Q&A

DEAR NEW FARM:
We are working to introduce and open a food-service facility encompassing Catskills Pie Kitchen; a cooperative pie/coffee shop; and a cooperative licensed kitchen, packaging, labeling, and refrigerated-storage facility catering to retail, wholesale, manufacturing, mail-order and storage locally in Delaware County, N.Y. The pie kitchen will use mainly organically grown fruit and ingredients sourced within our region.

We are seeking interested parties to contact us directly to find out how they can share in the use and growth of this project. It will be run as a nonprofit cooperative for the members and run by the members democratically. Please email RoboticDolphin@yahoo.com or to the Catskillag@yahoogroups.com with comments.

Drew Meyer

DEAR DREW:
We wanted to share your vision with the rest of our readers, not only to help you with your networking—before we get on our soapbox, try www.farmtotable.org for potential collaborative partners in your area—but also to provide inspiration for others who might be dreaming up similar ventures.

One thing we can say for sure is that you are not alone. A sea change is swelling on a tsunami scale. People are beginning to think radically differently about their relationship with their food, and, like the Hundredth Monkey phenomenon, this higher level of awareness seems to be approaching a critical mass. As Leopold Center Director Fred Kirschenmann commented in a recent New Farm interview, Agriculture of the Middle, there is a new breed of conscious consumers who want more than cheap hollow calories; they want authenticity, a story behind every mouthful and ethics in every bite.

Books such as Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation and essays by New York Times writer Michael Pollan and others outlining the consequences of a food system gone awry are finding their way into popular culture, and people are seeking alternatives. These people are counting on folks with vision such as you and your community of friends, Drew, to provide those choices. Folks who put the heart in hash browns such as Tod Murphy, founder of the Farmer’s Diner in Barre, Vermont, where you can rest assured nothing on your plate traveled more than 60 miles (most of it, much less). Righteous restaurateurs like Judy Wick of the White Dog Café (www.whitedog.com) in Philadelphia, where locally grown food, award-winning cuisine, and social activism are daily fare.

The list of is extensive and growing. (We’ve actually considered writing Schlosser to suggest that he author a companion--Slow Food Nation--to chronicle what’s right with the way we Americans are learning (or relearning) to bring our food from the farm to the table, and to tell the story of the local food revolution. We’re glad to hear that you’re a part of it.

Build it, Drew; we think they will come.

NF

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