Chefs Collaborative

The Tamworth pig originated in Tamworth, Staffordshire, UK and is known to have been at least partially bred from pigs from Ireland known as “Irish Grazers.” The breed was first imported into the US in 1882. The American Tamworth Swine Record Association was founded in 1887.

These pigs were originally bred to thrive outside on foraged food, especially in wooded areas. They are amazing rooters. We’ve seen dirty snouts on day-old piglets. We find the sows’ favorite farrowing spot is under a recently turned-over maple tree stump. The new family won’t venture from the nesting area for a few days, and the freshly dug roots and all of the many grubs and bugs provide ample nutrition for mother and piglets alike. I’ve witnessed many a newborn piglet suckling on a maple root, until mama announces that the milk bar is open. Their long heads and long snouts help them forage very efficiently. We use them on recently cleared land for de-stumping and de-rocking. Moving a particularly stubborn stump is often accomplished by several pigs working on it together. They look and sound like linebackers.

We always know when someone has given birth because no one shows up for breakfast. We find the new family easily enough, because the rest of the herd has spread out in a big circle around her. The sows are very good mothers, with a litter size of 6 to 12. We’ve found the boars to be very safe, gentle and protective with new piglets. They are quite tame and friendly. They are still pigs, however: Our 800-pound boar, Albus Dumbleboar, comes up for a scratch every morning, but I will never get between him and a chocolate cake.

We did have one farrowing disaster, but it was with our (and her) very first litter and a sow we later ended up sending off to freezer camp because of bad mothering. We came out in mid-February when it was -15 degrees F to find frozen piglets half buried in the hay. We were able to revive one of them by holding her in warm water. I forgot to wrap the baby (all but her head) in a plastic bag first, and when we later brought her out to her mama, she took one sniff and rejected her. So I raised a bottle baby that year, but have not had to do it since. It taught me a lot about piglets, though. I had her potty trained and everything. I had a puppy and a young dog at the time, and Bjarki and Minnie remain best friends, years later. Minnie is almost 500 pounds now, and a mother herself, and she and Bjarki exchange lots of kisses and cuddles every morning.

We find them quite hardy here in our cold New Hampshire winters. Even when it’s well below zero and they have three-sided sheds available to them, they prefer to huddle together in the open, and we can see the steam from the pile from hundreds of feet away. We give them plenty of hay to bed in, and when it’s really cold, you can only see snouts and ears above the hay.

In the summer, we are sure to provide plenty of available shade and wallows filled with water and find they do well. In the heat of the day, they barely move and do most of their eating and foraging in the evening. Their red coats make them adaptable to many climates and protect them from the sun. When it’s very hot out, they make sure to coat themselves in mud from their wallow.

We’ve not found them to be fans of morning, at all. We do all of the rest of our farm chores first, and then feed the pigs. They all slowly and sleepily wander down to our feeding area when they hear the tractor coming, one by one. We feed ours quite a bit of expired organic yogurt from our local food pantry, and they love it. We joke that we are turning organic yogurt into bacon, 4 ounces at a time. We have several lovely neighbors who bring up windfall apples and garden clippings and weeds. We’ve found several things that at least our pigs do not consider food, like Brussels sprouts, broccoli and cabbage. They’d prefer we feed that to the sheep, thank you very much. Even if we put it at the bottom of their feed trough and cover it in yogurt, we find it in piles out of the trough, with the yogurt licked off. We had such a bumper crop of zucchini in our garden this year that we were feeding tons of it to the pigs. You know you’ve grown too much zucchini when 6 sows, 1 boar and 16 piglets start to cringe when they see it.

It’s amazing what a garden comes up where we have kept them. So many volunteer tomato, squash, tomatillo and pumpkin plants come up. It’s quite bizarre to see so many woodland plants on their next regrowth, right next to a tomato plant. I constantly do a double-take. They love to harvest their own plants, and we have to get up early and hunt for tomatoes we want to steal from them early in the morning. They know exactly when they’re ripe.

After we’ve moved them from a paddock, we rock the field, rebuilding all of the stonewalls that have been on our land for hundreds of years. We also build brush piles, and burn them once the ground is snow-covered. The soil left behind is simply amazing. The crops we plant in their wake are wonderful with all of that organic matter in the tilled soil. Pastures are lush. Most of the trees don’t regrow, but if they do, we use our Icelandic sheep on the next pass. We have our current home vegetable garden on an area where we had the pigs a few years ago, and I do top-dress it with new compost every year. But the raised beds have soil that is just black gold. I confess I admire it all the time.

At maturity, both sexes weigh between 600-800 pounds. As long as we provide them with large paddocks where they stay quite active with foraging and walking around, they can breed for many years. We usually slaughter at around 250 pounds, as most farmers do for most breeds. It takes them about six to eight months to reach slaughter weight. We don’t castrate our male piglets, because we do not have boar taint in our herd, and we find they grow better that way. It is also nicer for all concerned.

They are considered a “bacon” breed, because they thrive on low energy foods and grow slowly, producing lean and fine-grained meat. Their extra long length means extra pork belly. We get a very good carcass yield, usually 60-70%, a very productive meat to bone ratio. Their long body provides a very good, long tenderloin as well, quite prized. Unless we slaughter an unproductive sow, there isn’t much fat back, but what there is renders to a lovely lard that is quite healthy, full of omega-3 fats. Everyone that tastes our pork tells us it’s the best they’ve ever had. Happy critters living in a healthy outdoor environment make healthy, delicious guilt-free bacon and pork. It doesn’t get better than that! I save all of the fat when I cook with the bacon or pork chops, and use it in all sorts of delicious ways. I bake with my lard, and my breads, pie crusts and biscuits are divine.

These pigs are quite smart and friendly, and get along well with other farm animals. Albus Dumbleboar and all of our brood sows know their names. (We find it useful to have a theme when we are picking out names, and chose the Harry Potter universe for our Tamworth pigs.) Our turkeys and chickens forage alongside of them quite often. They get along well with our Great Pyrenees guardian dogs, and are herded pretty easily by our Icelandic Sheepdogs. When the piglets scoot out under the hot wire we use to keep them in, they shoo back in as soon as they hear the dogs start barking. They all find it a very amusing game, dogs and pigs alike, the bunch of hooligans.

The American Livestock Breed conservancy lists their status as “threatened.” There are an estimated 1,500 Tamworth pigs in the United States right now, and fewer than that in the rest of the world combined. They are not well-suited for intensive commercial production, because of their slower growth and strong desire to root. They are wonderful for farms where they can forage a significant portion of their own food.

To see more photos of Mack Hill Farm animals, see their flickr page here.  And while you’re at it, check out their website and become a fan on Facebook!

Heritage turkey, photo from ALBC

Turkey mania is upon us here at the Chefs Collaborative headquarters. All four staff members’ “eagles” landed yesterday from Brambly Farm in Norfolk, MA. Grant Kessler, one of our newest members from Chicago, wrote a blog post about the real value of a Thanksgiving turkey. Read on, tell us who raised your turkey (plus what you’re doing to prepare it) and have a very happy Thanksgiving tomorrow!

So I’m in sticker shock about the buzzword-turkey that I ordered Wednesday at the farmer’s market. ‘Buzzword’, you know, as in: “pasture-raised, organically fed, non-GMO, happy turkey.”

I just need a small bird in the ten pound range and it’s going for $5.25 per pound. I signed up for a turkey that is going to cost over $50. Yikes! It made me wonder what a turkey with fewer buzzwords goes for these days. Turns out I could get a twenty pound Butterball for $20. Twice as large, less than half the price. So there you go. Those are the simple economics of buzzword-turkey.

Since it’s a number that scares me – the big FIVE-O – maybe I can talk myself down with numbers. I’m going to feed six members of my family with this bird and then each of us will eat leftovers. That means I’m getting at least twelve portions which run around $4 per portion. Already my heart rate is calming. Then of course I can make stock from the carcass, for extra credit.

But really I chose this turkey because I like knowing who raised it – the caring people at Mint Creek Farm. People. Real people raised my bird and are offering it to me to help feed my family. Buying it from them means I’m helping them feed their family. They looked after tom for me all year. I couldn’t insult them with the Butterball price of $10 for their efforts, could I? How could a farmer survive by selling ten pound turkeys for $10? I’m no farmer, but I can see that’s ridiculous. Hmm…I wonder how those big operations make that work…steroids, GMOs, confinement lots?

I also know that Mint Creek farms biodynamically to improve soil quality and because they’d like to reduce the size of the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. Let me say that again. This small farm in Illinois is making farming decisions with the health of the Gulf of Mexico in mind. I’m starting to feel like I should offer them $100 for that $50 turkey. I think maybe I’m getting a good deal!

As for the $22 black Angus T-bone my wife and I split for dinner that night, well, I think that was just a splurge!

Grant Kessler is a food photographer in Chicago, obsessed with eating well, cooking with fresh, whole foods and shrinking the distance his food travels.  He’s at farmer’s markets multiple times a week and loves that he knows who grew his kale and who raised his pork chop.  Grant is sharing a large urban garden (complete with chickens!) and learning to grow food – but finding the relationships he’s growing to be equally as important.  Check out the rest of his food blog here.

As usual, our members have been doing some pretty fantastic things this week!

• Chef Peter Davis of Henrietta’s Table in Boston, winner of our “Sustainer of the Year” Sustainability Award, is featured in Stuff Magazine.  Read all about “The Sage of Sustainability” and learn how Chef Davis supports small producers while sourcing the freshest and best ingredients possible.

• In Chicago, Chefs Collaborative board chair Chef Bruce Sherman of North Pond Restaurant teamed up with other chefs, farmers, distributors and advocacy groups to discuss sustainable meat and how to improve supply chains.  The conference, “State of the Plate,” drew an amazing crowd of speakers and attendees.

• Also in Chicago, congratulations to Chefs Collaborative members Chef Carrie Nahabedian of NAHA and Chef Paul Virant of Vie for their recently awarded Michelin Stars!

• And finally, as we close in quickly on Thanksgiving (the ultimate local foods holiday), member Nicolette Hahn Niman shares a fantastic piece on heritage turkeys in The Atlantic. Read her article to learn about why they really are worth the extra cost.

Congratulations to all our members and keep up the great work! Members, let us know what you’re up to– if you’d like to be included in our news roundup, please e-mail jen@chefscollaborative.org.

With food sourcing on the brain (even more than usual!) in the run-up to Thanksgiving, we thought we’d call to your attention two bits of legislation being debated in Washington. No matter which way these rules go, they stand to impact how and from whom we source our food.

First up, and possibly being voted on today, S.510, the Food Safety and Modernization Act, which, if passed, will strengthen efforts by the FDA to prevent food-borne illness. But at issue for sustainable food advocates is whether a one-size-fits-all approach to these food safety regulations is a good fit for small farms.

This brief from the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition outlines a big picture definition of food safety—definitely worth a read. Many members of this coalition and others support the bill if it includes the Manager’s Amendment and the Tester Amendment, and advocate sending a message or calling your senator to let them know how you feel.

Okay, next? This one’s about cowboys, corporations, and competition.  A recent NPR story highlighted the proposed tightening of existing regulations on meatpackers. Ranchers who sell to these meatpackers say that as the industry has become dominated by four companies, these companies have dictated (low) prices for cattle, forcing many ranchers out of business while their own profits soar.

The rule that the USDA is proposing to enforce is known as the Packers and Stockyards Act, overseen by Grain Inspections, Packers and Stockyards Administration (GIPSA) which aims to maintain competitive, transparent bidding in the livestock business.

At Civil Eats last month, Haven Borque talked to livestock farmers and advocates to explain why this is important—from the perspective of rural food producers and eaters everywhere. Basically, if GIPSA isn’t better enforced, we risk having the beef market dictated by multinationals. If the pork and chicken industries are any indication, this is not a trend to support.

The comment period for this rule is open until Monday, November 22. If we want to encourage fair competition in agriculture that nurtures a robust rural economy and higher quality meat, read a little more about the rule here and let the USDA know you’re in favor of enacting and enforcing GIPSA by submitting a comment to the USDA.

Thank you!

A big thank you to Seattle Chefs Collaborative member, Jon Rowley of Taylor Shellfish Farms, for contributing today’s post on how to handle your fish for maximum quality and presentation.

When it comes to “beautiful tastes,” there is perhaps none more beautiful than the taste of fish when the season, harvest, handling and preparation all come together… when we are lucky to taste a fish as good as it can be.

How a fish is caught and handled during its first three hours out of the water determines its eating qualities, at least that is what I found after I started paying attention to the relationship of flavor to fish handling on my own salmon troller in SE Alaska, studying hook-and-line fishing methods in different parts of the U.S. and Europe and working with chefs and fishermen conjointly to correlate what happens on deck with what happens in the pan and on the palate. The concept is simple but it took something like 10 years for the light bulb to go off.

Hook-and-line gear (longline, troll, jig, rod and reel) offers the potential for the  highest quality fish because they come aboard and can be dealt with individually. Here are the steps I have found that produce the highest quality, best tasting and most beautiful fish.

• As soon as the fish come aboard or even before, the fish is stunned by a sharp blow to the top of the head. The heart is still pumping but the fish won’t flop and bruise itself and we can prevent the lactic acid build-up associated with struggle. The stunning step also prevents scale loss. Scale coverage is essential to the manufacture of protective slime when rigor mortis sets in. Complete scale coverage makes for beautiful, shiny fish and is probably the best indicator of how well a fisherman has handled the fish.

For more tips on how to produce high quality, attractive fish, read the rest of this article on Jon Rowley’s blog.

Comments, questions for Jon?  Post them in the comment section below.

Hello!  The staff here at Chefs Collaborative are all avid readers, but it doesn’t take an avid reader to notice how many of our members have gotten media love this week.  We were talking about it, and our consensus was to feature a recurring blog post every Friday, which highlights Chefs Collaborative in the news.  Here’s what caught our eyes this week:

• Our Executive Director, Melissa Kogut, talks about how to keep sustainable food costs in check.
• Chefs Collaborative Board Member, Chef John Ash, talks about sustaining the sea by using lesser-known alternative varieties of sustainable fish.
• Chef Joanne Chang, of Myers & Chang, adds an Asian flair to traditional New England Fare.
• Chefs Collaborative Board Member, Stephen Stryjewski, urges Americans to save the Gulf by ordering Gulf seafood.
• Chef Rolando Robledo just expanded the Clover Food Truck into a restaurant in Harvard Square.

Members, please let us know what you’re up to!  If you’d like to contribute linkage, please e-mail jen@chefscollaborative.org.

A huge thanks to Wanda (from Chicago) for responding to our call for blog contributions from Chefs Collaborative members! Melissa and I just returned from the Women Chefs and Restaurateurs conference in Pasadena, which happened this weekend. The main focus of the conference was this very theme – holistic sustainability – or more simply said, work/life balance. Wanda’s post is very apropos!  Working in the industry isn’t easy, and to be able to work effectively, you also have to know how to unwind. I encourage you to post your comments at the bottom of the blog. How do you maintain a work/life balance? What feeds your soul and keeps you going? Read on below for Wanda’s thoughts. – Jen

Wanda: Honestly, when Jen Ede of Chefs Collaborative gave me the topic of Holistic Sustainability, I had never heard the two words joined together. So – I asked my friend and customer, Sodexo General Manager Cyndi Gloodt, if she could explain it to me since she completed a certification course on holistic medicine.

Here’s what she said: “This pertains to things such as farming, the environment, health and nutrition. If you look at the two words individually, holistic is most commonly associated with the health of the whole person, physically and psychologically. Sustainability is about supporting or providing. So you could say that holistic sustainability is about supporting a person’s physical, mental and spiritual aspects. Following these principals helps you sustain a work/life balance of achievement and enjoyment, the core of obtaining work/life balance. This sounds like a bunch of words, but simply put, you have to support the whole picture, not just one aspect, then things will fall into place.”

Personally what I do to try to achieve a work/life balance includes:

Baking. It’s relaxing and I enjoy it. I bake for my customers, potential customers, security guards, valet, and accounting people, as a goodwill and PR/marketing gesture. I use organic and fair trade ingredients. I feel I’m helping to promote my business and sustainability.

Twice-weekly kickboxing classes at the local Park District. Really helps to relieve stress from work and life, punching and kicking pads with a partner, jumping rope, squats, crunches, push-ups, shadow boxing. Excellent cardio and strength building for men and women. Vigorous work-out that doesn’t get boring and serves a purpose with self-defense techniques.

Once-a-month book club. Diverse group. We take turns suggesting books and voting on the selection. Friendly and social. I enjoy exposure to a variety of books that I wouldn’t choose on my own.

Once-a-month breakfast with my girlfriend I’ve known since kindergarten. We’ve done this for years, and if we didn’t schedule our monthly breakfast, we’d go for months without getting together. E-mail and phone calls are great, but taking time to sit down, share a meal, talk and laugh is important.

Early-morning walks with the dog. We know our neighbors through the other doggies.

Power napping. Much healthier than caffeine. I indulge whenever possible.

Nov. 16th I’ll be meeting a friend for dinner. Then we’ll attend a lecture at The Tibet Center in Evanston, IL, Jane Barrash, “Discovery of Self” about key internal resources and new operating assumptions that together create a new model of productivity, performance and possibility.

It’s important to stay focused, hopeful and positive. Remember, optimism may make you look stupid but cynicism always makes you look cynical!

Interested in joining Wanda at Chefs Collaborative?  Click on this link for membership information.

From Zester Daily: http://zesterdaily.com/zester-soapbox-articles/702-gulf-seafood-safe-to-eat. Stephen Stryjewski is the chef/partner of Cochon restaurant in New Orleans and board member of Chefs Collaborative.

As a New Orleans chef committed to preserving my region’s unique and robust food culture, I am eager for a complete recovery of the Gulf’s magnificent fishery in the wake of the BP oil spill. Yet I see it under pressure from something potentially even more damaging than BP’s millions of gallons of rogue oil: an ongoing panic over the safety of Gulf seafood.

Let me be clear: I am as concerned about contamination as anyone — especially since my livelihood depends on our surrounding foodshed. But state and federal officials are monitoring the waters and will close any fishing grounds that show signs of contamination. So far, 96 percent of federal waters have been declared safe and reopened to fishing. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration also just announced the results of an extensive study, which tested 1,735 samples of fish, oysters, crabs and shrimp. Only 13 showed even trace amounts — still far below any safety threshold — of residue from the chemicals used to disperse the oil. I wouldn’t be serving Gulf seafood at my restaurant — nor would I be eating it, which I am — if I weren’t completely confident it was safe.

Gulf fishermen need consumers’ support

Yet media reports suggest some consumers are avoiding these products. Harlon Pearce, chairman of the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board, recently told the Wall Street Journal that grocery stores and restaurants around the U.S. have canceled orders. Cliff R. Hall, a fish supplier, told the Associated Press that national demand is down 50 to 75 percent. This adds bitter insult to the injury inflicted by the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

The BP oil spill was a devastating, manmade environmental disaster, among the worst in U.S. history. But food consumers will compound the spill’s damage if they don’t support the Gulf’s fishermen. If the individual fishers, shrimpers and oystermen — with generations of experience and expertise — are forced out of business, a centuries-old food tradition will perish. Reviving it will be next to impossible. This will be a loss not only to the Gulf communities, but also to the whole country.

Since the opening of Cochon in 2006, we have emphasized Gulf seafood on our menu. That hasn’t changed. I believe chefs like me have a responsibility to strengthen our regional food systems by supporting local farmers who are growing food responsibly, by purchasing meat from conscientious producers and by buying seafood that is sustainably harvested. At this moment, that ethos calls for serving safe, delicious, domestic, Louisiana Gulf shrimp, crabs, oysters and fish purchased from people whose way of life is endangered.

Gulf seafood isn’t just safe, it’s delicious

While the BP oil well has been killed, the Gulf’s future, both environmentally and economically, is uncertain. Though offshore waters have been deemed safe for fishing, vast swaths of our coastline are still undergoing cleanup. The way Louisianans carry on also will serve to either preserve or bury traditional ways of life here. If we want to continue the traditional fishing and aquaculture that has long characterized Louisiana coastal living, we must work to save our coastline.

I urge consumers and my peers in the restaurant industry nationwide to remember that Gulf seafood isn’t just safe — it’s delicious. Participating in events and supporting organizations focused on fishermen and the oil spill recovery are a place to start. But eating and serving seafood from the Gulf of Mexico is the only way to save a truly American way of life. Let’s not allow fear to magnify the financial hit the Gulf has already sustained. Together, we can ensure a vibrant future for healthy fisheries in the Gulf — and for one of our nation’s most vital and beloved foodways.

A recent Zester Daily article asked the provoking question, “Is Culinary Heritage a Good Idea?” The author argues that designating certain cuisines a “Cultural Heritage” may not be as indisputably good as it sounds, arguing that “It can, at its best, encourage local pride and cooperation as well as drawing tourists to an unforgettable experience. All too easily, though, it can become an end in itself, blocking the change that keeps societies alive and making second class citizens of minorities, migrants and others who do not share the heritage.”  She refutes “pervasive culinary nostalgia, the disquieting feeling that somewhere, sometime food was better, tastier, more natural and more healthful, that there was a Mediterranean diet or a Mexican cuisine untarnished by migrants, industrialism and change.”

As the Chefs Collaborative RAFT Grow-Out project coordinator, this article got me thinking.  One of the goals of the RAFT Grow-Out project is to encourage the renewal of heritage and heirloom foods.  We work with farmers to encourage them to grow “traditional” New England varieties, and we encourage chefs to buy and cook with these foods.  Are we blocking change and giving into culinary nostalgia?

I realized that many of the varieties we’ve chosen for the Grow-Out, which have such seemingly solid roots here in New England, have actually been transplanted here from other places.  The Jimmy Nardello sweet pepper was bred and brought to America from an Italian immigrant (and for that matter, peppers originated in the tropics of the Americas before ending up in Jimmy’s garden over in Italy). The Forellenschuss lettuce is originally a German variety.  We here in New England owe a great deal of our culinary heritage and tradition to global immigration patterns– as do most regions of the world.  ‘Traditional’ foods change and are constantly influenced by history and politics.

At the same time, plant foods grow in the ground, and some plants just do better in certain places.  We can’t grow coffee or chocolate here in New England; we can grow some excellent winter squash and turnips.  Regions have culinary heritages in part based on the ingredients that grow well in those places.  One reason the Grow-Out heirloom varieties have such a long history in New England is that generations of gardeners and farmers have deemed them good enough to plant again.  Farmers today are growing Gilfeather Turnips and finding that there is a reason they have become part of New Engand’s culinary traditions: they grow well here.

During the Grow-Out, I had a chance to taste a lot of the ‘traditional’ New England vegetable varieties interpreted by different chefs.  The creative and delicious dishes that the chefs came up with were inspired by these ingredients, but were absolutely not limited to what we might think of as “traditional New England” foods. From Morroccan-braised lamb with Long Pie Pumpkin to Boston Marrow Squash flatbread to Jimmy Nardello Kimchi, the chefs participating in the Grow-Out found all kinds of innovative ways to defy ‘tradition’ while honoring the traditional varieties.  The chefs appreciated the quality of the ingredients that are well adapted to this particular place, but by no means felt bound to prepare those ingredients in nostalgic ways.

So, is culinary heritage a good idea?  Honoring place-based ingredients seems like a good idea to me, as does recognizing that food comes from the ground and is affected by weather patterns and soil type.  But, it also seems like a good idea to go ahead and appreciate the diverse flavor palate that global migration has introduced.  We can eat locally, think globally.  And, from my experience with the Grow-Out, these don’t have to be mutually exclusive—in fact, they make a delicious combination.

Chefs, what do you think? What do the ideas of ‘culinary traditions’ and ‘culinary heritage’ mean to you?

I recently crossed one thing off of my long-standing wish list – going to Farm Camp!  Hosted by farmers Jen Small and Mike Yezzi of Flying Pigs Farm in Shushan, NY, Farm Camp is a nonprofit program that provides an intense hands-on learning experience for chefs and food professionals about the real challenges and costs of producing good food.

Shanna Pacifico, chef at New York's Back Forty restaurant. Photo courtesy of Leitha Matz.

As the executive director of Chefs Collaborative, with a focus on promoting chef/farmer partnerships and on providing educational resources to chefs about making responsible food purchasing decisions, this was an invaluable experience.  I will not soon forget what it was like to slaughter and gut a chicken and hold an adorable piglet while it was being castrated.  But, what did I learn from my time in beautiful Washington County, as we walked through a small CAFO, a USDA slaughterhouse, a goat farm, a poultry farm with a state certified poultry processing facility, a milk bottling facility, and heard from policy people from organizations like American Farmland Trust?  Here are a few nuggets I walked away with:

* Farmers raising animals for consumption may have the ability to grow bigger but need to do so in conjunction with the market.  Since it’s expensive to raise animals (especially when pasture-raised and humanely cared for) and farmers carefully calculate the optimal time for slaughter, having a plan for who is going to buy the animals in advance is key.

* A community of farms in a region is essential for supporting an infrastructure of affordable supplies, services, grains, etc as well as mutual support for one another (for example, taking turns bringing product into the city).  For this reason, the presence of a large farm in a community is helpful to the smaller ones.

* Good food costs more.  We knew that one but it sure helps to be reminded and seeing is believing.

Eagle Bridge Custom Meats. Photo courtesy of Holley Atkinson.

And not to be underestimated, Farm Camp was an opportunity to enjoy the deliciousness of eggs collected that morning, peppery greens from a local farm, roasted pork leg from a pig raised on that farm.  Thank you to Erin Fairbanks, formerly of Savoy and Gramercy Tavern, and Shanna Pacificao, chef at Back Forty in NY, who cooked for us!

Changing the food system is a complicated proposition.  We may not feed the world with small farms like the ones I visited in NY, but we can support local communities of farms to ensure a ready supply of local, tasty food, we can influence the big guys to adopt some of the humane, environmentally sane principles used by the smaller sustainable operations, and we can contribute to biodiversity in our food supply through the efforts of communities of farms around our country.