As Lauren Stinson of Slow Food taught F.H. Kingers on February 10^th, baking without these usually necessary items is totally possible, and you can actually make your sweet treats quite a bit more nutritious.  So if you or your loved ones are trying to eat vegan or suffer from a gluten intolerance, or even if you’re just trying to eat more whole foods and less processed junk, here is your guide to almond substitutions.

Almonds, one of the world’s oldest and healthiest foods, are low in carbohydrates and extremely high in protein.  They are a great source of omega 3 fatty acids and are essential in maintaining heart and brain health.

We’ll begin with almond milk, which can be bought in stores, but can also be made from scratch quite easily for about the same price.  If you’re more prepared than me, you can do it for even cheaper.  I had a lot of trouble finding whole blanched almonds (meaning almonds with the skins removed) so I settled for slivered almonds (which are almost always blanched).  Upon further investigation, however, I learned that whole blanched almonds are sold in 4 ounce packages from Metcalfes for only 99 cents!  So get them there and 40 ounces of almond milk will only cost you about $2.  Anyways, I digress.

The Wrong Kind of Almonds... but they totally worked!

You will start the night before you actually begin by covering 1½ cups of almonds with water and soaking them for at least four hours.  Soaking raw nuts is something I had never heard of until Mel forwarded me the handout from Friday’s workshop.  But after I researched the topic a little bit, I learned how beneficial soaking is for mineral absorption, digestibility and flavor.  I let mine soak for twelve hours, but I’m sure there is a lot of flexibility to this step.

Soak, soak, soak.

After straining out the murky almond water, you will add a fresh 1 ½ cups of water to the now soaked almonds.  Then you can use a blender or immersion blender to create a puree from the almonds and water.  I used a blender first but had little success.  Even after the immersion blender, my liquid almond mixture was still far from a puree. I would recommend using perhaps only a cup of water first.  But in any case, blend the mixture for 3 or 4 minutes and you will be fine because my end result was delicious despite my lack of a pureed state.

Blend, blend, blend, part 1

Once the “puree” is finished (or as close as you can get to a puree), add 1 teaspoon of almond extract, 1 to 2 tablespoons of real maple syrup or honey (depending on your sweetness preference) and a dash of cinnamon.

The other star ingredients.

Blend this mixture slightly, then add 2½ more cups of water (or 3 more cups if you used only 1 cup previously) and blend for another 3 or 4 minutes.  Here the appropriate texture is difficult to see, so just go by the time.  And now you’re ready for the cheese cloth step (my favorite)!

Prepping: putting the cheesecloth in the strainer.

You probably need a friend for this step.  Line a colander with two or three layers of cheese cloth and place it above a clean bowl.  Have your friend either hold the colander or dump the almond water mixture through the colander.

Ready to strain.

The holes will get clogged so be sure to pour slowly.  Stop every once and a while to squeeze the cheese cloth into a ball and force the excess liquid through.

Forcing the liquid through the cheese cloth.

If the holes get too clogged with almond mush (which they likely will), toss out the excess solids.  Once your almond water mixture is fully strained you’re done!  Pour the delicious milk over some cereal and enjoy!

Best cereal ever! I don't even want to use this delicious milk for baking, just straight out of the glass from now on!!!

For a more thorough blogger’s experiment with almond milk, click here.

Now onto something quite a bit simpler to make: almond flour.

Almond flour is an amazing substitute for regular flour.  Not only is the flavor enormously more complex, it is also nutrient dense and a beautiful alternative for those suffering from Celiac’s or some other form of gluten intolerance.  Almond flour lends itself especially well to desserts.  Most commonly found in cakes, almond flour is also the star ingredient of my favorite French cookie: macarons.  But in reality, almond flour can be used almost anywhere you would use regular flour.  It is commonly used for pancakes, muffins and as a thickener, but the opportunities are endless.

Now for the bad news.  Almond flour, when bought from conventional grocery stores rings in at about $40 per pound.  This is the one almond item I’ve found costs significantly less to make for myself.

Again you’ll begin with blanched almonds, although more traditional skin-on almonds will work just fine.  You’ll have a little more “texture” to your flour with these skin-on almonds (so don’t use them for my favorite finicky French macarons), but it won’t affect the quality in most recipes.  One important thing to note, however, is that almond flower makes baked goods more fragile than regular flour would.  Leave your baked goods to rest for a few minutes and you should have no trouble.

Understanding that 1 cup of almonds equates approximately 1 1/2 cups of almond flour, you should be able to convert just about any recipe.  Just pour the appropriate amount of almonds into a food processor, coffee grinder or rocket blender and grind until they begin to clump together.  This texture is perfect for most recipes, such as the Flourless Almond Honey Cake F.H. Kingers made during the Slow Food workshop.  Just measure out your freshly made “almond powder”, also known as almond flour, and go from there.

If you seek finer results, you’re going to need a sifter.  Simply sift the almond flour and re-grind larger chunks that stayed on top of the sifter screen.  Repeat this process until no large pieces remain.  Again, this final step is usually unnecessary as less fine almond flour will almost always suffice, but its good to know your options.

Also, keep in mind that almond flour will only keep 1 to 2 weeks on the shelf or 1 to 3 months in the refrigerator.

Making almond butter is a practically identical process, only you leave the almonds is the food processor for much longer.  Lauren recommended soaking the almonds first and scraping down the sides of your food processor every five minutes.  For a paste-like almond butter, you should process the almonds for 12 or 13 minutes and for a more oily version, process the almonds for a full 15 minutes.

I also found a recipe online that suggests using two teaspoons of olive oil for each cup of almonds, but I have yet to try either version, so I don’t have much advice to offer.  Almonds are so delicious though, I doubt either recipe will steer you in the wrong direction.  You can use your butter as a substitute  for butter in most places: sweet or savory.  I found recipes online for everything from snickerdoodles to granola to downright incredible-looking sauces.

If you want to replicate the other recipes F.H. Kingers tried at the workshop, they are listed below.  Now go, try some recipes!  Happy almond-ing!

Cream of Almond Soup

This preliminary coalition meeting, organized by Carrie Edgar, head of the Dane County Food Systems Department at the UW Extension, has been discussed for a year and a half, since Edgar was first hired for the position in the fall of 2010.  As she began her work in Dane County, meeting with organization directors and other integral members of the Madison and Dane County food community, Edgar consistently heard the call for a group that could bring everyone together to work collaboratively.   There are so many similarly-minded organizations in Dane County, that surely both strength in numbers and coordination of work would be beneficial.  Edgar brought everyone together with minimal influence over the direction the group should take or even what it will look like.  Edgar facilitated the conversation as she hoped the coalition would determine its own goals and course of action.

The round-table discussion style meeting began by briefly introducing ourselves, our organization affiliations and any upcoming initiatives or events we were holding.  It was a space to share and brag, not one of competition or discomfort.  After the introductions, everyone was given an opportunity to establish ground rules for meetings now or in the future.

Then the harder, but much more fun, discussion began on what we all wanted to get out of a Dane County Food Coalition, what we want it to look like and what questions we had regarding the process of getting started.

It was a brain-storming session filled with some of my favorite Madison voices.  There were several concrete goals discussed, such as wanting to improve access to healthy and organic fresh foods or launch a PR campaign that would promote a joint website where people not already connected could go to learn about local food issues.  We talked about using the coalition as a way to lend support in forming more kitchens and farm co-ops, a real tangible method of promoting the infrastructure that small growers need but is so difficult to achieve as a single organization.  Or the coalition could work to better coordinate fundraising opportunities so that we didn’t have six of the same events every season.  As everyone competes for the same pool of volunteers and funds, why not find a way to share them through collaboration?  There was also talk of finding a way to bring organization interns together socially, so collaboration can be improved at every level, not just among directors.

Yet despite the specifics, people seemed more focused on the coalition as a forum to discuss the future of local food systems.  As Kiera Mulvey, executive director of MACSAC, stated: we could use this coalition as a forum for elevating the scale of the projects so many are already doing and promoting our greater vision for Dane County which is afterall, not very specific and does not need to be.  We all want more local food available for everyone, and we all play a vital role in the larger picture of doing so.  Every organization has its own realm of possibilities but as a collective, we can discuss our grander ideas for larger systemic change.  The coalition could serve as a place to chew on these ideas rather than push them aside because they are beyond our own individual or organizational capacity.  While setting tangible goals and meeting them, we could also discuss the big conceptual ideas we all grapple with.

As a coalition of twenty or so groups from around Dane County, each of which represents a multitude of different voices in itself, the Dane County Food Coalition will take a while to establish who it is and what it needs to do first, but as Edgar told me, “we all really want the same thing – a sustainable local food system that is economically, environmentally and socially just.”  Now it is just a means of getting there, and I for one am enthusiastic that F.H. King and students have a say.

The night started off with an overview of the facility where UFC both prepares their products for Underground Meats and also operates their catering company.  Since the group began experimenting with and processing pork in 2007, they slowly began to acquire the necessary equipment to become a licensed vendor.  Their kitchen is now a state-licensed meat processing facility capable of smoking, curing and packaging a wide range of fresh, prepared, and specialty meats.  Underground Meats offers CSA-style meat offerings throughout the year while also selling wholesale products to restaurants and markets.  Check them out at the indoor market beginning this Saturday!

We got to sample a variety of meats while Jonny taught us about their meat business and history: Tuscan salami, pepperoni, and many others.

Sandwiched between the curing coolers and the sinks, we all gathered around a cutting board table as Jonny unloaded pig parts from two cardboard boxes.  Meanwhile, Nancy, the woman who donated her dear Ferkel to us for sausage making, told us her history of raising hogs, which is short, but quite impressive.  It all began several years ago, when the city of Madison passed an ordinance that allowed single-family residences to have up to four domestic fowl on their property.  Nancy immediately went out to get some chickens.  She calls them her “gateway drug” to bigger and badder farm animal rearing.

Four years ago, Nancy and her husband moved to Cross Plains where they could have a little more room to roam so to speak.  She became very interested in a breed that was growing extremely rare: American Guinea hogs.  In fact, she became interested in numerous heritage breeds.  On the farm now they have a llama, some sheep, geese, ducks and chickens alongside their hogs.

Their first four hogs came from a man in St. Paul who worked at a nature center that had a farm element.  The American Guinea hogs were small and had a friendly temperament: perfect for children (and for Nancy).  She was looking for a heritage breed that could also provide some meat for the household.  American Guinea hogs are perfect for this.  Because of their small size, the amount of pork they provide is manageable.  Currently Nancy has six sows and three boars (an unusual ratio of sows to boars, my farm growing up had 25 sows to 2 boars that we rotated).  But this ratio is not so odd when dealing with heritage breeds, the ratio of sows to boars is for genetic preservation purposes.

The donated hog was sent to Black Earth Meats, who cut it into “primals” (meaning the first large cuts of an animal, separating large cuts from one another).  Jonny first pieced the hog back together so we could see its original form.

As he elegantly cut the meat off the bones, Jonny explained the separate cuts of meat and how to prepare them as well as which pieces were best for sausage making.  When making sausage, you look for a 30% fat to 70% meat ratio.

He began with the head, and told us all if we were interested in butchering, this was where to begin because you can get heads for cheap.  First he cut off the jowls (those fatty neck parts of the hog), explaining how they were almost analogous to pork belly.  Then he removed the cheeks (something that looked a lot more tricky), from both inside and outside of the jaw bone.  These are one of Jonny’s favorite cuts of meat.  Supposedly they have great flavor development because of their extensive muscle use (pigs are always eating!).  He cut the jowls into smaller pieces and put them into a tub (which would eventually be what we ground up for sausage) and set the head (eyes forward) down on the table, placing the cheeks beside it.  These pieces were up for grabs.

Jonny then brought out an interesting meat for us to try.   It was a cured meat made of pig head, after removing all the bones (but none of the skin) and tying it tight before curing.  When he pulled it out of the cooler, you could see the snout!

He then went on to the belly, which is where bacon, pancetta and pork belly (obviously) come from.  This was cut into smaller pieces and also placed in the large meat tub.

Then onto the ham, otherwise known as the hog’s butt and hind leg, and removed the massive bone which involved cutting through a very disgusting and very strong tendon.

The front shoulder, also called the Boston Butt (on top) and Picnic Butt (on bottom) was then dismembered.  All the leg meat pieces were thrown into the meat tub while the bones were placed onto the “grab bag” pile of things not appropriate for sausage.

The baby back ribs were removed from the loin and together the baby back and spare ribs were placed into the “discard” pile.  The loin was cut into smaller pieces for our sausage.

It was pretty apparent that having a meat processing facility and a catering company was a brilliant paring.  The fattiest pieces could be used for sausage while the remainder (bones, checks and ribs) could be used for catering.  It was also clear why UFC loved pork: it was incredibly useful, nothing was wasted.

With our giant tub of meat, we went on to begin the sausage.  The meat was weighed and this weight was calculated so that the meat/fat mixture would constitute 95% of the weight while the dry milk and spices would account for the other 5%.

Together, we measured out the dry milk, anise, fennel, paprika, salt, pepper, brown sugar, mustard seeds and ground up pre-smoked jalepenos that Jonny had smoked in his homemade smoker.  This spice mixture was layered into the meat and Jonny mixed it all together with his hands.  The mixture was then put into a meat grinder with small holes followed by an addition of red wine vinegar and brown sugar and then the mixture was run through another grinder with a kidney grinder attachment.  These two grindings ensured the meat and spices all stuck together.

Then we moved onto the casings, otherwise known as cow or pork middles, also known as intestines.  Yup, casings and middles sounds much nicer, doesn’t it?  Jonny rinsed off the cow and pork middles, which looked like mini balloons and stretched them over the stuffing machine.  Here, a manual crank pushed the meat through a small tube (around which the casings were wrapped).

We used about half cow and half pork for the casings.  The pork middles were obviously much smaller; when they were filled they were about the diameter of a bratwurst.  For the larger, beef cased sausages we cut them to a desired length (around 12 inches) and then tied both ends off with square knots.  For the smaller sausages we pinched them into 12 inch segments and then twisted to get a long rope of separate sausage links!

We cleaned up thoroughly and then placed the sausages in the smoker where they would remain for the next two days.  The smoker was lined with cherry wood chips.

Not consuming public school lunches with any degree of regularity, I can honestly say I knew nothing about them before guest speaker Sarah Elliot’s discussion of the issue last Thursday evening.  F.H. King invited Sarah, the director of REAPs Farm to School Program, to speak at our second Get the Dirt dinner of the semester.  Get the Dirt dinners are held in Science Hall and provide students, alums and community members with an opportunity to eat delicious food and learn more about sustainable agriculture, food systems and related subjects.

Sarah began by providing us with a thorough overview of what public school lunches look like in Madison.  The Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) is made up of 49 schools.  And given that the majority of these schools don’t even possess kitchens, all of the food processing for both breakfast and lunch is done at an external processing facility.  Here, things are cooked and baked, but handling whole raw produce is completely avoided through the use of already diced. precooked canned or frozen fruits and vegetables.  If fruits and vegetables are used, they are taken out of a package rather than purchased whole.  Washing, cooking or dicing fresh produce is unseemly.

Meals are built for efficiency.  Food is divided into hot and cold boxes, of which children receive one of each.  For example, if lunch is a hot dog, applesauce and cookies.  The hot dog is placed in a hot box while the applesauce, cookies, bun and ketchup are placed in a cold box.  This way, food service workers can easily heat up hundreds of hot dogs quickly without having to actually put them together.  With only two or three food service workers per school and no kitchen, this certainly seems like the most effective way to get children fed quickly.

Why the need for such urgency?  Most public school cafeterias cannot even hold an entire grade, so lunch is often divided into three or four lunch periods.  The earliest lunch session may be at 10:40 with the final one being at 1:20.  Food service workers need to get 60 or 70 kids fed in 20 minutes so the next lunch period can begin.  But often these make-you-own-style meals are not well understood.  First graders may eat their hot dog, bun and ketchup separately.

When we learned that MMSD food services prepare approximately 18,000 meals per day and are not allowed to exceed $0.95 per meal, the processing facility and lack of kitchens began to make sense.  Within this $0.95 budget, $0.22 is allocated for milk and another $0.11 for packaging.  In the end, public schools only have $0.62 for lunch food!  They are dealing with massive quantities of food every day, and local agriculture (or fresh produce for that matter) just doesn’t have the low-cost or efficient preparation capabilities of processed foods.

This all being said, there are obviously a multitude of barriers for bringing local produce into the school breakfast and lunch programs.  But despite the challenges, REAP has been working for a solution since 2002.  The Farm to School program we learned about has existed since 2010, but grew out of a related project, the Wisconsin Homegrown Lunch Program, which came about in partnership with the University of Wisconsin’s Center for Integrated Agricultural Studies (CIAS).

Currently, and because of the numerous barriers for bringing local food into actual school meals, REAP’s Farm to School Program uses a Chef in the Classroom program (at Sherman Middle School and East High School), Snack Program (at ten Madison elementary schools) and Classroom Education (from AmeriCorps Educators) as their main outlets for change.

The main focus of Sarah’s discussion on Farm to School was the well-known, but rarely well-understood Snack Program. This program is possible through a USDA Fresh Fruit and Veggie Grant that serves ten Madison elementary schools.  This grant enables these ten public schools to purchase raw fruit and vegetable snacks three times per week.  Note: raw fruits and vegetables. This does not include dehydrated, preserved or pickled produce, nor does it include dairy, meat products or grain produced from local farmers, showing obvious challenges throughout the winter months, but this is a very specific stipulation of the grant.

Out of these three snacks per week paid for by the USDA grant, REAP provides only one.  Even though they only provide a third of the snacks, REAP still sources about 700 pounds of produce each week!  This shows not only the magnitude, but also the infrastructure necessary for such a program.  Also because of the fresh produce stipulation, there is a three to ten week gap during the winter months.  REAP provides a lot of carrots, sweet potatoes, kohlrabi, apples and spinach through the winter months, but some gap is inevitable.  They hope to encourage and facilitate a Harvest of the Month program in all of MMSD schools in order to utilize more products such as cheese, yogurt, and wild rice.

REAP AmeriCorps in-class education also occurs at the ten elementary schools participating in the USDA Fresh Fruit and Veggie grant.  Because these are schools that have the highest percentage of kids who receive free or reduced lunches, it is assumed that these children also have the lowest access to fresh produce.  The grant encourages not only access to fresh fruits and veggies, but also education on why kids should care about what they are eating.

So what is it like to be the director of the Farm to School Program?  Sarah works at achieving two simultaneous goals: working to increase the amount of local fresh fruit and veggies to kids while also helping to create viable pathways for local products to be used in institutional settings.  She splits her time between procuring and processing vegetables and implementing these three programs.  But her vision goes beyond these admirable daily tasks.  While doing her day-to-day job, Sarah also “tries to focus on big-picture ways to make systemic changes to our public school meal system. This certainly involves meeting lots of folks and trying to bring people together to make pathways for local food to get into our schools!”

It will no doubt be a slow and gradual process, but with a new food service director, MMSD is growing increasingly receptive to REAP and their methods.  As far as local food goes, Sarah and REAP are certainly moving forward in the Madison public school system!

It was a long and winding road that brought Danna into this world of green spaces and sustainability, but it’s safe to say she has found her place in Madison.  After graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with degrees in Biological Aspects of Conservation and Zoology as well as an Environmental Studies certificate, Danna had trouble finding employment.  Like many of my recently graduated friends, Danna’s classes had thoroughly expanded her mind on ecological issues, but weren’t quite enough to help her obtain the jobs she desired.  Danna found undergraduate degrees in science were rarely enough.  Employers wanted Masters or Doctorate degrees, but she wasn’t ready for these higher educations.

She held temporary positions at the UW Primate Center and Monsanto before finding employment as a chemist for PPD, a pharmaceutical company in Middleton.  Although she wasn’t especially interested in this type of science, it seemed like a step in the right direction.  For 7 years, Danna was (usually) stuck in a room filled with gray crates for 40 hours a week.  The dull, monotone, windowless room was depressing (especially when summer rolled around) and Danna reached a point where she was  always complaining about her job.  She was good at it, but knew it wasn’t making her happy.  Much of the misery had to do with the environment she was working within.  Finally, she realized she had to leave before moving on to the next step: management.  On a dare, she quit her job.

Danna began work at Barrique’s where she found she had time to learn and pursue her interests again.  Always intrigued by public health and the environmental effects of health, she decided to continue her education and become a Nurse’s Assistant.  During her first summer away from PPD, Danna took a “mental vacation” and spent the majority of her summer outdoors.  Although she was shifting her life’s direction and perhaps even taking a step backward (what should have been a stressful time), she somehow felt at ease.  She attributes much of her happiness during the transition period to her time spent outdoors.

Once back involved in campus life, Danna began attending Environmental Studies Club meetings, attending Professor DeWitt’s coffee hours and volunteering for Madison Environmental Group.  She was part of a big pesticide-free campaign on campus and began to notice that environmental and sustainable changes are a very gradual process.  Because there is so much bureaucracy and divergent interests involved, innovative changes need to be handled patiently and persistently.  To many, the appearance of Bascom Hill defines UW-Madison.  If the Grounds Department began to use pesticide-free lawn care, would this iconic hill still look good?  This was one of the many voices surrounding the lawn-care debate.  This struggle is still going on.

The following September, Majora Carter came to campus.  Danna became even more inspired.  Her interest in sustainability efforts within cities broadened and she began to wonder what Madison was doing in this realm.  It turned out they were not doing as much as she’d hoped.

Danna organized the Green Roof Initiative in order to advocate for green rooftops in Madison.  The group brought together roofing companies, landscaping students and native plant exports. Group members and Madison residents can now look to Greening Madison to become educated on green rooftops in the city as well as follow their progress.

Meanwhile, still working at the UW-hospital, Danna began to notice the dreary views outside of her patients windows.  It reminded her of those 7 years spent working  indoors for PPD: little more to look at then drab gray and concrete.  While working with surgical patients, Danna began snapping pictures of the views outside their windows.  The gray and gravel rooftops couldn’t have positive implications for recovery.  With the pictures she’d taken, Danna created a slide show that connected both her interests: Green Roofs and Patient Care.  The slide show discussed the economic and human benefits of green roofing on hospitals.  She explained how vacant space could be used as a place of healing.

She took her slideshow to Health & Healing meetings as well as Facility Planning meetings at the hospital and her superiors listened. The UW-Hospital staff agreed that green roofs would improve patient care.

While still nursing, Danna began to act as a facilitator for these green roof projects, networking, utilizing resources and bringing divergent groups together in conversation.  She brought in UW engineering students to help with planning the infrastructure for her healing gardens (green rooftops require a lot of infrastructure in order to support the weight of the soil, transitioning from a normal rooftop to a green rooftop is no small endeavor).  Landscape architecture students have been recruited more recently to help design the corridor space.  Currently there is one healing garden in place at the UW-Hospital, but two more are in the works including one atop an old helicopter pad.

Danna is the quintessential example of someone taking a normal job, and making it exceptional.  Working as a nurse, she did more than just the required patient care.  She observed the environment that her patients had to live in while recovering and found a way to improve it.  It is clear to me that Danna has never been one to settle in life.  Wherever she looks, she sees ways in which things can be improved and believes in making everything around her a little bit better.

Danna tells me that for a long time now, she has been on a quest to use her abilities and interests.  She hasn’t gotten to where she wants to be yet, but feels like she is certainly headed in the right direction now.

Danna still works as a Nurse’s Assistant at the UW hospital in the Neurology Department while simultaneously taking nursing classes and volunteering her time as a environmental sustainability and greenroof advocate.  Eventually she would love a job “that looks at the  environmental factors that shape health problems.”  Soon she will be beginning graduate studies at UW-Madison.

It is safe to say that plants can heal, and more than just recovering patients, it appears plants can reshape the direction of one’s life.

However, despite the lack of sunset, there appears to be one determined group of people who will not be brought down by the drab weather conditions: this year’s Bike the Barns participants.  Between 8 and 10 am, approximately 530 cyclists headed out to Cambridge, Wisconsin to embark on a 63-mile, 3 meal ride, or a 26-mile, 2 meal ride.

Thought up by Jonny Hunter and Kevin Walsh of UFC, Bike the Barns is a large fundraiser for the Madison Area CSA Coalition’s Partner Share Program (which makes CSA farm shares, and therefore fresh produce, much more affordable to limited-income households).  UFC and MACSAC have co-sponsored the event since its commencement in 2007.  In the ride’s first year, Hunter expected 60 participants; they had 350 sign up.  The event had to be capped in its second year!  Every year since, the ride has sold out.  Registration was full in early August this year!

Bright and early (er, well, cloudy and early), this year’s participants registered and picked up goodie bags (complete with pink t-shirts, designed by Art and Sons, more intimately known as Drew Garza and Scott Pauli) before heading to the park shelter for morning snacks.

Immediately, my friend pulled on her new pink shirt, complete with a bicycle pulling a plow.  Although Garza and Pauli’s design business has been up and running for a little over a year now, they have been doing the t-shirts and promotional material for Bike the Barns for the past three years.  Garza and Pauli got connected with Bike the Barns through Hunter (they have done a lot of work for Hunter and UFC while establishing their artistic identity).  After MACSAC’s executive director and community program manager educated them on MACSAC as well as the whole CSA process, Garza and Pauli began doing work for the event.  It was important to understand the significance of Bike the Barns and the meaning behind it in order to create images that would represent the event well.  This opportunity as well as working with UFC has given the artists an opportunity to be free with their work.  Hunter and MACSAC employees were very receptive to Garza and Pauli’s creativity and design work, allowing them to grow as artists.

The weather at Lake Ripley Park was chilly but everyone cheerfully drank their coffee and munched on delicious yogurt cups prepared by UFC while waiting for their registered start times and hoping for clearer skies.

My registration time was 8:20, so I “had to” leave within the 20 minutes after 8:20.  This was the general request, but with no race bib or official starting line, my race departure relied on me and me alone.  Because riders left as they pleased between 8 and 9am, the ride had an extremely casual feel to it.  There was no need to worry about how fast or slow you biked because you didn’t know when anyone else began and truly, there was no one paying attention to or concerned with your speed.  Riders of the 63-mile ride followed lime green arrows stuck to the road, indicating when to turn, although ride maps were also distributed.  Riders of the 26-mile ride followed yellow arrows that would take them to farm stops 2 and 3.

The first farm stop, High Meadow Farm, was 25 miles from Lake Ripley Park and somehow the rain held off for this largest portion of the ride.  Here cyclists enjoyed croissants from GRAZE, Sassy Cow Creamery chocolate milk as well as watermelon and apples.  Bikers were free to wander the grounds, looking at the farm’s chickens and vegetable crops.  20-minute farm tours were also available.

Back behind the tent where hungry riders grabbed meal number 1, the farm’s moveable chicken pen sat ready for viewing.  During the green seasons, chickens sleep and lay eggs within these portable structures called Chicken Tractors.  The structures are moved weekly for fresh, clean pasture.

Our time at High Meadow Farm was a bit chilly, but the rain still held off… until I pulled out my camera.  From about the moment we got back on our bikes until we arrived at farm stop #2, the rain and wind did not let up.  I, a glasses wearer, cannot tell you  much about the scenery of this 20 mile ride as my glasses were tucked away in my raincoat pocket as I rode blindly down country roads.  One thing I can tell you is that this stretch was extremely hilly and that hills are a lot less daunting when you cannot see them.  I think this was the fastest bike ride of my life.  There is something about cycling through the elements that just makes it a lot more fun.  In the middle of a cycling event, rain is a kind of instant community-builder: we were all out there, we were all struggling, we were all drenched and therefore, we were all immediately friends.  When I put my glasses back on at farm stop #2, everyone was still smiling and to me that is a testament to how well-run and well-loved this event is.  We were dripping and disgusting but absolutely pumped to eat a lunch prepared by the Underground Food Collective, inside of a hoop house full of tomato plants.

This picture was taken during our first few minutes at Stop #2: Wholesome Harvest.  Cyclists were allowed to park our bikes on the front yard (which I feel like we turned into a mud pit, along with the whole driveway, thanks so much Wholesome Harvest!).  Here we enjoyed open face sandwiches of roast beef with tomato, onion, sarvecchio, jus and toast alongside a bean salad with a lemon vinagrette and a wheat berry salad with carrots and beets.  Maybe I was just starving and cold, but given that I’d eaten croissants, chocolate milk and fruit less than two hours previous, I don’t think hunger had nothing to do with how absolutely incredible this meal tasted.  My friends and I chowed down the entire thing in less than ten minutes.

After a twenty minute warm up in the hoop house, we left Wholesome Harvest with much fuller stomachs and hoped this would warm us up.  But I regret to inform you that this is where the pictures stop because my friends and I took the 10 mile ride back to Lake Ripley Park rather than the 18 mile ride that included ice cream sandwiches at Sprouting Acres Farm.  We, unlike the vast majority of riders, were not sufficiently prepared for the weather.  With feet that felt like bricks and legs that were chilled to the bone, we biked back.  My friends were happy with this decision, but after speaking with Hunter, I was pretty disappointed that I missed their ice cream sandwiches made with apricot jam and homemade ice cream using Sassy Cow Creamery milk.

When I told Hunter that I would certainly still eat that ice cream treat on a cold day, he matter-of-factly replied, “Lots of people did.”  A little disappointed that I hadn’t been tough enough to join my fellow crazy Madison bikers in making it to the ice cream sandwiches, in the end, I was thrilled that Bike the Barns had such enthusiastic support.  It seems my friends and I were in the minority when it came to sticking it out through the weather.  According to Andy Watson, a farmer at Sprouting Acres Farm, an amazing number of people kept rolling in throughout the day. Almost 100 people asked for a farm tour at this final stop despite the conditions, and many many more enjoyed the delicious desserts.

By the post-ride party, some riders had put in more than 10 hours on the road, but it was all worth it for pork and beef tacos, fresh tomato and tomattillo salsa with cabbage and carrot slaw.

In the end, out of the 660 participants who signed up ahead of time for the event, only 39 people did not show up for registration, leaving the total at 535 registered riders, 20 bike support folks, 50 volunteers and 12 SAG wagon participants!  And here’s one final impressive number for you: by the end of the day, UFC had prepared over 2000 meals for Bike the Barns.

So where does all this food come from? As Kiera Mulvey, executive director of MACSAC told me, UFC does a great job of  “serving up amazing meals using mostly donated produce (a feat of its own!) and is willing to work in whatever conditions we’re able to come up with.  Incredibly flexible and creative, its always been a joy to see what the menu consists of and how they’ve transformed all the food donated by our amazing farmers into a full day of fresh food for over 550 riders.”  The vast majority of this food comes from MACSAC farms.

Along with the flawless and delicious meals, it was quite apparent that this event has evolved over the years into an amazingly well-supported, well-executed and enormously popular event.  Planning for next year will begin immediately.  Participating groups will get together to assess this year’s successes and figure out what can be done better next year.  “This is our 5th year and I feel that we finally are getting a pretty good idea about what it takes to make it more work,” Hunter tells me.  As a bike participant, this was pretty apparent.

Kiera offered me a little insight into the support staff MACSAC has working on this event.  Willy Street bikes, REI Madison, We Are All Mechanics, Just Coffee and Uphill Grind have all offered tremendous amounts of support over the years.  MACSAC also relies on a volunteer committee of 6 folks (3 staff and 3 volunteers) to do most of the pre event planning, organizing, development and logistics.  There are also 5-two person crews of route markers the day prior to the event, 5 in office volunteers the week prior to the event helping with logistics and prep, and approximately 50 day-of-volunteer slots (although, often folks do multiple shifts, so only about 30 individuals helping the day of).  This year and last, Scott Kremer and Mike Miller, served as dedicated ride support volunteers.  Their goal: reaching out to long term supporters and coordinating their presence, hoping to make involvement larger and more comprehensive.  As Kiera explains, “Willy St. Bikes has always been a huge event supporter, but we’ve arranged with them in the past few years to have more of a day of presence to lend more assistance to riders.  It comes a lot from personal connections between committee members and also from a great track record of a successful event, bike shops are excited to help out because they know this is an awesome community of riders out there not to win races and beat records, but to enjoy our amazing cycling atmosphere, our community of farms, and the great food.”

With great respect for one another’s talents and abilities, this collaboration seems to bring the best out of everybody.  I, for one, am thrilled MACSAC, UFC and partner organizations all came together.