) - During pandemic, it was hard for restaurants, hard for farms.

I'm a restaurant guy.

Ashley's also in hospitality.

And the farm was selling the restaurants.

So they had a tough time, too.

We decided to team up, and here we are two years later, filling the room with all your smiling faces.

So it's just been really great.

(community applauding) - Through the communal seating that we have going on in the barn, people are really able to meet their neighbors and break bread with people who they would otherwise not meet or have a chance to meet, and find things in common when it's really, really easy to find our differences.

We're all here to eat and have a good time.

And I think that's something we all need.

It's an art, and the world needs art.

(mellow music) - Engineering is fun, construction is fun.

Growing plants and raising animals is fun.

Do cool interesting stuff, and create interesting experiences for people, and make interesting places where people can enjoy themselves.

(uplifting music) - I love hospitality, I love making people happy, I love creating a space where that can happen.

But selfishly, I also love to cook food and hang out with my friends.

So it's sort of the best of all worlds.

- As Ryan always talks about, farm-to-table is just like what everybody should do, but friend-to-table is what we do because we want to connect people with their food and we also wanna connect people with each other.

So by sharing the farm and having people come out, they can really kind of understand how all the puzzle pieces fit together.

All of these little connections with each other, with businesses, with the ecosystem, that's what makes the world go round.

(uplifting music) - Those dinners on the farm are so much fun.

The way everything is cooked over wood and the way that they manipulate the fire in all those different spots, now I wanna have one of those in my backyard.

But we're actually cooking these chops inside.

(bright music) I was lucky enough to pick up a couple of chops at the farmers' market, and I've had them in a brine for a couple of hours.

It's sorghum, water, salt, brown sugar, and a little bit of vinegar.

And so I'm just going to pat them dry.

And because the brine has a lot of salt, I'm just gonna give it a nice dusting of pepper.

(upbeat music) That's it.

Let's head over to the stove.

(bright music) So I just have a tiny bit of oil in the pan and I've preheated it.

I'm going to caramelize these and then I'm going to put them in the oven.

Now, remember, there is sugar in this brine, and so that will caramelize faster than if you were just salting and peppering your meat.

So you wanna keep an eye on it, you don't want it to burn.

(meat sizzling) (upbeat music) So while my pork is in the oven, I'm just gonna go ahead and make my cherry sauce, which is very, very simple.

I just have red onion, garlic, thyme, and of course those fresh cherries.

(upbeat music) (ingredients sizzling) Let this cook for just a little bit, and then I'm gonna deglaze with my chicken stock.

(upbeat music) I'm looking for this to kind of reduce and get a little bit jammy.

It's gonna be so delicious.

(upbeat music) So I took my chops out of the oven, and look at all of this beautiful rendered fat and flavor.

So I'm dumping it into my sauce.

You should never waste all that good stuff.

And this is just about ready to go.

You can see that it's become syrupy and the fruit is nice and soft.

I think we're ready to serve.

(pan clanging) (gentle upbeat music) Pork is wonderful with fruit.

Just the sweet tart nature of it really goes with the fatty kind of unctuousness of a great pork chop.

And because we brine the pork chops in that sorghum, the flavor is just gonna be off the charts.

Now, I'm pairing this beautiful dish with a Chambourcin, and a Chambourcin grape makes wine that is kind of jammy and it's light.

So it's kind of similar to a pinot noir, and it pairs really, really well with pork.

(gentle upbeat music) To me, this is comfort food.

It is fatty and rich, but still has that wonderful kind of tart acidic quality of the sauce.

And then the pepperiness of the arugula, which is perfectly complemented with this really aromatic Chambourcin.

(gentle upbeat music) So if you're looking for the recipe, just go to the website.

Thank you so much for joining me.

And cheers, I'll see you next time.

(gentle upbeat music) Connect with us online at wearetastemakers.com or through social media on these handles.

(uplifting music) (mellow music) - [Announcer] "tasteMAKERS" is brought to you with support from Global Foods Market and Midwest Dairy.

(mellow music) (uplifting music)