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Table to Farm

The farm-to-table movement has come full circle, with chefs bringing the cooking process back to the land.
by BETH D'ADDONO - October 2009

Published in :: Gastronome Destinations


Serving beet root soup at the Abbondanza Organic Seeds & Produce farm, site of a Meadow Lark Farm dinner; Sean Brock, executive chef at McCrady's in Charleston, SC, at his farm on Wadmalaw Island.

ON A MILD SUMMER EVENING IN ZIONSVILLE, IN, more than 100 diners are soaking up the last rays of sun on a votive-lit deck at Traders Point Creamery while an acoustic trio plays old-time country music on banjo, guitar and fiddle. The crowd has gathered for the weekly $20 family-style farm dinner, an outgrowth of the year-round farmers market, featuring area growers and hosted by farm owners Jane and Fritz Kunz. Around dusk, the group is treated to the sight of some 225 Brown Swiss cows exiting the milking parlor and strolling, single file, down the hillside. The sight of these mooing models is a picturesque reminder of the source of Trader Point's artisanal cheeses and ice cream.

Although more than 80% of all commercial dairy cows are Holsteins, Jane wanted to pasture raise Brown Swiss cows because they are a heritage breed, raised by past farmers before the drastic reduction of breed variety caused by the rise of industrial agriculture. "Brown Swiss cows are generally better adapted to withstand disease and survive the harsh winters we have in the pasture," Jane says. This is in contrast to those used in industrial agriculture, which are bred to produce lots of milk, gain weight quickly or yield particular types of meat within confined conditions.


Thomas Open Space in
Lafayette, CO, site of a
Meadow Lark Farm dinnerThe Kunzes are examples of those who are taking the farm-to-table movement to the next level, creating more direct and personal relationships with the land. Many chefs are now participating in the farming process, while others are even setting their tables directly in the field, creating a visual bridge between what's on the plate and where it came from.

"From the beginning we felt that the farm should be the place where the food is eaten as well as created and produced," says Jane, who inherited the original 150-acre dairy farm from her grandmother in 1999. Certified organic since 2003 (the first in Indiana), Traders Point has grown to 500 acres, a large enough operation to deliver its award-winning drinkable yogurt to Whole Foods stores across the US.

At Traders Point Creamery, what started as a Saturday morning breakfast served in the barn during winter has grown into a full-fledged restaurant operation, with lunch, dinner and brunch served at the farm's Loft restaurant, and sandwiches and desserts offered daily at the casual Dairy Bar. Both feature an all-local menu along with the creamery's cheese and milk products.

"We're promoting what it's like to live off the land," Fritz says. "The cows eat this beautiful grass, and from that grass we make beautiful products. It's a miracle of nature, and we can showcase that miracle."


Traders Point Creamery There are many benefits to making the direct connection between what sustains us and where it comes from, says Veronica Volny of Meadow Lark Farm Dinners in Boulder, CO. The selftrained chef, along with a few fellow cooks, gardeners, foragers and preservers, bought an old school bus and turned it into a mobile kitchen. Between June and October, the group serves five-course dinners for 36 people, twice weekly, on 10 local farms.

"For us, and I think for a lot of chefs, it's about wanting to taste food at its prime. Knowing that an ear of corn changes 12 hours after it's picked, and having the chance to eat it right away-that's powerful," says Volny, whose menu isn't set until the day of each dinner. "We didn't want to take the produce to a commissary kitchen and then bring it back. This way, what we eat never leaves the field."

For diners, creating a connection to the land is a way to fight back against the 20th century rise of industrial food production. "In the last five years, more people have become aware of the industrial food chain and its impact on the environment," she says. "They are seeking alternatives and ways to support sustainable practices."

In its basic form, sustainable agriculture offers a way to raise food that is healthy for consumers and animals, doesn't harm the environment, provides fair wages, and supports and enhances rural communities.

You can also eat right on the farm at Blue Hill at Stone Barns, a former Rockefeller estate located 30 miles north of New York City in Pocantico Hills. Opened in 2004 and co-owned by Chef Dan Barber- named the nation's top toque in 2009 by the James Beard Foundation-the restaurant has no menu. Instead, the kitchen creates multi-course "farmer's feasts" around the day's harvest and the diner's preferences. Servers explain what's fresh, ask for any requests-and the feast begins. Guests experience the freshest possible ingredients, virtually yards from where they were grown or raised. The five- ($105) or nine-course ($135) menus always start with a selection of just-harvested, lightly dressed baby vegetables.

At the height of the growing season, the farm's 23,000-square-foot greenhouse and 22 acres of pasture provide as much as 80% of the ingredients used in Barber's kitchens (he also co-owns Blue Hill in Manhattan's Greenwich Village, opened in 2000).

"The recipes are being written in the field," says Barber, whose grandmother owned a family farm in Massachusetts. "I have yet to find a carrot or a leg of lamb that tasted good, yet had bad ecological decisions behind it. It's not possible. Ultimately, taste is the most powerful tool in a chef's toolbox. And by seeking better tasting food, by default we're making good environmental decisions. Chefs are fueling the movement away from commercial farming because, in our search for delicious food, we're influencing the way farmers farm."

DINING IN THE FIELD IS ON THE menu for fall at Congress Hall and the Virginia Hotel in Cape May, NJ. Both hotels will feature farm picnics as part of their corporate retreat programs. Curtis Bashaw, whose company Cape Resorts Group owns the hotels and five restaurants (including Ebbitt Room), also has a 62-acre farm. He first noticed the rustic tract of deserted farmland in West Cape May two decades ago. As his business grew, he kept an eye on it, and finally bought the long-fallow farm in 2007.

Planted with summer crops like blueberries, asparagus, tomatoes and strawberries, along with a large perennial herb garden, the certified organic farm already supplies Bashaw's restaurants with close to their 50% of seasonal produce. The Ebbitt Room's chef, Lucas Manteca, looks forward to expanding with chickens and pigs next year. "Once you taste organic food straight from the source, and understand the process, it's hard to go back," he says.

Due to guests' enthusiasm for the farm, organized bike tours are offered twice weekly in addition to the picnics, which hotel guests can reserve through the concierge for groups of six or more. "Being on the farm feels like you're in another world," Bashaw says. "It's a connection to the way things used to be. And we want to be a part of that."

A COMMITMENT TO PRESERVING heirloom strains of grains and vegetables- original strains that haven't been manipulated in any way-is what inspired Sean Brock to start farming a 2.5-acre tract of Low Country land on Wadmalaw Island, about 20 miles outside Charleston, SC. When the executive chef of Charleston's McCrady's restaurant is up to his elbows in rich soil harvesting Sea Island red peas, he sees much more than just bushels of humble legumes as the payoff for his toil. For Brock, who hosts occasional meals and teaches a class on sustainable agriculture to Culinary Institute of Charleston students on the farm, this heritage vegetable has an important story to tell.

Also called a cowpea, the Sea Island red pea was brought by enslaved Africans to Charleston's shores in the 1600s. A staple of the West African diet, it supplied vital nitrogen to the soil in which it grew, and its tender first shoots made an ideal and much-needed food for livestock. An early harvest of it was added to leftover broken bits of rice for Gullah-style "reezy peezy," or rice and peas, also known as "hoppin' John." And when dried on the vine, it became a year-round commodity, ground into flour for baked goods and used to dredge fish for frying.

"If we let these heirloom varieties slip away, we lose the history along with them. That can't happen," Brock says.

For close to three years, Brock-with the help of volunteers-has been farming to provide McCrady's with a direct source of organic produce, chicken, eggs and cured pork from heritage breed pigs. The project has been so successful that the restaurant's owners recently expanded their land holdings to include Thornhill, a 100-acre farm in nearby McClellanville, SC.

With a full-time farmer partner now on board, Brock is able to concentrate his efforts on tilling a 4-acre plot sewn solely with antebellum strains of vegetables and grains. "These crops offer a timeline of agriculture in America," Brock says. "And the old varieties, including cow peas, farro and Jimmy Red corn, are incredibly beautiful and delicious."

People like Brock, Volny, Barber, Bashaw and the Kunzes all feel a responsibility to improve the way food is grown and served. And while the majority of food produced in America is still raised in an industrial setting, the movement towards more traditional practices is gaining ground.

"We wouldn't be having this conversation 10 years ago," Barber says. "And the conversation we'll have 10 years from now will be that much further along."

Fruits Of Their Labor

In addition to bringing meals back to the land, many chefs are farming to supply their restaurants with the freshest ingredients.

Executive Chef Corey Heyer, along with two cooks, farms the land of The Bernards Inn (www.bernardsinn.com; 908- 766-0002) in Bernardsville, NJ (61 miles from Allentown/ Bethlehem, PA) to provide the restaurant with arugula, seven kinds of mint, eggplant, potatoes, edible flowers and habanero peppers. Heyer is at the farm eight hours a week to weed and harvest-and he'll sometimes get the inspiration for a new dish.

Executive Chef Ryan Hardy heads up the kitchen at Montagna (www.thelittlenell.com; 970-920-4600), the restaurant at The Little Nell ski resort in Denver. The menu is full of ingredients from his 15-acre Rendezvous Farm. In addition to growing produce and raising livestock, Hardy is hands-on in other ways: He cures prosciutto and makes his own cheese and fruit preserves.

Chef Frank McClelland's day starts at 6:30am, when he feeds the animals at Apple Street Farm (www.applestreetfarm.com), the 14-acre organic farm he lives on in Essex, MA. Mid-morning, he leaves to deliver the day's harvest to his restaurants in Boston: the AAA Five-Diamond L'Espalier (www.lespalier.com; 617-262- 3023) and Sel De La Terre (www.seldelaterre.com; three locations). Guests can arrange private tours of the farm, which will eventually host dinners.

Published in :: Gastronome Destinations

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