Sept. 19, 2024

This paid piece is sponsored by Vanguard Hospitality.

For the past two decades, Nick and Kristianna Siddens steadily have been making their mark on South Dakota agriculture.

The owners of Prairie Coteau Farm near Astoria moved from Illinois in 2004 with the idea of starting a farm.

Nick grew up on a dairy farm and had a career in the wind industry, while Kristianna “always wanted to be a farmer,” she said. “I had worked on a vegetable farm after college for a couple years and did agroforestry in the Peace Corps, but he knew I wanted to grow vegetables. It was a lure to get me to come up here, and it worked.”

The Siddens family, which includes two daughters who also help on the farm, has created strong market niches.

“We had noticed when you buy garlic to plant, at the time there weren’t a lot of vendors,” Kristianna Siddens said. “Especially in the upper Great Plains, and garlic actually acclimates to where it is planted, so you get bigger and nicer bulbs if you plant seed that was raised where you grow it. So we saw an opening to become a seed provider in the region.”

They grew garlic for shares they offered as a CSA “and always had really nice bulbs, so it seemed like a good thing to try,” she said. “It’s gone really well. I sell the seed garlic through the Dakota Fresh Food Hub and another online farmers market, and then I sell to other restaurants and the Sioux Falls Food Co+op and Pomegranate Market grocery stores.”

At Vanguard Hospitality, “we’d never worked with someone who grew garlic,” chief operating officer Tim Meagher said.

“And now, we use less garlic because hers is so potent. This is the discovery in working with local producers. Not all things are created equal. This garlic is so rich, suddenly my costs aren’t an issue because I’m yielding better. The value of nutrient-dense food is very eye-opening.”

The garlic is used in dishes at Morrie’s Steakhouse, “and we would use even more in our restaurants if she could make more,” Meagher said.

In 2015, Prairie Coteau began raising lamb.

“That’s also gone really, really well,” Siddens said. “I have some individuals who buy directly from me, and I also offer that at the Food Hub and online market Glory Garden, but right now I’m pretty committed to supplying the Vanguard group for most of what I can produce.”

Because the farm is certified organic, the lambs are eating “all the adjacent grasses and go through the land in a form of regenerative agriculture,” Meagher said. “They’re eating better, healthy grasses. The root systems are better and not depleted by chemicals. They’re healthy animals, and her lamb specifically is a very mild lamb that guests really enjoy.”

For Siddens, “it’s been a really exciting development to work with Vanguard,” she said. “I love that they appreciate so much what it takes to raise lamb in a regenerative way that’s good for the land and good for the animals. They’ve even sent their chefs here to see what we do, which is pretty cool.”

The lambs rotate where they graze, eating a natural diet without pest control or antibiotics.

“If I ever need to take care of a parasite, I use garlic, and that’s perfect because it works really well,” she added.

The difference is clear in the lamb produced, Meagher said.

Lamb “can be very gamey or super-grassy, and this is very middle of the road and a way for people to realize they really do enjoy lamb — they just may not enjoy some lamb,” he said.

Prairie Coteau lamb is showcased on the current feature menu at Grille 26, which includes a burger made with ground lamb, smoked feta, tzatziki sauce, arugula, tomato and onion on pita.

There’s also a Greek salad with Prairie Coteau lamb kofta meatballs, peppers, onions, tomatoes, feta, olives, cucumbers, oregano and lemon vinaigrette.

“The features are fantastic,” Meagher said. “The salad is about as clean as you can get — organic, regenerative vegetables, very simple ingredients. But what we’ve discovered at Vanguard is that if we have five really good ingredients, suddenly we want to put less in the dish because you want those to blend.”

The features will be available for a limited time, so stop in soon to try them at Grille 26, and keep an eye on Morrie’s Steakhouse features for other lamb dishes.

“It’s really refreshing to have a customer that is willing to get that much information about how I’m raising my products and is actually interested and willing to share that with their customers,” Siddens said. “They’re going the extra mile to connect the dots, and it’s really great.”