october-2009

PHOTOGRAPH BY TOM WHITE (BERNARDS INN)
McCrady’s restaurant is up to his elbows in
rich soil harvesting Sea Island red peas, he
sees much more than just bushels of humble
legumes as the payoff for his toil. For Brock,
who hosts occasional meals and teaches a
class on sustainable agriculture to Culinary
Institute of Charleston students on the farm,
this heritage vegetable has an important
story to tell.
Also called a cowpea, the Sea Island red
pea was brought by enslaved Africans to
Charleston’s shores in the 1600s. A staple of
the West African diet, it supplied vital nitrogen
to the soil in which it grew, and its tender
first shoots made an ideal and much-needed
food for livestock. An early harvest of it
was added to leftover broken bits of rice for
Gullah-style “reezy peezy,” or rice and peas,
also known as “hoppin’ John.” And when
dried on the vine, it became a year-round
commodity, ground into flour for baked
goods and used to dredge fish for frying.
“If we let these heirloom varieties slip
away, we lose the history along with them.
That can’t happen,” Brock says.
For close to three years, Brock—with
the help of volunteers—has been farming to
provide McCrady’s with a direct source of
organic produce, chicken, eggs and cured
pork from heritage breed pigs. The project
has been so successful that the restaurant’s
owners recently expanded their land holdings
to include Thornhill, a 100-acre farm
in nearby McClellanville, SC.
With a full-time farmer partner now
on board, Brock is able to concentrate his
efforts on tilling a 4-acre plot sewn solely
with antebellum strains of vegetables and
grains. “These crops offer a timeline of
agriculture in America,” Brock says. “And
the old varieties, including cow peas, farro
and Jimmy Red corn, are incredibly beautiful
and delicious.”
People like Brock, Volny, Barber, Bashaw
and the Kunzes all feel a responsibility to
improve the way food is grown and served.
And while the majority of food produced
in America is still raised in an industrial
setting, the movement towards more traditional
practices is gaining ground.
“We wouldn’t be having this conversation
10 years ago,” Barber says. “And the
conversation we’ll have 10 years from now
will be that much further along.”
Fruits Of Their Labor
In addition to bringing meals back to the
land, many chefs are farming to supply their
restaurants with the freshest ingredients.
Executive Chef Corey Heyer,
along with two cooks, farms
the land of The Bernards Inn
(www.bernardsinn.com; 908-
766-0002) in Bernardsville,
NJ (61 miles from Allentown/
Bethlehem, PA) to provide
the restaurant with arugula,
seven kinds of mint, eggplant,
potatoes, edible flowers and
habanero peppers. Heyer is at
the farm eight hours a week to
weed and harvest—and he’ll
sometimes get the inspiration
for a new dish.
Executive Chef Ryan Hardy
heads up the kitchen at Montagna
(www.thelittlenell.com;
970-920-4600), the restaurant
at The Little Nell ski resort in
Denver. The menu is full of
ingredients from his 15-acre
Rendezvous Farm. In addition
to growing produce and raising
livestock, Hardy is hands-on in
other ways: He cures prosciutto
and makes his own cheese and
fruit preserves.
Chef Frank McClelland’s day
starts at 6:30am, when he feeds
the animals at Apple Street Farm
(www.applestreetfarm.com), the
14-acre organic farm he lives on
in Essex, MA. Mid-morning, he
leaves to deliver the day’s harvest
to his restaurants in Boston: the
AAA Five-Diamond L’Espalier
(www.lespalier.com; 617-262-
3023) and Sel De La Terre (www.
seldelaterre.com; three locations).
Guests can arrange private
tours of the farm, which will
eventually host dinners.
OCTOBER 2009 GO MAGAZINE
069