(rugged uptempo music) - Welcome to "A Shot of Ag."

My name is Rob Sharkey.

I'm your host.

I'm a fifth generation farmer from just outside of Bradford, Illinois.

Hey, do you like vegetables?

Do you like farmers markets?

Do you like CSAs?

Well, do I have the guests for you.

Today, we're talking with Ginger and Tony Malek.

How you guys doing?

- Great.

- Good.

You're from Sparland.

- Yep.

- That's not a very big burg.

- No, it's not.

- Yeah (laughs), tell people where Sparland's at, 'cause not everybody might know.

- Well, Sparland, we don't actually live in Sparland.

We kinda- - [Rob] Does anybody?

- No.

- It's kind of a myth, isn't it?

(laughs) - No, we actually live kind of in a triangular area between Camp Grove, Speer, and Sparland.

- Okay, you just named three places that nobody knows exist.

(Ginger laughs) You're only about probably 10 minutes away from where I live.

- Okay.

- So, yeah, but yes, Camp Grove, they might know that from Route 40.

- Right.

- But that's about it.

How did you guys end up there?

Is that where you grew up?

- I grew up there, and then when I was about 13 we moved to to Henry.

But yeah, I grew up about a quarter mile down the road from where we live now.

- She actually went to the Sparland Elementary School.

- [Rob] Which is still going, right?

- Sparland actually changed to Midland now.

- Okay.

- And so some of our arch rivalries actually now have consolidated with us.

So Lacon- - [Rob] Yeah.

- Mid-County or Varna, and then Sparland are all in the same school district now.

- When I was in high school, it became Bradford-Tiskilwa.

- Okay.

- Whew.

(Tony laughs) There's some bad blood there, (Ginger laughs) for a while, you know what I'm saying?

'Cause we were never a big fan of Tiskilwa.

- Right?

- But then all of a sudden, we were supposed to get along.

- Right, right?

- She took me up the hill.

She wanted to show me the school.

It was a brick building, red brick building, supposedly.

And it was gone by the time- - [Ginger] It was a cell tower.

- By the time- - It was a cell.

- You walked up there?

(laughs) - Well, it was, by the time she got around to, we were dating and we came up.

We always came up in September, and before I could marry her, I had to get her grandparents' okay- - Oh yeah, that's a- - And- - Law up here, yeah.

Where are you from, Tony?

- I'm from all over.

I was born and raised in Southern California, and moved to Arizona, high school.

My family, on a whim, decided they were gonna move to the state of Wyoming.

And then I moved to Florida.

And (laughs), where we met.

- 'Cause that's close to California.

(laughs) - 'Cause that's close to California.

Yeah, we met in Florida.

- It says here, you guys met on Tinder.

Is that right?

- No.

- Oh.

(everyone laughs) - That didn't even exist.

- [Rob] How'd you guys meet?

- Dancing, at a nightclub.

- [Rob] At a bar.

- At a bar.

- [Rob] That's romantic.

- That's- (Ginger laughs) - Yeah, I had just broken up with a girl, and a friend of mine was feeding me drinks, and I saw this cute girl dancing, and I was trying to keep up, and then she asked me if I knew how to two-step or swing or all of that.

And I go, "Yep, I can do all of those things," and- - [Rob] Could he?

- He could, yeah.

His mama taught him well.

- Ginger, are you the rebound girl?

- I hope not.

(Rob laughs) We've been married now for 26 years.

- Oh, we'll see how it goes, I guess.

(Ginger and Tony laughing) So at what point did you guys move back to Sparland?

- We moved back in 2011, at the end of 2011.

Previously we both, he had worked in corporate, Disney, and I had worked as an HR director for a Christian ministry down in Orlando, Florida.

And the opportunity came when my grandpa passed up here, that my mom and dad were the caretakers of the farm, which had primarily been corn and soybeans, for a number of years.

And I told Mom what I wanted to do, because I actually have, I went to University of Illinois and have a, it's called a Foods in Business degree, but it's actually Nutrition in Business.

That's kind of a combo thing in the Department of Agriculture down there.

And so I wanted to do something like this, what we're doing with farmers markets and trying to reconnect people with their food.

In Orlando, when we lived down there, most kids didn't know where their food came from at all.

You know, potato, you probably even grow potatoes where you live.

- Oh, no.

- No?

- No, no.

- You don't grow any potatoes?

- We had a garden once, (Ginger laughs) but every time the weeds come up.

- They do, and we have- - Yes they do.

- Lots of them as well, 'cause we don't spray.

We're no spray.

- I have pictures of foxtail as tall as she is.

- Yeah, yeah, and it's kind of funny, it's kind of on a side note, but we actually found some old stories about how way back in the day, like the early 1900s, parents used to put their kids in wooden barrels, out where we live- - What?

- Out in the prairie.

- In order to keep them from getting lost in the tall, tall grass.

- [Rob] Okay.

- Her great-aunt has it.

- So I would say, that's probably pre, what do you call that, playpen?

- I think that's pre OSHA.

(Tony laughs) That's pre everything.

- I don't know.

All I know is it was really- - "Where's the kids?"

"Oh, they're in the barrels, don't worry."

- Well, what was happening is that they had really, they had a lotta snakes.

- [Tony] They had a lotta snakes.

- They had a lotta wolves out where we live.

And they were all clearing the land.

- Yeah.

- And so in order to, I mean, kids were getting lost in the middle of, you know, and no, pre-electricity.

I mean, you're talking- - Life was much simpler then, wasn't it, yeah.

- It was a lot different.

- You know, having kids isn't that bad.

You just put 'em in the barrel for 12 hours at a time.

(Ginger laughs) They'll be fine.

(laughs) - Exactly, well, what Ginger didn't tell you though, is that, so the whole thing started, she had, for years, every time we came up to visit her grandparents, and she'd always say she'd like to move back here.

And her grandpa'd say, "Oh, there's nothing here for you.

You guys are doing great in Florida.

Don't think about coming back here."

And one day, her mom, when after Grandpa passed, her mom called and said, "So we have to talk about the house there," 'cause a lotta times farmers will burn the house down to gain a few extra bits of- - A little more acreage, yeah.

- Acreage.

- And Ginger went, "No, please don't burn down.

In fact, we have a plan.

We'd like to sit down and talk," so- - [Rob] Who's the "we," you and Tony or- - Yeah, she- - You and yourself?

(laughs) - Yeah, well- - No, we had been talking for a long time, and- - Yeah, you know, my mom, God bless her, she said, "Well, you know, you could always buy a farm in Florida."

- Yeah, a fern farm.

(laughs) - "You could raise ferns."

- [Rob] And gators.

- I was like, "I don't wanna raise ferns, Mom."

And so, I put a 26-page- - [Tony] Plan.

- Plan together for Mom, to explain what we were planning on doing.

- [Rob] Really?

- We did a one-year, a five-year and a 10-year.

I guess we're gonna have to redo it, 'cause we're at 10 years now.

- Now we're at 10 years now.

Yeah.

- And this was a plan here.

- This was part of it, yeah.

- Yeah, so- - Yeah, raising chickens, produce.

The funny thing that I said, one of the biggest things I've learned is, you can make a plan and you can read all the things of how to do all of this.

But the practicality of it really is when you start doing it.

You kind of figure out, "Oh, that really didn't work," or wasn't quite the way that they said it should go.

And so then you have to- - You have to tweak it.

- Kinda fit it to you.

- You know, I'm sure with what you do, you've run into the same situation where, you know, you're like, "Okay, this is great, but in order to really make this work, this is what I have to do."

- [Rob] No.

- No, never?

- I just, no.

If it doesn't work, I just keep doing it.

(Ginger laughs) Yeah, eventually it'll work out, right?

- Yeah, sure.

- Something will happen.

I mean, how do you learn to do this, right?

I mean, because it, yes.

You're just raising vegetables.

- Yeah.

- But you're just raising vegetables.

It's not that easy to learn all the stuff that takes to make what you have in this basket here.

- So I'll tell you the first, so the first season, we started digging in and creating beds.

And we made these beautiful beds of lettuce.

And I have pictures of me pulling heads of lettuce and smiling and showing this beautiful big head of lettuce.

And we realized real quick, we only did three rows, maybe a hundred feet long.

- And we sold out in three weeks, and then we had no more lettuce to sell.

- So you realize- - So we learned.

- [Rob] Just go to the grocery store.

- We're like, yeah right, no, no, yeah.

- You know, you just kinda learn and then you- - And the first year- - Fast.

- We bought 25 hens.

And then we realized that regular- - [Rob] Chickens.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, hens that would lay eggs, and we realized really fast that our coop was not mink-proof.

- [Rob] Oh, yeah.

- And we had- - They're awful.

And we had a mink- - They kill for fun.

- They'll kill like 20 in a night.

- Yeah, oh yeah.

- Yeah, oh yeah, yeah.

And they did, 15 in one night.

- Oof.

- And then of course a regular hen only lays about 165 eggs a year.

Well, when you're going to a farmers market, that's not very many dozen eggs.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- So then you realize you need to have more hens.

And so, in different varieties, that lay more eggs, so- - [Rob] You need to get rid of the minks.

- Right, yeah.

- Well, you'll never get rid of- - We never get rid of 'em.

It's really bad.

- For the past eight years, we've dealt with mink, every, either fall or spring.

- It sounds like you would like to eliminate minks from everywhere.

- Yeah.

- Well, they're such a pretty animal- - They are.

- But they are so destructive.

- They're vicious killers.

- They are vicious killers.

- They really are.

They really are.

- You know what's coming, working their way up here?

You know what's in Pekin right now?

Armadillos.

- Real, no.

- No.

- Oh yeah, oh yeah.

- No way.

- Why, yes.

(Tony laughs) - They make a really good boot.

- The, no.

- Armadillos?

- No, 'cause they're hard, right?

- No, they make a really good boot.

- They they make a boot.

- Yeah, they make- - They make a- - I promise you I've never- - Armadillo skin.

- Heard that before.

- Cowboy boots, yeah.

- Cowboy boots.

Great cowboy boots- - Armadillo skin boots.

- Yeah yeah.

- I'd buy 'em.

- They carry leprosy.

- We used to grow- - Yeah.

- We used to, I didn't own 'em, but I know people who own armadillo boots, yeah.

- Okay, we should probably get- - They couldn't be any worse than a possum.

- Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.

- Got off on the armadillos again.

(Ginger and Tony laughing) So tell me about what you're raising on your farm.

- Everything.

(laughs) - We raise, we're very diverse.

We have about 120 different varieties of vegetables and fruits that we grow.

- [Rob] Good night.

- And we do a, you know how, I guess I'll just say this.

How many crops do you rotate in your operation?

- Oh, all of 'em, two.

(Tony laughs) - Two, okay.

- Yeah.

- Well, we use a four-year crop rotation, versus the two-year crop rotation, so that, and every vegetable is in a different family.

So like your tomatoes and your eggplant here are in the same family.

- [Rob] This is the eggplant.

- Yep, these are eggplant here.

And then you've got your winter squash, which is- - Is this a different eggplant?

- Yeah, it's a- - They're both Asian varieties.

- Yeah, they're both Asian.

They have a really thin skin, so yeah, and so that you don't- - So does a lot of my viewers.

- Ha, bah dum bump.

(Rob laughs) - Right, and so, yeah, so- - That's funny, come on.

They're already emailing.

- Oh, that's funny.

(Tony laughs) - What's this stuff?

- So those are beets.

- Red beets.

- Okay, I'm not a fan of beets.

- Okay, so- - Some are, some aren't.

- Some people are, and some people aren't.

- [Rob] They smell good.

- Yeah, but the tops are super high in potassium.

- The leaves?

- Yeah, so people that- - The greens.

- Get like leg cramps and things like that, beet greens are great for.

- Really.

- Because they actually, they're like 942 milligrams per serving.

And then red potatoes, you know red potatoes.

- Which most people don't realize we can grow potatoes up here.

- I know.

- Right, you know what?

We were known for potato growing here in Illinois.

Did you know that at one point in time- - Well yeah, it's all Irish people that settled here.

- Way back in the day, we, it wasn't Idaho.

It was Illinois.

- [Rob] I'm gonna pick through your stuff, right?

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- [Rob] You got the onions.

- We got onions.

- [Rob] Yeah, what are these?

- Red onions.

- [Rob] Red onions?

- Yeah.

- Okay.

- Different varieties.

- I like to- - Yeah, you can smell.

- Is that weird that I smell stuff, right?

- No, you can.

- Then we have- - Peppers.

- Sweet peppers.

- That's the sweet pepper.

- And then we've got apples down there.

- That pepper you're grabbing right there is the most controversial pepper.

People ask for bell peppers and we go, "Well, right there."

"No, do you have green bell peppers?"

"Well, that's a green bell pepper."

"It is?"

- Yeah.

- I've heard about the, seriously?

(laughs) - Right right right, yeah.

- 'Cause it starts out lime green.

That's a yellow bell pepper.

- [Rob] This is yellow.

- [Ginger] Yeah, but, do you like green peppers?

- Sometimes- - I like bacon.

(Tony laughs) - Well, sometimes, I know, right?

I know, well, the hardest part is, green peppers have a really strong flavor sometimes.

You can definitely know what a green pepper tastes like.

- [Rob] Smell it, no.

- But those are not quite as strong of a green pepper flavor.

- Okay.

- And that's a spaghetti squash.

- Okay, I like this.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- I've never, I've had it.

I've never cooked it or anything.

- Yeah, it's simple.

You just cut it in half.

- Ooh.

- Some people like to roast it, but- - You got this balanced, don't you?

- Well, I guess.

- Did you learn how to do that?

- I don't know, there's this- - Like a little bit of TV magic.

We've got an onion hanging, holding up the entire basket.

(Ginger laughs) - Yeah, and of course- - Oh, I think it's gonna fall off.

- Then we've got our lovely cherry tomatoes there too.

- Oh yeah.

- And the reason, there's a story behind our cherry tomatoes.

When we first started, we didn't raise enough cherry tomatoes of the same color.

- Yeah?

- And so we just decided to mix 'em all up together.

And then kids used to call it tomato candy.

- Because they're all different colors.

- [Rob] Are those different- - Yeah, there's seven different varieties of cherry tomatoes in there.

- Can I eat one?

- Yes.

- Oh yeah.

- Can I open it?

- (laughs) If you can, yeah.

- So what would you start with, because we've got the red.

- So do you like a meaty cherry tomato, or do you like something like, that bursts in your mouth?

- Well, no, let's not burst, 'cause I'll probably spit.

- Taste the, an orange one is a Sungold.

- This, like this one?

- Yep.

- No, the orange one.

- No, the orange.

- Okay, this one.

- (laughs) That's it, yeah.

It's super, it should be sweet.

- It should be very sweet.

- I don't think I've ever quite tasted one like that.

That's delicious.

- Isn't that fun?

- Yeah.

- Yeah, and the ones that look like pears, those little, those are actually called a pear tomato, and they're a little meaty.

They're not as sweet.

They're a lower acid, 'cause some people like lower acid.

- To me that's more of a tomato- - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

- Taste, yeah.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Do people like the cherries or do they like the- - They do.

- Beefeaters.

- I mean every- - No, they like 'em both.

- I think they like 'em both.

We also grow what they call heirloom tomatoes, and heirlooms just mean that you can save the seed from year to year, and it'll revert back to its true, whatever you grew it as.

And people like those as well.

- They're the ugly tomatoes in the tomato world.

- Yeah, they are.

(Rob laughs) They're misshapen.

- The sheep in the tomato world.

- Right, right, right.

All right, let's talk about what you guys do.

The CSA.

- Yeah, so this is actually what we're giving out to our clients that signed up for CSAs.

They're a subscription basically.

Some people don't know what a CSA is.

And it's basically, if you think of a magazine subscription, and you usually get like a magazine a month or whatever.

Well the difference is, is here you basically get a basket of produce, either every week or every other week, and you just prepay for it as a subscription.

And then we, there's a few pickup points that people can just pick up their veggies up, every week or every other week.

- Well this person's getting screwed, 'cause I ate some of their tomatoes.

- No, this is going to you.

- Okay, then it's not so bad.

(Ginger and Rob laughing) Now, does this put some risk in the customer's, some risk and reward?

- Sure.

- Because a good year, will they get more, a bad year, get less?

- We usually try, there's a couple of things that we are maybe unique in regards to that.

Yes, there is, but we always try to put about $25 worth of produce in their basket every week or every other week, whenever they're picking it up.

The other thing we try to do is, if they have special dietary needs, maybe they can't, they don't like a particular thing, or it doesn't sit well on their tummy, we let 'em trade out, if they need to.

And that's why one of, most of the time people like to pick up at one of our farmers markets, so that we usually always have a spread and some other options for them to choose from.

- You guys mentioned you went the organic route.

Is that what your customers want?

- Yeah, yeah.

- I think so.

- We have a lotta people that have a lot of health issues.

And then we also have, we do the CSAs but we also do just regular farmers markets.

We also have an online store, that people can purchase from year round.

And then we also do eggs, brown eggs that are, we feed 'em a certified organic feed.

Technically we're not certified organic.

We don't wanna use that terminology, so we use- - It gets tricky.

- Chemical-free.

Well, if you say you're certified organic, - [Both] If you say you're organic.

- Technically they can fine you up to $10,000 every time you use that terminology.

So we use chemical-free.

- Yes, I would too.

- And so- - Just going back to CSAs, it stands for Community Supported Agriculture.

And to your question, yeah.

You're buying into their farm, a farm, our farm, or somebody who is a, has a CSA, and yeah.

You're buying into that farm and you're buying into the highs and lows.

By the grace of God, we have not had to short anybody or, but we hear stories of people who've tried different CSAs, and we hear, "Oh, I kept getting, all I got was lettuce all season long," or- - And so that's why we try to take that and then we go, "Okay, well if that, we wanna make it better for, we want you to have a good experience."

And it just makes people, some people really love it because they go, "Okay, what am I gonna get this week?"

'Cause we also do a weekly email, so everybody knows what they're gonna get in their basket before they get it, so they can kinda plan for it, and go, "Okay, what am I gonna make for dinner this week, based on the stuff that's coming in my basket, or do I need to contact them?"

'Cause we usually text back and forth with our clients, to remind them to pick up their basket on the day of, and also if they need to trade something out that they can.

- But it is also a business, correct?

- It is.

- Sure.

- And I'm sure there's times where you're like, at farmers markets and that.

People are like, "Well this is so expensive" or something.

You know, "I can go to Walmart and get this for 20 cents less."

- Yes.

- Right.

- I mean- - To which we say, "That's great."

- "Go on to Walmart."

- "Go on to Walmart, that's fine."

- But I mean, obviously not everything's about money.

What is your like, philosophy about doing this?

- Well, our main philosophy is, I don't know, how would you?

- Just being there as a provider of, local provider, among others that are doing the same thing here, to provide produce that hasn't been traveled across the United States.

- Yeah, I think the biggest thing is, for us, is it's just the two of us touching this produce.

The average thing that you buy in the grocery store travels on average 1,500 miles to get to your table.

So you know, when you taste that tomato and you go, "Okay, I've never had a tomato that tasted like that," it's probably because the stuff that they sell in the store, in a lotta cases, has been made so that it can ship well.

But the flavor may not be great.

- The food industry as a whole has kind of trained- - [Ginger] Consumers.

- The consumer to, what to buy and what it should look like.

And I think that's the biggest challenge at selling anything, because there are some things that people go, "Oh, I don't care what it looks like."

But boy, when it comes to tomatoes they're like, "Oh, I've gotta have the perfect tomato."

- Yeah, exactly.

- Right.

- Well, everything you get in Walmart food-wise, it's going to be safe.

- Sure.

- I really don't think there's anything that people believe that they're gonna buy there as unsafe.

Taste-wise, quality-wise, I've done, I've talked to people that are selling like direct-to-consumer beef, right?

- Sure.

- Direct-to-consumer produce and that.

- Sure.

- Eggs, you know.

- Yeah.

- The homemade eggs.

I can't describe it.

- Yeah.

- But it's better.

- Yeah.

- To me it tastes better and you can't say, "Well, it has this or that or the other."

But you don't really know until you experience it.

- You try, exactly, exactly.

- But did you know that, so eggs, short story, but it's worth noting.

A nest-run egg is an egg that you take out of the nest, and you put it in a container, and as long as you put that container, don't do anything to it, don't wash it, don't do anything, it can be stored in a 50-degree refrigerator for up to six months before it has to be candle graded and then put either a 30 or 60-day shelf life on it.

And so, when you get an egg from the store, you don't know how long it's been sitting there.

It's legal and it's all fine.

Their eggs last a long time.

But, ours are sold within- - Have you ever noticed- - The first week or two.

- Do you ever boil eggs?

- [Rob] Hm?

- Do you ever boil eggs?

- I'm not gonna answer questions, 'cause I'm gonna sound lazy.

- Okay, all right.

- We buy the boiled eggs 'cause I hate to peel the stupid things.

- Oh, that's so fun.

Okay, so here's the deal.

So if you boil an egg that you buy in a grocery store, it's easy to peel, and the- - [Rob] Okay, that's an opinion.

(laughs) - Okay, okay, it's easier to peel than our eggs, that are only a week old, because there's an air sack in that egg, and as the egg ages, the air sack pulls away from the shell, and so therefore it's easier to peel.

- And that's not just ours.

- And so, yeah.

- [Tony] That's farm eggs.

- And then of course we also raise pasteurized chickens.

And so people will ask, well, and so we actually offer CSAs with those as well.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- And people, "Well what's the difference for that?"

Well, if you've ever roasted a chicken, and you've poured off the broth, usually a wait for that white gunky oil to solidify above the broth.

Of course, the chicken that's in the store usually has been injected with chicken broth, to take, you know, and so you're like, okay- - Adds flavor.

- That's kinda weird.

But anyhow, so then you usually throw that gunky stuff away.

Well, our chickens don't have that.

- No gunk, gunk-free.

- No, no gunk.

- We gotta get to your, because we wanna tell people where to find you.

- Oh yeah, please do.

- Oh yeah, yeah so, give all the information, websites, all that stuff.

- Yeah, so our website is www.grandmagrandpasfarm.com.

- [Rob] Grandma's with an S?

- Yeah.

- And Grandpa's Farm.

- Yeah, Grandma and Grandpa's Farm.

- Do you have the ampersand, or how does that- - Not on the website.

- Not on the website.

- It's just one word, Grandma.

- It's just one word.

- Actually the website is grandmagrandpasfarm.com.

- Yeah.

- Dot com.

- [Both] Yeah.

- And that's where people can go to find where you'll be at farmers markets, how to join the CSA.

- Yep, yep.

That's your online store as well.

- Yep, yep, you can also find us on Facebook.

You can always just Google us.

- Okay.

"Grandma and Grandpa's farm, Peoria, Illinois," and it'll pop up.

- Yeah.

- [Rob] And your TikTok?

- No.

(laughs) - We don't do TikTok.

- [Rob] It's a joke.

(laughs) - Sorry.

- Ginger and Tony Malek.

From Sparland, thank you guys very much for being on.

Really, really appreciate it.

- Thanks.

- Thank you.

- This smells great.

Go check 'em out.

Everybody else, we'll catch you next week.

(rugged uptempo music)