Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/760410
w i n t e r 2 0 1 7 | 8 1 "What does it really take to operate a farm-to-table restaurant?" That's the question Eric Skokan has been asking himself ever since he and his wife Jill opened Black Cat Farm-Table-Bistro in Boulder, Colorado, back in 2006. A decade in, he's still finding answers on his certified-organic farm in nearby Longmont, a living lab where he experiments with not merely raising crops and animals but saving heirloom seeds and heritage breeds, custom-building everything from equipment to furniture and advancing the goals of sustainability and self-sufficiency to an extent rarely seen stateside—let alone in the high desert, where aridity, extreme temperature shifts and unseasonable frosts are agricultural facts of life. A tour of Skokan's 130-acre property testifies to his resourcefulness. Some 250 crops run the gamut from myriad squashes, lettuces, roots, legumes and tomatoes so abundant "we haven't had to purchase any in five years" to things you'd never expect to see in the shadow of the Rockies: black garbanzo beans, artichokes, sesame plants. And "when something fails miserably, we have the pigs to feed," says Skokan—nature's way of sweeping everything under the rug. (Take the celebrated but endangered Mulefoot pig, which he's currently attempting to crossbreed as "part of their survival strategy.") His heritage sheep, too, serve multiple functions as lawnmowers, fertilizers and, well, blankets: Skokan cures their skins to use as chair covers in both the bistro and adjacent gastropub Bramble & Hare. And then there's his latest challenge: milling. Following successful trials with polenta corn, Skokan is now tackling wheat, which he considers emblematic of "the synergistic relationship" between farm and table. On the one hand, he says, "Grain crops are essentially cover crops—they improve soil quality." On the other, "We can obviously make pretty spectacular bread" (with leftover feed for the herds). In 2014, he planted a small patch of hard red winter wheat "just to see what it looked like"; his 2015 planting reaped enough to require a combine harvester. This winter, he's auditioning eight heritage wheat types to determine what's best "for Colorado and for my restaurants," even as he reno- vates a storage facility to house different mills—which he hand-builds—for different grains. For all his bold forward strides, his path hasn't been easy. In fact, the infamous floods of 2013 cost him tens of thousands in damages, nearly wiping him out. Still, Skokan sees the bright side: "I've become more adept at dealing with the realities" of Colorado's unpredictable climate. Which means he has at least one firm answer to the question of what "farm-to-table" really means: sheer resilience. ERIC SKOKAN FARMS IN THE SHADOW OF THE ROCKIES FOR HIS BOULDER RESTAURANTS BLACK CAT AND BRAMBLE & HARE BY RUTH TOBIAS AT SKOKAN'S BLACK CAT BISTRO IN BOULDER, CO, A SIGNATURE DISH IS HIS HERITAGE TURKEY. PHOTO: CON POULOS ■cr