Deep Mountain Maple

The Special
This week we are pleased to feature maple marshmallows from Deep Mountain Maple of West Glover, Vermont. All this week, Chef Casey Graham will use locally-produced, wood-fired Deep Mountain Maple products in main dishes, appetizers, desserts, and drinks. Be sure to ask your server about tonight’s Deep Mountain Maple Special!

The Farm
Deep Mountain Maple is a maple syrup producer in West Glover, Vermont. They produce pure wood-fired Vermont maple syrup of many flavors as well as a variety of maple candies and confections. Deep Mountain Maple sells the bulk of their products at the Green Market in New York City and to fine restaurants in Brooklyn and Manhattan, as well as in Vermont at the Lake Parker Country Store in West Glover.

“Slow Food is an idea, a way of living and a way of eating. It is a global, grassroots movement with thousands of members around the world that links the pleasureof food with a commitment to community and the environment.”
-www.slowfoodusa.com

Slow Food is the anti-Fast Food. The Slow Food Movement began decades ago in response to the construction of a McDonald’s in an Italian town that prided itself on the local cuisine. Today, Slow Food International has thousands of members around the globe and promotes the slow production and consumption of indigenous foods through workshops and conferences. Maple syrup, Vermont’s famous indigenous treat, is a perfect example of Slow Food: it reflects the environment and community of the place where it is made, takes time and skill to produce, and is best when consumed in a leisurely fashion, like over homemade pancakes late on a Sunday morning.

Howie and Stephan Cantor have been producing maple syrup in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom for over 25 years. Though born out of state, Stephan in Georgia and Howie in Massachusetts, the Cantors are truly at home in their nearly one-hundred-year-old sugarbush in the Vermont woods. Their farm, Deep Mountain Maple, lies three miles outside of the tiny village of West Glover, about 20 miles south of the Canadian border. This week the Cantors are far from their home in the woods at the Terra Madre International Slow Food Conference and Festival in Torino, Italy, along with Marisa Mauro of Ploughgate Creamery, another one of Juniper’s Restaurant’s featured local cheese producers.


The Cantors are in Italy as representatives of New York City’s Green Market, a network of farmers’ markets in Manhattan and Brooklyn where they have been selling their products for 26 years. In Torino, they will have the opportunity to sample Slow Food from around the world and educate the international Slow Food community about Vermont foods. The idea of educating people about the source of their food has always been part of the Deep Mountain Maple philosophy. “We’ve been going to the Green Market in New York City for 26 years now,” says Stephan. “It is the largest urban outdoor farmers’ market in the country. And we’ve been standing on the street for 26 years, talking to our customers and hearing how people feel about food and maple syrup. We came to understand that we like the real marketplace, and the whole idea of a farmers’ market, especially in an urban place, where people come and meet the people who are producing the food they eat. For me that’s a big part of it, reconnecting people to their food.”


The Terra Madre Conference promotes local foods whose production have a positive impact on their environment and community, and the Green Market chose Howie and Stephan as delegates because Deep Mountain Maple embodies this ideal. The Cantors’ maple syrup is made without pesticides, herbicides, or chemical fertilizers of any kind, and their maple trees are healthy thanks to constant, generous rain and snowfall and the Northeast Kingdom’s rich, rocky soil. Deep Mountain Maple employs local people to boil and package their wood fired maple syrup, and their customers in New York and Vermont know they are buying products that represent and enhance the place where they were made. “In all that we do, we seek to manage the forest in a way that sustains it, and our future as sugarmakers,” Stephan writes on Deep Mountain Maple’s website. The Cantors are proud that their product is “real food” and contains no artificial ingredients. “I’m way into real food,” says Stephan. “It’s just a little thing we can do as producers to put real food out there, and Vermont is a real greenhouse for these kind of ideas. In our own little way we’re part of that movement. It’s all tied together, respect for the forest and for ourselves, for what we put into our bodies.”

Maple syrup production has changed in recent years, becoming faster and more industrialized, though it is still a slow and painstaking process. The Cantors currently use a system of hoses connected to a vacuum to harvest sap from the trees, but they used to collect it in buckets, guiding a sledge pulled by draft horses through silent, snowy woods to deliver sap to the sugarhouse. Do they miss the old days? “I don’t!” says Stephan. “It was really hard work!” “I sort of miss it,” says Howie. “It’s a whole other sport. But it’s hard to find people willing to do that kind of work these days.” The vacuum system doesn’t seem to affect the syrup’s flavor. The Cantors still boil their syrup in a wood-fired sugarhouse in the heart of the sugarbush, and they bottle it on the farm in their own canning facility. Howie tempers the adoption of new technology by continuing to respect and care for the forest. “Sugaring used to be this really sacred thing,” he says. “It’s gone from this incredible respect for the forest and what the trees give, to getting as much as you can as fast as you can. We try to honor the forest, maybe because we live in it.” Howie and Stephan’s beautiful wood and stone house sits in the middle of their sugarbush, sheltered by the very trees that provide their livelihood.


The Cantors use maple syrup constantly in their own cooking. “We use it for everything. If a recipe calls for sugar, you can substitute maple sugar,” says Stephan. “It’s great in any basic Asian sauce, great in tomato sauce. Fortunately, I don’t have a huge sweet tooth, so eating too much syrup isn’t a big problem for me!” Some of their customers in New York use Deep Mountain Maple products in more unconventional ways. “We have friends in New York who are high-end mixologists, which is a fancy way of saying they’re bartenders,” Stephan says. “There’s a place in New York has used our syrup to make several interesting things, not least of which is a bacon-infused Manhattan sweetened with maple syrup.” Deep Mountain’s maple marshmallows, an original product of which the Cantors are particularly proud, can be used just like traditional marshmallows, and I must say that they are delicious in homemade hot cocoa. My personal recipe calls for the cocoa to be sipped slowly, from the comfort of an armchair next to a woodstove, with a good book in hand.

You can read more about the Cantors and their trip to Italy in the Barton Chronicle online, Orleans County’s weekly newspaper.

www.deepmountainmaple.com

*This is my final post as the Farm to Table Project Coordinator this season. Thank you all for reading, and be sure to check the blog again when Juniper’s Restaurant reopens in December. It has been an honor and a privilege to interview the members of the Northeast Kingdom's agricultural community and hear what they have to contribute to the ongoing conversation about local foods. There are some truly exciting and delicious things happening around here.

-Meg Gibson

Meadow View Farm

The Special
This week we are pleased to feature all natural grass-fed beef from Meadow View Farm of Lyndonville, Vermont. All this week, Chef Casey Graham will use Meadow View Farm products in main dishes, appetizers, soups, and salads. Be sure to ask your server about tonight’s Farm to Table Special!

The Farm
Meadow View Farm raises 100% all natural grass-fed Belted Galloway beef on their property on Darling Hill, right next to the Wildflower Inn in Lyndonville, Vermont. Meadowview Farm beef can be found on the menu at Juniper’s Restaurant at the Wildflower Inn as well as at summer and winter farmer’s market in Lyndonville, Vermont and in Massachusetts.

Meadow View Farm

The Downing Family’s properties on Darling Hill in Lyndonville, Vermont, are the realization of a family philosophy: care for the mind, body and spirit. Meadow View Farm, which raises all natural grass-fed Belted Galloway beef, is a sister property of the Wildflower Inn, the Stepping Stone Spa, and the Chapel of the Holy Family. Meadow View’s herd of 120 “Belties”, large black, red and dun cows with a broad white stripe encircling their bellies, dot the fields surrounding the Inn, Spa, and Chapel. The beef on the menu at Juniper’s Restaurant at the Wildflower Inn is exclusively from Meadow View Farm, and it gets rave reviews from diners eating signature Beltie burgers, meatloaf, shepherd’s pie, filet mignon and New York sirloin. Paul Downing, sales manager at Meadow View Farm, works with his sister Mary and brother-in-law Jim O’Reilly at the Wildflower Inn and Juniper’s Restaurant to help their guests experience food that benefits the mind, body and spirit: grass-fed beef that is good for the consumer, the cows, and the environment.

Richard Downing Sr. and his sons began raising cows in the 1970s at their home in Massachusetts. They started with a small herd of Herefords, kept mainly to help feed their large family. When the pasture they leased from a neighbor was sold to developers in the 1980s, the Downings moved their herd to the Wildflower Inn, a property they had recently purchased in Lyndonville, Vermont. Over the next decade the family bought adjacent properties on Darling Hill totaling 895 acres, 275 of which is lush pastureland perfect for raising grass-fed beef, and in 1996 Meadow View Farm was born. The Herefords were unsuited to the harsh climate of the Northeast Kingdom, so in 2001 the Downings decided to switch to Belted Galloways they purchased from a breeder in Maine. The animals were cold tolerant, well suited to eating grass, and did not need to be milked, in addition to being good-looking and docile. “We couldn’t be happier with them. They are just phenomenal,” says Paul. “They are such nice animals. The people that train these cows are, on average, 14 year old girls, and even the bulls are so calm that these kids can handle them.”


Meadow View Farm’s Belties are regularly shown at local and regional fairs where they have collected dozens of blue ribbons. One of their bulls recently won a national award, which is especially significant because he was in direct competition with grain-fed animals. The herd at Meadow View Farm possesses some of the best and oldest Belted Galloway genetics in the country, highly sought after by other breeders. Belted Galloway is an over four hundred-year-old heritage breed that originated in Europe and is growing in popularity in United States. Written history traces Belties to the islands of North Wales, and before that they are known to have been bred in Scandanavia. They are originally descended from extinct European Bison, which until seven or eight hundred years ago inhabited the plains of northern Europe. Thanks to their ancestry, Belties are well suited to Vermont’s long, cold winters. A warm double coat of fur allows them to spend most of the year outside and prevents them from developing a thick layer of back fat.

The Belties’ distinctive coats also help them retain more energy from their feed, which is entirely made up of grass. Even in the winter, the cows are fed on hay made on the farm. Meadow View Farm practices Intensive Rotational Grazing, where 30-40 cows graze a half acre of lush grass for a short period of time and are rotated to new pasture throughout the season. Grazing on the high quality, pesticide-free grass quickly adds nutritional value to the beef and adds nutrient rich manure to the pastures. Grass-fed beef is high in vitamins, trace minerals, omega-3 fatty acids, and CLAs (conjugated linoleic acids), which suppress the formation of cancer cells and reduce vascular blockage. According to Paul, the human body requires 1.2 grams of CLAs per pound of fat to process red meat. Feedlot beef has .6 g/lb, which means that in order to process the meat the body is depleted of CLA’s. Grass-fed beef from Meadowview Farm contains an average of 2.6-2.8 g/lb, so eating it actually replenishes the body’s stores.


In January of 2009, Time Magazine ran the story “How Cows (Grass-Fed Only) Could Save the Planet.” Reporter Lisa Abend explained to America that, in addition to being good for human health, grass-fed beef benefits the environment by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

“It works like this: grass is a perennial. Rotate cattle and other ruminants across pastures full of it, and the animals' grazing will cut the blades — which spurs new growth — while their trampling helps work manure and other decaying organic matter into the soil, turning it into rich humus. The plant's roots also help maintain soil health by retaining water and microbes. And healthy soil keeps carbon dioxide underground and out of the atmosphere.

Compare that with the estimated 99% of U.S. beef cattle that live out their last months on feedlots, where they are stuffed with corn and soybeans. In the past few decades, the growth of these concentrated animal-feeding operations has resulted in millions of acres of grassland being abandoned or converted — along with vast swaths of forest — into profitable cropland for livestock feed. "Much of the carbon footprint of beef comes from growing grain to feed the animals, which requires fossil-fuel-based fertilizers, pesticides, transportation," says Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma. "Grass-fed beef has a much lighter carbon footprint." Indeed, although grass-fed cattle may produce more methane than conventional ones (high-fiber plants are harder to digest than cereals, as anyone who has felt the gastric effects of eating broccoli or cabbage can attest), their net emissions are lower because they help the soil sequester carbon.”

-Abend, Lisa. How Cows (Grass-Fed Only) Could Save the Planet. Time Magazine. 25 January 2010.

Grass-fed beef is more expensive for the consumer than feedlot beef, but the true cost of feedlot beef is measured in its negative effects on the environment and on human health. Paul points out that in Argentina, where nearly all of the beef is grass-fed, the incidence of heart disease is 70% less than that of the United States.


Not only is grass-fed beef better for you, it tastes great, too. The flavor of grass-fed beef differs from grain-fed beef and can take some adjusting to, but Meadow View Farm beef has a reputation for high quality, consistent flavor. Paul’s favorite cut of grass-fed Meadow View Farm beef is a New York strip steak, cooked just shy of medium and allowed to rest for 3-4 minutes. He recommends paying close attention when cooking grass-fed beef because it can overcook more easily than grain-fed beef. Paul’s favorite cut of beef from the menu at Juniper’s Restaurant is a harder question to answer. “I like everything at Juniper’s,” he says. “The Burger and Beer is definitely a favorite.” He is referring to the Tuesday night special, where any of Juniper’s 100% all natural Belted Galloway burgers and a pint of Vermont-made Switchback or Trout River Red on tap are only $10 ($11.50 with tax). Meadow View Farm’s grass-fed beef is good for the mind, body and spirit, and on Tuesday nights at Juniper’s Restaurant, it's good for the wallet too!

www.meadow-view-farm.com

Ploughgate Creamery

photo credit Ali Kaukas and Meg Gibson

The Special
This week we are pleased to feature Hartwell Cheese from Ploughgate Creamery of Albany, Vermont. All this week, Chef Casey Graham will use Ploughgate Creamery products in main dishes, appetizers, soups, and salads. Be sure to ask your server about tonight’s Farm to Table Special!

The Farm
Ploughgate Creamery is an award-winning artisan cheese creamery in Albany, Vermont. Ploughgate collaborates with the Cellars at Jasper Hill, a cheese again cave in Greensboro for affinage, or cheese aging expertise, as well as for distribution. Artisan cheeses from Ploughgate Creamery can be found at farmers' markets in Montpelier and Stowe as well as at restaurants and stores throughout Vermont and in select locations in Boston and New York.

Ploughgate Creamery

In Vermont, we believe that the principles of Freedom and Unity are not mutually exclusive. Individualism benefits the community, and vice versa. It’s kind of like in the song: “I get by with a little help from my friends.” Marisa Mauro owns and operates Ploughgate Creamery, an artisan cheese making business in Albany, Vermont. When she was getting started three years ago, she borrowed equipment, solicited advice from colleagues and neighbors, and got free assistance from the Small Business Association of Vermont to develop a business plan and take out a loan. Help was donated enthusiastically and generously. “I had to cook ten different people pies because no one would take money!” she says. Today, Marisa makes award-winning artisan cheeses whose production supports local people and enhances the local landscape. It is a shared accomplishment that she and the community can be proud of. Marisa hosted a pig roast this summer to thank everyone who supported Ploughgate Creamery along the way, and the field next to her house could barely contain all of the cars that showed up.


Marisa grew up in southwestern Vermont. Her career as a cheese maker began at age fifteen when she went to work at Woodcock Farm, a sheep dairy in Weston. It was apparent that this was the life for her, and she spent the next several years traveling and working on dairy farms in northern California and southern Vermont before moving to the Northeast Kingdom to study farming for a year at Sterling College in Craftsbury. She ended up getting more of an education working for Neil Urie at Bonneview Farm in Craftsbury, where she spent two years making sheep cheese and becoming involved in the Northeast Kingdom's local foods community.

It wasn’t long before Marisa and Princess Maclean, a friend at Bonneview who cofounded Ploughgate and later left the business, decided that they wanted to start their own cheese operation, but they lacked the start-up capital necessary to buy a farm and animals. Neil encouraged them to purchase an abandoned creamery in Albany instead. It was already equipped with washable walls, drains, draining racks and a walk-in cooler. He would lend them stainless steel tables, cheese moulds, and various other equipment. A small cheese vat, more moulds, and cooling coils came from Mateo and Andy Kehler of Jasper Hill Farm, old family friends of Marisa’s. Cabot Creamery even lent the odd piece of equipment from their warehouse. With a little help from their friends and a loan guaranteed by the Small Business Association of Vermont, Ploughgate Creamery was born.


The new business plan included purchasing milk from a local farmer, which eliminated the cost and labor of running a farm and allowed Ploughgate to give back to the community that had given them so much. Marisa buys her milk from the Hancock Family Farm in Coventry, which milks Ayshire cows and has been owned and operated by the same family for one hundred years. Ayshire milk is prized by artisan cheese makers, and the Hancocks raise their cows naturally on feed produced on the farm. Marisa pays $20 per hundredweight for their milk, compared to the current national average price of $16. Studies have shown that conventional farmers need to makie $18 per hundredweight to survive. Marisa is happy to pay more to support a local farm that raises their animals responsibly and to do her part to keep the Northeast Kingdom’s farmland open and working. “I believe in good farming practices and in keeping things local,” she says.


Ploughgate’s cheeses are aged and distributed by the Cellars at Jasper Hill, a system of cheese aging caves in Greensboro, Vermont. The Cellars is an invaluable resource for Marisa as a small cheese producer. “The aging process is its own art,” she says. “Having Jasper Hill there allows me to just focus on making quality cheese.” The Cellars also provides opportunities for Marisa to perfect her craft. Once a year she works with a man she calls “the cheese ninja,” a consultant from France who is hired by the Cellars to teach classes to local cheese makers. Even with the support of the Cellars, developing her cheese recipe has not been easy. Plenty of batches have ended up feeding her pigs. “So many times, my boyfriend would be looking for me, and he’d be like, oh, she’s crying again at the pigpen!” she says. But her hard work is paying off. At the American Cheese Society awards in Seattle this year, Ploughgate’s Hartwell Cheese won a blue ribbon in the cow milk camembert category. Ploughgate Creamery will produce and sell around 13,000 pounds of cheese this year locally at the Montpelier and Stowe Farmers Markets, as well as to restaurants and stores throughout Vermont and in select locations in Boston and New York.

Marisa currently makes three kinds of cow milk cheeses, all named after local bodies of water. Hartwell is the award-winner, a mild, slightly grassy brie with a velvety texture and a good shelf life. Willoughby is a pungent soft cheese with a washed rind, made with local artisan mead and occasionally washed with Eden Ice Cider. Elmore is a delicious fresh cream cheese available in local markets in plain, sundried-tomato garlic, and chive. Marisa recommends making a baked brie out of the Hartwell, with a Vermont twist. She bakes the brie and tops it with local maple butter, chopped nuts and homemade jam, using fresh Elmore Mountain bread for dipping.

www.ploughgate.com

The Cellars at Jasper Hill

The Special
This week we are pleased to feature Vermont artisan cheeses from the Cellars at Jasper Hill of Greensboro, Vermont as well as vegetables from Joe's Brook Farm of Barnet. All this week, Chef Casey Graham will use products from the Cellars at Jasper Hill and Joe's Brook Farm in main dishes, appetizers, soups, and salads. Be sure to ask your server about tonight’s Farm to Table Special!

The Farm
The Cellars at Jasper Hill is a 22,000 square foot, seven vault system of cheese aging caves located in Greensboro, Vermont. The Cellars were constructed for the purpose of providing affinage, or aging expertise, as well as distribution opportunities for local cheesemakers so that they may access the burgeoning market for artisan cheese nationwide. Artisan cheeses from the Cellars at Jasper Hill can be found locally and nationally in farm stands, natural and gourmet food stores, and fine restaurants.

The Cellars at Jasper Hill

Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom is currently engaged in a delicate economic balancing act. Land rich but cash poor, as a region and as a state we face critical decisions about which we value more. How can we build strong local economies while continuing to preserve and protect our natural environment? The political and geographical landscape of northeastern Vermont has been shaped by the dairy farming industry for decades, but a drop in commodity milk prices in the 1990s and the highly competitive organic milk industry have threatened dairy farming's long-term viability.

Enter the Cellars at Jasper Hill, a new 22,000 square foot complex of cheese aging caves on Jasper Hill Farm in Greensboro, Vermont. The Cellars are a partnership of several northeastern cheese producers who are using the infrastructure of the caves, Jasper Hill's existing national distribution system, the technical expertise of world-renowned artisan cheese makers and Vermont’s landscape of dairy farms to create a vibrant and profitable artisan cheese industry. In an article he wrote for the Diner Journal, a Brooklyn-based culinary magazine, Jasper Hill Farm owner Mateo Kehler writes, “We are building a local economy that is an expression of the landscape."


After getting enjoyably lost for a bit in Greensboro’s labyrinth of dirt roads and fall foliage-splashed pastures, I find myself only slightly late for my interview at the Cellars. My host is Zoe Brickley, the Cellars’ primary account manager and event planner. Zoe is a graduate of the French Culinary Institute of NYC and has a B.A. in philosophy. These dual focuses fit neatly into her work at the Cellars, where the prevailing philosophy is that a commitment to a place and its people can bring about the successful reinvention of its agricultural economy.

The Cellars at Jasper Hill is the brainchild of brothers Andrew and Mateo Kehler, along with a community of like-minded farmers and cheese makers looking to join forces to promote their products. The Kehlers, longtime summer residents of Caspian Lake in Greensboro, own Jasper Hill Farm where the Cellars are located and have been producing artisan cheese there since 1998, building their first cheese house in 2002. The Kehlers were sending their award-winning Bayley Hazen Blue, Constant Bliss, and Winnemere cheeses to New York City in a refrigerated truck when they realized they could share their distribution resources with other local cheese makers. The idea for the Cellars was born, and a few years later a $3.2 million state of the art cheese aging facility was built with grants and loans from the state as well as funding from private investors.


The Cellars is a “medium-sized business” that currently ages cheese for nine producers: Jasper Hill Farm, Landaff Creamery, Von Trappp Farmstead, Scholten Family Farm, Crawford Family Farm, Twig Farm, Cobb Hill, Cabot Creamery and Ploughgate Creamery, all located in Vermont except for Landaff, which is just over the border in New Hampshire. The producers vary in size from Ploughgate, a single-person cheese making operation in Albany, Vermont, to Cabot, which as a branch of Agramark is part of a $400 million a year business. The Cellars also provides technical support and educational opportunities to aspiring artisan cheese makers. At the Vermont Food Venture Center in Hardwick, currently under construction, employees of the Cellars will offer training in artisan cheese making and in the use of the Center’s cheese making facilities.

While the Cellars is dedicated to promoting local farms and cheese makers, they do not restrict their market to just Vermont or even just New England, where they sell about half of their products. The Cellars see themselves as a natural part of the east coast “foodshed” that extends as far south as Washington DC, and the market for their products is truly transnational: they distribute to New York, Chicago, California, and the Pacific Northwest. The Cellars at Jasper Hill will age and sell over 100,000 pounds of cheese this year, employ 22 people full time, and generate $5 million in sales. They have expectations of 50-100% growth in the next few years.


Artisan cheese is what is known as a value-added product, one in which raw ingredients are manipulated to create something more valuable, and its production is an exacting scientific process that requires time, skill, and proper facilities. Zoe and I don hairnets, rubber clogs, and lab coats to enter the caves, a necessary precaution to prevent foreign microbes from entering. The air inside is ripe with odors of ammonia and mold. Zoe leads me through the Cellar’s seven vaults, three large and four small. Each has a specific humidity and is used to age different kinds of cheese (bloomy rind, washed rind, etc). The vaults are built into the bedrock, where ambient temperatures are constantly near 52 degrees.

A variety of processes are used to keep out random bacteria and control the salt, moisture, and pH of each batch of cheese. These elements determine which kinds of mold, yeast, bacteria and mites will be able to grow and give each type and individual batch of cheese its unique flavor, which is also influenced by the milk that is used. It is all quite complicated and fascinating, especially for those who enjoy the science behind it. Zoe and I meet a couple of scientists walking through the vaults. For one, it is his first day on the job, and he looks like a kid in a candy store. “Are you excited?” Zoe asks. “Yeah, I feel like I’m on safari!” He smiles. “It’s a microbial jungle in here!”


A driving force and major source of capital behind the creation of the Cellars was Cabot Creamery, the nationally-renowned Vermont cheddar cheese maker. Cabot wanted to produce an artisan cheese with milk from a single source, but as a large, well-known producer they were having difficulty breaking into the artisan cheese market. They decided to co-brand with Jasper Hill Farm, who already had a national reputation for their artisan cheeses, and Cabot Clothbound Cheddar now takes up the majority of real estate in the cheese caves. In 2006, the first year it was produced, Cabot Clothbound Cheddar won “Best in Show” at the American Cheese Society Conference, and it was recently named one of the Best-Tasting Products in the first-ever Taste Test Awards hosted by Cooking Light in New York City.

The most recent issue of Brooklyn's Diner Journal is dedicated entirely to articles about the farms involved with the Cellars at Jasper Hill. The magazine is emblematic of the surge in popularity of gourmet, local foods, and one of its primary goals is to support the creation of healthy food economies by promoting medium-sized agricultural companies like the Cellars at Jasper Hill. Writer Annaliese Griffin informs Brooklynites, “By supporting a robust medium-sized economy, we give farmers options that are better than growing cheap subsidized calories or selling their land to condo developers. And best of all, we can do it from Brooklyn, knowing that our dollars will support and inspire more and more medium momentum.” They can do it also knowing they will have a delightful dining experience. Cheeses from the Cellars at Jasper Hill cheeses are rich and delicious. Paired with local artisan and domestic beers or a glass of dessert wine like Eden Ice Cider, a slice of cheese from the Cellars at Jasper Hill is a treat that can be enjoyed on many levels.

www.cellarsatjasperhill.com

Eden Ice Cider

The Special
This week we are pleased to feature ice cider from Eden Ice Cider of West Charleston, Vermont, as well as organic potatoes from Pete’s Greens of Craftsbury, Vermont. All this week, Chef Casey Graham will use Eden Ice Cider and Pete’s Greens products in main dishes, appetizers, soups, and salads. Be sure to ask your server about tonight’s Farm to Table Special!

The Farm
Eden Orchards and Eden Ice Cider Company was started by Eleanor and Albert Leger in the winter of 2007. Located on what was an abandoned dairy farm in West Charleston, Vermont, the business currently consists of around 1000 apple trees and a small pressing operation and winery in the basement of the rebuilt farmhouse. Eden Ice Cider products can be found in locally and nationally in farm stands, natural and gourmet food stores, and fine restaurants.

Eden Ice Cider

It is autumn in the Northeast Kingdom, and the colors red and gold fill the senses. They are in the brilliance of the trees on the hillsides, the flames of the first fire made in the woodstove, and the ripe apples and fresh cider coming in from the orchards. In West Charleston, Eleanor and Albert Leger are putting a twist on a New England tradition with their ice cider, a slightly sweet, slightly tart dessert wine that has its origins in Quebec. The Legers have been operating Eden Orchards and Eden Ice Cider Company since 2007. Located on what was an abandoned dairy farm, the business currently consists of around 1000 apple trees as well as a small pressing operation and winery. This is only their third season, but Eden Ice Cider has already won gold medals at the Los Angeles International Wine Competition and at the Finger Lakes International Wine Competition. “From day one we knew we didn’t want to be a mass market, cheap thing,” says Eleanor. “We wanted to be high quality and reflect the place that we’re in, the climate that we’re part of, the land and the beauty of the environment.”

Before this relatively new venture, the Legers lived in Massachusetts. Albert was a chemistry teacher (“so he is the science behind it,” says his wife) and Eleanor had a corporate business career. The couple "had always been food and wine appreciators,” and had always wanted to own a working farm with heirloom apple orchards in the Northeast Kingdom, where Eleanor’s family members have been residents and visitors for seven generations. Eleanor was writing business models for hard cider and apple brandy, but she was having a hard time seeing how they could make money producing either. “We were thinking about wonderful and interesting ways to use these fabulous apples, and we wanted create something that was high quality and tasted good,” she says. It was on a trip to Montreal to visit Albert’s sister (he is French Canadian) that Eleanor and Albert first tried ice cider. “We literally tasted it, looked at each other, and said ‘We’re going to make this!’” says Eleanor.


Unlike ice wine, apples used for ice cider are not left to freeze on the trees, but are harvested, pressed, and frozen as a liquid in large tanks. Ice cider is produced during the coldest months of the year, between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve, so that ambient outdoor temperatures can do the freezing. The cider press produces up to 250 gallons of cider per day, which is pumped into large tanks that are placed outside to freeze. After about 6-8 weeks, the containers are brought back inside and warmed to 36-38 degrees. When the tap is opened, the first 20-25% of the cider that melts is what will be used to make ice cider. This liquid is denser and contains all of the sugar and flavor of the fruit. The concentrated cider goes into stainless steel fermentation tanks and is warmed to about 55 degrees, at which point yeast is added and the cider is left to ferment for around 2 months. When the cider reaches 10-11% alcohol content, it is placed back outside to kill the yeast, which dies naturally at temperatures under 40 degrees. Each batch of cider is made from only one kind of apple (mcintosh, empire, russet, etc.), and the different batches are blended to create the final vintage of ice cider. The final product is filtered into bottles, labeled, and allowed to sit for a few weeks before being shipped. The Legers will sell over 12,000 bottles of their ice cider this year to regional and national distributors as far as California and as prestigious as the Union Square Café in New York City.

Eden Ice Cider and other local producers of “value-added” products (items like cheese and wine in which raw materials are manipulated to create a more valuable product) are having a positive impact on the Northeast Kingdom’s agricultural economy by catering to a national market and creating local, sustainable jobs. They are also making the Northeast Kingdom an attractive destination for culinary vacationers. “There is a lot of support in Vermont from the Agency of Agriculture and the USDA for making value-added products, because we’re never going to be big commodity producers of anything,” Eleanor says. “So I think value-added, but also culinary tourism, will be the future of farming in Vermont.” She recently attended an international conference on culinary tourism in Halifax, Nova Scotia, as part of the Vermont delegation. Eleanor believes that, with a bit more emphasis on marketing, the Northeast Kingdom’s excellent food, beautiful scenery, and unique culture are ripe for culinary tourism. “We have a great tourism business in Vermont, and we just need to branch out beyond ski resorts and beautiful leaves to say there’s other stuff to do here, which is to experience an incredible variety of value-added products, and the farmers themselves,” she says.


Culinary tourism in the Northeast Kingdom will be strengthened by the strong spirit of collaboration that already exists between the local producers of many value-added products. The Cellars at Jasper Hill in Greensboro, Vermont, is an internationally acclaimed producer of local artisan cheeses, and they often pair their cheddars and bleu cheeses with Eden Ice Cider for client cheese tastings. The Cellars at Jasper Hill also partners with the Legers to make an artisan cheese that is hand-wrapped in grape leaves soaked in ice cider, and Grafton Cheddar’s cheesemaker recently won third prize at the American Cheesemaking Society Awards for cheeses marinated in Eden Ice Cider. Eleanor suggests pairing Eden Ice Cider with local artisan cheeses, especially bleus and cheddars, and also with savory hors d'ouevres like foie gras, patté, and venison sausage. The Legers enjoy sampling their wine with cheddar cheese, and for dessert, a small glass with a sugar cookie is a perfect way to end the day.

www.edenicecider.com

Lazy Lady Farm

The Special
This week we are pleased to feature goat cheese from Lazy Lady Farm of Westfield, Vermont. All this week, Chef Casey Graham will use organic Lazy Lady Farm products in main dishes, appetizers, soups, and salads. Be sure to ask your server about tonight’s Lazy Lady Farm Special!

The Farm
Lazy Lady Farm is an off-the-grid, organic farm located in the town of Westfield in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. Owner Laini Fondiller milks 40 registered Alpines goats and produces over 21 varieties of goat and cow cheese, raises pork with whey from the cheese plant, and produces grass fed beef raised in her farm’s lush pastures. Lazy Lady Farm products can be found in locally and nationally in farm stands, natural and gourmet food stores, and fine restaurants.

Lazy Lady Farm

Like the state of Vermont, Lazy Lady Farm of Westfield was “green” before “green” was cool. In the late 1980s when owner Laini Fondiller started her small, organic off-the-grid farm, this meant using candles, gas lamps, hand water pumps, an outdoor privy and a car battery for running a radio. Today, Laini and an apprentice milk a herd of 40 goats and raise whey-fed pork and grass-fed beef using power from 17 solar panels and a one kilowatt wind generator. Laini's approach to farming has nothing to do with trendiness and everything to do with environmental sustainability and an appreciation for quality food. “I make natural food because that’s what I like to eat!” she says. “I don’t want any chemicals in it.”


Lazy Lady Farm, Laini's small, successful cheese plant and meat farm in northern Vermont, has been many years in the making. After graduating from college in southern Indiana, Laini moved to Vermont during the “Back to the Land” movement of young people from urban to rural areas that was a hallmark of the 1970s. She spent some time working for Butterworks Farm in Westfield, another one of Juniper’s Restaurant’s featured farms, where she learned to work with cow milk. In the early 1980s Laini visited Corsica, France where she spent two years learning to make French style goat and sheep cheese. When she returned to Vermont, Laini began making goat cheese in her kitchen to sell at local farmers’ markets and in gourmet food shops in Stowe and Montpelier. Her first licensed cheese plant, a 10 by 12 foot room where she made cheese in five gallon batches, was finished in 1995, and her first geothermal cheese aging cellar was built in 1996. In 2003 a loan from the VT Community Fund allowed Laini to build a cheese plant capable of housing a 50 gallon cheese vat, and this year Laini completed a second cheese ripening cellar.


Lazy Lady Farm currently offers 21 varieties of cheese made with both goat and cow milk. Laini enjoys creating so many kinds of cheese for a number of reasons, number one being her own enjoyment of the flavors that goat cheese is capable of. “I have such fond memories of the cheeses I enjoyed in France,” she says. Political humor is another aspect to her productivity. “An underlying pulse to some of the cheeses is my addiction to politics and political figures,” she says. “I can’t resist creating a cheese to fit a politician or a political topic.” Examples of cheese with names that are politically inspired: BiPartisan is a combination goat and cow cheese, Barick Obama is a square goat cheese, and Tomme Delay is a French style tomme cheese. Another influence is “the environmental factors of the farm, cheese room and cellar,” she says. “Certain cheeses can only be made at certain times of the year, where it is enhanced and made possible by the external conditions.” Laini stops milking her goats in November and only offers cow cheese, made with milk from Butterworks Farm, during the winter months.


Laini is very proud of her herd of 40 registered Alpine goats. “I like goats,” she says. “They have good personalities. They’re not dopes. Well, they are, but they’re not too bad.” The herd is meticulously managed in order to produce high quality cheeses. They are pastured in the summer, May through October, using intensive rotational grazing, and in the winter they are fed on hay produced on the farm and on grain from Green Mountain Feeds in Bethel, Vermont. The goats are also given plenty of minerals to keep them healthy, vital, and productive.


Lazy Lady Farm currently produces around 12,000 pounds of cheese per year that is sold to gourmet food stores and fine restaurants as far as New York City and Chicago. Laini’s cheeses are the recipients of multiple national cheese awards and her farm has been featured in the food section of the New York Times. Beyond being part of the local foods movement, Laini sees Lazy Lady as part of a growing national appreciation of better-tasting food. “Local foods have gotten so good, now it’s just associated with being good versus being local,” she says. Laini enjoys eating her own cheese, and takes a simple approach to its use in her meals. Contrary to her farm’s name, Laini doesn’t have time to be lazy, and accordingly she says, “I don’t cook. I just like a big blob of cheese on a cracker or a piece of bread.”

Lazy Lady Farm
973 Snyderbrook Road
Westfield, VT 05874
802-744-6365
www.lazyladyfarm.net
www.vtcheese.com/members/lazylady/lazylady.htm

The Joy of Gardening

This week we are pleased to once again feature organic dairy products from Butterworks Farm of Westfield, VT. All this week, Chef Casey Graham will use Butterworks Farm products in main dishes, appetizers, soups, and salads. Be sure to ask your server about tonight’s Farm to Table Special!

“Next him, September marched eeke on foote,
Yet he was heavy laden with the spoyle
Of harvests riches, which he made his boot,
And him enricht with bounty of the soyle.
-Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queen

This morning I am harvesting my garden to supply a coming vacation with friends. Finally, a chance to use up the rest of the zucchini! As I gather ripe tomatoes, carrots, beets, and a late crop of peas, the cool September breeze reminds me that summer is slipping away, and with it the time I have left to spend in the garden.

Having a small organic garden helps me understand the passion of the farmers we have featured in the Farm to Table Project for the work they do. It is a pure joy to spend one’s days in a garden, where there is a daily feast for the senses. At times it also is hot, buggy, and cramp-inducing, but nothing can match the sense of pride and accomplishment felt at the successful ripening of a single experimental cantaloupe. Read on for seasonal pictures from the garden and for a Farm & Garden to Table recipe to start your day off right!

A beetle and a caterpillar among the peas, an encounter
made possible by not using pesticides on the plants.

Sunflower whorl.

Jasmine tobacco distracts
a potato beetle from its customary victim.

It also attracts beneficial pollinators.

Ripening corn.

Homegrown tomatoes.

Carnations, a natural pest deterrent, and the single zucchini I’m allowing to grow to full size. Current length – 16 inches.

Calendula and kale.

A Farm & Garden To Table Recipe

Open-Faced Egg, Bacon, Tomato, Cheddar & Basil Sandwich
Yields 1 serving

Add onions, peppers, and seasonal greens as desired.
Omit cheese, mayonnaise and bacon for a low-fat version.

Ingredients
2 slices Shuttleworth Farm bacon
1 egg
1 slice multigrain bread
1 clove garlic, cut
mayonnaise or Dijon mustard
sliced fresh tomato
1 slice Butterworks Farms smoked cheddar cheese
3 large basil leaves
cherry tomatoes for garnish

1. Fry bacon in a cast iron pan at medium heat. When fully cooked, remove bacon from pan and place on a paper towel to drain.
2. Fry egg, sunny side up or over easy to taste.
3. While egg is frying, toast the bread to desired color. Rub the toast with the cut garlic clove. Spread toast with mayonnaise or mustard to taste.
4. Layer egg, bacon, sliced tomato and cheese onto toast. Place in a toaster oven or under a broiler just long enough for the cheese to melt. Remove sandwich from heat onto a serving plate.
5. Top with fresh basil. Garnish with cherry tomatoes.

Butterworks Farm

Butterworks Farm is a family owned and operated certified organic farm located in the town of Westfield in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. They produce an array of exceptional quality yogurts, heavy cream and cheeses widely available throughout Vermont and many of the Eastern states.


It is no easy task to interview a farmer. They rarely have time to sit still for even fifteen or twenty minutes, so as an interviewer it is essential to cultivate an ability to walk, talk, and sometimes be of a little help. But though you must learn to juggle camera, notebook, pencil, recorder and the occasional fencepost, it is in these unrehearsed moments that you witness a farmer’s genuine commitment to and love for his work.

It is a windy, overcast day as I follow dairy farmer Jack Lazor on his chores. Jack is co-owner of Butterworks Farm in Westfield, Vermont, which he operates with his wife Anne, his daughter Christine and her family and a small army of farm hands. He is moving fence for his herd of Jersey cows, who follow a system of rotational grazing in which they are moved onto new grass or forage every twelve hours. It is so windy that Jack’s soft voice is often whipped away as I jog along behind him. Butterworks Farm’s signature windmill is working overtime where it sits atop this high plateau just east of Vermont’s Green Mountains. The windmill produces roughly one third of the farm’s power, most of it during the winter months, so a gusty summer day like this is an unexpected boon for the Lazors, though it does not help the quality of my sound recording.

Butterworks is a producer of fine quality yogurts, heavy cream and cheeses widely available throughout Vermont and many of the Eastern states. All of the products except for the cheeses are processed and packaged right here on the farm. Jack attributes his products’ excellent quality and flavor to the protein-rich milk of his Jersey cows. The animals, all born and raised on the farm since 1982, are kept healthy without the use of antibiotics or hormones, and the closed nature of the herd prevents the importation of foreign bacteria and germs. The Lazors chose Jerseys for the high butter-fat content of their milk and their ability to produce milk on a diet composed of at least 80% forage. The remainder of their diet is a mixture of corn, oats, barley, peas and soybeans that are grown organically on the farm and stored in a beautiful new grain silo. The cows spend the winter bedded down in deep clean straw in a large solar barn.


This industrious farm is a “Back to the Land fantasy” come true for the Lazors. Jack is originally from Springfield, Massachusetts. He met his wife Anne at Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts when he was visiting on spring break from the University of Wisconsin. The couple moved to Irasburg, Vermont in 1973 as part of the “Back to the Land” movement of young people from urban to rural areas that was a hallmark of the 1970s. In 1976 they bought the farm just over Lowell Mountain in Westfield and began dairy farming in a way that was good for the health their animals, the environment, and health of themselves and their customers. Jack and Anne chose Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom for its natural beauty and its unique cultural character. They enjoy their proximity to Quebec and the mixture of Quebeçois and transplanted (moved to Vermont from out-of-state) farmers.

According to Jack, Butterworks is the oldest organic dairy farm in the United States, certified since 1984. The farm has been influential in the food economy of the Northeast Kingdom for decades now - many local farmers, including Laini Fondillier of Lazy Lady Goat Farm who we will feature in future weeks, got their start working for the Lazors. Jack is also very active in several local agricultural organizations, including acting as vice president of the Northern Green Growers Association. “Agriculture is not an easy way to make a living, but there’s something wonderful about it,” says Jack. “I think that right now Vermont is so much better than anywhere else in having support for alternative, diversified small business.” He also sees the state as a place where the “independent mindedness” of local farmers and local consumer demand for high quality, socially responsible food is creating a model for small sustainable food economies all over the country. “I see Vermont leading the nation as producers of high quality, organic, value-added food,” he says.


Butterworks Farm’s products have been featured in a number of regional and national publications, including in Martha Stewart Living in 2006. Martha used their yogurt, cream, butter, and cheese in a variety of gourmet desserts and savory dishes. I can tell you from first hand experience that their products are of exceptional quality and flavor. Raw milk directly from the bulk tank is smooth, creamy, and lightly flavored. I also sample a slice of their smoked cheddar, and I think it is on par with the best that Cabot, Vermont and the entire state of Wisconsin have to offer. I ask Jack how he uses Butterworks cheddar in his cooking, and the answer is, of course, “What doesn’t taste better with cheddar?”

www.butterworksfarm.com