Duncan Pogue shifted irrigation lines on a freshly seeded bed of salad greens at his Wild Water Farm in between Quechee and West Hartford one sunny afternoon in early August. Moving the black plastic lines would help provide water to the rest of the bed, he said.
“If the soil dries out, the biology basically dies,” he said.
Pogue grows greens on a rotating basis throughout the summer. He prepares each bed by growing a cover crop such as buckwheat, tilling it under and covering the entire bed with black plastic to kill off any remaining weeds.
He then plants a new crop of salad mix, lets it grow for three to five weeks and then harvests it for market, using a handheld harvester that looks like a large green bag with a blade on one end. In a shed he built last fall, he washes the leaves in a large sink and dries them in an automatic salad spinner.
At Cloudland Farm in North Pomfret, Chef Ira White — one of Pogue’s customers — sets the menus for the restaurant’s prix fixe dinners on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights.
All of the meat served in Cloudland’s restaurant is raised on the farm. Much of the produce is grown in the farm’s gardens. The rest is supplemented with fruit and vegetables from nearby growers, including Wild Water Farm. Dairy products in the restaurant come from producers in Vermont or New Hampshire, flour comes from King Arthur Flour in Norwich and olive oil comes from Dianne Hinaris, of Woodstock, whose husband’s family runs an olive farm in Greece.
“If it’s locally available, we will source it locally,” White said.
Pogue’s delivery of greens, which are then served to Cloudland diners, is one example of a type of transaction regularly occurring in the Upper Valley. The restaurant’s website invites customers to “experience true farm-to-table dining.”
Many restaurants make similar “farm to table” claims, but what do they mean? The phrase conveys less a uniform standard than an ideal, and it means different things to different farmers, chefs and diners.
One prominent exponent of the farm-to-table movement, the Vermont Fresh Network, calls on member restaurants to spend 15 percent of their food budgets on local products, which might not seem like much. Many local restaurateurs say they spend much more, particularly this time of year, in the midst of harvest season.
What seems clear from a series of conversations this summer is that whatever “farm-to-table” means, it’s creating a web of relationships among food producers and consumers, with restaurants helping to bring them together.
The Vermont Fresh Network — which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year — came into being when a group of chefs decided they wanted to serve Vermont-grown food in their restaurants, but they needed to know where to get it, said Meghan Sheradin, the network’s executive director.
“Basically (it’s) just getting people in a room together — talking and sharing,” she said.
It’s not always easy. Farmers and chefs “work totally opposite ends of the day,” Sheradin said.
The network still focuses on bringing growers and chefs together, but in recent years it also has acted as a third-party certifier of chefs’ commitment to local purchasing. In addition to spending a minimum of 15 percent of the annual food budget on Vermont-grown or -produced food, restaurant and chef members of the network must work with at least four Vermont farms or food producers, have a menu containing Vermont-grown or -produced foods from three of the six U.S. Department of Agriculture food groups and attend one of the network’s annual events.
The farmers or food producers must confirm they do in fact work with that restaurant or chef, Sheradin said.
She said this check helps to distinguish active relationships between chefs and farmers from false claims or “green washing,” which is language that overstates a company’s commitment to environmentally friendly practices.
The network takes restaurants at their word that they spend the percentage of their annual food budget locally that they say they do. The group does not perform audits of members’ expenditures.
“If there’s ever a question, we say we’re going to come back to them and say they’re going to need to stand by that number,” she said.
The purpose of the network is not to add paperwork to chefs’ lives, but to build relationships between chefs and farmers, Sheradin said.
The network presents restaurants that go above and beyond the network’s membership requirements with its Gold Barn Honor. Such restaurants — which include the Skinny Pancake (see sidebar) — partner with at least 15 different farms and are within the top 25 percent of network members in terms of money spent annually on local products. Last year, Gold Barn honorees spent 35 percent of their annual food expenditures or more than $200,000 on locally grown and produced foods, according to the network’s website.
A handful of Upper Valley restaurants are members of the Vermont Fresh Network. The list includes Long Trail Brewing Co. in Bridgewater, the Norwich Inn, Osteria Pane e Salute in Woodstock, Simon Pearce Restaurant in Quechee, the Windsor Station Restaurant and Barroom, and the Woodstock Inn and Resort.
Though the bulk of the network’s members are in Chittenden County, Windsor Station chef and owner Jon Capurso said being a member helps visitors know what to expect when they walk through his doors.
Using locally grown products has been a part of what he does as a chef for more than 10 years, Capurso said in a phone interview. Before opening Windsor Station in 2013, Capurso and his wife, Stacy, owned and operated Stella’s Restaurant in Hartland. Stella’s also was a member of the network.
Cooking with farm-fresh ingredients simply makes sense, Capurso said.
“It tastes better,” he said.
Working with growers such as Cedar Mountain Farm in Hartland and Deep Meadow Farm in Ascutney has created long-lasting relationships, Capurso said.
“The farms that we deal with around here are friends that we’ve known for years,” he said.
At the Norwich Inn, Chef Ryan Murray said he enjoys working with local food as much as he can. He particularly likes that the food has a story. For example, Murray has visited Robie Farm in Piermont to see where the beef and veal he serves are raised.
Doing so creates “more of a personal relationship with the product you’re getting,” he said.
Customers’ interest in the sourcing of the restaurant’s ingredients has grown in recent years, Murray said.
“In the past two years, (we’ve) seen a lot more people asking about where this comes from,” Murray said.
There are challenges to providing locally grown food to customers, Murray said. It can be difficult for area farms to provide consistent quality and quantity, he said. For example, variation in the size of locally grown lettuce heads might mean that six heads are enough one week, but the same number might not be sufficient the next week, he said.
One way to go local is to make food and drink in-house. The inn has made its own beer — Jasper Murdock ale — since 1993. In addition, the inn recently collaborated with the Vermont Farmstead Cheese Company in South Woodstock to produce a cheddar using the inn’s Whistling Pig Red Ale, said William Kinney, the inn’s marketing and function manager. And the inn brews a beer from hops grown on the lawn once a year, Kinney said.
“We’re trying to do what we can,” he said.
The Granite State also has a group working to evaluate the localness of restaurants’ offerings. The New Hampshire Farm to Restaurant Connection, a nonprofit that began in 2004 with support from the state Department of Agriculture, initially hosted farm fresh dinners to bring together farmers and chefs, the group’s president, Charlie Burke, said in a telephone interview.
As meals with a local food emphasis have grown in popularity, the group changed its focus to become a certifying agent. Now, it offers a certification process.
“I’ve heard chefs say, ‘We buy local whenever possible,’ ” Burke said. “I think that’s totally meaningless.”
A retired surgeon, Burke describes himself as a serious cook and a former market grower at Weather Hill Farm in Sanbornton, N.H.
In certifying restaurants as local, Burke’s group scores them on their local offerings, including produce, meat, smokehouse products, fish, cheese, dairy, maple syrup, honey, wine, beer, value-added products — such as bread, jam, jelly, coffee or tea — and New Hampshire bottled water and soda.
The group also judges restaurants on their promotion of local products and farms, use of New Hampshire products in their dining rooms, New Hampshire flowers on display and composting.
So far, the New Hampshire Farm to Restaurant Connection does not count an Upper Valley restaurant among its 15 certified local restaurants now in operation.
The Upper Valley has its own culture, which sets it apart from other regions of the state, Burke said. He acknowledged that some Upper Valley restaurants are serving local food without the group’s certification.
“They have their own promotion and following for whatever reason,” he said.
While Burke is skeptical of some restaurants’ farm-to-table claims, he said consumers can sort out which restaurants are serving local products by asking chefs and servers.
“Most of the people really doing it will somewhere acknowledge their sources,” he said. “Usually the waitstaff is excited about it.”
He said he hopes local food eventually becomes so commonplace in New Hampshire restaurants that the certification process is no longer needed.
Baskets of tomatoes decorated the dining room at Market Table in Hanover in early July. The specials menu, written on a chalkboard on one wall, listed a variety of Vermont-made cheeses: Fuzzy Wheel from Twig Farm in West Cornwall; Summer Snow from Woodcock Farm in Weston, and Pyramid Scheme from Champlain Valley Creamery in Middlebury.
Also listed were some of the restaurant’s other local products, including pork from Vermont Heritage Farm in Chelsea, lettuce and spinach from Root 5 Farm in Fairlee; asparagus from Hurricane Flats in South Royalton; lamb from Woodcock Farm; tomatoes from Old Athens Farm, and asparagus and strawberries from Harlow Farm, both in Westminster, Vt.
Lunch specials included local beets and local, organic eggs.
“Right now it’s all in season,” Chef Jared Black said while standing behind the restaurant’s prepared foods case. “It’s (in) the summer that we really pop and flourish.”
He estimated that 80 percent of the restaurant’s produce comes from local farms in the summer. For the most part, the restaurant is able to keep prices flat, he said. For example, though the price for tomatoes has gone up this year, he said the price for burrata — cream-filled mozzarella — from Maplebrook Farm in Bennington, Vt., has dropped as the company has increased efficiency in its production. In that way, the price the restaurant charges for its caprese salad stays flat. The salad costs $14.50, according to an online menu.
As a chef, Black said, he enjoys working with different types of produce as it’s in season.
“Pretty soon we’ll be getting local peaches,” he said.
It is harder to source foods close to home in the winter, but he said the restaurant still tries to purchase many of its ingredients locally when possible. In the winter, tomatoes come from Long Wind Farm in East Thetford and root crops, such as parsnips, begin to appear on the menu, he said.
Offering local foods to customers is one of several priorities for John Chapin, owner of the Canoe Club in Hanover. One sometimes competing priority is balancing the books.
Finding local products at a price point that a restaurant and its customers can tolerate can be tricky, Chapin said in a July phone interview. Canoe Club dinner entrees range from $12-$27, according to an online menu.
One area where price and a desire for localness converge is in the Canoe Club’s choice of milk supplier, Plainfield’s McNamara Dairy.
“I love the McNamaras’ product,” Chapin said. “Last time I checked, it was a surcharge I was happy to pay.”
His initial fears about managing the McNamaras’ glass bottles and questions about the family dairy’s abilities to deliver at times that are convenient for the restaurant have been assuaged, he said.
The Canoe Club’s definition of local also includes purchasing hamburger from Northeast Family Farms, a regional supplier of meat. The restaurant’s coffee comes from the Dirt Cowboy Cafe down the street and some beer, liquor and hard cider come from a variety of Vermont and New Hampshire breweries, distilleries and cideries.
While the coffee beans themselves certainly are not locally grown, the roasting is done by a fellow member of the Hanover business community, Chapin said.
“(We) should get some credit for doing that instead of Maxwell House,” he said.
Another example of localness at the Canoe Club is in their choice of bread roll supplier. All of the restaurant’s rolls come from King Arthur Flour. Though the grain for the flour is not grown locally, the rolls are baked nearby by Upper Valley residents.
King Arthur executives bring out-of-town business clients to the restaurant for dinner, Chapin said. He could purchase products from a nationwide brand, but those executives do not come for dinner at the Canoe Club, he said.
“There’s a little bit of one hand washing the other,” Chapin said. “Some of it comes back in the side door if you’re paying the premium.”
Like Chapin, Three Tomatoes Trattoria owner Robert Meyers said he buys local products for his Lebanon restaurant “when the economics work.” Dinner entrees at the eatery on the downtown pedestrian mall range from $12-$24, according to an online menu.
Three Tomatoes purchases milk from McNamara Dairy and tomatoes from Long Wind Farm year-round, Meyers said.
Otherwise, most of the restaurant’s vegetables come from North Springfield, Vt.-based Black River Produce, which distributes produce in Vermont, New Hampshire, New York and Massachusetts. Some of Black River’s products come from the region’s growers.
“(It) saves us having to deal with a lot of small farmers at one time,” Meyers said.
More than a quarter of Black River’s annual sales come from local products, company President Sean Buchanan said. Black River brings products from growers and producers to restaurants and retail outlets throughout the Northeast, he said. “Our role is as an ambassador for local produce,” he said. “We help find new markets for them to move into.”
Three-quarters of Black River’s sales are to restaurants and institutions, Buchanan said. While chefs may have a farm drop off produce once a week, they may need “filler” for the remaining six days, he said.
As he spoke, Buchanan said, his trucks were carrying local peppers, green beans, cabbages, broccoli and lettuce.
While the contents may change with the season, the distributor maintains a supply of local items throughout the year, he said. In the winter, Black River trucks might carry local sweet potatoes, potatoes, butternut squash, dairy, meat and value-added products such as soups.
Local sourcing simply makes sense, Meyers said. The quality is good and it keeps money in the region’s economy.
Specials on Three Tomatoes’ menu for the early part of August included a salad featuring Blue Ox Farm organic cherry tomatoes and a pizza with grilled eggplant and peppers also from the Enfield farm.
Specials offer the restaurant an opportunity to showcase smaller amounts of locally produced ingredients, Meyers said. Doing so is a “great marketing tool for us,” he said.
Challenges to local sourcing include availability and consistency, Meyers said. Having been around for 25 years, Three Tomatoes has many regular customers who come in looking for a meal similar to others they’ve had in the past.
“When you have a business that’s been in business that long, they look for consistency even more than they would somewhere else,” Meyers said. “(We) take a lot of pride in that.”
Restaurant customers do not make up a large volume of organic vegetable sales at Deep Meadow Farm in Ascutney, owner Jon Cohen said in a July phone interview.
The way a restaurant pursues purchasing from local growers “has a lot to do with the chef,” Cohen said. “There are chefs out there who are supplementing and (others) out there that are spearheading.”
Some chefs might stick some local arugula in their salad mix, while others build their menus around what is seasonally available, Cohen said.
But Deep Meadow Farm’s sales to restaurants have other values, he said: They add to a farm’s brand recognition and put local food in front of those who might not otherwise encounter it.
“All of this fits together into a greater issue of sustainability,” Cohen said.
No matter how they approach it, chefs who buy local ingredients are “promoting a movement,” he said.
It would be nice if the promotion were accompanied by more local spending, said Danielle Allen, co-owner of Root 5 Farm in Fairlee. The use of local food on restaurant menus is more a marketing tool than an expression of where the money is going, she said. In addition, she said, cheese and meat often get top billing on menus while produce might get short shrift.
From a restaurant’s perspective, Allen said she understood that the seasonality of produce makes it tricky to call out on a menu, she said.
Sales to restaurants and retailers are secondary to Root 5’s direct-to-consumer sales. The farm focuses on providing a wide variety of crops to its CSA customers and then it offers a weekly list of available products to wholesale customers — including restaurants — Allen said. Bulk sales account for about 20 percent of the farm’s business, she said.
To cultivate a relationship, Allen encourages chefs to come to the farm.
“We’re growing so much food (and) restaurants are not tapping into that,” she said.
From a grower’s perspective, it would work best if chefs would tailor their menus to the crops as they become available, she said. Offering truly seasonal menus would take a good deal of creativity and flexibility on the restaurants’ part, she said.
One suggestion would be for a restaurant to sign up for several CSA shares and use what’s in the boxes to create weekly specials, Allen said. She compared the challenge to the one her family faces when putting a meal together at the end of the day.
By approaching local food like a CSA customer would, a restaurant would be able to offer “what’s best from the field and what’s most fresh,” she said.
Changing the public’s approach to local crops is not solely the responsibility of chefs and restaurants, Allen said. Customers also may need to alter their expectations and make them known to chefs and restaurant owners, she said.
“It’s customer driven — customers asking for it (and) chefs and kitchens getting more creative and trying different things,” she said. “I think there’s so much potential.”
Sales to restaurants have been growing in recent years at Cedar Mountain Farm in Hartland, said farmer Kerry Gawalt. She sells vegetables and beef to Skunk Hollow Tavern in Hartland, Windsor Station and Harpoon Brewery in Windsor and vegetables to Cloudland Farm.
Cedar Mountain Farm, which is at Cobb Hill Cohousing, includes 4 acres of vegetables and 60 Jersey cows. The farm sells some of its milk to Cobb Hill Cheese, which turns the milk into cheese and frozen yogurt. The rest of the farm’s milk is shipped to Agri-Mark Inc. for use in products such as Cabot Cheese.
Fortunately for Gawalt, Windsor Station is interested in purchasing all of the farm’s pot roast for specials and Harpoon is interested in “lots and lots of burger,” she said. It’s especially convenient when restaurant staff come to the farm to pick up their orders, she said.
There are some challenges. Some chefs like to communicate via email and others by phone, she said. Organizing regular order and delivery days help make things run smoothly, she said.
When she has an abundance of a crop, she makes calls to the restaurants and the first one that picks up gets the order. And, when a woodchuck eats all the farm’s lettuce, she immediately calls restaurants so they can find another source.
Even without formal relationships with restaurants, Killdeer Farm in Norwich provides produce to some local chefs through its Route 5 farmstand, said Scott Woolsey, retail and customer experience manager.
Serving restaurants in this way allows chefs to pick out the quantities and sizes they are looking for, Woolsey said. He also noted that it doesn’t hurt his business to have some of the region’s respected chefs shopping at the stand.
Woolsey, who also is the president of the Vermont Fresh Network, said the network is important to him as a retailer. It has allowed him to get to know local cheesemakers and meat producers, he said. Such connections mean that if something seems off with a product, he can go to the producer and ask.
“It’s all about celebrating those relationships,” he said.
Nora Doyle-Burr can be reached at ndoyleburr@vnews.com or 603-727-3213.
