Where have I been? How did I get so interested in Silk and
Supper? The following is a quick chronological recount of the ventures that
have gotten me so involved with agriculture, food, and art. Each of these
overviews could be filled with its own blog full of pictures, stories, and
hilarious capers, many of which I will touch on as the blog goes on. This is
meant to be a quick overview to set the story when I refer to Mexico,
Brattleboro, and some island.
It began at UMass Amherst. UMass has a lovely program where
students can design their own major, should the 88 majors that are offered not
quite suit them. I designed my studies
and took classes in Plant and Soil Sciences, Political Science, Economy, and
Anthropology. I got to narrate and name my major, which is why my major is
called…wait for it…Humanism through Sustainable Agriculture and Experiential
Education.
I would write lofty papers about socioeconomic issues of agriculture by day. And, as Eisenhower said “Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you're a thousand miles from a corn field” My lessons got more challenging, and more rewarding, away from the books and around actual food. I got a job, to put a dent in my college bills, at
a collectively run vegetarian restaurant. That’s where I learned anthropology
through consensus based business, economy through paying a fair price to our
producers while keeping our prices accessible to students, political science
through navigating a way to evade our school exclusive contract with Sedexho
and get small vendors, and plant and soil sciences through the trial and error
of growing our own kale. It’s also where I got hooked, not just intellectually,
but viscerally, on food production. It where I experienced the challenges, and
the rewards, in flavor and fun.
College students need a summer job, too. I got one on a tiny
island off the coast of New Hampshire. It’s a rustic summer retreat center with a
hotel built in the eighteen hundred. The staff of 100 live in the top floor of
the hotel, and 400 guests come out weekly for their conferences. With my
restaurant experience, I got to work in the kitchen.
Star Island is often environmental by necessity. Throwing
things out mindlessly is not an option when any waste has to be hauled off the
island in our little lobster boat. The island produces its own power, and it’s
own drinking water from sea water with a reverse osmosis machine. They are
treated like the limited resources they are-most faucets provide cistern water,
with a few special faucets for drinking, and the toilets run on salt
water. A yearly practice is knocking the
barnacles out of the toilet. I was also trained as a firefighter, along with
many employees. If your hotel from the 1800’s catches fire, you don’t want to
wait around for the mainland firefighters.
I on went to Costa Rica for a Spanish Intensive with a
program focus on community development. I began learning Spanish and got to
visit those big industrial pineapple and banana plantations.
I then participated in Kripalu Yoga Centers’ amazing
volunteer program. I chopped kale and tofu, and sorted beans, in exchange for
lovely housing and all the yoga classes I could attend.
From there, I did a season with the Farm and Wilderness
Foundation, as the retreat center host and chef for their farm summer camp for
girls. We had fresh milk and the most
beautiful eggs. The summer season
culminated with a feast entirely prepared from the produce from the farm -bread
from the wheat, fresh herbed zucchinis and eggplants, and chicken. One of my
favorite food memories is slaughtering, cleaning, and cooking a flock of
chickens with fifty sassy twelve year old girls. Anne, my retreat center
partner in crime and I, would avidly study cookbooks and run out to the gardens
to harvest the vegetables we were learning about.
After that season, I worked at my highest paying job to
date. As a chauffeur. I learned about the real importance of inherently
rewarding work, which I was not getting. I left, to return to Star Island and
work as the baker.
At the end of that season, I went on to Mexico to
participate in WWOOF (Willing Workers On Organic Farms) in Mexico. I traveled
from Chiapas to Morelos, working on farms. Organic farming is in a very
different state in Mexico than in the U.S. They do not need to worry about
Whole Foods co-opting any movement, to say the least. However, the small farms run by Mexicans are bursting with vibrancy and the "we have no money so we have to think" mentality. I helped re-inhabit the abandoned mansions of the former presidents cousin. The mansions (3 of them, with a total of 45 bedrooms) were built illicitly with embezzled government funds during an economic recession. After the president was deposed, his family beat a hot trail out of there, and the mansions stood vacant for 15 years. The farmer and organizer petitioned the city, saying that since they were actually built with the peoples money, they should be for the people. They handed them over to him, and said-"go ahead and try" He was in the early stages when I worked with him-planting cucumbers and raising bunnies. Part of my purpose was just being a person in the mansion and convincing the stubborn bats that lived in my bedroom that they should find another home. When he heard that I could slaughter poultry, he had his workers chase down one of his very free range ducks. They presented it to me in a sack and asked me to make Christmas dinner.
From Mexico, I returned to Star Island, in the incarnation
of the head chef.
At the end of the season I moved to Brattleboro, Vermont. I
began working at Real Pickles. Real
Pickles makes gloriously delicious fermented vegetables from local farms. I learned the magic of lacto-fermentation. This is where I became infatuated with
feltmaking. See older posts for examples
of feltmaking. As a quick overview it’s creating permanent fabric using the
magical qualities of animal fibers. Felting, like cooking, is a creative yet
functional activity that is based around farmed materials. I looked for both
food and fiber that would surprise me and let me interact with them playfully.
Hence silk and supper.
From there it was a fateful Craigslist ad taking about
cooking seasonal food and friendly kitchen environment that brought me to the
Putney Inn to work with Chef Ismail. We immediately began exploring local farms
and ingredients. Our duties to prepare
food were always part science and art adventures. Amongst many, many other
things, I learned to make ice cream, break down rabbits and fish, smoke
pheasant and eggs, to plate food with aplomb. This is also when I got smitten with another artistic pursuit photography. I hauled my DSLR camera to work, and we quickly took many pictures of each plate, playing with the camera settings, before sending the food out, often to the vexation of the waiting waitresses.
The following summer, Matt and I went to work on his family
farm. His great grandfather farmed
chickens there, but it has been a gentlemens farm for the past two generations.
We began to rebuild the infrastructure- putting in perimeter fencing,
irrigation, and hoop houses. We lived in
a former chicken coop (for 1,000 chickens) that has been converted to a rustic
house. Occasionally, though, the chickens would come over for a visit:
From there, I joined my sister Madeline for and
apprenticeship at Prodigal Farm, a new goat dairy in Durham North Carolina. I
got to feed those hungry, growing baby goats (113 of them) their formula for
all three meals. I also milked the does, and made French style goat cheeses and
sourdough whey bread.It's true, goats are smart sweethearts, and working with them, even for 16 hours at a time, is inherently rewarding.
While looking through my photo cache of adorable baby goats,
I came across this one.
It’s one small pile of cheese molds, waiting to be washed. I
printed it for the owners, with the caption: “Beyond the mountains, more
mountains. Blessed are the cheese makers.”T When the owner was asked what surprised
her most about starting a dairy; she responded “I didn’t expect all the dishes.”
Though there is a disproportionately huge stack of dishes in cheese making,
each adventure I have mention has a stack of dishes behind it. This morning,
while bleaching the baseboards of the kitchen, I was mulling over how easy it
is to share pictures and stories of baby goats and perfect sorbets without mentioning
those hours of cleaning. Doing what I love is so much like being in love with a
person: I just do love the whole thing, the good and the hard, the fun and the
tedious, the beautiful and the dirty, because it’s all part of it.
I simultaneously worked at an artisanal cheese shop in
Durham, where I tasted the most glorious cheeses of my life and absorbed information
on all things cheese.
Now I am hard at work on bringing a restaurant into the
world. It’s a restaurant for both silk and supper! The Gleanery concept is that
everyone involved loves what they do. It’s a place for me to be a blossoming
feltmaker and a knowledgeable chef, a place for me to learn more about
enchanting crafts like woodworking from our table makers, and a place to teach
what I know.
