Translating Theory into a Working Farm

Description: Adapting the writings of Elliott Coleman and Joel Salatin to 300 acres.

Question:  How did Elliott Coleman and Joel Salatin inform the project?

Transcript: Yeah well the two that you just mentioned are the two reasons I’m cooking really.  I mean Elliott Coleman is a farmer in a Northeastern part of Maine that was frustrated with the shortness of the growing season, and he . . . Well he tells this story.  He’s a great storyteller, but he tells a story about how he was thinking of moving to France or to Italy.  And he was looking at a map, and he saw how his farm was on the same latitude as Northern Italy and Southern France Province.  And he knew that there were vegetables that were daylight determinant, not temperature determinant.  So if you keep it above 32 degrees, you could grow everything that you grow in Northern Italy and Southern France in the middle of the winter.  You could do that in Maine as long as you controlled the temperature and kept it over 32 degrees.  So he invented these revolutionary greenhouses –sort of hoop houses that prevented ice crystallization on the plant and got his farm going in ways that very few people have been able to do.  And now he’s been mimicked all around the world really.  So he was an inspiration for me because in college, when I was cooking sort of on the side, I was thinking Blue Hill Farm was a great asset too.  It’s . . . It’s 300 acres of pastureland.  And part of the problem with farming in the Northeast, of course, is what do you do from December to May?  And most of these farmers have other jobs during this time, and it’s a very sort of low revenue stream time.  So what Elliott invented, or what Elliott took advantage of was something that very few farmers thought about; and he did it making money doing it, which is the key.  So he was a huge influence on me and my thinking that, you know, ultimately if I got good enough and could be . . . could make a career of cooking, Blue Hill would be an asset for supply chain.  And then there’s Joel Salatin who did everything – I’m just talking about on the animal end – and took advantage of this landscape in ways that other farmers hadn’t by raising different species of animals in the same space.  So both of these mane informed me greatly, and then ultimately Stone Barns greatly because we kind of mimicked each of their operations at Stone Barns – made it our own for Westchester County, but their basic philosophy is all over the place at Stone Barns. 

Question: How did you implement their ideas?

Transcript: Well we have this 23,000 square foot greenhouse, for example, on the Elliott side.  So that’s Elliott Coleman and ____________, and it’s . . . and it’s made for . . . I mean it was built for . . . you know based on Westchester County; which is to say that the taxes, the labor that’s necessary for this part of the country versus where Elliott is.  So it needed to be quite a bit larger than what Elliott does.  But the underpinnings of what he wrote so . . . what he writes so eloquently about and talks so eloquently about is . . . is strong soil and planting vegetables that take advantage of our natural . . . You know our natural ecology.  You know so for example we just harvested last week . . . We just harvested . . . The farm just harvested carrots from both the greenhouse and the field, and they’re the best carrots of the year.  And so what people generally talk about in the Northeast as I was saying before, it’s dead during the winter, right?  But in fact for certain vegetables – like root vegetables – carrots, and parsnips, and rutabaga, and celery root – if you are willing to use hoop houses, or use something that can prevent the temperature from falling (14:25) below 32 degrees, you can actually have vegetables that are better than any place in the country because the starches – through the cold, through the freezes – turn to sugar with these freezes.  So you know we took a bricks test of this carrot.  Now this particular carrot I went on the Internet and I found . . . The bricks test is the parts per billion of sugar in the vegetable, right?  So we squeezed a little bit of carrot juice on it and took on a reading, and they said the highest reading for this type of carrot was 14.6.  I took a . . . took a dot of it and read it and it was 15.8 – literally off the charts, right?  And so I was speaking to a plant scientist who also happens to be a poet, and I think he described it best what’s going on.  He said that when a vegetable gets through . . . a root vegetable or actually other vegetables like kale, and Swiss chard, and brussels sprouts – but in this case in dead of winter when these root are in the ground – feel the freeze coming, they convert their starches to sugars to try and raise their body temperatures . . . _______.  To prevent ice crystallization, they’re raising their body temperatures.  Like ice crystallization means death.  So he said, I think poetically, you know what you’re tasting is sweetness.  And what the plant is telling you is, “I don’t wanna die.”  It’s really interesting.  It’s taking advantage . . . I mean this is sort of Elliott and Joel’s and any of these sustainable-agriculture minded individuals, it’s taking advantage of your natural ecology to produce delicious – and by definition healthful food – that’s low impact on your environment.  So that’s there.  And then on the . . . On the animal side of things, one of the great benefits of being in this New England area is grass . . . is grasslands.  So you know our goal and the goal of the farmers that practice the animal __________ at Stone Barns is to . . . is to take advantage of the . . . keep their eye on the sunlight, and have the sunlight feed the grass; and have the grass feeds the animals; and have the animals feed us.  So the minimum amount of grain inputs that we can take from other farms outside of Stone Barns and use what’s in our own natural ecology is what provides not only, you know, the most sustainable meats, but also the most delicious because the grass is this buffet of different flavors and nutrients.  And it adds subtleties in the flavor of the meat that you can’t find elsewhere.  So those are two examples of many that take advantage of our natural ecology and produce better tasting food.

Recorded on: 2/11/08