Breaking Berry News: The First Straw
Strawberries make surprise first appearance, plus some big meat home delivery news
It’s the Berries!
The traditional early-season crops (ramps, asparagus, rhubarb, spring onions) arrived pretty much on schedule… so there was rising anticipation for the start of our regional strawberry season.
Nonetheless, having visited two berry-less farmers markets over the weekend, I had no particular reason to think I’d find them on my first-of-the-year visit to Chicago’s Lincoln Square Farmers Market on Tuesday morning.
Yet here we are, courtesy of Noffke Family Farms of Coloma, Michigan. They not only had the first strawberries I’ve seen this year, but had lots of them. A quart of them came home with me, and that first sweet, juicy bite of a perfectly ripe, super-fresh strawberry is one of the year’s true foodgasmic experiences.
There’s more about the market visit below, but first, news from Fresh Picks, one of our region’s pioneering farm-to-home delivery services.
Fresh Picks, based in the Chicago suburb of Niles, was a pioneer in farm-to-home local food delivery when it was founded by the husband-and-wife team of Irv Cernauskas and Shelly Herman in 2006. Meat produced in the region by small livestock farms was always on the product menu.
Now, under the leadership of CEO Benjamin Harrison — who bought the company from the original owners in 2021 — Fresh Picks is taking its meat program in a new direction with a subscription service called Pasture Picks.
I learned about it during an interview with Ben at Oromo Cafe in Lincoln Square, conveniently located right across the street from Tuesday morning’s Lincoln Square Farmers Market, where I scored those first-of-the-year strawberries.
Ben — a Local Food Forum subscriber — describes Pasture Picks as similar in nature to national meat-delivery companies such as Butcher Box, but with major distinctions. “It is quite different in the sense that it is entirely local. It is completely transparent. And it is all directly farm sourced,” Ben said. “In other words, I'm not buying through a third-party producer or butcher. Every piece has the farm’s name on it.”
He continued, “The consumer knows exactly where that piece of meat has come from and who raised it, and it's entirely local from farms in Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin. I'm not sourcing from Australia, or Colorado even.”
The Pasture Picks boxes are designed to include a mix of meats and producers that will rotate monthly for variety and seasonality. Ben said, “There'll be multiple farmers represented in every box and every month will be a new selection of different pieces. So it'll be a nice mix of staples like chuck or ground beef, but then premium cuts as well.”
He stated that Fresh Picks analysis shows its price per pound is less than the leading national meat shipping companies. Ben said this is in part because Fresh Picks delivers locally to homes in the Chicago area, directly from its warehouse and packing facility in Niles — which in turn minimizes its carbon footprint.
“One of the advantages we have is we don't have 25 pounds of dry ice in a box that I'm shipping by FedEx,” he said. “It comes in, we pack it so it stays frozen, but it's delivered that day. So we have a simpler supply chain and a much smaller footprint to go with it.”
After we wrapped up the conversation, Ben (right in the photo above) joined me in crossing the street to the Lincoln Square Farmers Market to chat with vendors and inquire about their interest in doing business with Fresh Picks.
Click the button below to learn more about Fresh Picks’ Pasture Picks and see what’s in this month’s boxes. Local Food Forum will have a follow-up article about Fresh Picks’ broader work and vision.
Now Back to the Lincoln Square Market
Lincoln Square Farmers Market operates on Tuesdays from 7 a.m. to noon and on Thursdays from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. Located at the south end of the Lincoln Square commercial strip, it is a market with a neighborhood feel, with a modest number of vendors and the elbow room to shop at leisure and get on a first-name basis with the folks selling the food.
It is also super-convenient for mass transit riders as it sits just below the Western Brown Line L station, in the background in the photo above.
Along with my mission-driven visit to the Noffke stand for those first-in-season strawberries, I stopped at the stand of Jacobson Family Farms, with whom I have a friendly relationship.
Now, if you’re a frequent Local Food Forum reader, you might recall my early season folly concerning mistaken identity of Jacobson’s root vegetables. First, I bought what I thought were big radishes, then discovered when I got home that they were actually baby chioggia beets. Then, on a subsequent visit, I picked up a bunch of what I thought were hakurei turnips, only to be informed that they were in fact white baby beets.
Having been beeten twice, I was determined not to make the same mistake. I loved those super-sweet chioggia beets, so I picked up another bunch. Then I noticed a box clearly labeled as turnips, and got my hakurei fix (if you don’t already know, hakurei are described as the only turnips that are palatable eaten raw).
Having visited five, count ‘em, five farmers markets last week, I didn’t need much on Tuesday, so here’s a still life of my little haul.