Name: WATCH NOW: Mount Pleasant man used to work a city job. Now he's seeking the perfect pizza on his anarchic farm
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WATCH NOW: Mount Pleasant man used to work a city job. Now he's seeking the perfect pizza on his anarchic farm

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Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter.Please subscribe to keep reading. You can cancel at any time.Loading&amp;hellp;{{title}}{{description}}{{banner}}(renews at {{format_dollars}}{{start_price}}{{format_cents}}/month + tax){{tagline}}{{special_title}}{{html}}You are the owner of this article.You have permission to edit this article.© 2022 Lee EnterprisesShare ThisWATCH NOW: Mount Pleasant man used to work a city job. Now he's seeking the perfect pizza on his anarchic farmShare thisMOUNT PLEASANT — Last March, Charlie Tennessen, owner of Anarchy Acres, a small farm in the backyard of his home in Mount Pleasant, set out to find the perfect wheat for the perfect pan of pizza.But there’s a catch. Tennessen didn’t want to grow any “superwheat.” He turned to the and planted wheat that stood the test of time.“They make new wheats today all the time, but if I were to grow one of those wheats, it’s had five years maximum of practice,” Tennessen, 54, said. “It hasn’t seen droughts, hasn’t seen rainy years, super cold years.”He said older variants of wheat that he grows, like the circa 1860, are more interesting to him because of what they can sustain.“I had this challenge of: Can I grow food just on my homestead?” he said, “… which sounds crazy, but also we’ve been doing it 10,000 years. It’s only in the last 100 years people have used inorganic fertilizers.”After last year’s harvest, Tennessen discovered that , initially identified by the University of Wisconsin in 1905, was the ideal wheat for pizza.Tennessen documented the entire process himself, from March through August 2020, in a full-length film to be titled for which he raised over $6,000 for in a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign. Tennessen reached his goal and will use the money to start post-production. He hopes to have the film, which is co-produced by that looks into the lives of people who grow food across the state, ready for release soon.But Tennessen didn’t — and couldn’t — do this all by himself, he said.Enter Team Anarchy, made up of three miniature donkeys at Tennessen’s four-acre homestead farm on the 4000 block of Newman Road. Sebastian, Rosie and Cassie have been with Tennessen since he began his farm back in 2015. They are Tennessen’s main source of productivity on the farm.Working together with Team Anarchy, Tennessen said he’s able to support a cyclical lifestyle on the farm: Tennessen and the donkeys farm the wheat, the wheat makes hay for the donkeys and flour for Tennessen’s pizza, and the donkeys make manure to fertilize the farm.“I take care of them. They’re gonna take care of me,” Tennessen said. “I clean their stalls, trim their hoods, feed them, watch out for foxes. They feed me — they feed my friends. It’s a deep gift.”Tennessen has written three children’s books about Team Anarchy, which are up for sale on his website, .“I want children to see that donkeys can be more than just ,” he said. “They have a role that’s important.”Tennessen also chooses to conduct his farm with as little modern technology as he can in an effort to be as sustainable as possible. He still uses scythes to cut grain and relies on the horsepower — err, donkeypower — of Team Anarchy to plow the ground.Tennessen said about 75% of the food he eats, he gets from his own farm. He makes tamales, bakes bread and — most of all — loves making pizza. For the pizzas, he grows the tomatoes, basil and (no surprise) provides the flour.Dawn DeMuyt, who lives next door to Tennessen and has a small farm of her own, said his food is “delicious” and she uses with his flour, too.DeMuyt, who is youth farm corps program manager at the , an environmental education center in Racine, said being neighbors with someone who has the same values on growing and living organically has been a nice experience. DeMuyt moved from Detroit to Mount Pleasant back in 2016, and Tennessen helped her plow out some of her property for her first fall garden. She said if either of them have to go out of town, or “won’t be home in time to put away the chickens,” then “we rely on each other for support.”“It’s not your typical neighbor,” DeMuyt said.More information on Anarchy Acres, how to support the documentary and even some of Tennessen’s recipes with his flour can be found on the website . To donate or learn more about the Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign for the documentary, titled "25 Weeks: A Wisconsin Pizza Harvest" with the subtitle "The true story of an ancient crop, a farmer, and a pizza," go to&nbsp;.Tennessen said the planned documentary centers on a theme of acceptance that things don’t often go as planned, especially on a farm that doesn’t rely on anything but him and his animals.For example, heavy rain during one week meant his farmland was too muddy to do anything with — the weather can’t be changed y’know.Tennessen said he sold out of his wheat fast because the harvest wasn’t plentiful.“So the only way I can get more wheat to sell is to get a time machine, change some things I did,” he said.Tennessen said prior to living in Mount Pleasant, he worked in an office and lived a city life. “I went on vacation, worried a lot more about my clothes and what kind of shoes I was wearing,” he said.Now, waking up knowing there’s work to be done at Anarchy Acres gives him a more fulfilling purpose, he said.“All that fulfillment, all that anguish, and the things that don’t work, all the lessons learned — at the end of life, you have that feeling of, ‘Wow, I really did something,’” he said. “You can have that on a couple acres of dirt.”Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter.Charlie Tennessen introduces the three donkeys on his farm, Anarchy Acres, that make up Team Anarchy on Friday, Jan. 29. From left, Cassie, Rosie and Sebastian.&nbsp;Charlie Tennessen gives his donkey, Sebastian, a hug on Friday. "Every morning, I put the three of them (the donkeys) in a headlock like this, and hug them," he said.&nbsp;Elliot is perched up on Charlie Tennessen's shoulders on Friday. Tennessen said Elliot was a stray cat he met in 2008 around his property on Newman Road. Ever since then, Elliot has been his pet.&nbsp;{{title}}{{summary}}You don't have any notifications.Get up-to-the-minute news sent straight to your device.Topics

Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter.Please subscribe to keep reading. You can cancel at any time.Loading&amp;hellp;{{title}}{{description}}{{banner}}(renews at {{format_dollars}}{{start_price}}{{format_cents}}/month + tax){{tagline}}{{special_title}}{{html}}You are the owner of this article.You have permission to edit this article.© 2022 Lee EnterprisesShare ThisWATCH NOW: Mount Pleasant man used to work a city job. Now he's seeking the perfect pizza on his anarchic farmShare thisMOUNT PLEASANT — Last March, Charlie Tennessen, owner of Anarchy Acres, a small farm in the backyard of...

WATCH NOW: Mount Pleasant man used to work a city job. Now he's seeking the perfect pizza on his anarchic farm

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