Werp Farms -- year-round growing in indoor facilities. / Beth Price
Werp Farm in Buckley has found a way to provide what farm-to-table restaurants sometimes lack--year-round, fresh food and ingredients so they can keep up their committments to local sourcing.
Ann Arbor's Grange Kitchen & Bar would close its doors right after each short growing season if it were not for Werp Farm in Buckley.
Why? Its chef and co-owner Brandon Johns says it's because they won't serve food that isn't local and fresh.
"We're super-committed to local sourcing for everything – meats, dairies, veggies, seafood," he says. "Cheeses, wines and Michigan beers, too. We serve fresh, clean foods that come from people we know and respect."
All year long? In the Midwest? Sounds impossible.
Enter Mike and Tina Werp, who operate the certified organic and chemical-free Werp Farm. While frigid winds howl, they tend and harvest micro greens--and much more custom-grown produce--in wood-heated commercial greenhouses. Their tender greens stay planted in the soil until the orders arrive. The Werps carefully hand-harvest each with scissors no more than one day before delivering to the many eateries who cook with their fresh fare. Besides Grange, that includes Mission Table in Traverse City, and Perennial Virant and Browntrout in Chicago.
How's that for bringing garden-crisp local produce to the table during winter's dead cold?
So, while offering such fresh local fare while the snow falls could present a significant hurdle for Johns and other restaurateurs, Werp Farm helps break down that barrier by supplying him with ingredients that many others cannot.
Baby vegetables, lettuces, tomatoes, edible flowers, herbs and more are among their crops--crops that enable Johns to stay true to his mission of serving the best of the farm's bounty at the peak of fresh flavor, all year long.
"I use Werp all winter. Some local suppliers do grow in hoop houses, but they're not heated; no one around produces nearly as much as they do," Johns said.
He buys Werp-grown baby arugula, Swiss chard, kale, mustard and turnip greens, carrots, turnips, beets, leeks, and sunchokes to use in dishes on Grange Kitchen & Bar's ever-changing menu. The freshly snipped herbs, including tarragon, chervil, cilantro, and chives, are mainstays on his upscale dinner menu--and even in desserts.
"Our pastry chef uses their lemon verbena, sorrel and mint," Johns says. "Because they use heat in the greenhouses, nobody grows as many things as Mike and Tina Werp can."
Diners ask Johns how he finds the fresh radishes, carrots, and lettuces they enjoy at Grange Kitchen & Bar during the Michigan produce off-season.
"Werp Farm really does allow us to stay open during the winter," Johns said, reinforcing his belief that sustainably raised, locally grown products are the basis for great meals. They are the only reason he can serve appetizers like his spicy fried chickpeas, a salad of poached pears, with fresh lettuces and fresh goat cheese--or the popular marinated roasted beet and toasted almond salad.
Werp Farm, according to Johns, helps facilitates his promise to stay with local, familiar sources--a practice in sustainability that is good not only for his dishes, but for the community.
"The food that's grown close to you is the best food and it's grown by friends. That's our whole philosophy here."
Kelle Barr is a Portage-based freelance reporter who can be reached at Kellebarr@gmail.com
Photo: Werp Farms -- year-round growing in indoor facilities. / Beth Price
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