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New Columns appear each Tuesday. 27JUN06 Doral Chenoweth writes about the business of restaurants and the food industry in the Columbus, Ohio, Metro area. Reader comments are welcome by telephone. 614-538-1822. Email the Grump: thegrumpygourmet@wowway.com Send food stuff here: iPLATE@grumpygourmetusa.com Send weird stuff here: alferd_e_packer@wowway.com E-mail messages must include name and telephone for a reply. |
 DR. DAVID ZARTMAN, retired ag prof at Ohio State, still makes regular visits to check on his friends in the paddocks at Ackerman and Kenny roads. |
27JUN06 Cow Town, or Cowlumbus? Ring the Cow Bell Proudly Jokes about Columbus being a Cow Town get more traffic than mother-in-law jokes. For some dumb reason people who utter Cow Town think they have just invented something new. Cousin, research has 2,200 reasons to be proud Columbus is a Cow Town. First but not least is the fact we have a unique centerpiece in Columbus - one totally foreign to any other city.
Ohio State's dairy farms at the intersection of Kenny and Ackerman roads showcase (for more than 75,000 drivers daily) this summer 26 grazing Holsteins and four Jerseys. Annually from mid-April until frost, they graze contentedly in a pastoral setting of four paddocks. When the sweet grass in one lot is grazed to about three inches, the 30 head rotate to the next fresh paddock. Nature keeps pace. Their sweet grass menu varies: Tall Fescue, Orchard grass, Kentucky blue grass and white clover, all free of chemicals. I may be the only driver in that 75,000 number who daily checks this bovine classroom. There are no blackboards. No play grounds. No flag poles. No blacktop lots for students and faculty parking. But the four paddocks for years have been a classroom for Dr. David Zartman and others. Dr. Zartman retired in June from the agricultural faculty. Today he is professor emeritus, still leads tours of the OSU farms, and teaches a course that should be mandatory these times - he teaches students how to harvest sunshine. Read that twice. OSU's Waterman Dairy and Natural Resources Laboratory on both sides of Kenny road is year around home to 135 to 140 cows. Therein is an asterisk to origin of how Columbus became a Cow Town. In the 1970s a Chicago Tribune reporter, Paul Gapp, was researching Columbus. He happened to drive onto North Star road, the farm's western boundary. There was his illustration for the story theme: a silo, neatly fenced truck farms of corn and vegetables, cattle barns, and lots of cows and more cows. In the distance beyond this placid rural scene he could see the city's single skyscraper, then the Lincoln LeVeque Tower. It is not recalled if Gapp took the picture, but when the Tribune story appeared, the illustration was of a herd of cows with the LeVeque cap in the far distance. Gapp, very familiar with Columbus, referred to Columbus as a cow town, herein accepted as a badge of distinction. Gapp in the 1960s was a Columbus Dispatch reporter. Among his assignments: Covering the more than two dozen suburbs in Franklin County, most of them sucking water and sewer services off Columbus. Gapp won a Pulitzer Prize for architecture writing in 1979.
Do you know who keeps population cow counts? Franklin County has 2,200 cows. The county ranks 82nd out of 88 Ohio counties in cows. The other end: Wayne County is No. 1 in Ohio with 94,600 cows. Wayne's count claims 33,200 as milkers. In all of Ohio there are 1,300,000 cows; 266,000 are milk givers. For all those proud numbers, thanks to the counts keeper, Deborah Edwards, a Federal counter known as an automation technician. So, see the importance of beef on the hoof. Now you understand why those Holsteins and Jerseys are known as the Grumpy Gourmet's cows. That is my small claim since I lost my first bovine campaign.
by Doral Chenoweth 614-538-1822 |
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