Page 10 - The Peorian, Vol 3 Issue 2

L yndon Hartz epitomizes
the members of his
generation who view
what they put in their bodies as
important, at least more so than
generations before them who
cared little about nutrition over
convenience.
If they have their way family
meals across America will consist
of home cooked food that came
from a local farm, or perhaps
their own backyard vegetable
garden and far less on the fast
food restaurant that dot about
every corner or every town in the
U.S.A.
In other words, they want
to go back to the way their
grandparents and great-
grandparents did it, said Hartz,
32, who decided while in college
he wanted to farm and eat off
his own land. Now owner of
Hartz Produce in Wyoming, just
north of Peoria, he helped form
an alliance of small farmers who
eschew chemicals and he is a
supplier to many restaurants in
the area.
His best customers are the
growing number of restaurants
that have embraced the farm-
to-table concept. There are now
five in the Peoria area that either
call themselves farm-to-table
restaurants or are at least on their
way there.
Those are June and Hearth,
both in Peoria Heights, Edge in
Junction City, Table 19 inside the
Marriott Hotel Pere Marquette
and Harvest Café in Delavan.
It should be no surprise that
the head chefs and in a couple
cases the owner, is of the same
generation as Hartz.
“It is a pretty new concept
and I think it is starting to take
off because more and more men
and women of our age group are
starting to become chefs or are
opening their own restaurants,”
Hartz said. “I started getting
drawn into the idea of farm-to-
table when I was in college and
once I started farming, I really
started becoming more concerned
about what is going into our
food.”
10 thePeorian.com
The Present
FARM-TO-TABLE CONCEPT
FINDING ITS WAY INTO
CENTRAL ILLINOIS
By Paul Gordon