Posted by Neil Brody Miller on August 20, 2010
Author’s Note: This article was published concurrently on the Farmshed Nation blog.
Megan Schader of Wake Robin Farm, with her herd of pasture-raised Jersey cows.
I travel a lot to local farms, farmers markets and related businesses, and I do my best when visiting these locations to arrive with as few preconceptions as possible. Ideally, I want to view each farm or business on its own terms, rather than in terms of my expectations. Philosophers call these expectations presuppositions, and on some level they are inescapable; the process of interpreting and making an experience meaningful begins well before the experience itself. Still, armed with this insight, I try to keep my expectations in check.
I was reminded of how difficult putting ideals into practice can be on a recent visit to Wake Robin Farm, a dairy farm and cheesemaker in Jordan, NY. Wake Robin Farm enjoys an enviable position among Syracuse-area farms. Their premium, natural cow’s milk products, especially their yogurts, are highly regarded by consumers and widely available at local grocery stores, including eleven Wegmans locations, Green Hills Market, the Syracuse Real Food Coop and Natur-Tyme. This widespread appreciation and distribution, along with Wake Robin’s distinctive branding, led me to assume that they were a relatively large-scale operation, if not on par with commercial dairy farms than at least recognizably similar to them.
The first sign that something was wrong was when I drove past the farm looking for an operation that matched my expectations. I failed, however, to heed this warning. When I finally pulled onto the property what I saw made little sense: there was an old barn edging slowly towards ruin; and a newer, smaller building that turned out to be the farm store and production facility. But no mountains of silage, no heavy machinery, no modern milking facility – the milk is transported in 10 gallon jugs from the barn to the creamery – and no sight or smell of the big herd I presumed I would find.
The farm store at Wake Robin Farm.
While I was sorting this out, I was greeted by Megan Schader, who along with her husband Bruce owns and operates the farm. Wake Robin Farm, that is, is a two-person, family-run operation (three persons if you count the Schader’s son, Hugh). While much of the land has been in Bruce’s family for generations, Megan and Bruce first began farming in 1999 and only converted to dairy production in 2006. At present, they tend a herd of 25 Jersey cows, a smaller breed than the ubiquitous Holsteins, that produce milk with a high butterfat content and more milk solids, which makes them ideal for crafting rich, delicious whole milk products.
The Schader’s cows are pasture raised and grass fed, with grain from Lakeview Organic Grain in Penn Yan supplementing their winter diet of locally grown organic hay. During grazing season, the herd rotates twice daily onto fresh pasture, is milked twice a day, and produces about 450-500 gallons of milk per week. Dairy production and cheese making occur four days a week, with the milk pasteurized but not homogenized. While the farm’s milk and yogurts are distributed regionally, their cheeses and Cheddar cheese curds are sold exclusively at the farm store and the Central NY Regional Market.
Bruce Schader in the creamery at Wake Robin Farm.
I don’t mean to give these facts short shrift. I was fascinated by the creamery, with its stainless steel tanks and arcane technology, and barely able to follow Bruce’s explanation of the cheese-making process; how different cultures and bacteria produce different cheeses and dairy products, how the various hard cheeses – the Schaders produce four varieties of hard cheese – require specific handling, humidity, aging, etc. But I am still hung up on the modest size of the Schader’s operation relative to the success Wake Robin Farm enjoys in the marketplace, and what this says about small-scale farming – or, more specifically, about successful small-scale farming – in the 21st century.
Bruce and his artisanal cheeses, in Wake Robin Farm's aging room.
Here, in no particular order, are a couple of thoughts:
1. Wake Robin Farm does one thing, and only one thing, exceptionally well, which is produce natural, whole milk dairy products. Megan and Bruce initially grew vegetables and even experimented with a CSA. But when they decided in 2006 to shift to dairy farming, they gave up growing vegetables and concentrated exclusively on dairy production. This single-mindedness goes against a certain contemporary school of thought, which says that small, independent farmers can and should try their hand at everything, raising livestock and poultry, planting fruits and vegetables, producing honey and maple syrup, baking breads and making jams and jellies, etc.
I’m not saying this approach can’t succeed; there are any number of paths to success and every farmer or food producer needs to figure out what works for him- or herself. But there is a certain undeniable wisdom in the adage that a jack of all trades is master of none. Those artisan farmers who by popular consensus set the standard of excellence in Central New York for a specific crop or product: Alambria Springs Farm for their salad greens; The Piggery for their pork products; Lively Run Goat Farm for their goat’s milk cheeses; Wake Robin Farm for their cow’s milk yogurts – the list goes on – dedicate themselves to, and excel at producing one product, or group of products, and are content to leave the rest of the food universe to other producers and their respective passions.
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Wake Robin Farm's "Alpine" cheeses - Floradell & Mona Lisa - in the aging room.
Wake Robin Farm's Cheddar cheeses, aging gracefully.
2. Wake Robin Farm, however, is much more than a small, specialized farm. It also is a successful brand in a crowded, competitive marketplace, with an enviable reputation and readily identifiable packaging that consumers can spot well before they reach the dairy case. Which is to say, the Schaders also are savvy businesspeople who understand the importance of brand management, marketing, and value-added food production for the long term viability of their farm.
In the 21st century, business acuity seems essential to the survival of independent farming, and by extension to the continued well being of local food cultures and economies. Thanks largely to the popularity of CSAs and farmers markets, many Central New York farmers have already become successful direct-market vendors. Given the relative ease of starting up an Internet business, the ready availability of local resources like Nelson Farms and the Syracuse Community Test Kitchen, run by my friend Marty Butts, and the growth of direct-market distributors like CNY Bounty, Garden Gate, the Foodshed Buying Club, and Nom Nom, many more farmers, I suspect, will also become value-added producers.
Neither I nor anyone else should be surprised, accordingly, when we come across a small family farm that has successfully developed, branded, and marketed an exceptional product. Success stories like Wake Robin Farm, in fact, may soon become commonplace. The cream is once again rising to the top in Central New York, and nowhere, literally, is this more evident than at Wake Robin Farm.
Wake Robin Farm is located at 177 Brutus Road in Jordan, NY. Their farm store is open everyday from 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM, April 1 to December 31. They also can be found Saturdays at the Central NY Regional Market, in “C’ shed from May through October, and “A” shed from November through April. Although their yogurts are available for sale in Syracuse-area Wegmans, the Green Hills Market, the Syracuse Real Food Coop, and Natur-Tyme, their artisanal cheeses and Cheddar cheese curds can only be purchased at the farm store and the Regional Market. For more information, visit the Wake Robin Farm website.
Posted by Neil Brody Miller on August 5, 2010
It seems quintessentially American to believe that too much of a good thing is never enough. As a result, our cars, houses, debts, meals and waistlines have gotten ever larger, though the Great Recession has momentarily curbed our excesses. The obscene genius of KFC’s Double Down, however, and the popularity of television programs like Man v. Food, which glorifies gluttony as conspicuous consumption, suggest that many Americans still see More is Better as a constitutional right.
From this perspective, the banh mi sandwich at Syracuse’s Ky Duyen Cafe seems downright un-American. I don’t say this because it is a culinary import of Syracuse’s Vietnamese immigrant community, although I suspect that members of this nation’s resurgent nativist movement would see it as such (their ideological great-grandaddies weren’t called the Know Nothings for nothing). What I mean is that something so small and deceptively simple, so meticulously crafted from fresh, flavorful ingredients into a complex, subtle, and stunningly delicious meal, cuts deeply against the grain of American eating habits.
In the spirit of full disclosure, I need to thank Don Cazentre, The Post-Standard’s food and wine columnist, for bringing the Ky Duyen Cafe to my attention. I thought I already knew all of Syracuse’s Vietnamese restaurants, but somehow I missed the Ky Duyen despite having driven past the cafe on numerous occasions. It won’t take me long to make up for my mistake, however, because hands down this is one of the tastiest sandwiches in Syracuse. It is a symphony of delicately layered, alternately harmonious and contrasting flavors.
I refer readers to Don Cazentre’s April 21, 2010 review for details about the Ky Duyen Cafe, its owner Dung Vu, and its remarkable banh mi sandwich. Very briefly, the sandwich consists of tiny portions of pork liver paté, barbequed pork, sliced roast pork, cucumber, cilantro, chilis and pickled daikon and carrots, layered into a crusty Italian hard roll baked for the cafe by Nino’s Italian Bakery on Lodi Street.
I love this last fact, this meeting of disparate immigrant cultures, not only because it testifies to the humanitarianism of Syracuse’s Catholic Charities and North Side community, which has welcomed large numbers of Vietnamese and other Southeast Asian immigrants into their midst, but also because it bears witness to the cultural possibilities of a pluralistic, open society (yeah, I’m thinking of SB 1070, and the reactionary zealots who support it and so much else that is small-minded, ill-informed, ungenerous, and bigoted in our society).
All this, from a small, deceptively simple sandwich served in an unassuming neighborhood cafe. Unexpectedly deep thoughts, and a heightened awareness of how our most mundane decisions – what do I want for lunch? – connect to the biggest issues of the day.
The Ky Duyen Cafe is located at 488 N. Salina Street, at the intersection of N. Salina Street and Butternut Street. The banh mi sandwich and a can of tamarind soda came to $6.00, roughly the same as a McDonald’s combo meal. If you need any more incentive to check out the cafe, consider that banh mi is the only food they serve. I asked for a menu after I ordered my meal and was greeted with bemused stares, because there is no menu. And I’m not even sure of the cafe’s hours, when asked I was told simply that they closed when they ran out of food. How cool is that?
Posted by Neil Brody Miller on June 18, 2010
A lot has been written recently about the health benefits of local, naturally grown and raised foods: the increased nutritional benefits of fresh fruits and vegetables; the higher percentage of good versus bad cholesterol in grass-fed meat, etc. These claims, I believe, are probably correct, as are the environmental benefits of sustainable farming, and the social utility of supporting small producers over factory farms.
All good reasons to buy local, but not the best reason, at least not for me. Something about them is too abstract; they make sense in the head rather than the heart, like following doctor’s orders, and appeal to my intellect rather than my passion. And increasingly, as I learn to live better and more comfortably with middle age, I am most interested in following my passion.
Right now, my passion leads me to want to meet, and get to know, the people who grow and prepare the food I eat, and who make the wine I drink.
I noticed this growing interest last winter, when I realized that I looked forward to visiting winter farmers markets like the Poolville Community Farmers Market more for the opportunity to touch base with new friends, than for the food itself. If home is where the heart is, then my home in part is knowing where my food grows, and who grows my food.
I was very excited, accordingly, when I was invited to Cobblestone Creek Farm’s “Harvest Share” open house this past Tuesday. I already knew Diane Eggert, co-owner of Cobblestone Creek Farm with her husband Steve, through a mutual friend, Lindsay Ott, author of the terrific blog A Trailing Thought, and had become a fan of Cobblestone Creeks’s produce from recent visits to the Hamilton Farmers Market.
Diane Eggert of Cobblestone Creek Farm, alongside this week's Harvest Share produce.
Even better, the invitation included an offer to take home a half share of their weekly “Harvest Share” – their name for the weekly CSA shares of freshly harvested produce.
I already knew that I loved Cobblestone Creek’s fresh basil from previous purchases at the Hamilton Farmers Market, but the bell peppers, hothouse tomatoes, and zucchinis were also outstanding. Their radishes and cucumbers had more “snap” than any other local produce I’ve enjoyed this spring.
The flat leaf parsley, that underappreciated stepchild of the American herb garden, was a revelation, and found its way into nearly every meal I prepared this week, including a flavorful Middle Eastern-style salad – made entirely from Cobblestone Creek’s produce – of diced cucumber, bell pepper, and tomato dressed with some good Extra Virgin olive oil and freshly squeezed lemon juice. The parsley was the star of the dish, adding an astringent grassiness that nicely complimented the sweetness of the vegetables and the fruitiness of the olive oil.
Steve Eggert’s guided tour of the farm, however, was the highpoint of my visit. Throughout our walk, he kept up a running commentary on a broad range of farming-related topics: the cost and effort involved in organic certification (too high); the safety of organic fungicides (a more complex issue than consumers appreciate); the prospects for the early broccoli planting, which had begun to flower (not too good), etc. More than anything else, I was most impressed with Steve’s profound knowledge of the soil, the crops, and the rhythms of the growing season. Without saying as much, it was clear that farming for Steve Eggert is as much an art as a science, and that he relies as much on intuition and accumulated wisdom as he does on expert knowledge.
I came away from the open house not only with a boxful of delicious, fresh produce but with a greater respect for farming and a fuller appreciation of the innumerable critical decisions that go into deciding which crops to plant, when to get the seeds going, when to transfer the seedlings from the hothouse to the field, and so on, that determine whether or not there will be a successful growing season and harvest.
2010 is the first year that Cobblestone Creek Farm has offered “Harvest Shares” for sale, and a number of shares are still available. Their CSA/Harvest Share season runs 26 weeks, from early June until Thanksgiving. A full share costs $650.00 and a half share costs $325, and rates will be prorated for anyone who joins after the beginning of the season.
According to Diane, upcoming products include eggplant, hot peppers, sweet bell peppers – red, orange, yellow, chocolate – broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower – white and orange – sweet onions and cooking onions, leeks, various herbs, brussel sprouts, winter squash – butternut, buttercup, acorn, spaghetti – sweet potato, potatoes, rutabaga, turnip, kohlrabi, corn, cantalope, watermelon, and carrots.
Harvest shares are picked up Tuesday afternoons at the farm, which is located on Collamer Road in East Syracuse. For additional information, contact Diane Eggert at diane.eggert@verizon.net, or visit Cobblestone Creek Farm’s Facebook page.
Posted by Neil Brody Miller on April 30, 2010
A locapour is someone committed to drinking locally produced wine, just as a locavore’s commitment is to consume locally grown foods. I’ve apparently been a locapour for some time now, according to the definition, but first came across the term a couple of days ago in a friend’s Facebook post, and again today in The Washington Post.
The word locapour seems to have been recently minted, a Google search turned up a bunch of pieces from this past January that use or discuss the term. The earliest usage I found dates to 2008 or 2009, in a wine review titled “The virtues and pleasures of being a ‘locapour,’” by Beppi Crosariol, a wine writer for the Ontario, Canada newspaper The Globe and Mail.
The reason I’m writing, however, is not to advocate adding yet another trendy buzzword to our crowded cultural lexicon, but to publicize a very interesting opinion piece on “DrinkLocalWine.com 2010 and locavore hypocrisy,” in today’s Washington Post. Written by Dave MacIntrye, author of the blog Dave McIntyre’s WineLine and wine columnist for the Post, the article takes Washington DC restaurateurs to task for thoughtlessly pouring non-local wines alongside their heavily promoted locavore menus. It’s a good piece, as applicable to Central New York as the Mid-Atlantic States – maybe more applicable, given the comparative development of Finger Lakes and MD/VA winemaking – and worth a read.
Posted by Neil Brody Miller on April 26, 2010
Some ingredients are so good you know that whatever dish you prepare with them will probably turn out great. On such occasions, the only real concern is not to screw up the preparation, and to let the quality of the key ingredient speak for itself. Tonight’s dinner was one of those occasions, and featured one of those ingredients, the Flour City Pasta Sweet Potato Pappardelle I purchased last Saturday at the Central NY Regional Market. Thankfully, the recipe for a brown butter sauce with toasted, chopped walnuts and grated Pecorino Romano cheese, which is adapted from a classic ravioli recipe, is about as simple is it gets, and the dish turned out every bit as good as I hoped.
First, it should be said that the pasta was a thing of beauty all by itself, the product exudes the love, skill and experience of dedicated artisans, along with an accompanying commitment to use only the finest organic ingredients. I feel foolish for not taking a photo of the dry pasta before putting it in the pot, but let’s just chalk up the lapse to unrestrained enthusiasm.
The pasta took about 10 minutes to cook al dente. In the meantime I browned a couple of tablespoons of unsalted farmhouse butter from Meadow Creek Farm of Interlaken, NY and about a 1/4 cup of chopped walnuts in a large sauce pan, until the kitchen was filled with rich, nutty aromas from the sauce, and sweet spice aromas of cinnamon from the pasta. When the pasta was ready, I added about a cup of the salted pasta water to the sauce, then drained and added the pasta to the sauce pan, along with a good pinch of dried sage and some ground black pepper, and let everything come together over moderate heat until almost all the liquid was absorbed. Off the heat, in quick succession I added the grated Pecorino, poured a glass of wine (the 2007 Salmon Run Meritage), and sat down to enjoy.
Stupid grin in a bowl good. Happy feet good. What could be better than perfectly matched ingredients, and a quick, simple preparation? The pasta had a wonderful, firm texture, with subtle, sweet potato flavors and the sweet spice aromas of cinnamon and nutmeg, which were perfectly complimented by the nutty, smoky, salty flavors of the browned butter, toasted walnuts and grated Pecorino, and the savory note and slight bite of the sage and black pepper. The wine, the 2007 Salmon Run Meritage (Salmon Run is the second label of the Dr. Konstantin Frank Winery), which didn’t impress me the night before on its own, was a great match, the moderately high acidity cut through the richness of the brown butter sauce, while the pasta brought out and deepened the wine’s dark red and black fruit flavors.
The moral of this story is as simple as the preparation. Find Flour City Pasta, either at the Central NY Farmers Market or wherever else it is available. Buy Flour City Pasta. Eat Flour City Pasta. Then tell a friend. Or cook it for your mom on Mother’s Day, or to impress the hell out of a first date. New York City doesn’t have better pasta than this. Portland, Oregon doesn’t have better pasta than this. In fact, no one, anywhere, has better pasta than this. So find it, buy it, and enjoy it. We are very, very fortunate that Jon Stadt and his dedicated staff call Central New York their home.
Posted by Neil Brody Miller on March 21, 2010
The deeper I delve into the cultural politics of the buy local and slow food movements, the more I appreciate how transformative a real commitment to these movements will be. A number of developments this past week have driven my thinking on this topic. First, I filed the DBA for my new business, TheVillageSquared.com (more about this at a later date), which is still several months away from being launched but which personally and professionally marks an important turning point. In all likelihood it signals the end of my academic career as a college professor, or at least an end to the expectation of finding a full-time teaching position, and a return to an earlier status as a business owner and entrepreneur. My ambivalence about this realization, however, is offset by the hope that it will also mean stability and independence – financial and existential – after eight years as an itinerant educator, and a firmer foundation for my commitment to remain in Central New York and put down permanent roots in the region.
I’ve also been reading and thinking about a number of related issues. I started reading Michael H. Shuman’s book The Small-Mart Revolution: How Local Businesses are Beating the Global Competition which, despite indulging occasionally in utopianism and relying too heavily on best- and worst-case scenarios, is an important book for understanding the challenges, and the politics and philosophical underpinnings, of community-based economics. I’ve also been thinking about joining a CSA, which for a middle-aged bachelor long habituated to eating out rather than cooking at home, is not as simple a decision as it may sound. Will I really make and keep a commitment to consume all the fresh food delivered weekly? Will I be paying for produce I won’t eat, or worse yet, throwing away food I failed to consume? Will the moral good of supporting local farming be offset by the moral harm of wasting food?
Finally, I got a letter this week from my bank, HSBC, “the world’s local bank,” informing me that, beginning in April, there will be a monthly charge for my checking account, which until now had been free. I’ve already been thinking about which bank to open the business account for The Village Squared, and have been leaning towards a community bank or local credit union. The letter from HSBC, however, combined with the ideas in Shuman’s book and my thinking about community-based economics, demands that I rethink my personal banking as well.
All these issues came together this morning over breakfast at the Red & White Cafe in DeRuyter. As I reached to pay the bill, I grabbed automatically for my plastic debit card, which over the past few years has virtually replaced my use of cash. In fact, I often go for weeks nowadays without a dollar in my pocket. I stopped, however, and thought a bit about the socioeconomics of my actions. Beyond the questionable ethics of banking with HSBC, a multinational corporation who uses the money in my account for god only knows what purposes, and in god only knows what countries, paying for my meal with the debit card also meant that Mastercard was going to take somewhere around 3 percent of the total bill, or around 30 cents, in fees and charges, which would come out of Chris’s, the owner of the Red & White Cafe, pocket and profits.
A short conversation with Chris brought home the economics of this issue. We quickly calculated that she serves about 500 customers a week, which at roughly $10.00 per customer works out to $5,000 a week. Which means that Chis pays around $150.00 a week in credit card fees, or somewhere around $8,000 a year in lost income and profit. That may not be enough to make-or-break her business, but it is certainly enough to prevent her from purchasing a major new appliance, or making a commitment to source locally grown products, or taking a much-needed vacation. So in terms of its effect on the local economy, the use of a debit card to pay for my breakfast could, like the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil, metaphorically set off a tornado in Texas.
All this may seem like a lot of deep thinking for a Sunday morning breakfast, but supporting a community-based economy, I am begining to realize, is not simply a matter of purchasing locally grown farm products. At the very least, today’s meal got me thinking about the supposed convenience of carrying plastic, which, like the convenience of purchasing produce at the local supermarket without any thought of where it came from and how it got there, comes with significant hidden costs. Which is why I say that supporting the local economy will be transformative and require me to change entrenched habits. If you love a local business, pay in cash!
Posted by Neil Brody Miller on March 7, 2010
I don’t often cook fancy when I am home by myself. By the time I’ve prepped, cooked, eaten and cleaned up I figure it’s as economical to eat out as to prepare a meal. I recently picked up a bunch of foodstuffs at local farmers markets, however, and have been putting together a meal in my head that would feature these ingredients. I also know from experience that cooking, like any learned skill, is a use-it-or-lose-it proposition. So the time had come, I decided, to get out the pots and see if my cooking chops were still up to par.
Actually, I didn’t get all that ambitious, as this was a two pot dinner with only a handful of ingredients. But the ingredients were so good that I had to write about the meal, and post a short photoessay.
The menu consisted of braised, pasture-raised lamb shanks from Meadowood Farms in Cazenovia, which I purchased last Saturday at the “Fourth Saturday” farmers market at Circa Restaurant, served on a bed of French lentils that I purchased in bulk from Lombardi’s Fruit and Imports, a Syracuse institution and one of my favorite specialty food shops. Additional ingredients included organic dried sage from Fresh Herbs of Fabius; organic carrots, New York State onions, and anise purchased at P&C Market; locally grown garlic from Muriel Barrows of Morrisville and an inexpensive New York State red wine, the 2006 Motley Cru, a blend of Syrah, Petit Verdot, Malbec and Merlot from Brooklyn Oenology, a winery on the North Fork of Long Island.
The preparation was very simple, a fine dice and quick sauté of some carrot, onion, and anise bulb for the French lentils, then chicken stock, two bay leaves, salt and pepper, and a slow boil for about 45 minutes. In the mean time, I browned the lamb shanks, did a rough chop and quick sauté of the carrot, onion, anise and crushed garlic, and then put the shanks back in the pot, along with the sage, thyme, bay leaf, red wine and a bit of water, and braised them on low heat for about 90 minutes.
The lentils came out al dente, well seasoned and very flavorful. The lamb shanks, however, were clearly the stars of the meal. By the time I removed them from the pot they were falling of the bone, and had taken on a gorgeous shellacked mahogany color. The meat was moist and fork tender, with a mild gaminess that paired well with the natural sweetness of the carrots, anise and lentils, and the aromas of thyme and sage.
As good as everything looked and tasted, it wasn’t restaurant quality. Close, but it needed something to deepen the flavors and add a bit more complexity. I probably should have added tomato paste when sautéing the vegetables, and some beef or veal stock to the braising liquid to offset the acidity of the red wine. Still, it was very tasty, and I’m reasonably satisfied that my cooking skills are in good order. At the very least, I had no problem cleaning the plate, and I won’t have any problem polishing off the other shank for dinner tomorrow night.
All told, I spent around $30.00 on the meal, including the wine for the braising liquid and a glass of the 2006 Allegrini Palazzo della Torre, a very tasty, highly rated Italian red wine that is widely available in the Syracuse area. So the meal wasn’t cheap, but at $6.00/lb., or around $4.50 per shank, the lamb shanks, which were large and meaty, were very reasonably priced. We’re extremely fortunate to have so many dedicated local farmers like Marc Schappell and Bee Tolman of Meadowood Farms, who raise grass-fed livestock and are committed to sustainable agriculture, and we should take every opportunity to support them, and let them know how much we appreciate their efforts.