Clover Hill Farm Tour
- engrained
- Mar 27, 2021
- 1 min read
At Engrained Brewery, we believe in offering you the freshest, highest quality products we can find locally, and the same holds true for our eggs. 100% of the eggs used in our recipes come directly from Clover Hill Farms in Bloomington, Illinois, just over an hour north of here.
While we love and appreciate all of the local farmers we work with, Clover Hill Farms holds a special place in our hearts. It is currently owned and operated by Annie Schwoerer, cousin-in-law to our founder, Brent Schwoerer. Brent's grandma Evelyn Schwoerer started raising chickens and collecting eggs when she was a young girl, feeding and caring for the chickens that provided eggs and meat for the family. Throughout her life, she collected, cleaned, graded, and candled eggs to be sold in town, and her vocation lasted well into old age.
Annie got involved in the operation initially to help out Grandma Schwoerer, but quickly found that she truly enjoyed it. She expanded the operation, and now sells both eggs and whole chickens to the public. She feeds her chickens with grain grown right on their farm without added hormones or antibiotics. Annie's chickens enjoy the fresh air and sunshine, and are able to free range most of the year as weather allows.
We appreciate Annie's hard work continuing the tradition started by Evelyn Schwoerer. Her legacy has certainly influenced the way we think about food here at Engrained.
Thank you to Annie Schwoerer for giving us an inside view of her farm operations. Check out our interview with Annie in the video below.
It’s great to see how much care goes into something as ordinary as the eggs used in a restaurant. Farming has its own rhythm—feeding, collecting, cleaning, grading, and repeating those routines day after day.
That sense of rhythm reminded me of Blob Opera, a playful music experiment where you control colorful singing blobs and combine different voices into harmonies. Obviously very different from running a farm, but both are good reminders that simple elements can become surprisingly enjoyable when everything works together.
I liked reading about how Evelyn continued collecting, cleaning, grading, and selling eggs well into old age. That kind of consistency is probably one of the less visible parts of maintaining a family farm.
Consistency and rhythm matter in much lighter activities too. Sprinter Game is a simple browser running game where timing your inputs properly matters more than complicated controls. It starts easy, but the races become surprisingly demanding once the opponents get faster.
The relationship between Engrained and Clover Hill Farms is a nice example of why local partnerships matter. There’s much more personality behind food when you know who produced it and how they work.
That same sense of interaction is probably why I tend to enjoy competitive games more than purely solo ones. Basketball Bros is a quick basketball game built around simple controls, timing, movement, and short competitive matches. Completely different subject, but a fun option when you need a break after reading something more thoughtful like this.
The family history was probably my favorite part of this post. What started with Grandma Schwoerer caring for chickens eventually became an operation Annie genuinely enjoyed enough to expand. That kind of continuity is difficult to manufacture.
For a much less peaceful kind of entertainment, I’ve also been playing Wrestle Bros. It’s a fast wrestling game built around punches, throws, jumps, and chaotic matches. After reading about calm farm life and free-ranging chickens, the contrast is actually pretty funny.
It’s interesting how many moving parts are behind a relatively simple product like an egg—feed has to be grown, animals cared for, eggs collected and graded, and relationships maintained with local businesses.
That kind of coordination reminded me of Ships 3D, where several players can work together aboard a ship, handling navigation and cannons while fighting other crews. Farming and naval combat obviously have very little in common, but both make teamwork look much easier from the outside than it really is.