Wise Acre Serves Up Local Food Year Round

Snow has finally fallen, withering even the heartiest plants outside Wise Acre. But even with temperatures below freezing, the Southwest Minneapolis locavore destination is entering its first winter of serving up local food from their farm in Plato, Minnesota.

Inside the restaurant, the walls are teeming with ornamental plant life. It’s weekday breakfast time and a few tables are enjoying plates of eggs and root vegetable hash and fried egg sandwiches. Believe it or not, all the plant and animal ingredients in these Wise Acre dishes came from their farm.

Beth Fisher, the executive chef at Wise Acre, explains the steps they took to make this possible.

“We had to be forward thinking,” Fisher said. “We knew we wanted everything to come from our farm so we started planning last spring.”

Vegetables like carrots, squash, and apples are kept in cold storage on the farm, while other vegetables like broccoli, beans, tomatoes and corn are frozen for later use.

Even with snow flying, the farm can still grow vegetables in containers. Hoop houses—a type of greenhouse—allow for leaf lettuces, radishes and the like to be grown year round. As the weather gets even colder, the farmers will move to growing micro-greens and sprouts.

Solar energy heats the hoop houses and Fisher says the farmers currently have more problems with the houses getting too hot than too cold.

Animals are also butchered as needed.

“Harvesting meat from the farm requires thinking about how you make your menus in a different way.” Fisher said.

When meat is available on a smaller scale the menu needs to rotate to feature different cuts of meat, she explained.

Although the idea of eating local all winter may seem new, according to Fisher, “it’s actually a very old idea. Wise Acre is cooking like it used to be.”