A Summer of Plenty
Summer Bounty
Last week, we served a perfect summer tomato dish: our amazing collection of truly vine-ripened tomatoes, a tomato water that is the essence of summer, garlic chips, and gorgeous fresh ricotta. As I was admiring the bounty that the farm has given me to play with, it occurred to me that this dish was the culmination of over a year’s work and planning.
Having been totally spoiled by my time in Napa Valley, I knew that we were going to have to grow the best possible tomatoes on our farm. The High Tunnel we built in 2016 was a first step. Subsequent smaller tunnels have added to our range and cultivation possibilities. Over a decade of experimentation with different varieties has refined our vision. Each year, our farmers prepare the beds, amend the soil as needed, select the seeds, and plan the spacing, trellising, and timing of the crop. The first seeds touch soil as early as late February and will be repotted and transplanted more than once before they finally make their home in the tunnels. Our planning for next year’s tomatoes is happening right now, as we savor and evaluate the crop before us.
The dishes the kitchen makes are far more than the work of the cooks; the farm is what provides us with exceptional products that any chef would envy.
Farm Stand News
Because our kitchen could not function at anywhere near the level it does without the produce the farm gives us, I have, over the last several years, made it a point to always emphasize to our team that the farm exists for the restaurant. The farming, unfortunately, cannot support itself financially at the demanding level we achieve. This is not a production farm that works to maximize output and seek efficiency. We make decisions about what we grow and how we grow it based on the quality and excellence of the product alone. We choose to grow things like our Corona Beans, asparagus, and certain varieties of tiny tomatoes that do not yield well and are labor-intensive to harvest and process. Economically, these are decisions a farm would not make. From a culinary perspective, these are the things that we want to eat and which set us apart.
Because the farm is the heart of the restaurant, and because farming done the way we do it does not pay for itself with produce sales alone, we have struggled with what we should do when we inevitably have an excess of some items. There is always more than we need for the restaurant, but not enough to fully stock our farm stand. A farm stand is very labor-intensive; every bit of salad mix or bunch of carrots needs to be washed, sorted, bagged, banded, tied, and labeled for sale. The POS system needs to be updated and inevitably crashes during the busiest part of our day, requiring attention from our IT person, Tyla. It takes many hours from our farmers each week to make this happen, and at the end of the day, we have less to offer than in past years because we are not growing larger amounts of crops specifically for the farm stand.
Because of these reasons—and because Orchard Kitchen is a special, rarified treat for our diners rather than how they feed themselves day in and day out, and because we have always believed strongly in supporting locally sourced food and eliminating food insecurity in our community—we have made a decision: Orchard Kitchen will be donating our excess farm production to our neighbor, Good Cheer Food Bank, rather than running our farm stand.
This does not mean that we are totally abandoning the farm stand. In the spring, we envision selling starts, as this coincides with a period when we are less busy and have the bandwidth to manage it. We also foresee selling excess tree fruit in years when it is available, so that the community can get some of our amazing plums, quince, and apples when we have more than we need. Additionally, we are working on a Fall Bounty Basket idea for later this year, with seasonal offerings of squash, value-added products, and other farm treats. But for the most part, we are choosing to support local food security rather than operating a farm stand for profit. We hope you will understand.
Chef Vincent
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Head to Toast to book you Summer Experience with us. Reservations available Thursday through Sunday. July 9 through the first week of September.
