The Culinary Institute of America, the world’s premier culinary college, spends more than $500,000 a year on produce, dairy, meat, and eggs from two-dozen local farms.
But until recently most incoming chefs didn’t know that there were more than two kinds of potatoes. That changed with the hiring of Paul Wigsten.
You see Paul is a tenth-generation farmer. He is also the full-time produce buyer and farm liaison at the CIA. With passion and brevity he settles questions—from restaurant owners, consumers and even policymakers—about local-sourced product.
Local Food is Less Expensive
By buying local and working with “the guys I knew I could depend on” Paul has been able to double the amount of produce purchased with the same budget. But, wait . . . doesn’t local produce cost five to 20% more than produce shipped across the country? It can but, according to Paul, with local fare there is “no trim, no waste. With California you loose 10 to 20% in kitchen prep.”
Local Food Tastes Better
At the CIA every student is required to take a class called product knowledge. Instructors tend to go with more dramatic “flavor profiles.” Red leaf lettuce is subtle. The flavor is not so different but the texture is crisper. Strawberries and tomatoes not. “We do a side-by-side comparison of tasting of local vs. Florida vs. California strawberries. It’s not a fair test. Local wins hands down.”
“Just when we need these vegetables most, in the bleakest part of the winter, they give us the sustenance to carry on until spring. Their texture and sweetness come from a combination of starches and sugars. To the plant, starches represent food that has been stored for future use, while sugars can be immediately converted to energy. Starches are chemical compounds that resemble tough little pellets when raw. After they are heated in combination with a liquid, they soften.
Sugars are closely related to starches. In fact, enzymes produced by the plant can convert starches (stored food) to sugars (usable food) when doing so is necessary for the plant’s survival. This is why parsnips are almost always sweeter when harvested after a hard frost: the plant, feeling threatened by cold weather, has started converting its stored food to food that can be used immediately.
We like to raise healthy and happy animals, who spend as much time as they want in the pastures. Our chickens are a seasonal business, from spring through late fall, to ensure that they have grass as a big part of their diet. The pigs have access to the barn in the winter to stave off the cold, and they eat a lot of alfalfa baleage in the winter as well as an organic grain and soy mix. For the rest of the year they are rooting up marginal fields or woodlots. The cows graze the fields as long as the grass grows, after which they enjoy the alfalfa baleage and hay that we put up for the winter.
Our British White and Murray Grey cattle were bred to thrive on grass. These heritage breeds have never adapted to the feedlot system that forces hormone-filled cows to eat grain and forget about grazing. A grass-fed diet ensures meat that is tender, tasty, high in omega-3s and hormone free. Since our pastures are certified organic, our cows are eating grass completely free of herbicides and pesticides.
In essence, we are trying to turn back the clock—to produce meat and poultry that tastes as good as it did several decades ago before farms got turned into factories.
Thanks to one and all for joining Paisley Farm CSA. I hope it was a positive experience for everyone. It was a pleasure for my staff and I to grow the vegetables that you ate for the last 22 weeks.
It’s an awesome feeling that our agricultural surplus allows you to be doctors, artist, moms, dads, inventors, hairdressers, actors, authors and even… bankers. Personally I enjoyed waking up every day knowing that I had the responsibility of growing good nutritious food for people who really cared and that good food was important to them. You have the right to good local food and thank you for making that choice.
We at the farm have learned a lot this year and have been humbled by Mother Nature. We know what works and what doesn’t work when you have 70 days of rain in a 90-day period! We also learned that in the end, the sun and the earth didn’t let us down. Maybe we didn’t get everything we wanted but it gave us what we needed.
Volunteering the week after your harvest party, I heard about the 90 friends who broke bread with you last Saturday. If I were able to be there I would have raised a glass to you and said, “thanks”…
“Thanks” for not poisoning the earth while growing and tending what the earth gives forth.
“Thanks” for working all hours, days and nights, for getting good food to those of us without a plot of land but with a burning need to feel connected to the land (and a healthy contempt for agribusiness).
“Thanks” for beautifully bundling all your bounty and presenting it in a way that shows you are as proud to grow it, as we are to eat it.
Farmers are business people, alchemists, scientists, economists, and stewards of the land. But sometimes they need help with that most basic and necessary of skills: marketing. Last week I sat in on a Cornell Agriculture extension seminar on the power of storytelling.
Herewith a modest partial list of ways for farmers to craft a story around their products, personalities, and people more effectively, especially at farmers markets.
Create a Narrative. The story should be real and worth repeating: How you got into raising sheep when a farmer left a flock on your pasture and never came back to reclaim them. (That one’s true.) Weave in details that create an image. People want—desperately need—the connection with the farm and an honest day’s work.
Smile and Make Eye Contact: Margo Sue Bittner of The Winery at Marjim Manor found that if you smile and make eye contact within the first 10 seconds of greeting a customer you reduce theft by 20%. Is that a scientific fact? Could be. But even if its not, it’s a great start. You’re not running an art gallery that gains its cachet by turning away traffic.
Identify Staffers Who Like to Talk: Sometimes customers want a simple answer. Is this easy to cook? How should I store that? The kind of questions most workers who staff farmers markets should be able to address gracefully. But not all workers at farmers markets also work on the farm. Have a designated staffer who enjoys talking about the difference between sustainable and organic. What exactly is Integrated Pest Management? Why you grow kohlrabi or celeriac.
Be Honest: If someone complains that “these carrots are long and stringy” you can respond “Oh God. Can you imagine what they’re like to wash and harvest? They taste perfectly fine, but next week we have Spanish Blacks that are gorgeous and very rare.”
Presentation is Everything: Show abundance when you have it. When you don’t, display products as if they were featured in Martha Stewart’s magazine. Spring for wicker baskets or wooden boxes lined with burlap. You have 10 tomatillos left? Put them in a small basket and highlight them at checkout as an impulse purchase (Make a great salsa verde!).
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