Frontera Grill

By Kris and Marty Travis of Spence Farm

Note: Marty and Kris Travis of Spence Farm are some of the most incredible people out there. They are great friends of the restaurant, true educators and innovators of sustainable agriculture, and wonderfully talented stewards who grow amazing and unique varieties of vegetables near Fairbury, Illinois.

Iroquois White Corn was initially grown by the Iroquois Tribe in New York State. The Iroquois Nation was supplying this corn meal to restaurants, including some that we work with in Chicago. Two years ago, Rick Bayless’s Frontera Grill restaurant in Chicago asked us if we could grow this corn as they were unable to obtain the corn meal anymore from the tribe.
We called all over the United States hunting for seed to no avail. Marty spent days on the internet contacting companies and even talking to researchers of corn at major universities. He found the corn was listed on the Slow Food Ark of Taste, which lists the best tasting heirloom foods. We expected to be able to find seed at a number of places because of this listing. But, we couldn’t find it in the United States. Eventually, we found seed through a Canadian company and we ordered one and a half pounds at $50 per pound…expensive seed. We grew eight rows of corn in 2007.
From eight rows we were able to save nine pounds of the very best seed for planting the next year. We roasted the rest over an oak flame and milled 63 pounds. The chef at Frontera, Brian Enyart, was amazed that we grew it for them, not expecting it for another few years.
In 2008, we applied and received a grant from the Frontera Farmer Foundation that would help us purchase more seed and the equipment we would need to grow and produce this rare corn and corn meal. The Frontera Farmer Foundation is a not-for-profit organization supplying grants to small farmers to assist them in ventures that will make their farms more profitable and more sustainable.
When we called the company in Canada to purchase another six pounds of seed, we were informed that they only had five pounds that they could sell us. And, we were unable to find it anywhere else. It had become, in one year, even more rare and valuable. Now we were on a mission to save this corn from extinction.
We purchased the five pounds and planted all that we had, keeping one pound for emergency back-up. Just over an acre was grown. We had a few trials with equipment malfunctions, wind and hail pushing the corn over, and not enough hands to harvest. But, we grew the one acre of corn and had it harvested by the middle of November. The corn was hand shucked, roasted over oak flame, shelled with an old hand crank sheller, and milled with our new commercial grain mill. We were able to produce over 1,000 pounds from this year’s harvest.
It is our goal to continue to grow this rare corn. We were able to save over 50 pounds for seed for the 2009 crop. It must be planted at a specific time so it doesn’t cross with the other corns in the area and special care is taken with the soils in order to grow it organically (non-certified). We plan to test the taste of the finished roasted meal by grilling it over different kinds of woods. And we plan to have some seed available for the seed banks so it will be kept safe from extinction.
Why save this corn? We think that many heirloom varieties taste better than the other commercially engineered varieties. This corn has a distinctive flavor that is sought after and Slow Food USA recognized that. Another reason for saving this corn is that we believe diversity is a good thing. Plant diversity, saving that diversity with heirlooms, means we can continue to battle the diseases and insects in a safe way.
And lastly, this corn is part of the history of our people and our nation. If we get rid of the past, then who are we? Foods that are heirloom foods help us remember the past, the mistakes made, the good things learned, and how to live a better life now. Bringing the past into the present in order to have a better future is what our farm is all about.
We hope you enjoy this special and rare corn meal. We really enjoy the whole process of growing, harvesting, and milling it. It is a wonderful connection to the past and a wonderful connection between our farm and you.

I'm sure many of you read the big piece in last Sunday's New York Times business section "Is a Food Revolution Now in Season", a piece which encapsulates both the history of America's "Good Food" movement and hope many of us feel that aspects of the American food supply might just change under the Obama administration. While I fully understand the need to overhaul our nation's relationship to agribusiness and processed food, I understand just as deeply--perhaps even more viscerally--the need for thriving local agricultural communities. After all, I have worked over the last 22 years of Frontera's existance to develop a network of local farmers to bring high-quality, distinctive ingredients into our restaurants. Not just because they make our menus distinctive and attractive, but because they offer our guests a taste of what's really fresh, a taste of what our local, seasonal bounty has to offer. And why is that important? Because those ingredients connect us viscerally to our immediate environment. Which keeps us in sync with the world we live in. Which reinforces our role as part of balanced ecological system. Which informs the countless decisions we make every day--from whether to buy that next Starbucks brew, whether to choose the wild-caught Alaskan halibut or Chilean sea bass, whether the farmers market vegetables with the hail-induced blemishes are as good as the beautiful ones from South America.

Not to mention the fact that locally cultivated food creates community. It adds vigor to the farming communities themselves by filling them with human-scale farms run by farm families that are intimately in tune with their land, those who till it and those who live around it. It brings city communities together around farmers market stalls, sharing enthusiasm for full-ripened fruits and vegetables, sharing recipes and ideas in a way that's almost been lost in modern society. It brings chefs together through a web of farmers, comparing ideas and techniques for ingredients many of us have never seen.

A strong local food supply, when you think about it, can provide some of the much needed social glue that we seem to lack in today's culture.

That's why we created the Frontera Farmer Foundation to provide capital improvement grants to midwestern farm families, hoping that a small influx of capital will make them more productive and profitable. After having invested over $600,000 with local farm families over the last few years, the mission of the Frontera Farmer Foundation seems to be paying off. No, we're not in Washington lobbying for Farm Bill reform or dreaming up new legislation. We're here in Chicago, doing what we can to create both a market and a supply for local food.
-RB