By Norm Wheeler

Sun editor

What is the perfect finish to an ideal summer day? What dwelling could you possibly enter after baking all afternoon on a secret beach where the sugar sand and the sweet water have drawn every knot of stress and worry from your languid body? Where can you find the ideal balance between light and darkness, between laughter and silence, between refreshing wine and delicious food? My friends, C’est facile!

La Becasse in Burdickville is that place; the little white house on the corner with the blue trim. When you push through the thick plum curtain into the French country house you have the sensation that you are entering a magical place right out of the Scheherazade, and it will take you one thousand and one nights to taste its delights. The bright walls are adorned with lithographs of woodcocks (la becasse is “woodcock” in French) and dappled Greg Sobran paintings that only enhance the sweetness of the space. You could be in a fold in the mountains on the way to St. Paul de Vence or Aix-en-Provence.

Patty greets us, and she has been the same cheerful, warm, and knowledgeable server here, both summer and winter, for 17 years. My wife Mimi, the artisan queen of Grocer’s Daughter Chocolate in Empire, picks out a table for the two of us, and as the late afternoon sun lemons the curtains and the maple shade spreads, we settle in for another dining adventure. There is a welcome little bowl of olives with herb de Provence, the flavors of which get you trying to remember your broken French. We choose a 2008 Sauvignon White Bordeaux from Prince de Tabourg for this evening, and its light citrus notes bring crisp closure to a hot day. Let the evening begin. With the wine comes a snack of tiny round toasts bearing a blue cheese/cream cheese spread with a bacon apricot glaze and scallions – each is a perfect mouthful that welcomes the wine and gets the juices flowing. Tres jolie!

The selection of appetizers is so tantalizing that choosing is tough. There are duck pate, seared scallops, escargot, artisanal cheeses, or French gravlax with aquavit (my usual favorite), but the specials tonight are even more alluring. Onion pie? Crab cake? No, we guiltily go for the frog legs (our pond is full of big healthy croakers) and the pork rillettes. With the cracker-and-bread basket come the two lovely plates, and we are not disappointed. The pork rillettes arrive adorned with tiny pickles, blueberries and mission figs next to a hillock of Dijon mustard. The naughty, fatty pork is warm and earthy — you smell the woods where the truffle hunting pigs of France root and nose through rotting leaves, you hear their snorts and see their steaming, foetid breath. These flavors transport you to another continent. Fresh from Lake Okeechobee, Mimi’s sautéed frog legs are even more astonishing. Served on a bed of spring lettuce with onion and tomato, the curry-chili-tandori herb seasoning sensationally compliments the tender, juicy delicacy of the butter-fried frog legs. The spices contrast in a perfectly balanced way, and you realize that this is exactly what Robespierre ate with his fingers secretly in his quarters late at night, the way Americans today wolf hot wings in sports bars! These are perfect appetizers.

Now the glow of excellent wine and food settles over us with the honeyed evening light, and we recall a recent conversation with dear friends: what’s the difference between a $50 bottle of wine and a $400 Chateau Mouton Rothschild? Or the experience of gnashing down an ordinary chocolate as compared to letting one of Mimi’s Mayan chocolate truffles melt slowly on your tongue? Surely it is in the complexity, the way the multitude of flavors reveal themselves in gradual epiphanies as your taste buds tease out the richness, the variety, and the balance of properly prepared food like you find at La Becasse. For Guillaume and Brooke Hazeal-Massieux, every plate, every meal, every evening is a work of art, This is why there is slow food, and this is why the finest restaurants require reservations and chefs are celebrities. Everything here is deliberately crafted with a highly refined sense of composition, presentation, and balance.

For our main course we have perused the menu that includes Lake Michigan whitefish, pan-seared breast of duck with a duck leg confit, sautéed veal noisettes, grilled lamb rack, grilled hanger steak with truffle sauce, or morel mushroom risotto served in roasted acorn squash. But the specials change every day or two, and we are drawn back to the blackboard from which we chose our excellent appetizers. Mimi goes with the Snapper from Florida, and I can’t resist the Tazmanian Salmon. After fresh, buttery Bibb salads, both entrees arrive elegantly presented, and before we trade to taste each other’s choice, Mimi exclaims simply, “This meal is really outstanding!” Both kinds of fish are served with red and mashed potatoes, broccoli and cauliflower florettes, green beans, pea pods, and tender slices of zucchini and squash. My salmon has a lively, rich fennel smell, and the melt-in-your-mouth fish is expertly highlighted with a savory, sassy, complex “hage” sauce. It tastes so incredible that it’s hard to find a language to capture its beautiful texture and flavor. Mimi’s snapper is firmer, bolder, a muscular fish that lets you chew into the amazing flavors.

Suddenly you are poling a flat-bottomed skiff through the mangroves in the ten thousand islands of southwestern Florida (where the murder of Mr. Watson is chronicled so brilliantly in Peter Matthiessen’s trilogy) and you smell the Seminole swamps, the mounds of tiny shellfish, the Spanish moss, and you hear an anhinga squawk over your left shoulder. This snapper has a subtler roasted bell pepper “coulis” sauce, and you begin to discern a formula at work here: the bolder fish gets the subtler sauce, while the subtler fish gets the bolder sauce. That Guillaume is a master!

As we wait for dessert, Guillaume comes out for a chat. He shows us the back of the menu where all of the local food producer’s excellent wares are summarized. Most of the produce, eggs, tea and coffee, and some of the meat, cheese and wine comes from our own back yard in northwestern Michigan. La Becasse is having a very busy summer, he says as he sits for a moment. Brook and Guillaume’s oldest daughter Margot just had her missing-two-front-teeth grin pictured in the Leelanau Enterprise, and the affable Guillaume laughs that from now on his local fame will probably come from being Margot’s father, and not from anything he does himself.

The dessert of a Tarte Tatin is as exceptional as everything else has been. It is a carmelized apple turnover served warm with a chestnut crème fraiche. Again the flavors are pure and flawlessly blended, requiring your taste buds to stretch, wait, sigh, and sing. C’est parfait!

La Becasse is open six nights a week (closed Mondays). For reservations call (231) 334-3944 or visit www.restaurantlabecasse.com.

By Pat Stinson

Sun contributor

It’s barely June, and the sweet red pepper plants (“Carmen” variety) carefully tended by Matt and Carissa Visser in their Isadore Farm greenhouse north of Cedar are 18 inches tall, thick with blossoms, and ready for sale to gardeners digging in the fresh, spring earth.

While others may plant a vegetable garden to feed their households or raise flowers to brighten their yards and scent their rooms, the Vissers have another mission in mind.

On approximately one-and-a-half acres (so far) of their 12 1/2 acre certified organic farm, the couple is growing healthy food and a building a new life within the local food community.

“We really love food and going to farmers’ markets,” Matt says, explaining some of their reasons for choosing a farming lifestyle. He added that they also “sensed a national shift” or growing awareness among the general public of foods and food safety.

In spring and early summer, they offer greens such as kale and arugula and herbs, including cilantro, to local food markets. They also sell specialty crops they love — like broccoli raab (a.k.a. rabe or rapini), treviso (a mildly bitter Italian lettuce and type of radicchio), and green garlic (regular garlic harvested early for its onion-like bulb and edible, pungent leaves) — at local farmers’ markets. Lesser-known but no less flavorful foods will also be sold to area restaurants, whose chefs have already placed orders for delicacies like salsify (pronounced “sal-si-fee,” a.k.a. “oyster plant”) used in French cooking.

This year, the pair will have planted 74 common and specialty vegetable varieties (including 12 of tomatoes, 15 of garlic), herbs and flowers as part of a plan to see what grows and also sells. (A complete list is available on their web site, www.isadorefarm.com) By working for a year at the successful Meadowlark and Sweeter Song farms, Carissa has learned what the soil in this climate can yield, with luck and the right ingredients.

Moving laterally along the 45th

The Michigan natives, (she’s from Grand Rapids, he’s from Lowell to the east of Grand Rapids), received their bachelor degrees from the University of Oregon and made their home for several years in Eugene, located at the southernmost region of the Willamette Valley. There, they fell in love with the food community and way of life, and enjoyed growing their own food in a “huge garden” that satisfied their then-vegetarian diet.

The Valley is known as the state’s agricultural heart and wine-growing region, and the two immersed themselves in the region’s considerable foodie culture. Carissa, a goldsmith, took a class in urban farming and worked at Sundance Natural Foods, where she developed an appreciation for great, local produce and local food security, and learned even more at annual conferences hosted by the Provender Alliance (and educational outreach and networking nonprofit for natural foods’ stores). Matt, a mycologist and self-employed indoor air-quality consultant, had grown up helping his parents with their roadside stand and was the grandson of farmers who worked the land in Iowa and Minnesota before retiring to Michigan.

Their idea to return to Michigan sprang from a desire to be near family. And, as Matt explains, “In Michigan we felt ahead of the curve, that we were getting in on a local trend. In Oregon, I felt like we were a decade too late.” Or, as Carissa puts it, “There was a saturation (of organic farmers).” They sensed that Traverse City was the only place in Michigan with the Valley’s vision of food and a similar food community.

Establishing connections

Matt and Carissa’s inspiration to become organic farmers developed from several sources. Among them were (and are) the books and teachings of Steve Solomon, founder of the Territorial Seed Company and one of the organizers of the nonprofit organic certification and educational organization called Oregon Tilth. Matt says Solomon has greatly influenced how they think about things. (For more information about the entrepreneur-gardener, visit www.soilandhealth.org.) Both say that as newcomers to the area with a new farm, they needed to build trust and establish relationships with customers, including commercial accounts, and that certifying their organic farm would give strangers a level of confidence in their food. As their web site states: “It’s your assurance that we are serious about taking care of both your health and the health of our environment.”

Isadore Farm on Gatzke Road continues farming traditions on a portion of land previously owned by the Miller family, (Mrs. Miller still lives next store and relatives own property nearby). The Millers moved to Isadore from Germany in the 1940s and grew potatoes, green beans and cucumbers before raising cattle in the ’80s. The Vissers named their farm for the community at Gatzke and Schomberg roads, then discovered the happy coincidence that St. Isidore is the patron saint of farming.

Last year, Carissa and her mother farmed, (Carissa’s mom is responsible for the beautiful flowers they sell), while Matt and the dads built the couple’s one-and-a-half story, energy-efficient home at the base of a steep hill with a summit view of Sugar Loaf mountain and the surrounding countryside. Matt and friends also tackled the challenge of reconstructing a used greenhouse purchased without assembly instructions. Family and farmer friends — such as Reed Johnston of Second Spring Farm (on Hoxie Road near Bugai) with whom they share equipment, time and help — have kept them going when there was barely enough time for swimming, one of their favorite warm-weather activities.

In summer, the two say they’re in the field by 6:30 a.m. and stop working at sunset.

So when do they rest? Last winter found them “mostly sleeping.” During what Carissa calls their “hibernation,” they planned seed orders, reapplied for organic certification, worked on “infrastructure” (planning/digging a root cellar and making spinners for drying lettuce), and also found time to visit family on weekends and to cross-country ski.

As the 2010 market season begins, Carissa says: “The whole thing’s a leap of faith. It’s been encouraging so far.” As for their goal of being self-employed and developing a sustainable lifestyle, Matt, who still does consulting work, says: “We definitely won’t be rich, but we’ll be well fed.”

The Vissers can be found at farmers markets in Glen Arbor, Suttons Bay and Traverse City. Select produce is also carried by Oryana Natural Foods and Wellington Street Market in Traverse City.

By Forest Olson

Sun contributor

For many area businesses, July and August are the year’s busiest months, and the weeks leading up to that period are merely preparation for the coming tourist rush. Not so at Greystone Gardens, located on Manning Road, off M-22 south of Empire.

For owners Tom Brodhagen and Kate Presnell, owning a greenhouse is a year-round job, and one that peaks in May. “Personal and family life are put on hold from February through the end of May, when we are tied down to our greenhouses,” says Kate.

Even during the winter they are busy ordering plants and preparing Greystone Gardens for the coming spring. The payoff from their hard work is a full spectrum of annuals, perennials and hanging baskets that are waiting to be purchased and planted in your garden.

Tom is a third-generation agriculturist who learned the business from his late grandfather Ken Morris, who owned West Winds Orchards and Nursery. “Grandpa got both my uncle and myself into growing plants. We wouldn’t have known what to do without him,” he explains, added that his grandparents had a big influence on his life.

Tom fondly remembers summers during his childhood when he helped his grandparents sell corn at the West Wind farm. He recalls days when “cars were lined up down M-22 waiting for sweet corn, 10 ears to a bag.”

Kate adds that, at the time West Winds was featured in AAA Magazine as having the “best sweet corn”. Tom’s grandmother Lucille Morris also attracted folks to her fruit stand, where she sold jams and cookies. “She made these famous sugar cookies. They were spice-filled molasses cookies that made people drive for miles,” Kate remembers.

But Lucille’s love of flowers was the spark that started the family’s plant nursery, which the Morris couple ran until their late 80s. The National Park Service eventually gained control over the part of the Morris farm that was once West Winds — and included it in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.

“My grandparents were getting older, and the Park taking over was a relief in many ways,” remembers Tom, who laughs when he recalls his grandfather’s first encounter with the Park.

“I was visiting my grandparents when (Park employees) first came in. They were surveying on the back of the farm. Grandpa ran for his double-barreled, 10-gauge (shotgun), hopped in his pickup truck and ran them off his land from behind the barrel!” (Tom emphasizes that he’s grateful the Lakeshore was established in order preserve the pristine land to his west.)

Tom and Kate remember Ken Morris as having a good sense of humor, being independent, resourceful, and an original “do-it-yourselfer”. He must have loved the color “burnt yellow,” because if he had a farm building to paint, that was the color he always chose. Tom summarizes, “anything my grandpa did … he did his own way.”

Today, at Greystone Gardens, the couple often uses some of the benches passed down from Tom’s grandfather. They agree that owning a nursery and growing plants has taught them valuable life lessons. “The biggest lesson we’ve learned is patience,” says Kate. “There is no such thing as an instant garden.”

“Some plants take one-three years to be fully grown,” adds Tom.

Patience is a difficult lesson to learn in our “fast-fix … do-it-yourself” modern culture, but taking the time to prepare your soil and waiting until the risk of spring frost is over will greatly improve the health of your plants.

Tom encourages local residents to skip the topsoil and focus on compost. Topsoil contains 50 percent sand, and most of the soil in our region is nutrient-poor sand, he explains. Tom and Kate can also offer advice for what to grow in the shade and what plants will repel a fearless local deer population. Coleus, Inpatients, Begonias and Bug Bane are among the plants that are tolerant of shade.

Most odorous plants repel deer — our area’s worst enemy to plants. Kate encourages customers to place an odor-producing plant such as lavender next to a plant, such as hostas, which attracts deer.

Greystone Gardens is an avid supporter of the Leelanau Nature Conservancy. On the customer level, what sets this business apart from other nurseries, according to Tom and Kate, is the care and knowledge they put into growing the best plants available.

Greystone Gardens is located at 9875 Manning Rd. off M-22 south of Empire, and open Monday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and 11-4 on Sunday. Call the nursery at (231) 326-5855.

By F. Josephine Arrowood
Sun contributor

Micro-distiller Rifino Valentine is going against the grain with his one-batch-at-a-time Valentine Vodka, which he launched in 2009. Searching for a high quality alternative to mass-produced spirits, he envisioned the ideal formula that would let him use local, sustainable resources, control the entire distilling process, and provide discerning drinkers with an artisan-made alternative to so-so products made by “faceless corporations.”

“In college, I used to brew my own beer. I ended up working on Wall Street for 13 years. One day, I had one of those moments: I could apply the same handcrafted techniques to spirits. Maybe it was the Manhattan influence,” Rifino laughs. “I wanted to make the best damn martini ever.”

With this spirited enterprise during challenging economic times, the entrepreneur carries on his Leelanau family’s tradition of can-do resourcefulness. His dad Nello grew up in Chicago, while his mom, Margaret Patchin, originally hailed from Detroit’s northern suburb of Berkley. The two met at Western Michigan University, and ended up living in Alameda, Calif. on a houseboat with their first son, Nello, Jr. It was the turbulent 1960s, with a lot of people questioning the status quo and their place within that structure.

“My dad had a suit and an office job,” he laughs. “Then they came here, bought a farm [near Cedar], had goats, chickens, everything.” In 1970, Rifino was born there, with his dad, demonstrating more of the family self-sufficiency, acting as midwife to deliver his son.

Rifino recalls, “My brother and me, we started working on the farm about the time we were born! The animals we thought of as kind of pets, but then they’d be killed, butchered.”

He explains, “When they bought that farm, it had been grazed extensively; the soil was really depleted. He was trying to reforest, stop erosion. When the trees started getting bigger, he realized the possibilities.” Thus, the Valentine Tree Farm was born. “My brother and I planted a lot of the big trees you can still see growing there. I think my dad still plants trees all over the county, all over northern Michigan, in fact.” It was all part of the back-to-the-land movement of the early 1970s, not unlike today’s sustainable, locovore initiatives by a growing number of disaffected global villagers.

The Glen Lake High School graduate went on to earn an economics degree at Cornell University, then worked as an independent trader in New York City for over a decade. Several years ago, he moved to Detroit to pursue his vision of creating a handcrafted, limited-edition vodka, drawing on the Motor City’s rich history as a “Mecca” of Prohibition-era liquor making, and the good times of the Roaring Twenties.

“The Walmartization of everything, the liquor industry is no different,” Rifino asserts. “In the federal regulations for vodka, after you’re done with the distilling, you’re allowed to add sugar and glycerol to make it go smoother down your throat. Most use continuous distillation, with ethanol spit out the other end. The process is just computer-controlled; when you cut the ‘heart’ away from the process, you end up with harsher, more astringent vodka.”

When he set out to create his own single-batch, handcrafted spirits, Rifino looked to the experts. He took a distilling class at Cornell, his alma mater, where he met Kris Berglund, a chemical engineer and forestry professor from Michigan State University (MSU). “Kris is considered the father of distilling in Michigan,” Rifino says. “He’s been integral in this, he really took me under his wing.”

“We’re one of the first few distilleries in the world to use a multigrain recipe,” he continues. Corn, red Michigan wheat, and two-row malted barley, supplied by Michigan farmers, provide the drink’s crisp flavor, with “different tasting notes and attributes. That’s part of the artisanal process.”

Each batch of vodka is triple-distilled, which means that the middle, or the “heart” of the mash’s run, is smelled and tasted by the master distiller, to determine “where to cut the ‘heads’ and ‘tails,’” or the undesirable compounds that are present at the beginning and end of each run. Valentine’s result is a smooth, clean, all-natural spirit, literally (and figuratively) from the heart of the distillation process. ”It’s not the cheapest way to make vodka, but it’s the way it’s meant to be made.”

“From grain to your glass, we’re a 100 percent Michigan product. As a whole, we need to start making things here again. It’s great to get people in Michigan to make Michigan-made spirits. If one in 10 people bought [the product], $100 million stays here, rather than ships out.”

But he acknowledges, “There’s only so many people that will buy something just because it’s made here — it has to be better. That’s the overall philosophy.” Currently, Valentine Vodka manufactures its product at a plant near East Lansing, leased from MSU, while working to bring the business to Detroit by the end of the summer. “We want to show people that Detroit is not just the butt of everyone’s jokes, but a viable place,” in which to do business.

“I’ve always appreciated and leaned toward the handmade,” Rifino reflects. So when it came time to launch a unique Valentine’s Day promotional package that could riff off his surname, yet tweak the traditional lovers’ gift, he instantly thought of Grocer’s Daughter Chocolate, based in Empire.

“I didn’t pick Grocer’s Daughter because it was local; we really looked for the best chocolate out there, and Mimi’s [Wheeler] is just phenomenal. We think our vodka is the best, and we wanted the best to go with it. We selected a beautiful heart-shaped chocolate with a raspberry-caramel filling,” which was created especially to complement Valentine Vodka. The presentation is exquisite as well, with the sweet ensconced in Grocer’s Daughter’s handmade case, beribboned atop each 750ml bottle.

The vodka-chocolate duet is now available at many local liquor retailers, both locally (Cedar City Market, Leland Mercantile, Bayside Market in Traverse City, and Barrels and Barrels in Suttons Bay, to name a few listed at www.valentinevodka.com), and throughout the state. Valentine Vodka is available by the glassful at many local eateries as well, including Art’s Tavern, Blu, LaBecasse, Martha’s Leelanau Table, and more.

In addition to running his business full time, Rifino is negotiating for a suitable manufacturing property in the metropolitan Detroit area, planning an interstate expansion of Valentine Vodka through a “strong distributor who will represent us well,” and dreaming up a flavored vodka that will capture the delicious essence of Michigan’s bountiful agriculture.

From his hippie-era youth in Leelanau, he has come, if not full circle, than in an upward spiral along the same arc of self-reliance within community. He has taken Valentine family traditions to a more refined level, perhaps, than landscape trees and farm animals, but carries along the same principles of hard work, hands-on craftsmanship, and sense of place, qualities so sorely needed in Leelanau, Michigan, and the rest of the country.

(In the interest of full disclosure, Grocer’s Daughter Chocolate is owned by the mother of the Glen Arbor Sun founder and editor, Jacob Wheeler.)

By Pat Stinson
Sun contributor

Like their new neighbors at Farm 651, Nichole (Nikki) and Mike McHugh are not farmers, or at least they weren’t three years ago when they began operation of their hydroponic farm on County Road 651 in Cedar. Nikki grew up in Grand Rapids, and Mike hailed from Grosse Pointe. Both had worked in greenhouses as college students while studying to become teachers at Western Michigan University. After graduation, the pair spent three years teaching in a small Eskimo village on the Bering Sea in Alaska. After they moved to northern Michigan, Mike taught for two more years at Grand Traverse Academy while Nikki stayed at home with Parker, their new son.

Agriculture was not part of their experience, but it became part of their future plan after Parker came along. The pair knew they wanted to be involved in local food production and also wanted a family business that could include their young son.

“Leaving teaching was hard,” Mike said. “There was honestly northing I didn’t like about teaching, but it took up a lot of my time.”

At first, the couple dreamed of adding greenhouses to their 14 acres, but the thought of learning how to grow a number of different crops in soil was daunting to them — especially since, as Mike said, most farmers inherit their farming knowledge. They wanted a farm the family could manage. Their vision led them logically to hydroponics, a method of growing a lot of food in a small space, without soil. In fact, Mike said he estimates that 15,000 plants grown in a quarter-acre vertical hydroponic system would need 6-10 acres if grown in the ground in a linear fashion.

During their first year, Mike read books on hydroponics in the winter months and toured Florida farms while taking classes from the founder of the hydroponic method they chose. (They grow their plants in planters, with rocks to hold the roots, and feed nutrients from the top, rather than placing the roots in nutrients.) At home, the couple investigated farmers’ markets, to see what was selling. They also checked out TLC Tomatoes, a hydroponic farm growing tomatoes and lettuce inside greenhouses in the Suttons Bay area.

“That was very attractive to me,” Mike said, “and cool to watch.”

The McHughs knew they wanted to grow more than one crop and decided to focus their energies on strawberries, with greens, tomatoes, herbs and lettuce as secondary crops. Now in their second commercial year, the couple offers a U-Pick friendly farm where visitors can pluck strawberries from the vine without bending or kneeling. They also sell their crops at their farm stand beneath a white tent in the front yard and take their wares to 5-7 farmers’ markets each week in Leelanau and Traverse City.

“The main reason we’re behind the hydroponics is, we’re fans of the local food movement and sustainable food,” Mike said. “This is more of a homesteading lifestyle. The more we can do at home and for the community without going outside the area, the better.”

Parker, now 5, takes customers on tours of the farm and can explain how the nutrients work just as well as his father. He’s learning his numbers and weights and will be helping at the farm stand next spring.

The family’s wish-list for the future includes helping to establish a farmers’ market in Cedar, expanding their strawberry operation, (they grew 11,000 plants this year), and adding greenhouses to extend their growing season.

“Our place is set up really well for events. We would also like to do free classes. We’ve had 15 people purchase their own set-ups. We (sell them) just because we believe in the system.”

As for Farm 651, Mike said, “We’d like to have our strawberries there. The more local food around here, the better it is for everyone.”

To learn more, visit www.cedarsolhydrofarm.com.