Pizza Farm Adventure

At Farmstead Creamery, we’re always looking for new and fun ways to connect the community with great local foods. Just this week, we’re making our sheep’s milk gelato fresh for the scooping case again. At the café, we’ve started having a lunch option featuring the tilapia we raise in our aquaponics greenhouse. And this summer we’ll be offering Pizza Farm Nights!

Across the country, coming out to the farm for savory, wood-fired pizzas made with ingredients grown or produced right there is catching on. Some places go picnic-style, while others host the event in their barns. On our farm, we’re hosting at the Creamery, with fun outdoor seating amongst our flower beds, bird feeders, and celebrity chickens. If it’s rainy or the bugs are too much for you, there is always the refuge inside, with seating downstairs or in the loft. With our new wine and beer license, smoky-flavored pizzas, and homemade gelato, who wouldn’t want to come on down to the farm on Thursdays and Saturdays from 5 to 8 pm? Come on Saturdays, and you can catch the farm tour at 6:00!

Finding the right type of oven was a crucial part of the story. Folks with masonry experience could make their own, but between food safety regulations and knowing that you can’t do everything all the time, we went in search of the right oven package for our project. There are plenty of commercial models on the market, but we continually strive to support local artisans and settled on a fully-complete molded concrete dome with brick floor and weather-resistant outer coating made by a cement craftsman from northern Minnesota. This oven was originally Chad’s exemplary 36-inch model (the measurement denotes the diameter of the cooking floor), used to show his handmade product to prospective retailers.

But weighing all of ?? pounds, crated and ready to go, this was going to take a delivery by semi (no throwing it in the back of our pickup truck), in January! Now, as you know from two stories ago, we do have a habit of ordering strange things in the mail. But the greenhouses, small farm equipment, and aquaponics supplies that have necessitated a freight delivery have given us quite the reputation amongst the area delivery providers. UPS, Speedy, and FedEx have a well-beaten path, but there’s almost always a hiccup when the project requires a semi-truck.

“You want me to drive that where?” is an exemplary response to the thought of a dead-end gravel road and either a tight parking lot or a hay field to turn about in. On occasion, we’ve even paid extra to make sure the delivery came with a lift gate…to no avail. And then there’s the fun little game of it’s coming today…nope tomorrow…how about Friday at 1:00? Lunch rush delivery, what?

We knew that this project would need our contractor Jon, who cleared a snowpath into the creamery yard for temporary placement until we could landscape appropriately in the spring. With a rented skid-steer equipped with a forklift-style bucket, we were ready to unload the precious cargo. But do you suppose we were met with a happy-camper truck driver? Nope. The delivery details were a veritable nightmare, with shuffling the load and threatening not to come down our lane! No, sorry, our farm doesn’t come equipped with a loading dock. We’ll just have to work with what we’ve got. Grumble, grumble, grumble…but we got ‘er done.

Now, you know, and I know, that most folks like the idea of a wood-fired pizza-on-the-farm experience. But when you’re a licensed and inspected Retail Food Establishment under the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection, you can’t go waltzing off by yourself and put in a pizza oven. Product specs must be sent to appropriate heads of department, along with floor plans, flow charts, and Best Practices outlines. There’s endless phone calls, emails, tweaking, and nitpicking.

Originally, we had hoped to tuck the oven near our north roof, using a canopy to protect the outdoor pizza prep space. But after this last winter and watching the three-feet-thick slabs of ice and snow come crashing down on the very spot our precious new oven was designed to rest…it was time to rethink our painstakingly approved plan. Between the snowload issue and our growing concerns over fire hazard and spark safety, we re-approached our inspectors with yet another set of plans to install the oven with its own personal structure about 10 feet away from the edge of the Creamery.

“Can’t you get it closer?” they asked. “And will you have a hand sink there?” More rounds of negotiation, and finally we had a green light to install the heavy beast. It’s still a process, so bear with us as we make do with a canopy until Jon can finish our official “Pizza Barn.” Of course, it’s a pizza barn on the pizza farm!

To celebrate the nearing of our debut Pizza Farm Night (Memorial Saturday), we invited a handful of friends over for a trial firing on a lovely Sunday evening. All afternoon, we chopped peppers, grated cheese, and planned a few fun pizza flavor ideas to try on our volunteer Guinea pigs. What, you’re asking me to come over and try some homemade pizza? Aww…bummer indeed.

Everyone stood in a ring around the working side of the oven (at a safe, spectator sport distance), while Kara shifted the flame-licking fire that had heated the interior to 900 degrees. In went the trial disk of dough to clean the ashes, but it didn’t last long, sprinkled with a little grated cheese and still finger-burning hot. The ensuing variety of pizzas also vanished as eager hands and laughing conversation introduced the cadre of attendants who had never actually met each other to good company and fun flavors. Everyone left satisfied and quite certain they’d be back for at least one of our official Pizza Farm Nights.

Now we’re chopping peppers and grating cheese again, preparing for the debut night. The signs are prepared, the posters are out, and the world of social media has been notified. Will you join us on this new culinary adventure? We’ll be stoking up the oven, popping out fresh, hot, smoky pizzas, and hoping that we’ll see you down on the farm sometime.