RAGBRAI Team Seeks Your Picks

[Devotay]

Team Edible, the official team of Edible Iowa River Valley, is looking for all your best ideas for food, beer, pie, wine, anything Edible and wonderful along the route of RAGBRAI XXXV.

For those who are unfamiliar, RAGBRAI is the Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa. This year, the route will take us through

Rock Rapids

Spencer

Humboldt

Hampton

Cedar Falls

Independence

Dyersville

Bellevue

We'll dip our rear tires in the Missouri River, then 6 days later will dip our front tires in the Mississippi. But we're gonna need some calories to burn off. We welcome ideas on:

Pie

Craft Brewed Beer

Pork Tenderloins

Maid-Rites

Wineries

Cheese

And anything that's Edible and fantastic.

Ridden RAGBRAI Before? Tell us about your other food finds

Riding RAGBRAI this time? Join our team!

[Devotay]

C'mon Gulleteers! Don't tell me I've stumped ya! offline I've heard great things like Archie's Waeside in Le Mars (on the way to Rock Rapids) and Beck's Sports Brewery in Cedar Falls, but I'm still looking for the eGullet folks to show me that hidden gem out there!

[StanSherman]

I’m not sure we can be of any help, but who knows. We will be spending the first 2 weeks of July traveling the Northern half of Iowa on our rural-focused farmette hunt. We have a very loose itinerary and are going to wander around exploring wherever we feel like going. We may run into some interesting food or drink finds along the way that we can alert you to.

We will be going through much of the area in which the first few days of the race is being run, since we haven’t been through that section of Iowa, yet. I suspect you are already familiar with the available interesting foods closer to the finish.

[Devotay]

I have to ask, what is a farmette hunt? You're searching for small, female farms?

I'd appreciate hearing about anything you find, whether it's good food, or good stories for the mag

Edited May 7, 2007 by Devotay (log)

[StanSherman]

I have to ask, what is a farmette hunt?  You're searching for small, female farms?

←

A farm with a “hot” body…

Searching for a small-scale farm. Here in Northern California, 20 acres can be a sizable organic produce farm. When we first started looking for a farm in Iowa, once people heard we raised chickens, they immediately steered us towards “chicken operations”. Places with buildings to house 60-90 thousand birds in each one. We raise a breed that is very similar to a Bresse chicken. Truly small flock, outdoors on pasture, milk-finished, and locally hand-processed.

We still want a few acres of crops and animal feed for family use, plus room for a small orchard of heirloom fruit trees and garden, but the “farm enterprise” would be the chickens. We want to be in an area with a bit of isolation because we do heirloom seed saving - we currently have 15 beans and 15 tomatoes, to name a few, that we offer through Seed Savers.

[StanSherman]

I was looking at some BBQ sites and woodyssmokeshack.com say they will be on the RAGBRAI route. I guess there will be a fair amount of BBQ rigs.