2/9/2024 0 Comments Fable farms![]() ![]() Are we willing to endure/embrace a winter of nothing but root vegetables and hardy kale? ![]() We are accustomed to a steady supply of staples like tomatoes, peppers, and bananas regardless of geography or season. Until someone in the Valley starts growing green onions hydroponically and on a large scale over the winter months, if you see fresh green onions in a restaurant dish in February, you can bet your Birkenstocks that they’re from Mexico or California. In the article on restaurants, Reiley writes: “The first tipoff on a menu? Constancy.” She’s right. But doing much more than we are now would require a significant change not only in what we do but also in what our customers do, and what they expect and are willing to pay for. We’re doing the best we can, I think, which doesn’t mean we’re not always on the lookout for ways we can improve. I’ve started a lemon tree, but even if it survives and thrives, I’ll be lucky to get a handful of lemons every year, which isn’t enough for our home use, let alone the shop. We are not allowed to use “backyard butter”, so our only source is large industrial dairies. Lemons. Butter! I wish Fox Hill would start making butter. Some things just aren’t available locally. All our fresh pork, beef, and chicken comes from Longspell Point Farm. (Their out-of-season produce may well come from the same place, but their profits go to different ones.) The one thing we will never buy from a store is meat. When we want vegetables that the local farms can’t supply, we turn to the small, independent markets like Foote’s and Henny Penny’s the big grocery stores are a last resort. We use maple syrup from Hutchinson Acres and honey from Brandt’s Bees. We get all of our in-season vegetables from Longspell Point Farm and TapRoot Farms, and we’re working on out-of-season produce as well: last year Longspell grew 300 Roma tomato plants to carry us through the winter, and we use TapRoot’s frozen basil “pucks”. We do go to quite a bit of effort and expense to support other small businesses in the area. We get most of our cheese from Fox Hill or Holmestead, except for Parmigiano-Reggiano which we get from Italy via Costco. Our website says we use ingredients that are “as fresh and local as possible”, which is pretty vague. They got me thinking about where we get our ingredients and what claims we make about it. They’re well-written articles and I highly recommend them. Restaurants claiming their meat is ethically sourced from a small local farm when it’s actually from a giant conventional (read: inhumane) operation several states away. “Farmers” buying national grocery chain rejects from a huge distributor and claiming they grew them organically and locally. Laura Reiley, the food critic for the Tampa Bay Times, is writing a series called “Farm to Fable” that exposes outrageous fraud perpetrated by some Florida restaurants and farmers’ market vendors attempting to cash in on the trend for all things local. Food, flowers, and herbs destined for the Noodle Guy’s kitchen.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |