By Mary Elizabeth Kidd
Georgia Organics Farmer Services Coordinator Kayla Williams recently spoke to Melissa Nisbet of Four Bellies Farm and Tyler Haake, Executive Chef of Atlanta’s Argosy via Zoom (interview below) to explore their farmer-chef partnership and participation in the Farmer Fund Accelerator program and the Farm to Restaurant Farmer Champion program, respectively.
Melissa Nisbet and her husband, Avery, raise grass-fed lamb, beef, rabbit, and chicken and produce bone broth in Bowdon, Georgia, about an hour west of Atlanta. Four Bellies Farm is a 2020 Farmer Fund Accelerator member and was previously a 2019 Farm to Restaurant Farmer Cohort member. With Four Bellies Farm, their commitment to humane practices and restorative agriculture is evident in all they do.
Melissa recently summarized their operation and commitments in a recent Facebook post:
Courtesy of Four Bellies Farm
“All our animals are on pasture and are rotated in a way that allows each species to benefit from the others and contribute to healing the soil. We use regenerative practices where factory farming uses degenerative practices. Rotating the animals and having portable waterers sequesters carbon where factory farming practices pollute the water supply and adds excess carbon to the environment. The sheep and cattle just eat grass with hay (dried grass) supplemented in the winter. The chickens get grass, bugs, and are supplemented with a non-GMO, soy free feed from Tucker-Milling. The rabbits get to forage on grass and are supplemented with a non-GMO feed from Tucker-Milling. Rabbits wouldn't eat soy, but their feed is also soy free. We have never given any hormones or antibiotics of any kind to any animal ever. We might one day consider antibiotics if they were needed for a specific breeding animal. We would never consider giving hormones to any animal. We do not spray our pastures with any herbicides. We make decisions everyday toward better health for the land, animals, and humans consuming them. These practices are not easy or cheap to carry out. The labor of moving each animal 7 days a week is intense. Our family eats this food and we are passionate about clean eating. That is why we do this. I do hope people can understand, taste and feel the difference when eating our meats and broth.”
At Argosy in East Atlanta Village, Chef Tyler Haake has developed a special rapport with purveyors like Melissa by prioritizing his menu around the availability of seasonal, sustainable proteins and produce. For Haake, this type of sourcing has been ever-present in his decade-long career. He was gaining experience in a time with the restaurant industry embraced and marketed menu terms like “free range” and “farm to table,” but through working relationships like he has with the Nisbets, he’s come to fully experience and embrace the understanding and practices it takes as a chef to truly source locally.
They met at the Grant Park Farmers Market, where Tyler wanted to learn more about their operation by volunteering at Four Bellies Farm.
Wood-fired Freedom Ranger chicken quarters. Photo courtesy of Argosy.
To truly build this working understanding and cement their farmer-chef relationship, it involved a trade off. In exchange for the knowledge and context he was seeking about the Nisbet’s business, he was willing to offer hands-on help at the farm. And it paid off. Now, when they’re collaborating on weekly orders, the process is more nuanced and familiar. The farmer-chef partners focus more on availability and unique cuts versus the boneless, skinless standards seen on order forms from Atlanta’s bigger purveyors.
“At the end of the day, they’ve helped me become a better chef.”
From this farmer-chef duo’s context and knowledge of each other, they’ve gained respective understanding of, in Chef Haake’s words: “the golden nuggets of why we do what we do.”
View the full interview:
Mary Elizabeth Kidd is the Communications Manager at Georgia Organics. To learn more about Georgia Organics, visit www.georgiaorganics.org and follow us on Instagram @GeorgiaOrganics, Twitter @GeorgiaOrganics, and at www.Facebook.com/GeorgiaOrganics.
To learn more about the Farm to Restaurant program, visit farmtorestaurant.georgiaorganics.org/
To learn more about the Farmer Fund Accelerator program, visit www.thefarmerfund.org/farmer-fund-accelerator
Connect with Four Bellies Farm:
www.facebook.com/fourbelliesfarm
www.instagram.com/fourbellies/
Connect with Argosy: