Farmers, consumers connect at Family Farmed Expo

• Reprints

Mark Schneider of Living Water Farms (right) shows lettuces to City Provisions owner and chef Cleetus Friedman at the Family Farmed Expo. (Courtesy Christina Noel Photography)

Expo details

The Family Farmed Expo is open to the public.

Tickets ($10-$225) for all three days or for specific days and events such as Localicious and the Good Food Festival can be purchased at the door or online at familyfarmedexpo.com. Call (708) 763-9920 for more details.

Article Extras

Updated: June 14, 2011 6:17AM

Dietzler Farms’ Wisconsin-bred beef is on the menu at many of Chicago’s top restaurants.

Starting this week, it will be sold in a jar, flavoring an heirloom tomato sauce that’s much more delicate and savory than the thick, corn syrup-laden ones common on store shelves.

The sauce is a collaboration between Michelle Dietzler, who runs her family’s farm; Kevin Lucey, who grows tomatoes and other vegetables on his Happy Valley Farm in Black Earth, Wis., and Lee Greene, owner of the Scrumptious Pantry, a Chicago-based artisanal foods company.

Greene will be selling the sauce at the Family Farmed Expo, starting tomorrow and running through Saturday at the UIC Forum.

The event — part-food fest, part-trade show, part-educational conference — is built on making these connections between farmers, producers, trade buyers and consumers.

Now in its sixth year, the expo is about to get bigger. Last week, founder Jim Slama was in Santa Monica, Calif., laying the groundwork for a similar expo there to be held in September (and likely over five days, not three).

Last year, the Chicago expo drew about 4,000 attendees. This year, the 170 speakers include Assistant U.S. Surgeon General Dr. James Galloway and U.S. Department of Agriculture Deputy Undersecretary Ann Wright.

The food fest portion might be enough to attract those with only the slightest locavore leanings: a Friday night “Localicious” party with tastings from more than 25 area restaurants, wineries, brewers and distillers, and cooking demonstrations on Saturday that will pair farmers with notable Chicago chefs, Stephanie Izard, Bill Kim and Dale Levitski among them.

For those who, as Slama says, want to “dig deep,” there are workshops on Friday and Saturday on such topics as experimental school food programs, large-scale sustainable meat production, cheesemaking at home and backyard chicken coops.

The financing portion of the expo — a day of workshops and networking between farmers, food processors and investors — is of least interest to regular Joes who just want to eat, but might have the biggest impact of all.

After last year’s expo, investors led by Open­Table.com founder Chuck Templeton formed a group to help fund sustainable food startups. The group, called SloFIG, held a business plan competition; the two winners will present their plans at the expo and will get mentoring and technical support from SLoFIG.

“This year, the money is showing up,” Slama says.

Greene, a newcomer to last year’s expo, started her company a year ago with foods made in Italy by small farmers, with the goal of adding products from Midwest farmers.

She approached Dietzler with her idea for a jarred sauce, and developed a recipe based not on Italian bolognese but on beef stew from 19th-century American cookbooks. A processor who was canning dilly beans for Lucey and had heard about Greene introduced the two.

Greene also has bottled a cranberry ketchup made with Lucey’s tomatoes and berries from Fine Vine Organics, another Wisconsin farm. The sauces were processed just in the last two weeks.

There are 2,000 jars in this test batch of tomato meat sauce being released at the expo. A 16-ounce jar will sell for $10.

“We’ve only done raw meat. That’s the only thing I’ve ever sold,” Dietzler says. “This gives me an opportunity as a farmer to develop something different and a little more convenient for the consumer.”