The past week was about spring cleaning, I guess. Chef Alex’s greenhouse has housed a couple chickens and some ducks through the winter. I quickly realized that creatures with wings can roost and poop in some pretty high places. Cleaning out their bedding gave us a couple hundred pounds of great compost material. Alex gave the compost pile a turn with his tractor, I’ll try my hand at posting a picture because the amount of compost I’m talking about is tons. We’re trying to estimate the actual weight because the pile measures a good twenty feet long by twelve feet wide by at least eight feet high. The mid-size Kubota tractor we use has a front end scoop that can hold 2ooo pounds so it could be 20 to 30 tons. Then there’s another pile of more aged compost which is about five tons.

The really cool thing about these piles is that they are the result of a recycling composting effort we started last spring at the Roadhouse. One of the restaurant bussers, Sarah, was asked to help implement our program and develop the culture of composting. It basically started with getting everyone to throw coffee grounds and tea leaves in a special bin instead of in the trash. Each night a dishwasher or busser was in charge of emptying these out into some special white 30 and 55 gallon plastic bins marked for composting. Pretty soon we got the cooks involved. Its amazing to see the activity in action now almost a year later. Vegetable scraps are either saved for soup stock or the compost bin. We even use egg shells and fish bones. This caused some anxiety at first being afraid of attracting crazy animals to our compost piles, but making sure those things are buried inside the pile masks their smell pretty good. It ends up being about 1000 pounds of material a week and one less dumpster unloaded at the restaurant per week. Wow - poop, compost and fish scraps - I honestly didn’t intend for this to be the topic when I started typing, but great compost helps make great soil which hopefully grows great veggies so … Cheers !

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The Zingerman’s Roadhouse is excited to announce that on March 24, executive chef and managing partner Alex Young received his second James Beard Award nomination for Best Chef in the Great Lakes Region. One of five nominees, Chef Alex Young is the only chef from Michigan. Check out his interview with Sylvia Rector of the Detroit Free Press.

Winter just won’t quit, but that’s okay. If you call yourself a gardener or farmer a necessary skill to have is timing. Knowing when to start seeds, when to transplant, when to work the soil, when to direct seed- these are all judgment calls that can change from year to year. I guess this week’s snows can be valued for keeping one’s enthusiasm in check. So we wait.

There’s all sorts of activity inside, though. We’ve been busy for over a…

This will be the first week of spring so it seems like a good time to get this blog thing rolling. Winter doesn’t want to end here in Ann Arbor and we haven’t really begun any digging in the dirt just yet but maybe next week. The planning for this years crops began in early January with the arrival of seed catalogs. We have looked for veggies we want to grow based on flavor. Sometimes seed catalogs will list items that…

Margaret Johnson is a prolific author and a noted authority on both Irish cuisine and on the ways Irish culinary traditions are represented in the U.S. In advance of her trip to Ann Arbor to join us for a special evening of Irish-American supper and stories at the Roadhouse on March 19 we asked her a few questions about how she came to love the food of the Emerald Isle.

Ari: Tell me your background.
Margaret: I was born into a 3rd generation Irish…