Ep. 25 Bob & Seth Bernard from Earthwork Farm and Harvest Gathering
Stop & Taste Conversations - New Holland Brewing
Release Date: 11/10/2016
Stop & Taste Conversations - New Holland Brewing
I met Carl a year ago at the China Craft Beer Conference. Carl’s passionate and direct approach to life, business and brewing stood out and fueled my curiosity. I was really grateful that we were invited to be part of the 2017 Beijing Invitational Craft Beer Festival. Besides the festival, Carl hooked us up with historical tours of Beijing and welcomed me to three unique Great Leap Breweries. This conversation happened with in view of the Great Wall of China, on a patio up in the hills, while the first kettle-soured brew of his Great Leap Fermentation project quietly came...
info_outlineStop & Taste Conversations - New Holland Brewing
In episode Thirty Five, my guest is Dave Kwiatkowski from the Sugar House in Detroit, Michigan. Dave and I sat own over glasses of whiskey in Corktown and talked about his adventure in classic cocktails, small business and community building. Dave’s a natural and encouraging champion for Detroit, Drinks and drinks IN Detroit. The Music: “Wealthy Street” on intro and outro, © and courtesy of Drew Nelson Guest Bio After graduating from the Ross School of Business at The University of Michigan with a BBA in 2000, Kwiatkowski moved to Chicago where he traded equity...
info_outlineStop & Taste Conversations - New Holland Brewing
In episode thirty four, my guests are New Holland teammates, Jon Boer and Ryan Cioffi. THey’re heading up the beer and spirits making at our new brewpub and distillery, The Knickerbocker in Grand Rapids. We’ll hear how they came into a life in beverage and what to look forward to drinking on Bridge street and beyond. The Details The Drinks: Blue Haven Fitzgerald and Debits and Credits Centennial Pale Ale The Music: “Wealthy Street” on intro and outro, © and courtesy of Drew Nelson Jon Boer - New Holland Brewing: Head Pub Brewer: Jon is a Holland native, married to...
info_outlineStop & Taste Conversations - New Holland Brewing
I’m pretty sure I met Fred in 1993 during my first Great Taste of the Midwest, which would be a formative experience. It was a few years into the beer business, but roughly two before I’d join the ranks of Midwest breweries. He has been a magnanimous brewery wrangler that cares deeply about connecting people to experience. He and his team have kept their festival special throughout decades of change. I think I speak for everyone in the Midwest brewing community when I say that we all look at “the Great Taste” as the grand daddy of the Midwest beer fest, and the...
info_outlineStop & Taste Conversations - New Holland Brewing
Some of you may know a little or a lot about the world of beer wholesalers, or maybe nothing at all. I’ve been calling on Rave Associates, a beer and wine wholesaler in Ann Arbor since 1995, when the current owner, Jim Warbritton. was a sales rep, and we’d cruise around to accounts together, selling all the beer we could get our hands on. Jimmy and his executive VP, Rick Lack - the self-proclaimed “King’s of Michigan Beer” joined me to trade some stories, just before we headed into their trade show in Novi, Michigan to meet and greet the retailers of Southeast...
info_outlineStop & Taste Conversations - New Holland Brewing
Ginger and I met years ago over beer and chocolate. She was in Michigan to present at the MBG and MBAA Winter Conference and took an extra day or so to hang on the farm. Ginger is a tireless advocate for equity in marketing, and has made a name for herself by establishing her own consulting businesses, Women Enjoying Beer. and The Fifty Percent. We talk shop including beer, gender, service and training. Here’s Ginger from the secret lair at Red Horse Ranch. The Drinks: New Holland's Mischievous II Sour Ale & Pilgrim's Dole Wheatwine 2014...
info_outlineStop & Taste Conversations - New Holland Brewing
Talking beer, music, collaboration and creativity with a talented panel of musicians and beer enthusiasts, featuring Kyle Hollingsworth of the String Cheese incident and Kyle Hollingsworth Band, Grammy winning Peter Madcat Ruth of Madcat Midnight Blues Journey and The Change, Mike Shimmin from Joshua Davis Trio and others, and Nicholas Barron from The Strapping Owls. We talk shop, taste beers and even play a little music. The Music: “Wealthy Street” on intro and outro, © and courtesy of Drew Nelson Live music performed and improvised by our esteemed panel. - String Cheese...
info_outlineStop & Taste Conversations - New Holland Brewing
Drinking pints at the market with Richard is a quintessential British experience. We got to talk about his history, the UK beer market and all sorts of other stuff. Next time, we’ll need to get his business partner Mike to join us, as the two of them together is even better. Here we are from The Rake at Borough Market in August of 2016. The Drinks: The Music: “Wealthy Street” on intro and outro, © and courtesy of Drew Nelson Guest Bio: Richard Dinwoodie has been in the beer industry for almost thirty years. He has been a champion for a diverse marketplace,...
info_outlineStop & Taste Conversations - New Holland Brewing
Chris and I go waaaay back to when I first started going to the Great American Beer Festival, aka the GABF. I believe my first GABF was 1995, when Chris was just getting the project now known as The Falling Rock going, so we’ve covered some ground, not only in Denver, but Madison, Chicago, Philly - Chris gets around and is a huge part of our craft beer family. He’s a warm soul with a kind heart and I respect him a great deal. We had a great time hanging out at Big Beers in Breckenridge The Details The Drinks: Barrel Knickerbocker Old Fashioned, Zeppelin Bend Reserve...
info_outlineStop & Taste Conversations - New Holland Brewing
I got to know Mark a little bit at the Brewers Association’s beer dinner at The Salon with Chef Nicholas Balfe and Adam Dulye. We got to chatting and decided in short order that more beers and conversation were in order. We met at what we thought would be a quiet beer garden in his neighborhood, but as the London Craft Beer Festival let out a few blocks away, a post-fest party gathered around us, sharing our picnic table, beers and lively conversation well after the Mics were off. The Details The Drinks: Cloudwater DIPA v6 & v7, Five Points Pale Ale The...
info_outlineThis conversation was a special treat, as it happened in the week following Harvest Gathering. Earthwork Farm was considerably more quiet and tranquil than just days prior when it was teaming with smiling and ebullient people celebrating it with song, drink and warm smiles. While quiet and peaceful, I could still feel the pulse of Harvest, resonating in the bees humming away nearby. Bob Bernard, is the founder of Earthwork Farm and his son, Seth - is founder of Earthwork Music, Harvest Gathering and countless other creative pursuits. We drank home-brew on the gazebo off the back of the main barn, and had a little chat. It's our finale to the Harvest Gathering edition and I hope you enjoy it.
The Details
The Drinks: Seth’s “Monster in the Closet” Imperial Stout
The Music: Intro and outro feature “Wealthy Street” © Drew Nelson. Seth and Bob play, “Travel” from Being this Being © Seth Bernard and “You Are My Friend“ © Dick Siegel
Guest Bios
Seth Bernard has a uniquely Michigan anatomy: knee deep in glacier-folk with a belly full of whiskey and peaches smuggled from the root cellar of a '70s guitar god. Fingers resinous with fresh cut white pine, and sacred north star geometries whirling around his brow.
Born on April Fools Day, and playing the trickster-bard every day since, he's grown from a potent young Interlochen idealist into a black-bearded surprise-eyed psych-rocker singing the woods and water, souls and soils of the Great Lakes.
The tools! He's got a pine-box-full, from his Gretsch (and the chops to play it, mister), to the many iterations of Seth-music. I mean Airborne or Aquatic, bristling with fuzz-poem arena-anthems, to Starlight Six, the madly talented hybrid of Michigan royalty (May Erlewine, Joshua Davis of Steppin' In It, Mike Shimmin of, well, everything, and the power duo of Dominic and Rachael Davis). Or he can roll solo, with a catalog of hundreds of original tunes, thousands of covers and millions of improvisational licks. And the waltzes. By god the waltzes.
And more tools: Earthwork Music Collective, Family Weekend, Harvest Gathering, The Water Festivals, On the Ground, 350.org (you gotta google this stuff, links below), youth engagement, and partnerships with dozens of local non-profits. Like a true old-school folker, he plays the songs because they mean something, and that something they mean drives a life beyond just playing songs.
His most valuable tool, though, doesn't live in that box: two good ears. Seth listens like a priest. To his audience, to his community, to his deep-rooted intuitive star-born aurora borealis campfire ancestor soul. That alone makes every show - EVERY SHOW - worth the price of admission.
-Brad Kik, co-founder of the Crosshatch Center for Art & Ecology
Bob Bernard grew up in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, the son of two fiddlers, and has spent the last 35 years of his life tending bees, cattle, running a sawmill, educating, farming, fathering and fiddling on Earthwork Farm, where the Harvest Gathering takes place.