History of Fresh

May 2026 Produce Parable

By Adam Calder, Wheatsfield Produce Manager

What is fresh food? A simple enough question to ask, mind-boggling difficult to answer. In her book Fresh: A Perishable History, author Susanne Freidberg does a thorough job answering that question, and analyzing how that definition has changed over time and history.

The basic premises of the book are that freshness means different things for different foods, and that biology alone can’t define what “fresh” means. Since different categories of food define “fresh” differently, the book devotes each chapter to the history of a specific food. The first chapter is about refrigeration and the profound change it had on food freshness. The following chapters are about beef, eggs, fruit, vegetables, milk, and fish. Freidberg digs deep into each of these food categories. She read many old food industry trade journals, home economics texts, memoirs, technical manuals, cookbooks, women’s magazines, food packaging and advertisements to get a comprehensive understanding of the history of food preservation.

In her book, you learn about the resistance to the first mechanical refrigerators, hard as it may be to envision someone being anti-refrigeration in this day and age. The transition from sawdust-covered blocks of ice for food preservation to gas and electric motor-powered refrigeration was not rapid or universal. It had to first be adopted by shipping companies, and added to their boats and railcars. Then it was food distributors and warehouse managers that had to be convinced refrigeration was the future. Lastly, it was the home cooks and grocery shoppers who had to be conditioned to accept refrigeration in their kitchens.

She moves from refrigeration to beef, as beef was the first product that pushed the concept of maintaining a “cold chain” from farm to consumer to maximize freshness. The formation of fleets of refrigerated British steam ships, Argentinian meat packing plants, and municipal cold storage houses all arose together as refrigerated beef pushed across the globe.

With this cold chain in place, it became possible to also extend the distribution and shelf life of eggs, fruits, vegetables and milk. There are fun facts in each of these chapters, like that the Pink Lady was the first apple developed to not only look beautiful but to still taste good, or that a woman’s group in Philadelphia took to the streets selling cold-storage eggs to convince people they were as good as fresh-laid ones. There are also sobering facts in each chapter, especially regarding what past generations have long known about how certain fresh foods can be deadly. Milk routinely carried tuberculosis. There was dysentery in dirty vegetables, cholera on fruit. Freidberg does a compelling job using these facts, and many more, to answer the question: what is fresh food?

Fri., Aug 28 | Doomed Pioneers

Doomed Pioneers are an Ames-based vocal and guitar duo who dip in and out of their favorite genres from Bossa Nova to Folk. The name Doomed Pioneers stems from the field of Geology where it describes small critters living at the bottom of a shallow ocean who are unwillingly transported to the deep by mud-slides. In this new and strange environment they become pioneers, and because most of them will not succeed they are doomed. Deanna, an Arkansas transplant, and Jacqueline, from Switzerland, can relate and think making music is a pretty good way to find joy wherever life sweeps you.

Fri., Sep 4 | Central Iowa Jazz Trio

The Central Iowa Jazz trio will keep your foot tapping with tasty trombone, swinging sax and grooving guitar! Featuring long-time Central Iowa musicians Dave Richardson, Steve O’Brien, and Dave Swenson, the Central Iowa Jazz trio will not disappoint. Come and hear your favorite jazz, swing, latin and pop tunes!!

Check out a video!

Spring Wine Sale

THURDAY, MAY 14 – SATURDAY, MAY 16

Member-Owners and Student Discount SAVE 15% on more that 200 wines from over a dozen countries!

Choose from a wide selection of red, white, and rosé wines from some of the finest vineyards in the world. Many of our wines are organically grown from small production vineyards with unique varietals. Don’t forget our great selection of Local Iowa wines! You can support fair trade, small businesses, and sustainable practices all at once.

Whether you’re looking for a crisp and refreshing white wine to enjoy on a warm day or a full-bodied red to pair with a hearty meal, we have something for everyone. Save off regular prices, non-members save 5%. Must be 21+

Red raspberries in the sun by wooden fence, credit: Fourmile Farm

An interview with Gary Huber, Forman of Fourmile Farm, Ankeny, IA.

Can you tell us a little about the history of Fourmile Farm and how it all began?

Fourmile Berry Farm is based on a desire by the owners to bring things to life on our 15-acre former farmstead. The farm began in 2020 when the first strawberries and raspberries were planted. More were added over time to arrive at our current inventory of about 700 different kinds of raspberries, 500 strawberry plants, and 240 blueberry plants. We also have smaller numbers of gooseberries, currants, and elderberries.

Where are you located, and what makes your land or growing practices unique?
The farm is in Ankeny on land that is zoned agricultural. As for practices, we aren’t certified organic, but we don’t spray to control insects or weeds. Fertility comes from sheep manure compost from a nearby farm.

What inspired you to start making jams?
Making jams wasn’t initially a goal. Rather, once we began harvesting more berries than could be used by our family, we decided to turn the berries into high quality jams. This led to installing a licensed kitchen on the farm where we make the jams.

What fruits do you use in your jams, and where do they come from?
The berries we use in our jams are from our farm. We currently make jams from our blueberries, strawberries, and red, black and purple raspberries.

Gary with round strawberry bed, credit: Fourmile Farm

Do you have a signature or customer-favorite flavor? What makes it special?
All our jams are special, in part because they come from berries we handpick at peak freshness, but black raspberry jam is our favorite. It has a deep rich color, great flavor, and a smooth texture. Also, black raspberry jam is hard to make because of its large seeds, but we’ve added an additional processing step that extrudes most of the seeds from the jam to create a product you won’t find anywhere.

What sets your jams apart from others on the shelf?
Our jams are made from fruits we grow and harvest from our farm, whereas most of the jams in stores are made from frozen fruits out of major fruit growing areas like Michigan. As well, we use traditional recipes that result in jams that taste amazing. “A party on your tongue” is how one customer described the jams.

Are there any seasonal or limited-batch flavors we should keep an eye out for?
Our farm is a small operation, so supplies of all our jams are limited. The most limited is our royalty purple jams because we have only one 70-foot bed.

Strawberries in green containers, credit: Fourmile Farm

What does the jam-making process look like for you—from harvest to jar?
We harvest, wash and freeze the fruits during the growing season. The frozen fruits are then thawed and turned into jams during the off season. We use standardized recipes we’ve developed for each type of jam, and we make them in 25 jar batches in our Home Food Processing Establishment licensed kitchen. We use a 20-quart steam kettle where ingredients are added in a prescribed order and brought to the appropriate target temperatures. The hot jams are added to jars that have been sterilized in boiling water using a large plastic kitchen picture with an appropriate spout and a funnel on top of each jar. Sterilized lids are then attached, and the jams cool to room temperature before the labels are added. Each batch is also tested for pH and sugar content to ensure these standards are met and we are in compliance with our licensing requirements.

What’s most important to you when it comes to quality and flavor?
The criteria for evaluating jams are color, aroma, taste, consistency, spreadability, and mouthfeel. Each of these attributes is important to the overall quality. We actually had our jams evaluated on these criteria by 20 participants in a shared-use kitchen workshop held in 2025. With 5=good and 1=bad as the rating scale, not one of the six attributes for all four jams had average scores below 4.0. Overall average scores for each type were 4.7 for the purple, red, and black raspberry jams, and 4.9 for the strawberry jam.

What does it mean to you to partner with a community-owned co-op like ours?
Local matters. We need to be able to feed ourselves from local farms using businesses that are locally owned and operated. As well, the co-op business structure has features imbedded in its principles that are unique and superior to other types of grocery stores.

How do you hope customers will enjoy your jams in their everyday meals?
Jams can be enjoyed in many ways. On top of ice cream or brie cheese, on toast or heated muffins, by swirling into yogurt or oatmeal, by mixing into vinaigrettes, or for fillings in baked goods.

What’s your favorite way to enjoy your own jam?
On warmed and buttered muffins with a glass of milk as a snack before bedtime.

If someone is trying your jam for the first time, which flavor should they start with?
The strawberry. It’s more affordable, and it was our highest rated jam.

What’s something people might be surprised to learn about your farm or business?
The farm’s location within Ankeny’s city limits is unusual. It’s an urban fruit farm that wants to do good for its local community.

Strawberry blossoms, credit: Fourmile Farm

What’s next for your farm or jam line?
We continue to add fruits to our fields and beds, which is especially important for our strawberry beds as they need to be renewed every few years. As well, last year we lost five 70-foot beds of red raspberries to disease, so we will be putting blueberry plants in those beds in the spring of 2026.

Any upcoming flavors, projects, or goals you’re excited about?
We’ve not had enough blueberries to start selling this kind of jam because our plants are only now beginning to produce good yields. Each year the plants add to their age, more fruit will be available so that we can add this variety to our portfolio.

Thanks so much to Gary and Fourmile Farm for sharing with our community! You can find their jams in the grocery aisle.