Huron Farms to Tables: Grassroots Pizza's 'Fired Up Fridays' set the tone for summer
BY SCOTT STEPHENSON
Foodies far and wide travelled down a stretch of Bruce Road 86 between Lucknow and Whitechurch on Friday to enjoy one of Bruce County’s most unique dining experiences - Fired Up Friday at Grassroots Farm. It’s a chance for locavores to visit the Morrison family and eat farm-fresh pizza with friends, family and neighbours. It’s a decidedly seasonal weekly event, occurring from July to September.
If you’ve never stopped by Grassroots Farm, you may not have noticed the rustic sign advertising wood-fired pizza on the side of Highway 86. Or you may have observed their travelling trattoria producing fresh pizza at local events, or perhaps you’ve seen their vacuum-sealed pizza in the freezer of Shanahan’s in Goderich and Penny’s in Blyth or at marina mercantile shop Delish Us in Bayfield Harbour. It’s safe to say there’s no wrong way to discover this innovative farm-to-table family business, which is quickly becoming the area’s worst-kept secret.
Grassroots is the brainchild of Roger and Vicky Morrison. They first dreamed-up farm-fresh pizza while operating a Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) garden. In the CSA model of farming, community members support specific farms in their local food network through subscription or membership, and, in exchange, they share in the yields from each harvest. Risks and rewards alike are shared by patrons and producers, which leads to stronger community connections to local agriculture.
A majority of the rainbow of vegetables adorning Grassroots pizzas comes from Pfennings Organic Farm in New Hamburg but some specialty ingredients are sourced from a CSA garden and friend to Grassroots - Firmly Rooted Farm in Belgrave. In addition to helping the Morrisons top their pizza, Firmly Rooted also offers season-by-season food shares in a variety of volumes, and sells seedlings and produce to the public. Firmly Rooted has also teamed up with Meeting Place Organic Farm near St. Helens and Goderich’s Weth Mushrooms to create both egg and mushroom shares as add-on options for their subscribers.
For the Morrisons, running a CSA garden meant there was an influx of crop sharers who came to the garden every Friday to pick up their vegetables. It seemed like a natural next step to start cooking something tasty for loyal locals to snack on while they waited for their produce. The two soon constructed a mud masonry oven and started baking dough topped with whatever extra vegetables they had on hand.
The popularity of the community garden pizza project encouraged the Morrisons to build a weighty behemoth of a pizza oven on the back of an open-air trailer that could go to farmers’ markets and, during the pandemic, breweries. The portability gave a wider range of people a chance to try the Morrisons’ wares, but they knew the cumbersome set-up could be streamlined. A new custom trailer and much lighter, stainless steel oven were constructed, and their original travelling oven found a new home as the heart of the farm’s pizza operation.
Roger remains pizzaiolo extraordinaire and Vicky focuses on education and programs that enrich the community. Their son Blair keeps operations running smoothly, while daughter-in-law Courtney’s background with both Firmly Rooted and Eat Local Huron made her a perfect fit to join the family business. On this day, “We’re super busy and we love what we do,” explained Courtney from the front porch of the barn that houses their oven and event space, which was abuzz with preparations for the first Fired Up Friday of the season. The decision to open up their homestead farm to hungry visitors was a simple one. “We wanted people to see the gardens where we grow stuff and look over the fields while they’re enjoying their pizza, and then music came along with that, and now breweries come to us, instead of us going to them, which is super fun. Fired Up Fridays is just a way to get people out on the farm eating our food in our own space.”
Revamped plans for farm-stay experiences are also certain to be a hit with visitors.
The Grassroots Farm is a truly beautiful place to inhabit for a meal. Guests are greeted by a very professional team of alpacas, and then get to travel through vegetable gardens, past the chickens and the farm store on the way to the airy barn that houses the eatery. Tables inside and outside offer ample space for the steady stream of visitors, and the smart, cafeteria-style layout of the space is designed to ensure each and every hungry human gets fed in a timely fashion. In addition to pizza, there were also rotating seasonal salads and beverages available, including Morrison Berry Farms’ strawberry milkshakes. Those looking for a salad could choose between a kale Caesar or spinach with feta cheese and local strawberries with balsamic dressing. The fresh greens topped with fresh fruit and flavourful cheese made for a real knockout of a salad, and paired perfectly with the pizzas, which came out of the oven just a few minutes after ordering.
So what are the hallmarks of a pizza from Grassroots? A thin, crisp crust is a must, though it is still chewy when you sink your teeth into the tip of a slice. Leopard spots, the dark blisters that are the hallmark of wood-fired pizza, are evenly distributed. The sauce is never applied too heavily, and does not run so close to the gripping edge as to create structural issues or the risk of saucy fingers.
Now it’s time to talk about the symphony of toppings. There are a number of tried and true offerings you can get from the mobile unit, farm or local freezer, from the Sassy and Simple to the fully-loaded Farmer. Choose any one - you can’t go wrong. On Friday they also offered-up a creamy, garlicky concoction of a pizza featuring garlic scapes and feta cheese, which was packed with garlic-flavour and local spirit.
The seasonal specials are going to be different every Friday at the farm, which means making the trip to Grassroots a weekly occurrence is probably a good idea.