Summer 2008
The Believers
For some, good food is a life's calling
By Melissa Pasanen
Photographed by Natalie Stultz
The Philosopher
George Schenk, 55
American Flatbread. Waitsfield
He arrived in the Mad River Valley in 1979 to ski-bum, but a dishwashing job led to a cooking apprenticeship and a lifelong vocation. At the Tucker Hill Lodge working with now-famous chef Gary Danko, he had long conversations about "the nature of food, the art of food, the beauty of food.
During his quest for perfect bread, George Schenk had to squash the dough down to fit it into his first hand-built stone fireplace and "flat bread was born.
American Flatbread's wood-fired, earthen ovens now anchor licensed affiliates in California and Virginia as well as three Vermont restaurants. They even spawned a seven-location spin-off called Flatbread Company. The organic, local-ingredient-topped pizzas have been lauded by Gourmet and Food & Wine, and supermarkets bring both frozen flatbreads and Schenk's vision to a nationwide audience, the black and white boxes proclaiming things like "Food remembers … the acts of the hands and heart.
"For me, it wasn't ever just about slinging it on the plate, Schenk says. He is a charismatic advocate for small farmers, better school food, hunger awareness, and against what he dubs "bulldozer food. "Food is fundamental to our health and well-being, he writes. "Food is important enough to be careful.
Sure, he acknowledges, Flatbread might wield more influence if he'd taken some of the venture capital dangled in front of him over the years, but, "Flatbread has been a way to express things that are important to me, to explore what it means to feed others, to be a responsible corporate citizen … The goal was not to build a company; the goal was to create a life that I could look back on and be happy I lived.
The Chef
Doug Mack, 53
Mary's Restaurant, Inn at Baldwin Creek, Bristol
"Everybody needs a cold-frame, declares Doug Mack as he stands by the insulated vegetable beds that will supply his restaurant with greens and root vegetables through the winter. "I got a Rototiller this year, he adds proudly, the way another chef might boast of his state-of-the-culinary-art sous vide machine.
It's ironic that Mack — among the first chefs to support local farmers when he and his wife, Linda Harmon, opened the original Mary's in 1983 — now grows much of his own produce. "I'm so aware of self-sufficiency and I've got all this land, Mack explains. Back then, "There were people just knocking on your door with this great stuff. Of course you bought from them. I was totally the luckiest chef on the planet. Restaurants buying local wasn't common 25 years ago and when the Vermont Fresh Network was founded in 1996, Mack was recruited as its first president. "As a patriarch of the farm-fresh food movement in Vermont, he was the natural choice, says Pam Knights, who worked for New England Culinary Institute at the time.
Mack still buys plenty of local ingredients and throws summer Farmhouse Dinners featuring farmer partners. Last fall at a new dinner series at Mary's on current food topics, Shoreham farmer and state representative Will Stevens spoke about ensuring a future for Vermont agriculture. One way, Stevens suggested, is to support a model of agriculture based on relationships, "driven by personal values, more than pure economics.
The Next Generation
Pete Johnson, 36, Pete's Greens, Craftsbury
Bill Suhr, 36, Champlain Orchards, Shoreham
When Pete Johnson (right) returns to his alma mater to talk with Middlebury College students about his career in agriculture, he knows what he's up against. "They expect not to make any money, he says, "and work 90 hours a week. Johnson counters by sharing how it feels to be at the heart of the "eat local movement and the intellectual challenge of rebuilding what he calls "village-based food systems in which food is grown, processed and stored locally. "I tell them it's the new wave thing, it's cool … and there's profit there, too, he adds emphatically.
The average age of America's farmers is now 55, but there is hope in this newer crop of young Vermont farmers like Johnson, who has raised mostly vegetables for more than a decade, and Bill Suhr (left), who bought a 158-acre farm and apple orchard with the help of the Vermont Land Trust when he was just 26. Few grew up farming; they are motivated by environmental concerns; by the rewards of producing something tangible and wholesome; and by the belief that they can help recreate connections to the earth and within our communities.
But it's not just about high ideals. "Farmers need to be able to make a decent living too, says Suhr. They are savvy marketers and salespeople who can talk shelf-space and added-value products, and also wax poetic about the culinary potential of gnarly looking celery root or a new variety of apple. They have sought out new markets such as schools, colleges and restaurants, and created year-round, direct-to-consumer local foods packages. They have developed products like vegetable soup and apple sauce to use imperfect but edible inventory, and they've made big investments in storage and processing to extend the season.
To those who balk at a winter and spring full of root vegetables, Johnson says, "To me this is not a deprived way of living, it's a rich way of living. The two farmers agree that Vermonters have been largely receptive to their message.
"Consumers choosing apple cider over orange juice in February, says Suhr, "that's something that thrills me.
The Cheesemakers
Bob Reese, 51, and Allison Hooper, 48
Vermont Butter & Cheese Co., Websterville
In 1984, Allison Hooper, a dairy lab technician and former French-cheese apprentice, crossed paths with Vermont Department of Agriculture marketing director Bob Reese, who was looking for locally made, French-style goat cheese to serve at a state dinner. Hooper's fresh, creamy cheese was the hit of the party and inspired the two to create Vermont Butter & Cheese Co., a riskier venture than it seems today. At the time, Vermont cheese meant cheddar, dairy meant cow, and chefs and retailers asked skeptically, "Why would we buy an American cheese when we can buy a French cheese for half the cost? recounts Reese.
The business partners persevered. "Allison would make the cheese and I would put it in a Subaru wagon and drive 200 to 250 miles twice a week to our accounts, mostly co-ops, Reese continues. They developed cow's milk products like cultured butter and crème fraîche because they couldn't find enough goat's milk to make just cheese. "Real Vermonters really didn't milk goats, says Hooper sadly.
Much has changed since Hooper first daringly proclaimed Vermont "the Napa Valley of cheese. In 2007, Vermont Butter & Cheese sold over $8 million worth of award-winning products, including fresh and aged goat cheeses made with milk from about 25 family farms. Last summer, in her second year as president of the American Cheese Society, Hooper hosted the national conference in Vermont, now recognized as a mecca of the artisan cheese movement with more than 35 cheesemakers on the Vermont Cheese Council she and Reese founded 11 years ago.
There remain challenges, including continued efforts to source all their goat milk locally. They wish there were more dairy farmers like Marcel Massé of Craftsbury who made the switch to goats 15 years ago after meeting with Hooper, and claims, "It's the best thing we ever did. After all, says Reese, "Why would we continue to do this if we didn't think saving Vermont family farms was worthwhile?
The Lunch Lady
Bonnie Acker, 60
Burlington School District
Bonnie Acker is chopping broccoli with a student in the Edmunds Middle School kitchen. A local farmer has arrived to hand out raspberries with yogurt and someone from Senator Bernie Sanders' office is due shortly. Acker is focused, though, on chopping. "I was telling him that cutting up broccoli may seem small, she says later, "but that it's part of a bigger movement. I like sharing the bigger context with kids. We don't ask kids to be participants in the community nearly enough.
Acker has volunteered in the school since her daughter enrolled six years ago and Acker, who raised her on food largely from local farms, was disappointed in the cafeteria. "I wasn't an economist. I wasn't a chef. I wasn't a nutritionist, she says. "I was one mom looking for a way to help.
She started with pages of suggestions: blenders for smoothies, whole wheat pita pockets with falafel and sprouts. After Doug Davis, Burlington's food service director, shared the realities of school meals, she stepped back and partnered with a teacher to measure food waste and start composting. She also enlisted the expertise of the farm-to-school nonprofit, Vermont Food Education Every Day.
Today, the cafeteria and school hallways are bright with student paintings of produce, farmers' markets and landscapes. There are salad bars and local, kid-tested recipes. Acker has also taken up the cause of worker compensation. "It's only a full circle of change if you include the people doing the work, she says.
Davis and his team have been recognized nationally, but he says Acker deserves huge credit too. "A few years ago, you'd say ‘food system' to the kids and they'd say ‘What's that? A microwave?' Now we have farmers in our cafeteria and their names and vegetables in our salad bar … This community without question is so much better for Bonnie's contributions.
The Purveyor
Alex Gyori, 61
Brattleboro Food Co-op, Brattleboro
Among the contentious issues general manager Alex Gyori faced during 26 years with the Brattleboro Food Co-op was the matter of shopping carts, which were decidedly absent from the original storefront. Back in 1982, Gyori explains, "If you had shopping carts, the impression was you were a sellout. Then, he says, "Reality set in and a lot of people had children.
Gyori was a co-op member before becoming an employee; he understood the anti-shopping cart crowd. He also understood that "politics are one thing, but you have to run the business as a business. Running any business successfully for so long has challenges, but a co-op comes with extra expectations. "Many folks who join food co-ops, their food is a higher priority for them, Gyori says, "not just the taste of food, but the politics of food. Social justice, environmental responsibility and community are all part of the deal. "A lot of people support co-ops, he says, "because they're in line with their planetary values.
Over the years, there have been tough debates over whether to move out of downtown (no), whether to offer a full-service meat department (yes), and whether to unionize (no, but "that was up to the staff to decide). The co-op has survived and thrived. It offers robust education programs, has a long-standing commitment to local farmers, and operates a discount store selling natural foods overstocks and seconds. With annual sales of $15 million and 4,500 members, it is Vermont's second-largest co-op and is currently exploring its next phase.
Leading the co-op is not always easy, Gyori reflects, but it is richly rewarding. "We don't always see eye to eye, but we talk it over and we understand that each of us cares deeply, he says. "The co-op is where it is today because we just kept coming back at it.
The Salesman
Tom Biggs, 47
Vermont Quality Meats, Rutland
Tom Biggs came to Vermont as a landscape contractor, but his first project had so much beautiful pasture, he recalls, "that I had to fence it off and put animals on there. Raising lamb led to his involvement in Vermont Quality Meats in 1999, with Biggs pounding the pavements of Boston and Manhattan on behalf of his lamb and meat from other Vermont farmers. "I had Zagat's, he said. "I'd walk around, look at menus, look at price points and then introduce myself.
Although Biggs did not single-handedly create VQM, he has carried it forward to the point where four drivers now deliver Vermont-raised meats to high-profile chefs like Thomas Keller and Mario Batali. He does sell some locally, but Vermont is not a low-cost producer, he points out, and big city restaurants pay a better return to the farmer.
He doesn't drive the city runs much any more, but Biggs is constantly in his truck buzzing between farms and slaughterhouses with a phone glued to his ear. "I know animals. I know husbandry. I know nutrition. I can relate with farmers because I've done it, he says.
"I'm not just a sales guy at a desk on a phone. I'm out there.
Biggs understands, for example, that cows have only so many prime cuts. "He's great at finding homes for the stuff we had a hard time selling, like short ribs and ground beef, says Cambridge farmer Mark Boyden. "His heart is really into it. He wants to see Vermont farmers flourish.
The Teachers
Fran Voigt, 68 and Michel LeBorgne, 69
New England Culinary Institute, Montpelier
It all started in 1980 around a card table and a secondhand couch. After other entrepreneurial ideas were found to be illegal (deer-farming) or impossible (car rust repair), New England Culinary Institute's co-founder and president Fran Voigt recalls, "Someone from the central Vermont economic development office said, ‘The hospitality industry is having a hard time getting culinary school graduates to come here. Have you ever thought of a culinary school?'
Voigt, a former Goddard College administrator, remembered his physician father emphasizing the value of hands-on training and decided to apply the same model. The school's first culinary professional, Michel LeBorgne, agreed: "Their way was the way I learned in France. You learn by doing it. Graduates from others schools were very knowledgeable, but they didn't know how to cook.
Twenty-eight years later, NECI has been named the Cooking School of the Year by the International Association of Culinary Professionals and boasts a roster of high-profile alumni including television chef Alton Brown and rising stars across the country like Gavin Kaysen, executive chef at Café Boulud in Manhattan, and James Beard award-winner John Sundstrom, chef-owner of Seattle's Lark.
NECI grads also head up many of Vermont's favorite restaurants, more than meeting the original economic development goal, but the school has also spread the gospel of good food beyond dining out. Graduates work in the kitchens of local hospitals, colleges, schools, high school technical education centers, and even fundraise for a food bank.
And in 1996, with the state Department of Agriculture, NECI co-founded the Vermont Fresh Network, an independent nonprofit that supports local agriculture by connecting chefs and cooks with farmers and food producers.
"We opened the school at the right time, reflects LeBorgne, now vice president for culinary affairs. "Something was moving. People had had enough of overcooked vegetables.
The Social Conscience
Joseph Kiefer, 54, and Martin Kemple, 47
Food Works at Two Rivers Center, Montpelier
Joseph Kiefer was working in environmental education in 1982 when he was invited to join a task force on hunger created to address a sharp increase in need. "I was shocked, Kiefer recalls. "I didn't really know that there was this kind of crisis here in Vermont … It looked like beautiful farms and healthy communities and everyone was fine.
In contrast to the Depression when Vermont fared relatively well, Kiefer learned that we are now more vulnerable to hunger. "It is the quiet, hidden secret of many Vermonters that they go hungry, he says. "I learned how many people live just above the poverty line and how we're not passing down the traditions and skills of our agrarian culture: how to grow our food, how to preserve our food, that way of life, that set of sustainable skills. Kiefer soon found a kindred spirit in Martin Kemple who had worked in Africa where he saw severe drought, but also survival based on a close relationship with the land. "I thought we had something to learn from those communities, Kemple says.
The pair founded the nonprofit Food Works in 1987 with the goal to eradicate hunger in Vermont by educating and empowering people to feed themselves. For more than 20 years, they have worked with affordable-housing communities, schools, senior centers, and other groups to ensure access to good, fresh food for all. Among their programs are a farm that grows vegetables exclusively for emergency food sites; a food distribution network linking local farmers with meal providers for at-risk populations; and a summertime gardening and cooking program designed to address the seasonal spike in childhood hunger.
Food Works is in the process of converting an 1836 landmark farm into its headquarters, a hands-on food and agricultural education center with a teaching kitchen and community root cellar. "Our name is a sentence, a statement, Kiefer says. "Food does work. It nourishes people, it brings people together.
The Stewards
David Marvin, 60, Butternut Mountain Farm, Morrisville
Millicent Rooney, 80, Monument Farms, Weybridge
Milk and maple could well be named the two pillars of Vermont agriculture and Millicent Rooney and David Marvin represent families with significant legacies in each.
Rooney grew up washing milk bottles at her family's Monument Farms dairy and a photo hanging in the front office shows her circa 1945 standing next to a delivery truck filled with blocks of ice. After she married, "I never really expected to come back, she says, but her parents and brother needed help, so in 1959 she and her husband returned to Vermont.
Rooney's parents started with 26 acres in 1930. The family now owns 1,700 acres, milks about 400 cows, and is the only conventional cow dairy in Vermont that still bottles and markets its own milk. Rooney's son, Jon, and two of her nephews run the business, although Mrs. Rooney, as she is known to all, works every day and has no retirement plans. "She still keeps a tight rein, Jon Rooney jokes.
As the fourth generation comes on board, Rooney believes Monument Farms will endure. "We take pride in our farms. We're very involved in the community. We're family oriented and we're service oriented, she says. "All the farmland here, we're trying to keep it from being developed. We have a heritage to continue.
David Marvin also grew up dairying but, "I knew from a really early age, I didn't want to have anything to do with cows. Instead, he followed the footsteps of his father, a respected maple researcher at the University of Vermont. "If you're a forester, you'd better be pretty humble, he says, "there's so much we don't fully understand.
Butternut Mountain Farm started with a 300-acre sugaring operation in Johnson and has grown into the largest handler of Vermont maple products nationwide. "I take a great deal of satisfaction in working with really great people — the producers, says Marvin, "and working with a resource that is undiminished even as we take our livelihood from it year after year.
His daughter now works with him, as does a son part-time, and last year his first grandchild came to the sugarhouse. "It is very important to think about what we were given and what we leave, he says. "Stewardship is a far greater aspiration than ownership.