forage dine at home dinner
available for pick up thursday to saturday, limited number available – first come, first served. give us a call or send an email to order.
burgundy beef – sunworks farm organic beef chuck braised with red wine and herbs served with reduced braising liquid
comté potato pavé – this slices of lund’s russets layered with comté cheese and cream
butternut squash purée
green beans with walnut butter – broxburn green beans
$32 per dinner
supporting small farms
It’s really been a brutal year for Gert Lund of Lund’s Organic Farm. Gert has 60 acres of over twenty-year-old certified organic farmland on the North side of Innisfail. We get potatoes, carrots, cabbage, chard, kale, beets, spinach, and lettuces from him. Last year was close to a record harvest but with a very long fall things started to go awry. Due to the warm weather the harvest was particularly late which meant that much of the harvesting had to be done by hand. The machine that he normally uses wasn’t able to grab the tops of the carrots because they had died off. Gert tells me they harvested 70,000 pounds of carrots by hand! There were signs of more trouble when much of his root vegetable crops started to rot in storage before Christmas. Normally he can store carrots into May and June extending his Farmer’s Market sales and recouping the costs of the previous year. By the middle of February all his carrots in storage were rotten and he has since found that much of his beets that normally keep well were rotten too.
This means Gert must have a serious conversation with his accountant and make some very hard decisions. I’m sure if he sold his farm it would be stripped of his 2 feet of organic top soil and turned into a subdivision overnight and this would be an incredible shame! We really need to look at better ways of sharing the risk and supporting the small farms that feed us Albertans good, clean, and fair food. We need to find better ways to help people like Gert Lund be the incredible stewards of the land that they are while ensuring better food security for us.
We will be using Gert’s organic russet potatoes for the next couple months since he is out of red potatoes. Look for more roasted potato wedges and baked potatoes on the menu. It looks like his supply of rutabaga and parsnips are holding up OK too. This helps us to keep on making regular purchases from Gert and hopefully he’ll plant a new year of crops this spring.
Here are the daily specials for the week of march 13th:
monday – beef macaroni casserole
sunworks farm organic beef, macaroni, tomatoes, green peppers, cabbage, cheddar cheese $10 green salad $5
tuesday – chicken cacciatore
sunworks farm organic chicken simmered with wine, herbs, and mushrooms served with creamy polenta, garlic broccoli, rapini, and kale $18
wednesday – vegetable pot pie
peas, carrots, beans, peppers, spinach, chard, squash, parsnip $10 green salad $5 grilled chicken skewer (2 oz.) $5
thursday – greek pork patty
broek pork acres berkshire pork patty with greek herbs and spices served with roasted potato wedges, greek salad, tzatziki, and flatbread $16
friday – roast organic chicken
sunworks farm organic chicken served with buttermilk mashed potatoes and our famous gravy $50 whole $30 half $16 quarter
roasted root vegetables add on $15 whole $10 half $6 quarter
saturday – ham & swiss quiche
polcan ham, swiss, sunworks eggs, cream, butter pastry $11 green salad $6
warm sticky cinnamon roll $3.75
this week’s salad – baked potato salad $7
this week’s side – italian vegetable pasta salad $7
this week’s soup – chicken mulligatawny soup $8
something extra – turkey white bean chili $9
something sweet – raspberry vanilla cake $7
bread – available wednesday – forage sourdough $7
forage dine at home dinner (thu-sat) – burgundy beef