A rainy afternoon on the farm

By Mollie Chen
On Friday, my editor Gully and I took a little field trip up the Hudson to Pontico Hills, New York, to Blue Hill at Stone Barns. There, we met up with Tim Stark, who is writing a feature on farm dinners for us, to do a little research (but mostly just to poke around the farm and eat). I had been to Chef Dan Barber's Blue Hill in Manhattan, where the food is bright and fresh, but the setting unmistakably urban. I don't know what I was expecting - a few gardens and vegetable plots perhaps, a cow or two - but this was a real, working farm.

While Gully settled in near the fire with her New Yorker (Manolos not being optimal farm footwear), Tim and I toured the grounds with Stone Barns Center's farmer Jack Algiere. The weather was less than pleasant - drizzly and a chilly fifty-five degrees - but somehow made the grounds look misty beautiful.

Jack and Tim discussing compost, including a
tangent into kelp and crop rotation

There are actually two entities: the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, a non-profit organization that works to bridge the gap between food production and consumers and encompasses produce and livestock operations, A farmers market, and educational programs; and Blue Hill at Stone Barns, the Barber family’s rightly celebrated restaurant. Algiere, who was hand-picked by the original four seasons farmer, Eliot Coleman, is in charge of all the produce grown at Stone Barns.

The conversation soon soared way over my head, as Tim and Jack started jabbering away about compost and broadforking, but everything came back to a few key points. For one, the farm has to support itself in order to be successful. Even with its unique situation - in 2001, David Rockefeller donated the stone buildings and 80 acres of land to the Stone Barns Restoration Corporation - the farm aims to maximize every tiny bit of space. "Right now, we're at three cents a square foot for the greenhouse," Algiere says, which is what they need to make a day in order to support themselves.

To do so, the farm has to be incredibly focused in what they grow. They sell to both Blue Hill and to the community (through a thrice-weekly farmers market) and they know their customers; for Barber, Algiere aims to offer him something that he can't get elsewhere, like smaller, more specialty lettuces, or exotic vegetables, while for the weekly grocery shoppers, he can offer more bread-and-butter items. Ultimately, he explains, "We're trying to be an example of how something like this can work in a community where people can support it."

Westchester County, where the Stone Barns is located, has about 35 farms but the majority of those are equine because they are the only ones that can be profitable.

At about this point, my notes dissolve into a messy smear of blue ink, an indication that the rain had started up in earnest. We were standing in a field of sweet potatoes when my frozen fingers and toes just couldn't take it anymore and I gently interrupted Tim and Algiere's animated conversation about topsoil and cover crops. We returned to the Stone Barns complex and the cozy, upscale rustic Blue Hill restaurant, where I thawed out by the fire with a restorative glass of Pinot Noir.

In the restaurant, Tim, Gully, and I rewarded ourselves with the five-course Farmer's Feast, which Barber says makes up about 70 percent of the orders on a given night. It makes sense, seeing as how Barber's menu is entirely determined with what he gets from Stone Barns Center, the Blue Hill Farm, local farmers, and the greenmarket. "It's one part of being a chef that is taken away from you," Barber says, " and it's interesting."

Because of the transparent nature of the restaurant - what you see is what you eat - Barber says people are often willing to try things that they might not ordinarily. "Last night we had three baby lambs for dinner service and we had forty requests for baby lamb brains." Perhaps, he reasons, If people are going to eat lamb brains they'll do it in a place where you can see the animals and you know they're being treated in a humane way.

Every night, Blue Hill works from a repertoire of about thirty dishes - ten that are somewhat regular, ten that change seasonally, and ten that are new for that night. Which means that there are endless permutations of what you might get on any given visit. Our feast began with procession of amuses - including a delicious oyster shooter topped with American caviar, a "tomato burger" made with almost candied compote spread between a mini sweet roll, and fresh sage threaded through a sliced potato and fried - and then marched on to the "real" courses.

Fittingly, some of our favorite dishes were those that seemed to have come straight from the farm garden, with little embellishment: the "roots and fruits," a deep bowl of lightly dressed chestnuts, carrots, grapes and sweet potatoes; and a striking composed dish of celtuce (think celery and lettuce, our server explained) laid over a smear of pine nut butter and tangy yogurt. For dessert, I was seduced by spicy black pepper ice cream served with a tiny demitasse cup overflowing with a perfect fromage blanc soufflé. As we drove back to Manhattan in the rain, I only wished that the farm had a small inn to stay the night.

Getting out of Town: Blue Hill at Stone Barns

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