Jiminy crickets!

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 07/03/2020 (2044 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

We’ve heard of dog yoga, goat yoga and even horse yoga. But cricket yoga?

Ryan and Lesley Steppler are the owners of Prairie Cricket Farms, to their knowledge the only operation in Manitoba that raises and sells crickets for human consumption. Prior to building a production facility in the lower level of their Miami-area home, the married couple relied upon a commercial kitchen at Manitou Elementary School, where Ryan teaches grades 1 to 6, to process their arthropods into a protein-rich powder that can be used as an ingredient in granola bars, muffins, even spaghetti sauce.

Two years ago, Ryan was cooking up a storm in the school kitchen when he was called to the gymnasium down the hall, where an adult yoga class was in full swing. Every so often when he’s harvesting live crickets at home, a few will cling to his jacket or pant legs without him noticing, he explains. He guesses that’s what occurred on the night in question because when he stepped inside the gym, the yoga instructor asked if he was missing anything, pointing at a number of crickets nonchalantly hopping from mat to mat.

“It became a bit of a running joke in town, how the school was now offering yoga with insects,” Lesley says, playfully poking Ryan in the ribs.

If you’ve never eaten crickets — besides cricket powder, the Stepplers also sell roasted crickets in a variety of flavours, including smoky barbecue, their top-seller — this weekend is your bug, er… big chance. Saturday from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m., Prairie Cricket Farms will be a featured vendor at Love Local Manitoba, an annual showcase for some of the province’s most innovative food and beverage producers.

The ticketed affair at the Victoria Inn (1808 Wellington Ave.) will mark the Stepplers’ Winnipeg sales debut. Lesley, a nutritionist and social work clinician, anticipates attendees’ reactions will be similar to what she and Ryan have experienced in the past, when they participated in farmers markets closer to home.

“To date, we’ve gotten everything from people getting out their phones to film themselves eating crickets to others rolling their eyes, saying ‘not in a million years,’” she says, adding their two children, Maverick, 5 and Savannah, 2 routinely add a teaspoon or so of cricket powder to their breakfast cereal every morning without blinking an eye. “We get it’s not for everybody, so we simply say ‘thanks for stopping by,’ and if they ever change their mind, they know where to find us.”

Ryan, 35, and Lesley, 32, both come from farming backgrounds. In 2015 Ryan’s father — they run a grain farm and raise cattle together — mentioned in passing how he’d heard cricket farming was going to be the next big thing. After conducting a fair amount of research, during which he learned about the health benefits associated with consuming crickets, as well as how much better it is for the environment to raise insects versus cows or pigs, Ryan placed an order for 200 live, tropical crickets from a supplier in the United States. Next he purchased a 16-square-foot hydroponics tent to house the critters. He placed the tent in a spare room in their home, along with large, plastic tubs outfitted with cardboard egg flats for nesting purposes. As advised, he kept the temperature inside the tent at 33 C.

It didn’t take long — about seven weeks — for 200 crickets to turn into 10 times that number. (When the females are ready to reproduce, he places blocks of peat moss in the tubs for them to lay their eggs in.)

Within about eight months he had enough crickets to make his first batch of powder, a process that involves placing live bugs in a freezer then, after they’re dead, washing and boiling them before running the lot through a grinding mill, antennae, thorax and all.

“Definitely him,” Lesley says, when asked which of the two tried the end-result first, in the form of a cricket smoothie.

“Nutty, a bit like sunflower seeds,” Ryan responds, when asked what that first batch tasted like. “Honestly, if we didn’t tell you what you were eating — which we obviously have to do because of (shellfish) allergy concerns — you probably wouldn’t have a clue it was crickets.”

Because it takes roughly 2,000 crickets to produce a 200 gram bag of powder, which currently retails for $22.99, for the longest time they were only able to make enough to sell to friends and family members who had placed standing orders. But after expanding their operation a little over two years ago by building a climate-controlled shed on their property and adding two larger hydroponics tents to the mix, and after successfully completing a provincially run food study, they were able to begin selling their products to the public.

Love Local Manitoba founder Peter Fehr says he was instantly intrigued when he spotted the Stepplers’ application for his juried event.

“I’d read articles in the past about people eating crickets but until Ryan and Lesley applied to be in the show, I didn’t know there was anybody in Manitoba actively raising them,” Fehr says when reached by phone.

A couple of weeks ago, Fehr staged a vendors’ night exclusively for this weekend’s 45 participants, during which they were able to sample one another’s goods ahead of time. Never afraid to try new things, Fehr, the owner of Gourmet Inspirations, a seven-year-old enterprise that turns out award-winning finishing sauces, dove into the couple’s roasted crickets first.

“They reminded me of a salt and vinegar chip, just a slightly different texture,” he says. “Lesley also brought along these little bar thingies she’d baked using cricket powder. With those you could only taste the raisins and nuts; the powder was simply added protein but had no taste, whatsoever.”

For now, Prairie Cricket Farms products are only available in three stores, one each in Miami, Manitou and Morden. That could change soon, as the couple has been approached by several independent grocers in Winnipeg, as well as a representative from Sobey’s.

How big can they get? That depends on the crickets, Ryan says with a laugh, pegging their current population at just over one million bugs.

“Right now we’re only using about half the space in the cricket barn, so there’s definitely room to grow,” he says. “The one thing we don’t want to do is take on too much, too soon, and then be caught without enough product. We want to make sure we can keep up with demand before agreeing to supply all these different stores.”

As for other plans, the Stepplers are always experimenting with new flavours for their roasted crickets, which retail for $10 a bag. Dill pickle and chili-lime look to be a go, as does a sweeter concoction, roasted crickets dusted with cinnamon sugar. That one was a big hit with adults and kids alike at a Morden-area market last spring, Lesley says.

Also, crickets might not be the E-I-E-I-only insect they have on the farm, going forward.

“I’ve read about crickets being the gateway bug, because the taste is so neutral,” Lesley says. “But I’ve also read about how other people who are doing this also raise mealworms. While the thought of that honestly grosses me out a little bit, hey, you never really know.”

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca