Perennial Revolution - Chef Michael Haskett

Hosts: Travis Entenman & Lori Walsh
Guest: Michael Haskett - Chef and Owner of MB Haskett Delicatessen 

Episode Summary

On the 14th anniversary of M.B. Haskett Delicatessen, Travis Entenman and Lori Walsh sit down with chef-owner Michael Haskett in the deli’s basement to trace his journey from teenage pizza maker to James Beard-connected chef and local food advocate. He reflects on how early jobs at Gigglebees and TGI Fridays, mentorship under Chef Dominic, and learning “real” stock at the Culinary Institute of America shaped his philosophy around food, people, and place. Throughout the conversation, Haskett emphasizes building a more matriarchal-style, humane kitchen culture and championing local, sustainable agriculture—especially perennial crops like Kernza that can reduce nitrate levels in water and improve soil health—while connecting this to his advocacy work on environmental policy and the power of consumer choices.

Highlights

• Growing up between Sioux City and Sioux Falls, discovering kitchens as a refuge, and early jobs at Gigglebees, Bagel Boy, TGI Friday’s, and Theo’s.​
• The shock of going from powdered sauces to making classic stock at the Culinary Institute of America and realizing food can tell a story, not just make money.​
• Punk rock, vegan friends, and how zines, Gulf War I, and animal welfare debates reshaped his politics around meat and industrial agriculture.​
• Mentors like Chef Dominic, Christina Keene, and Lucia Watson, and what Michael learned about running less patriarchal, more humane restaurant teams.​
• The 14‑year evolution of M.B. Haskett, from buying Michelle’s Coffee Shop with no stove to becoming known for meticulous eggs and local sourcing.​
• James Beard’s Chef’s Boot Camp for Policy and Change, pandemic advocacy for restaurant relief, and working with congressional staff on PPP and industry survival.​
• Chefs for Healthy Soils, cover crops, and why soil health, runoff reduction, and farm incentives matter to a breakfast cook in downtown Sioux Falls.

About the Show

Rivers & Rangelands explores conservation, water, and community in the Northern Great Plains. Hosted by Travis Entenman and Lori Walsh, the podcast asks big questions about how we care for our land and water — today and for generations to come.

🎶 Special thanks to Jami Lynn for providing the music for this episode. You can explore more of her music here: jamilynnsd.com

👉 Follow Friends of the Big Sioux River for more episodes, updates, and ways to get involved.

👉👉 And to hear more from Lori, follow So Much Sunlight, a newsletter of essays, poetry, and audio ephemera on Substack!

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

You guys know what, like our number one food culture contribution is to the world, corn, no like our our cultural food icon, chislik chisli. Know what chislik is? It's fried meat. Yeah, it's just chunks of fried meat. That's stupid. Chislik is stupid. Is it good? Yes, but it's where we get all that. Yeah, what you know? All right, let's start ready. Welcome everyone to our next episode of rivers and range land podcast. This is Travis Entenman. I'm joined with Lori Walsh, and today we are actually in the basement of MB hasketts Talking with Michael Haskett and hoping to pick his brain about the food industry, local foods, conservation, and how that has all integrated with his life. And we're excited for you to join us on this I love this room. Is this your office? This is our office. Yes, you can hear some workers behind this doing the preparation for the upstairs restaurant. Yeah, this is a nice, well thought out space for you to think and create, to take over the world from. Yeah, it's, it's been fun. It's been through a number of evolutions down here. This is actually my 14th anniversary in business and be Haskett delicatessen in downtown Sioux Falls today. Anniversary. Thank you. We opened on January, 16, 2012 it was a Monday. It was Martin Luther King Jr Day, really. And back then we didn't have a hood or a gas stove. It had been Michelle's coffee shop two weeks prior, and so, yeah, I love that. Like, we start the podcast and like, then all the chairs start some good audience. Yeah. People upstairs, yeah, yeah. 14 years ago today, we opened up. There weren't any shades on the light fixtures. It was just Michelle's coffee shop that had been, you know, painted, and a few pieces of furniture moved around and what was on the menu. And Chef Dominic had given me his crepe maker, and so we had crepes our first thing. And Chef Dominic gave me his crepe maker and said, You can have this, Mikey, but me and my family get crepes for free whenever we come in. And that deal is still like honored today. So, but that, yeah, that his crepe maker is, you know, helped us get to 14 years. It's the same crepe maker. Yeah, they last Well, I mean, just yeah, I've done replace the cord on it a couple of times. They're pretty simple machines, but yeah, I've gotten, I'm an excellent restaurant mechanic, so like, if this place ever does go under? I think my next job will just be like fixing refrigerators and other restaurant equipment. I've gotten good at it. How does it feel in 14 years? Are you gonna celebrate? Do you this is a good celebration. Just document it with the podcast. It sounds like fun. Yeah, tell us how you got started? Well, rewind back to the mid 90s. I was a high schooler at Washington High in Sioux Falls, and I had worked at high V as a grocery sacker for a couple of months, and did not love it, but I'm like my 16th birthday, I got a job at gigglebees making pizzas. And one person that's still a part of my life, Jamie Smith, was the voice of Wilbur and a manager there, yep. And so, you know, fast forward. How many years has that been? 46 so 30 years later, we're still working together. I'm his campaign chair for his mayoral campaign. So how about that? Yeah, I think it's like, it's pretty low impact. Did you get started making pizza? Yep, making pizzas at gigglebees, and then I worked at bagel boy briefly with another famous Sioux Falls person, janitor Bob. He was a bagel Baker there and taught me how to make bagels. I was only there for a month. I didn't like getting up so early at bagel boy. I worked at TGI Fridays out by the mall after that for a couple of years. Years, I got a job at Theos great food and 33rd and like Minnesota, basically that was, and that was working for Chef Dominic and George, I think it was probably at Theos, working with Dominic, you know, was French, and gone to cooking school in France, and worked in London, and, you know, wearing the chef coat and the camaraderie of the kitchen was a lot of fun. I loved working for him in high school. You know, I played hockey through throughout high school, but can remember it like it was yesterday. Dominic said to me one day, it's like, what are you going to do when you grow up? Mikey? And I was like, I want to be a chef, just like you DOM. And he said, well, then you're going to the fucking CIA. And I was like, okay, you know, two years later, I did, I was, I was on my way to the Culinary Institute of America. Right before I left, I did kind of a gap year. I graduated 98 and in that year, I helped Dominic open heaven on 11 which is now Mama's lottas over on 11th Street. And then, and then I worked for Christina's Cafe and Bakery just a couple doors down in this building that we're in, and 99 working for Christina Keene, making bread and doing all that sort of, you know, helping run Christina's cafe right before going to New York for cooking school. So that was kind of my pre, pre cooking school bones that I was making here in Sioux Falls. So you've really touched multiple different restaurants in the food industry in Sioux Falls for decades. Yeah, long time, 30 years. So it's almost just kind of part of you. It's just always been part of your life. Is it, yeah, yeah. Is there any catalyst, like, I know you mentioned that Theo is in that environment and that camaraderie, but like, Was there ever any deeper thought of, you know, providing food or hospitality to folks, or was it just kind of a gradual slip in, not slipping, but, yeah, you know, I would say, like, another aspect of food. Well, I mean, working at TGI Fridays and seeing, like, all of the industrial, commercial open a bag, mix the powder with the water, and, like, there you go. This, like, very, you know, it's very profitable, it's very convenient, it's very easy food to make, but it's not, doesn't tell much of a story. It's just a moneymaker, and like, working in that corporate environment, like, it's very, it's very impersonal, yeah, how was the pizza man at gigglebees. Pizza was fine, but, I mean, that was a different thing. It was a locally owned restaurant, right? That's why I'm asking. Were they making the crust from scratch at giggle opening a bag at TGI Fridays? Well, no, I mean, giggle bees was also, like, very conventional, like, you know, right off the food truck. It was simple. I was 16. It's my first job. I mean, it's like the pepperoni came in slice eating at home, I was eating like a teenager, an American, Midwestern teenager. I'm from Sioux City, so I eat like a Sioux City kid still probably do. But, you know, I remember working at TGI Fridays in that corporate environment. I didn't love it, and so like, getting to work for Chef Dominic I when I left TGI Fridays, I don't even think they're they're definitely not in South Dakota anymore, but I don't even know if they're around nationally. But I hated it. It was so corporate, and it seemed like the managers really only cared about, like, hitting sales goals, these different things, where Theos, they had the wood fired brick oven. So, like, the exact opposite, like you had to learn how to control literal wood fire to, like, make this thing. So it was like one extreme to the other, where it's like, you're controlling this agricultural product, wood, and then like, and doing the things. And there were, there was a lot more freedom with, like, artistry and how you plated food. And I mean, as a, then maybe 17 year old, I didn't have that much creative freedom, but getting to work for Chef Dominic, the dude that owned the restaurant, right? Like it was all his recipes and the guys that he worked around him, and so that was a lot of fun still there. I mean, there was a lot of, like, powdered sauces that got made there. It was a big restaurant. They did a lot of things, but this, like I thought when I finally got to cooking school and we got to skills class, yeah, and like, day one of skills class, you take all of these, like beef bones, like the knuckly, like the joint where all that collagen is, and you roasted them for like hours until they were a deep brown. And then you put them in. One of the big, like, 60 gallon steam kettles, and you cover it with water, and then you roast carrots and onions and celery or mirepoix, and you put tomato paste on it, and you brown that, and you put bay leaves, and we made stock. And I was like, Oh, the stock, that's what that is like. So interesting. I thought you just got a thing of powder or bouillon. Where's the bag of powder? Yeah, like, just, you know, it's a very Midwestern mindset, like stock. What's that? Whereas, like a lot of my colleagues that my, you know, my friends at school came from New York or New Jersey or California, they'd all worked in kitchens where, like, that's pretty common, pretty standard. And I was like, when do you use powder? It's pretty embarrassing. I didn't, I didn't actually say that. It kept my mouth shut about the powder, but it seems like a act of courage to go to culinary school in New York if you're a kid from Midwest, yeah, did it feel like a leap I had to get out of here? Though I like just I needed a different view of culture, and a lot of my friends had gone to California when I grew up in Sioux City, I grew up with a group of people that, like, I think most of them are like, pretty, like, right of center conservative, like, just typical Midwestern like, conservative families. And I was kind of a conservative person when I was growing up. My family is very conservative. So I had that like, conservative mindset when I went to high school, I met all of these, like, punk rock kids who were going to shows at the pump room and, you know, they were vegetarian, there were gay kids, you know, there were lesbians. I was, like, suddenly surrounded, like, by this group of people that were very like, welcoming and who you were down in Sioux City, my friends, I still love them today. My my Sioux City family, like it was your stereotypical 1980s like, upbringing, it was, like, we beat the crap out of each other and, like, played football. I've got one buddy that's got, like, four Super Bowl rings from the Patriots. You know, it's actually pretty liberal dude, but you know, like, it was just very, like, like, traditional, yeah, very male dominated. And then, like, when I met my friends at Washington High School and Lincoln High School and Roosevelt no Gorman, like, there was really no like school loyalty amongst, like, my high school class of the late 90s. You know what I mean, it was, like my friends that graduated, and when my freshman year to like, there was just like. And Brian Bieber did a great documentary about, like, the Sioux Falls punk scene. I really get into it. I really get into it. And like, those were my people. And I remember there was two dudes, Joey Lynch and Brian Schumacher, who were, I think, vegan at the time, but like, they were writing punk scenes about, like a crazy anarchist from like, the turn of the 18th, 19th century, like August speeds, like these anarchist dudes, and like, thinking about what globalism does, like learning about the Olympics and how they can be problematic. And for this naive, like Sioux City kid, this conservative kid, like I'd never thought about, like, what does the Olympics do to unhoused people in the cities that they go to, and so, like, they were bringing that kind of, like awareness to me. And just like veganism and like, food is politics and like, how, like, the meat industry, just like, on an on an animal rights it's called humane processing now, or, like, humane husbandry, confinement operation. So much has changed in agriculture in those 30 years. But like a lot of those problems still exist. Human like American society has become a lot more aware of those things. And so I think it was kind of a combination of my experience in food service in Sioux Falls in the 90s, and like falling in love with making food and that sort of thing. And also, like being friends with, you know, these people that, like, chose not to eat meat because of all of the problems that go along with it. There's environmental problems. There's, you know, post Gulf War too, yeah, so the first Gulf War is ended now at that point, yeah, which was a cultural upheaval for a lot of young people, right? My dad was at that one. And, I mean, I remember, what do you mean? My dad fought, well served, served in Gulf War One, yeah, the first one in the 91 two, and, like, he was gone. For a year, and he remembers, like, a missile attack in Riyadh, and, like, very close to him. And you know, it's scary when your dad's in war, like, you don't know if he's gonna come home and, like, it was a hard time. And my folks had, like, recently been divorced. They got divorced before my dad got deployed, and so, like, that was, like a hard time, yeah, you know, there was, there was another, there was a stepdad in there. Like, I, I don't want to talk much about him, but like, there was that wasn't like the best situation either. I think all around, like, I've like, learned to, like, forgive people that have done me wrong in my life, and I've forgiven him, but I haven't seen him since. But like, there was a rough time single mom, you know, to this weird relationship that she was in, and my dad being deployed, and, like, then, you know, coming home. So, I mean, like, I was maybe kind of struggling in middle school, and then met these people that were, like, very, like, accepting of who you are. Like, that was really cool. And, I mean, I think that, like working for Christina Keene, you know, tgi fridays was a very cutthroat environment, and very just kind of, again, corporate, yeah, and sensitive to, like, people's feelings, where you're, like, working for first Christina Keene, but then many years forward, like working for Lucia Watson and the Twin Cities, working for these, like, really awesome women who were restaurant owners and, like, empowered women to run their restaurants for them. Like, there's a difference between a patriarchal restaurant and a matriarchal restaurant. And I've really, like, I'm a dude, but I'd really try to run this restaurant from those, like, the best parts of what I learned for working for those two women and the women that worked for them, Christina Keene doesn't get enough. No credit. Yeah. She helped me make my way as a journalist too awesome, and wrote food stories and the first for Argus leader magazines, and the first chef who said, Come here. I'll tell you. I'll let you ask all the stupid questions. Was Tina keen she's awesome, yeah, yeah. And like, just like that, I guess, yeah. Like, make mistakes, right? Like, make mistakes and learn from them. She had an understanding of, not only the business, how to run the kitchen, but food journalism. I just feel like I want to say that, like we don't talk like food writing, yeah, and was not a good I mean, if you find the stories, you like, Wow, that's pretty basic. But I was beginning, yeah, and to understand for the first time that food writing could be impactful. Who did you write for? Like, different artist leader magazines. There was, like, a she magazine. There was a magazine called life. Maybe there was a magazine called the good life, live and the good life. And then they had a Sunday, Sunday life section. So I would write for I freelanced, awesome. Ever really? Yeah, yeah. I have a really good friend who's a server in Sioux Falls. She's worked for a ton of people. I don't think she ever worked for Tina, but she asked me one time, like, Who do you think is the most influential chef in Sioux Falls? And I thought about it for about 10 seconds. It was like, Christina Keene, like she's just, you know, the hazards who bought this building in 92 Jeff and Sheila hazard bought this building downtown. There wasn't much going on at the end of the 80s and the early 90s, in downtown Sioux Falls, they bought this place. And I was like, right around the time Tina had graduated from California Culinary Academy. And, you know, there's like, Jeff and Sheila were awesome. Like, they're like, no nonsense business building owners and like, renters, but like, if they see that you have talent, you've got a vision, they will they did back you and, like, help you get going, you know, like, they'll make sure that you pay your fair share of, like, the work that needs to be done to the building, right? And, you know, you go back and forth, a little bit of, I think that's like any landlord tenant relationship. I learned a lot from those guys, too, and like, standing up for yourself, but Tina was, like, from scratch. I don't know if there was, like, a lot of local foods available. No, I remember cam. He's still around here and there, but cam had a vegetable garden just north of the airport, and, like, he would sell, like, squash blossoms and things to Tina. So Tina was buying local, local foods. I was back in 99 when I worked for her. But really, yeah, and so was, was she the first person that showed you how to use local foods, or that you could use local foods in your cooking? Or was. Was that not really part of the conversation, or thought, I will say to back up, my love for cooking goes back to, like when I was a little kid. My mom always had an awesome garden. Okay, so just, I mean studying food, you know that, like the the fresh is best, you know, making things from scratch, and so in Sioux City, like an urban garden, or were you outside the city? Oh, my mom always had an awesome garden so, and I think she got that like one from her parents, but her grandma and grandpa, who up by Millbank, they had a farm up there and have it like my mom tells stories about when my grandpa so this would have been my great grandma's farm where my grandpa grew up in Millbank. They always had produce. My grandpa, during the Depression, when he was a teenager in the 30s, would like they'd go out and shoot pheasants, and grandma would can them, and they owned the hardware store in in Millbank. And so they would sell, like, canned pheasants and shelf really, but like my great grandma, when my mom was growing up, would, and they she'd spend the summers there, like that, on the farm, like was, like doing gardening. So my mom had a green thumb and was a great gardener, and so I, you know, kind of inherited that too, yeah, for me, like it was having a garden, having, like, having to help in the garden too. But I always loved it, like in Sioux City and in Sioux Falls, like my mom always had an awesome garden. So tell me about Lucia. Lucia Watson, after cooking school, I went to Colorado and was a chef at a bed and breakfast there. I worked for a glass blower in Colorado for two years, which was a really awesome blowing glass, or cooking food blowing glass. Were you doing both at the same time? Or No, I was a chef at the end of Glen haven for a year, and I worked for white oaks visions and glass for about two and a half years, a long time to blow glass. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. Yeah, got into, like, martial arts. I became a firefighter during that time. This is, like, my early 20s. It was great. Like, it was really, like, just doing a bunch of living on a mountain. Yeah, people were buying cell phones, and I was, like, chopping wood. It was great. I still to this day, hate cell phones, even though I have one. I'm with you, yeah, but yeah, just living on the mountains, I was working for the super liberal glassblower and learning EMT and firefighting stuff from my long haired Republican buddies, and we all got along famously up in up in Colorado, and I did that for a couple years, but I just like, I couldn't work at the glass studio anymore. Like, I just I wasn't good at blowing glass. I enjoyed it a lot, but I was like, This is not my career. I wanted to get back into food. I worked in restaurants in Estes Park for a while, but Estes Park is it's a beautiful place, but it's very touristy. And I just think, like, the climate of Colorado, I've got many chef friends in Boulder and Denver that would disagree with me, but like, just where I was living, it was so arid, like, and the clientele, it's a lot of like, Nebraska, Kansas, South Dakota tourists going to, you know, Rocky Mountain National Park, and they want, like, a burger and fries and chicken strips for their kids and so, like, I wasn't into the food scene. Sure, I loved where I lived, but the food scene there wasn't like the the best that Colorado offered. And I'd I would have had to go down to Denver or boulder to find places I like. But my high school sweetheart Virginia, I bumped into her when I was back here in Sioux Falls one time, and she was living up in Minneapolis, and so just kind of ended up that when I was kind of done with Colorado, I was in Sioux Falls for a little while working for Christina Keene again. Oh, wow. In 2006 and the Virginia went and taught English in Japan for a year. I went back out to Colorado to help my mom, who had bought a house out there, like, fix up her house. Just talking with Tina Tina keen. I was like, I'm going up to the cities. Tina had worked in the cities years before, and she still like, goes to get her hair cut in the cities. You can edit this part out. I'll leave it in. She gave me some ideas of like, some people to work for. Brenda Langton is like, very farm to table. And then she was like, go apply at Lucia's restaurant. And so my glass blowing boss, the office manager, Joe, she was like, I will get you whatever job you want in Minneapolis by helping you write your resume. And she taught me how to, like, write a resume. And the cover page, like, make sure, if any young people listen to this, like, when you write your cover page, write it to the business you're applying to. You know, put a cover page with your resume and tell the person reading that why you want to work at their specific restaurant. And so I did that. I for like, 10 restaurants in Minneapolis. I learned something about the place I was applying to, wrote like, a customized cover letter to why I thought I would be a good fit at their thing. Yeah, it's a lot of work, but like, I would the day I got to Minneapolis, I handed out 10 resumes, and I had like, three callbacks by the end of the next day, and I didn't get Lucia or Spoon River, that was Brenda's other restaurant, right away, but I got, I got a call back from Lucia's and Nettie, my now like sister from a different mister called me back. She was the Chef de Cuisine at Lucia. She interviewed me, and I got a job for working for Lucia, kind of part time at first. And I was real honest with Nettie, I remember, and she likes to tell this story, like in our inner in our interview, she was like, Why should I hire you? It's like I'd been, you know, a firefighter, glass blowing weed smoker for five years. I hadn't cooked in a long time. And she was like, this, kid's honest, you know, like I was like, I'm a little rusty. I haven't been in kitchen in a while. But like, hire me be, you know, up to speed in two minutes. I went to cooking school. I was like, I should have maybe been more confident then, but it's Minneapolis is very competitive food scene, and they've got cooking schools there and, like, there's, there's a lot of, there's a lot of really talented chefs and cooks throughout Minneapolis. At least there was then, I think that's still the case today, but got a job at Lucious, working on her to go side, which was kind of like where the newbies start, and then her restaurant side, which she opened in 1985 I was one of the first chefs to ever go from working On the to go side, where we made, like, crepes, and the same crepes you get at hasketts is what we learned there and then, like deli salads, that was the to go side to working on the restaurant side, where it was like, you know, the the menu changed every week, and So you were constantly learning what was going on. And that was really where you would see that farmer. There was a there was a hog farmer that brought cured hams. And we would get Tim Fisher, was it. And so, like, he was a hog farmer, and we would get fresh ham from them, river bend farms, which was just west of the Twin Cities. We got a ton of fresh produce from them. Lucia would go to the Canadian border parents like cabin like pick buckets and buckets of blueberries and bring them back. And her specialty chef would turn all of those blueberries into blueberry jam, and they would retail that. So Lucia was awesome. So a lot of, like, she, she started her restaurant in 85 in uptown. And, you know, Brenda Langton might be like, No, I was the Alice Waters of the Midwest. Like, they were, like, pretty like, good competition. But I think, like, even Alice Waters and Lucia and Brendan, they're all buds. You know, they've all been like James Beard nominated. So how did Lucia run her operation? How did she treat people? What did you learn? What did you learn about how to treat people in a restaurant from her? You know, I don't think I always live up to my ideal of how she did it, but I saw her not the best moments either. Like we're all human, right? We're not perfect, but Lucia, I really remember her like she I worked for her in her 25th year of business, and I'm celebrating my 14th. So I only got 11 to go. I'll get where she was when I worked for her, but she would just make the rounds. And she had 70 some people working for she had started in a space not much bigger than what I have today, and then had added another, another storefronts with and that was like the restaurant side. And then years later, 10 years into it, she was able to add the bar side. And then, you know, another, you know, after 20 years, she was able to open the to go side. And by the time, at 25 years in business, when I got to work for she had like 70. Some employees. She had a bread program. She had a pastry chef and two pastry cooks that worked for for her. And so there was 24/7 there was somebody at Lucious. And so there's always folks working there. She employed some really awesome Ecuadorian people. I don't know if they were documented, but they were like, great people. I remember this one woman that was a dishwasher there. She was, like, the grandmother to everybody, and she was super sweet. And she would like, this woman would call you on her you're bullshit, like, you brought her like a burnt pan, but she would like, call you out. But like, she was super sweet. And so it was very like family. Like, there her her bread bakers were from Mexico, and brother, sister team. And like, they worked. Like, the sister would come in and mix the dough, starting around like four or five in the afternoon, and then her brother would come in at like, seven, eight o'clock at night, and start shaping and baking. Wow. And there was just always somebody working there. The there was a lot of, most of the women, I'm sorry, most of the managers at the restaurant were women. There was a sous chef, Chris, who was a buddy of mine. He was a dude, you know, but she she was very empowering to women. We would kind of estimate that 75% of the people working at Lucis were women, and about 75% of them were lesbians. I remember one morning, one cold Minneapolis morning, at six in the morning, I came in with my dad's green flannel Filson jacket on my hat, the gloves with the fingers cut off, and my boots and my jeans cuffed up. And the pastry chef, I won't say her name either, but she was like, Oh my God, you were a hot lesbian for a minute. I took that as a great Can I borrow your outfit so I fit right in there? When did you open your own place in Sioux Falls? You said, 14 years ago, January. What made you take that leap? We were in the Twin Cities I lived in. We lived in St Paul and I and Lucia's was an uptown. And I just like, it's expensive, you know, like, I didn't have any money. You live in the cities. And as a cook, I think it's still true today when you're cooking Sioux Falls or cooking Manhattan, like it's kind of like, you can afford to go to work and like, you know, pay rent, like it's, you don't make a ton of money in this industry, but it is fun most of the time, I think, depending on where you're at. But I just, I wanted to open my own place, and I just knew that I didn't know that many people in the Twin Cities. It was too competitive, and I was, like, just kind of itching to get back here. I had a bunch of friends here, and, you know, it was like, my Virginia, his family, her parents, lived here. And so we would often come back and just see my friends, and and we would always come to Michelle's coffee and clay in this building like this is always kind of like, no matter where my mom lived in Sioux Falls, or if she lived in Sioux Falls, my mom had moved to Colorado, like while I was living in the Twin Cities, but like, whenever I would come home, I would always come to Michelle's first come downtown Phillips Avenue and hang out here and see, like, what everybody was up to. And so, living in Minneapolis, one day, Chef Dominic called me and said that, hey, I've got this I'm working for. Think he was working for the prairie club out by Valentine in Nebraska. Yeah. He was like that. Paul shock, I think, fun fact about the prairie club. I have a conservation easement in that valley. Oh, cool, yeah. Side note, no. Well, I want to know more about that. This is a lot of, like, my history. Like, I want you to cut a lot of this. This is why we wanted to talk to you. This is great. I'm just like, I'm in an episode of chef's table right now. So keep going. Dominic was doing consulting work for the prairie club. It was like, Hey, I'm doing this work for this guy. I'm like, helping him design his kitchen. How would you feel about like, moving to the middle of nowhere, like being the chef of a Golf Resort? And I was like, Well, I love that it's in the middle of nowhere, but I guess I'm ready to be the chef again, of a South Dakota like thing. And I just like, I think Dakota rural action was still kind of like new and I was kind of paying attention to, like, what was going on in South Dakota. I saw that there was lots of farm. Table stuff going on and in the in Minnesota, but there wasn't, like, a lot of that going on here. But having friends that worked for the Co Op, and I knew a few people that were affiliated with Dakota rural action, I guess I didn't really know much, but they were like, kind of like, here's this farmer here. And I wanted to, you can go, I can come back to South Dakota, where I know the landscape very well. Again, I'm a Sioux City boy, but my family's from here on, been to the Black Hills a million times. I know the landscape of South Dakota. I consider myself a South Dakotan from birth, even though Sioux City's awesome. I was born in Iowa, right at the confluence of the rivers. But I wanted to just do a tour and like, go interview farmers and, like, start talking to like, what, what's AG? What's agriculture like here, my Aunt Betty again, like a huge food influence of me. Like, she was a great cook. She lives in broadland, South Dakota, kind of in the middle of nowhere. It's north of Huron, about 50 miles. But her husband, Steve, my Uncle Steve, is a trucker, and so he would haul cattle and pork, and there's bison in the state. And wild idea, Buffalo company, yeah, they were kind of like Dan O'Brien hot thing in 2010 and I wanted to just come be a part of our food culture again, and like, and part of it is like, South Dakota is like, what do you guys know what like our number one food culture contribution is to the world, corn, no like our our cultural food icon, chislik chisley. Know what chislik is? It's fried meat. Yeah, just chunks of fried meat. That's stupid. Chislik is stupid. Is it good? Yes, but it's where we get all that. Yeah? What? You know what, man, like, the French will like, and Ryan Tracy, Chef, Ryan is a buddy of my like, it's like the French will, like, take an ingredient, and they'll peel it, and then they'll, like, grate it, and then they'll poach it, and then they'll puree it some more, and then they'll add egg and flour into it, and they'll turn it into quinels, and then they'll poach it some more. Like they'll do 15 things in South Dakota. It's like our food culture thing is we chop up a piece of animal and drop it in the fryer. That's boring, come on, we could do something more technical than that and become known for it. So there's an opportunity. Yeah, there is so much opportunity in South Dakota, because I know we can do more, create something, yeah, but I just wanted to come home. I wanted to come here. Wanted to be around my people and like start to be known for something more than corn and soybeans and chislik and I still like, that's why I'm still here like, I believe that there is so much opportunity. Faster but I wanted to come back. I wanted to bring that education that I had learned at Lucia is one of my favorite lessons. I think it was my last, very final day at cooking school in New York. Was this old maitre d from Manhattan restaurant. Was a teacher at the Culinary Institute, and we were front of house. We were servers at the American bounty restaurant. And he said, when you leave here, you're gonna go out there and you're gonna work. You just, you just got done with two years at the best facility in the world, with the best ingredients in the world, learning from the best instructors at the world, in the world at the Culinary Institute of America, like the premier spot for Culinary Education, when you go out there, you're going to learn how to make Hollandaise in a Cuisinart. Y'all made it in a mixing bowl with a whisk over a double boiler. Here, when you go out in the world, you're going to learn different techniques for facilities that aren't the best in the world, and you're going to have to just learn to do different things. And it's not what they're doing is wrong, it's just how they do it. And so don't go out there and be like, well, it's cooking school. We did it this way. And you know, some of my classmates didn't heed that advice. And so, you know, a lot of times, like CIA graduates or California, like culinary school graduates have this bad reputation being like, well, I know everything but this professor, and I don't even remember his name, but I loved what he said. He was like, you don't go out into the world and Lord Your knowledge over people. And be like, I got to do this, and you didn't, and I'm keeping my recipes secret. It's your job to go out there and, like, share what you learned here with people that didn't have the luxury of what you just experienced. Like, share that with people and and that's, like, been a huge part of my thing and the people that I've worked for over the years. Lucia Watson, Christina Keene, like they are, like that. They're nurturing in your education. I remember Lucia said to us, like, I know that you're not going to work at Lucious forever. Like, I want you to the time that you spend here. I want you to build your resume. Like working at Lucis means something so that when you leave here, that you this has been a stepping stone into you doing, whether you are a server or a bartender, or you open your own restaurant, whether you're cook or a chef, or if you want to be a dancer or, you know, a clay artist, whatever it is that is you're using Lucius For on your path. I want it to be a stepping stone. And doing that and so like that, nurturing is something that's really important to me. And I remarkable. Yeah, instead of as you're here to make money for me, I'm here to launch you into the next part of your life. And yeah, gosh, that I like her. I don't know her, but I like her. She's an awesome lady. That was, she had a really awesome staff meeting right before Thanksgiving, one of those years that I worked for, and she said, I never had kids, I never got married. I had, I opened this place when I was like, when all my friends were having babies, and so y'all are my kids. You are my family. And you guys wake up every day to come make sure, to come help me realize my dream. My dream was to own this restaurant in Minneapolis. And so, like, I want to make sure that, like, as much as you, you're putting your heart and soul into my dream, I want to help make sure that like, this is a good space for you and working that it was just like, it was a really cool thing, and it's like, stuck with me and like, like I said a moment ago, like, I don't always live up to that. I don't think she did either. But like, I really try to remind myself every day that, like, you know, these folks that work for me, and even the customers that come in and support us every day, like, we have a very like, they're almost like employees. They're here every day, and sometimes you want to fire them. But like that, like, they're all helping me, like, realize this dream, right? Sometimes it's a nightmare, but most of the time, it's a dream. And I'm really proud of, like, all of the things that we've done here over the years, and we continue to and you know that, I'm sure we'll get to James Beard in a moment, but like, Sanaa helping me on this journey, and like that us, like getting a nomination a couple years ago, but also me being able to be a part of the James Beard chef's boot camp and the independent restaurant Coalition and the Natural Resources Defense Council Chefs for Healthy Soils campaign. Like, I've gotten to do a lot of cool things because of this place. But I've also like, I think my biggest measure of success, and I think Lucia would like, probably agree with me, and like, all the things that her employees have done is like, I've had a number of former employees open their own businesses. Mary from the breaks, like she, she, she and Corey are doing great stuff over there, and they would have done that without having worked here. But like, I do, like, it is cool that, like, I have a very dear friend, the manager of this place, that left to open her own food business, the Jacob and Elsa at songbird kombucha, like they both worked here, and like, being able to, like, help mentor them in their early days of business ownership. I'm sure there's more business owners. We've been here 14 years. There's a lot of employees. I want to remember all of them, but it can be hard. But Kelly Sullivan was a state legislator, and Kelly has, like, gone out and, like, she's back here again. So, like, that's awesome, like, to have people, like, come back and say, God, I missed working here, and I'm so happy to be back. Like, this is awesome, because they know the culture, yeah, and it's not just me. I couldn't do this by myself. There's no way. Like, there's no way. And I'm I've done this for 14 years. I want to keep owning this place for another 14 years. But, like, there's some other things that I want to do Lucia, like, in her latter years of owning, she owned it for a month shy of 30 years. Lucia owned her restaurant in uptown, but she owned. House in Normandy that she would rent out. She would go over there and make salt with, like, on like, sea salt on the ocean side, she did, like, tons of cool things. And like, I don't want MB Haskett delicatessen in downtown Sioux Falls to be the only thing I ever do. Like, for some people, they want to open a restaurant do that forever. You know, like you hear stories like Kenny shopson was a dude in New York that, like, owned a restaurant till the day he died. That's awesome. I mean, I'd love for this place to this restaurant under my stewardship, like to outlive me. That would be cool. But like that, I want to do some other things too. So like, maybe we can, yeah, get to that. Yeah. We'll go back to that. Yeah, you were talking about food and politics early on in this conversation, like in high school, you're starting to talk with some of your friends about different things that have to do with where our food comes from, when was so that's kind of always been part, yeah, of your ethos, for lack of a better word, there's not an inciting incident for you. And you're like, Oh, this is where the pork comes from. You were always thinking about this, even as a young person the very beginning of this interview, you asked me about, like, Why? Why food? Why do you love it? And it's like, you know anybody? It's like, Anthony bourdain's Favorite movie was Ratatouille, like anyone can cook. And it's kind of true. He's a good movie. We just say that, but it's like, holds up, you know, like at TGI Fridays there, there were, I worked with people that, you know, were in assisted living facilities, like, had a job, you know, like, it's something this industry is something that has a space for anybody, like, if you the down and out, the Recently incarcerated the teenager that wants to, like, learn how to work. You know, like, and we've, like, we've had a lot of teenagers over over the years. But like, you can also be, you know, a state legislator working. You can be a US Congress person. AOC was a bartender before, like, she got her job. So, like, there really is a spot for anybody, why in the restaurant? Why is that? Why? What is it about the kitchen? Because we need to eat. Humans need to eat food. You know what I mean. And like we like, there is something that at cooking school in gastronomy, they teach you, like, the first taste that develops in when you're an infant is sweet, and it's also the last one to go when you're in, when you're an elder. And so like, where there's originals Right? Like, that's why there you always got the grandma or the grandpa sharing the candy with the kid. And so, like, there is nostalgia, you know. And like, you don't develop bitter until you're in your, like, middle years. So, but I mean, we all need to eat. Probably, a poem in there, yeah, you know. And so, so everybody comes, so we all have to eat. And like, food has that, even that you know, that the emotional evocation, like, you know, if you're mad and you're cooking food in the kitchen, like people can tell, you know, like they can tell, environmentally, what's going on, but like you can also tell when, like, you know, I've, I've had the great privilege of eating at places like the French Laundry in Napa, California, and like, those people love what they do, and the people growing that food love what they do. And I want to see like, South Dakotans love what we do more. You know what I mean, like, yeah, like, you ever eaten field corn? Don't taste a lot of love in it. Like, I want to see some more love in the food that we grow here. Who food the field corn? Like, it's got a place, you know? I mean, like, bye. Sarah, thank you. Oh. Her, yeah, she's cool. I want it. But like, you know, I feel the love and the ethanol in my in my car when I fill it up, but cruising down the road. But I, I really think that there's lots of opportunity here. But I look, it keeps coming back to people, yeah, it keeps, I mean, the food is there, of course, you know, the blueberries are there, right? Yeah. Like, politics, it's just having policies, yeah. And everything helps society, yeah. So those people, there's politics, yeah. And to me, it's like the most, I mean. Um, I've built houses before, and, like, I love doing that too. I've been a carpenter, I've been in medicine. I was an EMT and a firefighter. There's certainly politics in those things too. I mean, yeah, banking, finance, like, there's all these different aspects of human society that, you know, people need to weigh in. But like, you know when the when the pandemic hit and the independent restaurant coalition formed on March 16, I, like, signed up, like that day, and I started making videos about, like, how, you know, restaurants are too small to fail. Like, there we we employ too many people. Sure, we are too important to let restaurants just fold because, like, people can't go out to eat, and a lot of restaurants shifted to, you know, online takeout ordering. But like, I poach eggs that doesn't transport very well, no. Plus, like, you can poach an egg at your house. Like, what we really, what I found that we do at hasketts really well is, like, host people, we entertain, you know, like that, like the hospitality you get food when you go to a restaurant, but you're paying for, like, the environment and the entertainment, you know, the hospitality and so, like, the except my first memory of you coming to Sioux Falls and opening this restaurant was eggs. Yeah, I don't know if you led with eggs there a lot or something, but like, eggs were important to you. And I remember, like, my first memory was, like, if you go to Haskett, you're gonna get local eggs, yeah, we're gonna get a good egg, and you're gonna get a good egg. Yeah, and, well, that's still kind of a through line 214, years later. And I think that like this is kind of like this if you want to talk, like, if you want to be a cook. And the way I mentor people, it's like learning how to make stock and how to cook a steak correctly, takes a really long time. Like, and knowing like being that's stuff is expensive. They put you on salad station when you're a teenager, salads are a lot less consequential than cooking the steaks correctly. Those are expensive pieces of meat. When you you're learning to cook and, you know, tame fire, like cooking eggs all these different ways is a very affordable way to, like, teach people how to cook. And so eggs are a great step forward. At Lucius, we would drink all of her tap beer after a shift, you know, on her front patio, many nights, probably more than she'd like us to have drank on her dime. But I remember one night, we all went around the table, like, what kind of restaurant would you open? Like, somebody said this, somebody said that, and somebody was like, I'm gonna do breakfast. You're done by two o'clock in the morning. It's cheap. You make some money. You're always busy, cool, and so, like, when I came back, like again, I bought Michelle's coffee shop. Yeah, we didn't have a stove. We had these crock pots that we'd fill with water and vinegar. And, you know, it's we poached the perfect egg. And the secret is a three minute timer, yeah, just anyone takes anything away. Splash of vinegar in your water, lots of boiling water, simmering, not boiling, yeah, and a good splash of vinegar and a three minute timer, you crack the egg in, set your timer. Timer goes off, you've got a perfectly cooked, poached egg. Oh, yay. Let's talk about James Beard. Okay, yeah, so I really first person in Sioux Falls. Sioux Falls, yes, the state No. MJ. Adams was the first South Dakota nominated with the Corn Exchange in Rapid City. And that actually was while I was at Lucis. I think Lucia was nominated that same year. Oh 60708, somewhere there. Wow, it's a wait. And MJ has been good friend. I never worked for her, but she's cool. She's wild. In early 2019 I got an email from the James Beard Foundation inviting me to Chef's boot camp for policy and change. When I first saw James Beard, I was like, What? No way. I'm not nominated. There's no way. And then I opened it up, and I was right. I was not nominated, but I'd been invited to the chef's boot camp for policy and change, and I didn't really, you know, it's kind of like powder and stock all over it. You know? Like, what is this? What are they up to? I didn't really, I never followed James Beard because I never figured, you know, a breakfast cook and Sioux Falls would ever get nominated. They know the three minute rule, yeah for eggs, yeah, good for them. So you were super anyway. So I was like, Okay, this is cool. And Reddit, Reddit is just an invitation, a personal invitation like this, like and like they were gonna they paid for me to fly to Georgia, to go to resort there, and spend three days, two nights, learning about being a food policy advocate. I was on the co op board already at this time, because Sioux Falls food Co Op, you know, yes, I was concerned about, like, food policy, mostly around, like, how it's grown, yeah. And, you know, like, I, I know a lot about meat processing I wanted. I've had dreams of like, getting into the meat business. It's so hard, the way it is, but I just, I think I had made my bones as a food policy advocate by the time I'd gotten the James Beard invitation. And so I go to this thing, not really knowing what to expect. You fly in, you know, the shuttle picks you up, and you're meeting some chefs that you have no idea who they are. I think I'd recognized one. I was like, you might have been on Top Chef, this person that was there. And so we all get to this resort, and we're sitting around having drinks, and, you know, chefs in big cities know each other. You're like, just some dude from the Midwest, and you show up, you're like, I don't know who any of these people are. Yeah, I think some of them might be famous, but it was kind of weird. And so like, they go, Okay, so here's what we're doing here, and you've read some literature, you kind of understand they've got an outline of what the days are going to be like. And I'm starting to come around. And so when they first get there, they say, What did you think when you saw this email? I was like, I thought it was a joke, that somebody was pranking me. Like, okay, this I think, like, even Catherine Miller, I like, there's a phone number. I call her. I was like, Is this for real? She's like, yes, we'd like you to go, okay, cool. And so you go around the table. I was the first one to go. I was like, Man, I just like, I'm beside myself that like, somebody from South Dakota is here. This is so cool, like, you know what, whenever Jane James Beard nominations come out, or when ever articles are written about places, it's always like New York or California, like big city, Chicago, yeah, nobody ever imagines ascension to, you know, fly over country. And so it just feels really awesome to be here. There was another woman who's become a friend of mine through all these James Beard events that was there from Lincoln Nebraska. She owns a pastry company. There a pastry shop, and, yeah, there was these 18 chefs from all over the country coming together. Daniel Asher, from Colorado, is another friend that was like his first James Beard boot camp, and so we kind of met my first cohort of boot campers. We're there. At the time, Catherine Miller was running the programs for James Beard. Catherine Miller had worked for Steve Hildebrandt on Barack Obama's campaign and new policy and all this stuff, and she had found herself working at the James Beard Foundation, kind of running this programs department. The James Beard chef's boot camp is the brainchild of Chef Michelle Nishan, who was good friends with Paul Newman. Newman's Own Paul Newman and Chef Michelle helped each other. Michelle helped Paul Newman decide on doing Newman's Own and have that be a charitable brand of food products. And Paul Newman helped chef Michelle start his nonprofit. It's called Wholesome Wave. And so it's really about like, getting like, food is food is medicine. Both of his boys had like, really, like severe dietary issues, and so they were able to get like, legislation passed about, like making wholesome food more available to people that, like, have medical conditions, whether they can afford it or not. I don't know all of the details of Wholesome Wave, but that's how you got started. But. And he also saw, like, what an opportunity we had in chefs around the country. Again, you talk like, you know, like, Why? Why are chefs good spokespeople, people for policy? Is that, like, we know farmers. We know what farmers are faced with, and we know, like, how, like the whole process of food, and whether it's like, growing food, transporting food, processing food, preparing food and serving food. And like, what that and like, what types of food you're consuming has, what health outcomes for people. We are great advocates for the food system, and we know how it works. We don't know everything, but programs like the chef's boot camp, like help chefs realize our capacity to learn and grow advocates for it, and so that's pretty much what the boot camp is about. Patricia Griffin is a lobbyist in DC, and she, she teaches the chefs like how to lobby your congress person you know how to like bring them. You know policy ideas that can help our communities. And one of their main things that they work on Patricia's group is nutrition SNAP benefits, school lunch programs, that sort of thing. And so at my first boot camp, we talked about like, how to really help make sure ensure that SNAP benefits are available for people that need it. And like, often, the debate is about like, kicking able bodied adults without dependents, a bonds off of SNAP benefits. But like, they might, they might not have dependents, but they might be helping a family member at home, like, recover from an illness. Like, you just don't know the situation people are in. And like, I think SNAP benefits is a great way to help lift people up, which is what government should do, is help lift people up to be successful. You know, a lot of a lot of folks don't have bootstraps to lift up, and so like programs like SNAP help people find some bootstraps and get going. That's and that, like the the success is huge for programs like that and and so, like, I believe that they should be programs like that should be funded, right? My wife's a school teacher, and she knows that, like, if a student hasn't eaten, they cannot learn, right? And like, educators across the country know that if, like, their kids hungry, their brains are closed, you know, like that. They can't learn. And so, like making sure that kids have something to eat before school and during school is super important for their education outcomes, their financial outcomes, their social outcomes. And so food has these impacts on people. So I got to do that in the spring of 2019 in the fall of 2019 at Princeton University, which is like real life Hogwarts, beautiful, beautiful place, James Beard hosted their first chef's action Summit, where, I think that was year Seven of the boot camp program, sure, for James Beard and I think by the time that first ever chef's action summit at Princeton University in the fall of 2019 there were something like 300 boot camp alumni, and about 150 of us showed Up to Princeton and had again, like a two day, like Mega Boot Camp, where they kind of divided. There were, like, you know, it was just like a seminar type of thing. You show up, you have drinks and food, and then the next morning, there's a welcome, and then there's like breakout sessions. And some of those breakout sessions were, and this is kind of where James Beard programs has landed on, or like these three areas of food policy that the chefs tend to work on. One is like nutrition, SNAP benefits, school lunch programs. And food is medicine is kind of under that umbrella of nutrition. There's kind of social areas where, you know, kind of post me to fostering better kitchen environments restaurant environments, like treating people better, making sure that like restaurants can maybe offer health care benefits and doing that in inside your organizations. And another big part of that is like immigration, there's a huge immigrant workforce in restaurants and making sure that you know there's a. Is very pertinent today. But like, a fair way for people to, like, come and work in our restaurants and in our agricultural fields, like, that's another thing. Like, as chefs, like the immigrants, harvest our food, they process our food. We know that in Smithfield, like here in town, like there's a ton of new Americans working here in Sioux Falls. I was never more mad in my life than the day I had to listen to Michael Barbaro on the daily, on NPR Interview Tom Colicchio about like, people getting sick at smithfield here in Sioux Falls, and, like, we still haven't really done anything to, like, make sure that, like, the lines are moving at a safe and appropriate speeds for these, like, people that come to our country to cut up food and help us, right, like, have a food system So, like, there's still so much work to do in that. And the third part of it is environmental, which is really where I find myself. I love the landscape of South Dakota, and I remember getting nauseous at all the rows of corn driving from Sioux City to Huron, like it's just like monotonizing this corn and soybeans, these monocultures that are out here. I know that that this is the part of the world where that stuff is grown, but I know that there's other things that we can grow here that like have more of a value add. It doesn't have to be exclusively corn and soybeans. And you know, Travis, you're friends of the big Sue. You know that, like, if we have, like, buffer strips from water runoff, like, there's all sorts of things that we could be growing in these marginal lands and improving our landscape, right? So these three areas of the James Beard programs, nutrition, social responsibility and environmental are kind of the three main umbrellas that these, that James Beard focuses on. And over the years, like post like during the pandemic, James Beard was doing these wonderful like zoom calls, week, weekly sometimes where chefs from around the country would talk about a lot of it was like getting the Save restaurants Act passed. And, you know, some of it was about immigration. It was about like managing delivery services, and like the money that they were charging restaurants to deliver food and like how that wasn't sustainable in these different things. But one group that started up after the pandemic was the independent restaurant coalition, and I got to, like, be involved with them and developing relationships. One thing Patricia Griffin, the lobbyist from the boot camp, taught us is that, like you know, whether you have a Democrat representative or a Republican senator, like the people that work in their offices are people, and you know, like they eat food, they have grandparents, their dog might have died. So when you go in to talk about SNAP benefits at dusty Johnson's office, don't go in there hot, like, screaming at people. Like, you got to go in there, like, reasonable and talk to them like they're humans, because that's what they are. And like, if you just go in there screaming, they're not going to listen to you. So like, you have to go in and talk to your legislators like they're human beings. We should talk to all people as if they're human beings. Stupid that we have to say this, yeah, but like, just a reminder, people are people. So like, maybe be nice to them, maybe treat them the way you would want to be treated. But like, if you go in there and you're reasonable, and you lay out a case for, like, how the meat industry could work better, like, and you're nice about it, and you give them a good idea, they might be like, Oh, okay, I'll help you do that. Yeah, you know what I mean. So I spent a lot of time talking to thun's staff and dusty Johnson staff about like how important it is to pass funding for restaurants that were closed throughout the pandemic, like forgiving PPP loans and like a lot of this stuff they did anyway. Some of them voted for it. Some of them didn't that's where politics gets messy. And like, you the parties, yeah, input their control and, like, make legislation so hard because it's all politics. Like, that's the dirty part of it. But like, at the end of the day, like, some good policies came out of it, and a lot of rest. Restaurants are still around today, employing people, paying back the money that we were given in the form of sales tax dollars and payroll taxes like and just, you know, economic movement. You know, we buy stuff from farmers and so, like, when you save restaurants, you save our culture our spaces where people like, hang out and meet and talk and argue about politics and make policy, those are great, like I just been taught, you know, months earlier, from James Beard, how to, you know, engage work, work on policy and be respectful to policy makers and, like, push them to do the right thing, and then, and then I got to practice it with, like, the pandemic and all of the problems that were going on there, and so that all kind of wrapped up. You know, people got vaccinated. We didn't have to wear masks as much like summer. Summers came and went, and we got further away from covid. And there was a new normal that set in. And during that time, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the NRDC, start what started a group called the chefs for Healthy Soils campaign. And what really what they wanted is they wanted to make sure that there were incentives for row crop farmers to plant cover crops. Sure, and it helps with runoff. It increases the microbial capacity of soils helps build soil, helps their the plants, the commodity plants, that grow in these soils, be more productive. And it's like a really awesome thing, and it's, I think it was, I've kind of lost track of where that bill went, but I think the parts of it are still around and that farmers are still able to get a tax credit or a rebate on their crop insurance if they use cover crops. And so, yeah, is that? And you know this cost share programs that you know federal agencies have, and there's also nonprofit, you know, Ducks Unlimited have, you know, plans like that to provide cost share for farmers to implement cover crops, just for that reason, good health, family pictures in fog, which I inflict upon myself. Looked upon myself now every pedestal relinquished. I never dreamed it pushed me So Lori, you asked about, like, what, like, what do we I really want to talk about, like, what does agriculture look like in 100 years? Like, that's a question I want everybody to think about. Like, I know that there's, like, September hog futures and, you know, March corn futures. And like, the price of like, the commodities markets are like, changing moment by moment, and all these geo policy factors contribute to the price of beans these days, but I like back to cooking school. I did my externship in Seattle. My friend worked at a bookstore, and just perusing his bookstore, one day, I found this book called Becoming native to this place. It was written by one Wes Jackson, and I bought the book, and I didn't really read it. And then I go back to cooking school in Hyde Park, New York, and one day, down in the mail room, there's a picture or or there's a flyer on the poster board that said, you know, speaking at Vassar College was like, five minutes from the school is Wes Jackson talking about his book becoming native of this place. So I was like, oh, man, I better read that. So I read his book. And he's this farmer from Kansas who he and his friend, Wendell Berry and another friend who passed like early in the early days of the Land Institute. Founded the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, and Wendell Berry, I'd never heard of him, but like, was introduced to him by like, reading this book. I read his book, and I went to Vassar College, and I listened to him speak, and he talked about what they were doing at the Land Institute, which is developing a grain that that is a perennial wheat. Corn and soybeans and wheat are all annual crops, and you plant them, you. You know, you kill the soil, you plant these seeds, and you grow these crops in monoculture. They make seed heads in the fall, you harvest them, and then they're dead. And then the next year, you plant something else. The Land Institute really focused on like, kind of changing that mindset and planting perennial crops and finding a crop that would yield a big seed for human consumption, and that hadn't, hasn't really ever happened in all of our many, many years as humans. Like developing crops other than, like, you know, trees, pecans, walnuts come to mind, but no real like perennial cereal grain has ever been developed by humans. I think it was in 92 Cornell University, they told the Land Institute, hey, check out this seed called Intermediate wheat grass. And I think it's like native of Africa. It's a seed. It's a relative of wheat. I think wheat grass, like the kitty grass, like the stuff that you grow for your cat is that is that thing, and it had been grown in South Dakota for fodder for for this, but it's a perennial wheat. Comes back year after year, and they after a number of years of researching and breeding, selective breeding this wheatgrass. They branded it Kernza. And people may recognize that name, but it's the land Institute's brand for their strain of wheatgrass. And I remember Wes Jackson saying that, like corn and soybeans have had, like, 1000s of years of development, you know, to make them yield bigger seeds and and, you know, be the plants that they are today, that we recognize have been domesticated. So like, what we're doing with and it's not just the wheat grass. They've got sunflower seeds and other perennial legumes that they're developing. I think they've developed a rice that's in production in Asia, but a perennial rice where you can plant the thing, wheat grass, and you you plant it in August, it comes back the next spring, before it sends up the seed, you can cut the the first growth and use that as fodder for animals. And then after it sends out that seed stock, it matures in August, you can harvest the grain off of it, and then you just, you don't have to plow it. It'll keep coming back year after year. The problems with Kernza are that the seed is about the 10th of the side of a size of a piece of a grain of wheat, and so they're developing it to make it bigger. And all through kind of like selective breeding breeding, there's shatter so like, as the Kernza ripens, the the ones on the bottom will fall off before the top ones are ripe. And so they're trying to selectively breed so that that all of the seeds mature at the same time. But Wes Jackson and Wendell Berry, they talk about how so much of our agriculture is in this annual mindset, in the short term mindset, and it's everything is about these September futures. You know, the the winter futures, like everything, has this monetary value on it. And we don't really put a lot of value in what this perennial mindset could give us. And if we started to think about what could our landscape look like in South Dakota in five years? In 10 years? Like, what could we do if we got policy to encourage farmers and we have to subsidize these things too, right? Like, we have to give farmers a reason to plant Kernza over corn and soybeans. How everybody's always pointing the finger at farmers being like, you guys are ruining the earth by planting corn and soybeans. It's like, well, you're ruining the earth by only buying candy bars made from corn and soybean products. You know, like the consumer is just as guilty as the farmer. The farmer is just fulfilling the need of economics, right? And so if we choose to purchase our food, like that. This the whole political thing. Like, you every dollar is one vote and so like, whether you want to vote for big ag or you want to vote for local regenerative agriculture, like, if enough of us start spending money on local regenerative agriculture, then the farmers will start growing that stuff for us. It's not all on them to start changing things. We need to demand it as consumers to get these things going. But like we also need, you know, people at higher education institutions to like study this stuff, show that Kernza can be productive and develop markets for it. I know, I think, like. A Kellogg or GM, one of the like Minnesota grain companies would be like, yeah, we'd love to make, like, Kernza flakes, but you need to make us the like, so many billions of bushels before we'll start doing that right and like, so we just need to incentivize that sort of thing. But like, what Kernza can do just, not just east of where I live, in Del rapids. I think it's Eagan, Minnesota. They have that a well at the downhill side of their town, and that's where the municipal water comes from. Is out of that well, and it was so full of nitrates that, like, it was almost undrinkable, like they had to, like, treat it so many times to get all of the fertilizer out of it. And so what they did was they planted Kernza in the bowl of the drainage right up uphill from their their water source, Wellhead Protection and protection areas. Episode one and they and they started seeing, like, immediate drops in nitrate levels. And so like, like, Kerns, this plant, it eats nitrogen. If you've got a field that's, like, oversaturated with nitrogen, whether it be natural or, you know, applied, it'll take those things out and, like, clean your water systems for you. So I would love to talk to Mayor Paul or, like, anybody that'll listen. It's like, Let's plant a buffer zone of Kernza right down the river. Like, let's clean our I want water leaving Sioux Falls cleaner than how it comes in. That's great, yeah, because that's the nice thing about Kernza too. Not only is it a perennial, it has these really deep root systems that also act as this extra filtration to help build up that soil health that we were talking about earlier. So you get like it's, you know, corn is annual, but also has really shallow root systems too. So it's not doing that natural process as a tall grass prairie would, and Kernza is uniquely positioned to be able to do replicate that type of ecosystem that we once had on the prairie. Right? I love the idea, though, just even the thought process of thinking perennially versus like Kernza is like a tool, like a huge shift soybeans in our mindset. It's kind of a radical thought process, radical thought process to go to in our current cultural mindset of, you know, tomorrow now, seasons, seasonal, annual, you know, short term economic thinking, this perennial landscape, because we all don't want to just die next year either, right? So if we had these perennial thought processes, you know, I think everyone would benefit and be healthier. I want my kids to have kids here, and I want those kids to have kids that like, have an awesome environment to like, grow creative foodstuffs in South Dakota, Kernza, and all of these other perennial crops that the Land Institute are developing are awesome, but like, we can also raise native prairie, right with all of its diversity, and we can reintroduce bison to portions of it. And like the bison, like, what I bison is a little expensive, you know, it's a little expensive, but, like, it is perfectly suited to our environment. It's a little it's different than cattle. It's not as easy, you know, to manage. It's a wild animal, so it's a wild animal, but I love cooking it, you know, I think that I love eating. The more that we had available, the price would go down. Little economics, economics. So, like, I can imagine Lori. Like, part of that fun thing to think about, like, the future is the native herds of bison, like, as a food source, not just for the immediate community, but like, as an export of South Dakota. Like, wonderful, wonderful meat product available to us. One thing I like to think about when thinking about the future of South Dakota agriculture is, you know, we're infants, as far as land stewards on this continent, in the way that we've been farming. You know, we've had a couple of 100 Years of, you know, European mindset culture on on this continent, and that's pretty it's pretty young, whereas, like France and Italy, like the food products and the way they grow food there, like, are so special, so much of them. Like, I love European cheeses. Cheese is, like, the thing that I really think about, like, what we could do immediately here in South Dakota to really started development, and we have some cheese factories and some cheese makers in the state, but Vermont has a very vibrant, like cheese making economy, and that's because, like the and Wisconsin, California, like these states, have, like, identified something that they can grow in their state and invest it. And. Like, you know, promote it. The Wisconsin cheese marketing is was huge, and making them known as, like, a great cheese state. And now, like, I sell a ton of Wisconsin cheeses. They're, they're really, like, what can we be known for, right? I don't know, yeah. But, like, I think part of that buffalo seems to be buffalo, Yeah, but you're saying that we could be known for something very specific, yes, other than rows and rows and rows and, like, I know that, like, South Dakota Department of Ag is always trying to, like, push value added things. And I think that governor just said it in a speech. It was a priority of his, yeah, and so we're grassland, like cows are great at, you know, turning grass into protein, protein to, you know, to food stuffs. And so if we have these buffer zones and like, kind of marginal land where we can graze cattle. I toured a dairy farm last year just north of Sioux Falls, and I saw how this, like, it's a pretty big operation, like, the guy brings the feed to the cows, and the cows, like, being inside, it really kind of challenged my mindset of, like, maybe cows don't want to be out on the field all the time. Maybe they, like, they do their Sandy, you know, facilities, or their indoor air conditioned and heated facilities and but I mean that I think that we have the mechanical means for, like, tractors, yeah, to, like, go out and we can grow a diverse prairie of native prairie grasses, and like, kind of select, like, what's growing on there, and customize a feed for dairy animals. And, like, make really unique organic cheese products, dairy products that wouldn't just be known locally, but like with using some of the old world techniques and doing this thing my I had a friend who is a cheese monger out in the DC area. He'd gone to the cheese monger Invitational competition in New York a couple of times as one does, and so, like, what's really interesting about the cheese world is you have Europe, where there's rules about, like, how do you make a gruyere? How do you make a brie? You know, like, you have to, the cows have to be a certain breed. They have to have a certain diet. You have to, you know, have a certain German beer, yeah, French wine, there's these old rules to if it's going to be labeled champagne, it has to be from Champagne and grown in these rules, with these mixtures of grapes and a lot of like American cheese makers envy the history and like The the standard of quality for these European cheeses, whereas a lot of these, like young people, like, you know, a seventh generation cheese maker in Switzerland envies what rogue Creamery out on the West Coast is able to do, because it's like Wild West. It's like the best of like American like individualism is like, you can start a, you know, a cheese there's no tradition there. Yeah, you can do whatever you want. And so, like, what's really kind of cool about like, America is we can do whatever we want, as far as, like, cheese making learning, you taking what we've learned from the old world cheese making and applying that to what we can grow whatever grass we want. We can hybridize like these breeds of cattle to get the kind of like, whatever you want. And you know you're you're free to make that choice as a consumer, if you can make it work. So that sort of thing is really live in America where you're not beholden to some of those traditions. Another thought, and I'll just make this quick, like, I love the idea, like we have an oak savanna, from Sioux City to Brookings. Like, there's the the Newton Hills area is full of these beautiful native burr oaks, and the whole Big Sioux River Valley is just yearn, yearning to be an oak savanna. And what do they grow in Spain? That's like world renowned culinary product, Iberian ham. And so why doesn't over the next 100 years, we plant oak trees, you know, five miles on either side of the Big Sioux River, and start herding heritage breed hogs through the forest and like, making world renowned pork like, there's like, and I'm just one dipshit chef from Sioux Falls. These are my ideas. Like, you know, there's probably some mechanism. Is there a place where people convene to share? Of these ideas outside that. You know that the structure of a legislative session, which has certain rules and structures, and you only have so much time that ideas, and is there a place where those ideas are converging and where people are saying, Well, how about hogs? How about mataki mushrooms?