Curated news and information worth Sharing
In this section of the site you'll find news and information we come across related to local businesses in Lafayette Colorado as well as local food initiatives along the Front Range and beyond.
Heirloom Bakery & Hearth
via Instagram
Posted June 23, 2022 8:55 pm by Paul Bonneville
I recently came across Heirloom Bakery & Hearth through our Instagram feed. Seeing the former use of the building that they used to build their bakery business in, in conjunction with their 7 year anniversary announcement, was a bit inspirational for me as we embark on a similar journey. 

I wish I could find more information on their backstory, but their Instagram feed offers at little peek:

Today(May 7) marks our golden birthday for Heirloom 🎉. Seven years of grit, grind, hustle, happiness, tears, joy, friends, co-workers
Locations
401 E 63rd Street,
Kansas City, MO,
United States
Sales
Eating
Baking

First-of-its-kind bread now available in Bay Area
via bake magazine
Posted June 22, 2022 8:06 pm by Paul Bonneville
There is a lot packed into this little article, so be sure to go and read it. In brief, it tells the story of the revived Hourani heirloom grain and some of the grain chain partners that made it happen:

A first-of-its-kind bread will be available in San Francisco Bay Area bakeries in May. The bread — available in bakeries including Rustic Bakery, Jane, Ponsford’s Place, The Bekjr, and Avast — is baked with Hourani flour, a 2,000-year-old heirloom grain.

An Artisan Baker, Ken Forkish from Ken's Artisan Bakery
via YouTube
Posted June 21, 2022 6:50 pm by Paul Bonneville
If this isn't inspiration for a current tech worker, I don't know what is 😃 I just learned that Ken Forkish left the tech industry to get into baking and stumbled across this video from several years back.

Evolutions in Bread
via Instagram
Posted June 20, 2022 11:23 pm by Paul Bonneville
We'll be keeping an eye out for this one when it comes out:

This just in: @kenforkish is coming out with a new cookbook! Evolutions in Bread, coming 9/20, is now available on pre-sale at the link in our bio. Covering artisan pan breads, Dutch-oven loaves, and a new efficient sourdough method, these are recipes that you’ll want to use every week. Let the countdown to September begin! ⁠
Locations
Portland, OR,
United States
Baking
Food & beverage creation
Advocacy & Education

Meet Mad Agriculture
via YouTube
Posted June 18, 2022 11:47 am by Paul Bonneville
On the farming front, as a nation we need to rebuild sustainable regional food systems and grain chains so that small food businesses like ours can source ingredients as locally as possible. For farms to convert from commodity agricultural practices and business models, they need help. That's where Mad Ag comes in:

After over a year of documenting our work in the regenerative community, we are thrilled to be releasing this short film about who we are, who we work with, and what we do. In short—this is us, these are our people, and this is our story. Welcome to the revolution.
Locations
Boulder, CO,
United States
Organizations
Farming
Advocacy & Education

Northeastern brewers are shrinking the distance between fields of grain and pints of beer
via WBUR, Boston's NPR News Station
Posted June 15, 2022 8:52 pm by Paul Bonneville
WBUR, Boston's NPR News Station, posted a story about some of the work going on in the Northeast Grainshed Alliance is doing on building up the Grain Chain in the northeast. It also talks a little about the Alliance's SQFT Project which is being used to promote using local grain in local food and beverages:

Craft beer makers from five states in the Northeast are making efforts to source their grains from regional farms. It's not only economical but also good for the planet.

Can Dryland Farming Help Growers Endure Increasing Heatwaves and Drought?
via Modern Farmer
Posted June 14, 2022 6:22 pm by Paul Bonneville
Today I learned a little about Dryland Farming thanks to this week's Modern Farmer's newsletter. Drought is a problem in much of the western United States, and Colorado is no exception. As Ashley and I start looking at a sustainable business model for a bakery that looks to help build up our local and regional food systems, water is a big problem for the farmer's we hope to work with in the near future.

Increasingly, the Sonoran and other dry places are showing us what a heat-and-drought-riddled future has in store for more of our food systems. These examples suggest that deep knowledge of dryland farming practices could blunt the impacts, giving some farmers a workable path forward. Whether conventional agriculture is willing to learn anything at all from these systems, however, is the question.

The article also mentions a book called Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond by Brad Lancaster that looks like it may serve as a good primer on the topic that I am adding to my reading list.

Why Farmers Are Getting Priced Out of the Hudson Valley
via The New York Times
Posted June 13, 2022 9:59 pm by Paul Bonneville
Just getting back to posting after a week long vacation in Maine and I am finding quite a few more local food system obstacle-related articles than I care to see all at the same time.  I can say with confidence that is land affordability for small-scale agriculture uses is not isolated to any one region in the US. The same problem exists here in Colorado, and many other states, for any land that is relatively close to metropolitan areas.

Their affordable lease in New Paltz, N.Y., negotiated in 2015 with the help of a farming nonprofit, had just ended, and they were suddenly thrust into a market where buyers were paying above asking price. “Folks who were trying to leave the city were making all-cash offers,” Ms. Morley recalled.
Locations
New Paltz, NY,
United States
Farming
Policy & Legal

USDA Announces Framework for Shoring Up the Food Supply Chain and Transforming the Food System to Be Fairer, More Competitive, More Resilient
via United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)
Posted June 6, 2022 10:53 am by Paul Bonneville
There is a lot packed into this announcement from the USDA, so be sure to give it a read, but this is the highlight that sticks out the most for me. It is and has been the goal of a lot of Grain Chains across the country:

In order to be more resilient, the food system of the future needs to be more distributed and local. Having more capacity to gather, process, move and store food in different geographic areas of the country will provide more options for producers to create value-added products and sell locally, which will support new economic opportunities and job creation in rural communities.

Without a doubt, we are on board!
Locations
Washington, DC,
United States
Marketing & Promotion
Processing, Logistics & Distribution
Policy & Legal
Advocacy & Education
Farming
Business networking

Gravy Podcast: Bread by Fire Episode
via Southern Foodways Alliance
Posted June 3, 2022 9:20 am by Paul Bonneville
Another great resource find in the form of the Southern Food Alliance (SFA) AND their podcast called Gravy. This episode is about wood-fired baking:
 
In this episode, Zhorov talks to Cogswell, Lapidus, and Jensen all about how they learned to tend the fire and live by the rhythms of wood-fired sourdough baking. She also talks with Rob Segovia-Welsh, who runs Chicken Bridge Bakery with his wife, Monica, about what benefits he sees in working with fire. Throughout these conversations, she explores how baking this way offers a potential for connection to a community—and makes the baker’s life a pretty good life. 

Be sure to check out the SFA's website and explore their mission of documenting, studying, and exploring the diverse food cultures of the changing American South.
Locations
Marshall, NC,
United States
Advocacy & Education
Baking
Marketing & Promotion
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