The Special
This week we are pleased to feature organically grown kohlrabi, French filet beans, lettuce, zucchini, summer squash and brown trout from Mountain Foot Farm of South Wheelock, Vermont. All this week, Chef Casey Graham will use Mountain Foot Farm products in main dishes, appetizers, soups, and salads. Be sure to ask your server about tonight’s Farm to Table Special!
The Farm
Mountain Foot Farm is an organic farm in South Wheelock, located just outside of Lyndonville in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. They have a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), providing weekly shares of vegetables to around 10 local members and they attend weekly farmer’s markets in St. Johnsbury (Saturdays from 9am-1pm), and Danville (9am-1pm). They also provide produce to several local fine restaurants.
Do you know the Vermont Recycling Motto?
Use it up,
Wear it out,
Make do,
Or do without.
Curtis Sjolander of Mountain Foot Farm is familiar with the motto, and he credits much of his success as a small trout, vegetable and flower farmer in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom to its principles of thrift and ingenuity. “I drive old cars,” he says, “and I have a small mortgage.” He plans to expand his brown trout production into three new tanks this year, which he will construct out of an old grain silo he was given. “Creative Answers to Interesting Questions” might be a good motto for Mountain Foot Farm.
Curt was born in Massachusetts but has lived in Vermont for most of his life. His parents moved to St. Johnsbury where they still live, and he attended high school at St. Johnsbury Academy. Curt obtained his degree in computer science in Troy, New York, where he met his wife Joan, who is a nurse. They built their house on South Wheelock Road in 1984 and began to make a real go at farming in 1989. They have been regulars at the Caledonia Farmer’s Markets in St. Johnsbury and Danville for over twenty years. During the few months of the year when there is not much to do on the farm besides feeding and processing the trout, Curt works part time as a freelance software engineer.
The Sjolanders own a total of about 30 acres of land in two parcels. One parcel in the town of Wheelock, about 10 acres, contains their home, attached greenhouse, barn with trout rearing tanks, maple sugarbush and woodlot. The other parcel, about 20 acres in the town of Lyndon, has the main gardens, hoop houses, storage sheds, pasture, softwoods and undeveloped land. A third parcel is on Curt’s parents' land in St. Johnsbury where there are garden plots.
Why trout farming? When they bought the property and built their house at the foot of Ide, Wheelock, and Stannard Mountains, the Sjolanders discovered that the land had a particularly good spring that produced more water than was needed by the house alone, and they could think of no better way to use the excess cold, clean water than to install gravity fed trout tanks. Why vegetables? Curt has learned that diversifying his production is a good safeguard against the inevitable small and large disasters that farmers face every season (lost crops, personal or financial difficulties, etc.), and he also likes to keep life interesting by learning to raise new, unusual crops. Why farming at all, for a person who could make a steady living as a freelance software engineer? “I like to be out and about,” Curt says simply. “Who wants to sit at a computer all of the time?”
While not certified organic, Mountain Foot Farm does follow organic principles. Curtis practices long distance rotation of crops on his three parcels of land, which keeps pest populations under control by interrupting their generational life cycles. Another organic practice: cats, a perfectly natural and effective method of pest control. Throughout the interview, barn cats wind around our legs and keep watch for rodents. Mountain Foot Farm's fish are kept healthy without the use of medications, which Curt achieves by keeping a low density of fish in each tank and feeding them only once a day to promote slow growth and optimal health. The trout thrive in gravity-fed tanks filled with fresh spring water, which ranges in temperature from 46-52 degrees Farenheit. They are around 10–12 inches long and about 3-4 years old when they are sold.
Last year, which was one of his best for the trout business, Curt sold between three and four thousand trout to local restaurants and still was not able to keep up with demand. Curt has watched interest in local foods increase during his years at the Caledonia farmers’ markets, and in particular there are more requests than ever from local chefs for his fish. Unfortunately, this year has not been a good one for his trout because of heavy mink predation on their tanks this winter. His tanks normally produce 200 fish a week, but this summer Curt has only 200 total fish to ration to his customers over the next few months. This is the type of annual farming disaster that is predictably unpredictable, and a good example of why the Sjolanders are so diversified in their farming.
One of the unusual vegetables that Curtis raises is kohlrabi, a leafy vegetable in the cabbage and broccoli family. He recites for me the regular spiel he gives to his farmer’s market customers on how to prepare it: “There are three ways you can do it. Peel it, cube it up or slice it up thin, and boil it. Or you can thin slice and stir-fry. Your other option is to thin slice it and eat it raw in a salad.” The trout his eats is prepared simply. Most days Joan breads the fish and throws into the frying pan, but on special occasions she likes to bread it lightly, stuff the cavity with herbs, sprinkle it with a bit of white wine, and bake it in the oven. At Mountain Foot Farm, a delicious answer to a tasty question.
