THE FARMER AND CHEF SERIES: WHAT FARMERS DO WRONG.

I'm walking beside Philip as we pass what I see as a thoroughly solid market table. It's not diverse, but it's stacked high with some of the better looking produce I've seen yet––healthy kale, turnips, radishes––all vibrant and fresh. Noticing that Philip hardly gives the table anything more than a passing glance, though, I ask him what he thinks about these farmers. He says they have some good stuff sometimes, but the price point is often too high, and they don't really try to work with him. And like that we're back in the truck and driving off to another market.If I can emphasize anything that I learned this day traveling around with Philip and Owen, it's the value of the actual relationship. The price points of our farm can be high, too. I know that. But they still come back to buy from us. Why? I didn't ask them this question directly, but I would assume it's because we will work with them, and because we get along well. So even when they don't want something we have, I almost always try to bring them something they do want so as not to waste their time––in fact, every farmer we spent any real time with that day, pulled something special for R.A.D. from underneath the table. But this isn't about what farmers do right––we'll get to that in later posts––this is about what farmers do to make someone like Philip and Owen lose interest.When I ask Owen to give me an example of what a farmer does wrong he sites one specific farmer who was often combative and would refuse to sell them things they wanted because she didn't want it to ruin her display. Notice the past tense in that sentence, because they stopped even trying. As a farmer, I get the empty table thing a little. I understand that you may not want someone coming first thing in the morning and taking all of your produce, leaving part or all of your table bare for the rest of the day, and you with nothing to do (most markets ask you stay until the end of the day before packing up). An empty table does not bring in customers. That being said, I know few farmers whose goal is to have anything less than an empty table at the end of the day. That's at least part of the point––to sell the food you bring. Also, with a good relationship to a chef, they may tell you what they are looking for in advance––"can you have twenty pounds of this for me next week?"––so you can plan for it and keep it off your table in the first place.Anyway, maybe this farmer, or the farmers I started this post with, just don't care to sell to restaurants. Because not all farmers do. Not all farmers see the value in it which begs the question, what is the value in selling to restaurants? At a busy market, you may have no reason to get rid of your produce early. You may have other regular customers who will pay full price for everything until you completely sell out week after week. So is it even worth building up that relationship? If they're paying a lower price, why should a farmer bother?For me, for starters, having worked in high level restaurants, I enjoy selling to them. I enjoy foraging or growing items I wouldn't normally bother with for a market table. I also like the idea of someone buying in bulk from us when I do not know what the market turnout will be––when I do not know what other farmers are bringing. They want forty pounds of tomatoes from the front table? Great. Because everyone else has them, too, and who knows if we'll be able to sell them otherwise. If we see or suspect we're the only ones who brought tomatoes that day, we might just ask full price for all of them, which means the chefs may not buy them. If I know I can get full price for something over the course of the day, I won't discount it and they understand that. They understand about the price because we have a good working relationship. So, finding the value in selling to chefs isn't much of a struggle for us.Though I know farmers who are successful at doing this, I don't want it to sound like an advertisement for selling only to chefs, thus neglecting the regular market customer. Not at all. In fact, we don't even remotely do that. We sell primarily to customers through a CSA, then we sell mostly specific, requested items to chefs like Philip and Owen (most of which we actually also do give in our CSA––daylillies for instance). Sure, they buy off our table, but mostly we bring them something they needed or wanted. Anyhow, I think it's important to consider the potential––the business potential––in building a relationship with chefs. Because the truth is you, along with the rest of the farmers, may have a bumper crop of amazing looking kale one week––more than you will ever sell in one fall market day––and the person who the chef is going to buy a pile from is the farmer who has made the effort to build a relationship. Even at a small discount––and they're not expecting free food here––it's a nice bit of security.How do you make this connection? Just stop them and talk to them. See what they need, sure, but more so, just tell them what you have. Shake their hands, tell them you see them at the market all the time and you'd love to work with them. Believe me, if you make the effort, they will take notice, and they will look at your table.There may be more posts on what farmers do wrong, but I say next week we do a post about what farmers do right, and what chefs do wrong. So stay tuned. Well, not literally. Go work, then check back next week. Oh, and feel free to add some commentary below––I'd love to hear what you think about the farmer/chef relationship.- Jesse.

OUR FIRST OFFICIAL ACT OF PARENTING.

Further loves our water filter––it's kind of maddening. Now that he has learned to crawl, we will set him on the floor and he will use his newfound mobility to move swiftly to the water filter, reach for the tap, and try to dump all the water onto the floor.We are never far away, so we usually we just stand there patiently, gently blocking his hand from grabbing the tap while saying "No, Further, we do not play with the water filter," over and over. He then just looks at us curiously and tries again, but again we reject it. Finally, he'll get bored or frustrated and move on. But we don't want to just say "no no no" all the time. What we want to do is discourage him when using something is inappropriate, but then offer an emphatic "yes" when it is time to use it. So now, when we need to fill up a water bottle or a glass, we take Further over to the water filter and let him pull the tap, show him what it's for, then let him shut it off.Now, do we think our nine month old will suddenly get it? No. Not at all. We do not think he will just suddenly lose interest in the water filter at inappropriate times (update: he hasn't). If anything, he will have more interest in it than ever because we let him play with it for once. But if we continue to stop him from playing with it when there is no purpose, and let him use it when there is, then perhaps we can get him to understand that the water filter is a tool, or especially, if I may stretch this idea out a bit, that the stove is a tool.We are very diligent about the wood stove. So when it's going, we take him to it and let him watch me build a fire. We then hold his hand near by and let him feel the warmth while saying "HOT." As he gets older we'll let him help us collect kindling, build and (very far down the road) start the fire. Not because he will be able to do these things on his own anytime soon, but so he can see how it works, and get him used to the difference between a tool and a toy––create a habit out of using them correctly.Really, our goal as parents is not to just teach our child to be good or helpful or respectful, but to habituate him to it. We want him to look at the water filter and think, "If I want to use this, I need to fill something." Or at very least, "I can use this to fill something," which we conceded may be a glass, or a boot. Slowly, however, the time-and-place factor will become apparent. So in the same way your parents may have habituated you to clearing the table, or making your bed, or saying please and thank you, we want to habituate Further to everything we do. We want to habituate him to being helpful. Habituate him to being respectful of others. Habituate him to curiosity, to the joys of work, to eating well. Instead of always explaining to him why we do things, or just hoping he figures it out on his own, we want to also show him, involve him, and be consistent. Especially when he shows interest.But what do we know? We have only had a child since December so really, we have done no real parenting yet. Up until this crawling thing, he has just been another farm animal. Now, however, the real fun is beginning. And like our birth plan, we hope to stick to our parenting plan as much as we can (though like our birth plan, we know it needs to be malleable). But if nothing else, maybe it will save us some water.- Jesse.

THE FARMER AND CHEF SERIES: CHEF TO FARMER, NOT FARM TO TABLE.

In the name of full disclosure, Rolf and Daughters might be my favorite restaurant. I have worked and eaten at many great establishments over the years, but R.A.D.––as it so appropriately abbreviates––has served two of my most memorable meals. That being said, I suspected this may be the case long before I ever came in for dinner. The chef/owner, Philip Krajeck, has been coming to our farmers' market for several years now to buy produce. And for Philip, quality is paramount. He has bought loads of produce from us over those years but he has also turned down perfect-looking July carrots when the flavor wasn't there. He has passed on chanterelles when they seemed a little beyond their prime. I've always felt you can tell a good wine by simply talking to the winemaker, and I like to think you can tell a good restaurant by simply watching the chef at market. So I had no doubts, by this measure, that Rolf and Daughters would be good.But Rolf and Daughters isn't just a good restaurant, it's also an uniquely subtle one. The atmosphere is lively, italicized by fresh, creative food (and drink), that seems to prefer its focus be more on the experience than the chef––the experience than the farmer. No one at R.A.D. would likely describe the place as a farm-to-table, despite the fact that the chefs buy a vast majority of their food from local farmers. In fact, in the day I spent with them, they filled an entire pick-up truck full of food from no less than six different small farms. But this, as impressive as it is, is just not something they feel compelled to advertise. There are no blackboards with the farmers' names, no farmer portraits on the walls, nothing in their literature about farm-to-anything (in fact, nowhere in their online profiles does it even say who the chef is, let alone the farmers). They simply let the food advertise this for them.Curious about this, I asked Philip and his sous chef Owen Clark why Rolf and Daughters doesn't play up the farm-to-table thing, since they do it so legitimately. They both said they'd prefer to simply serve the best tasting food, and let the quality of that food reveal to people that it came from good farmers. "Doing it quietly," Philip added, "makes a bigger reverberation." And it has. Rolf and Daughters has already in their young existence been heaped with accolades including the number three Best New Restaurant from Bon Appétit in 2013. Moreover, you know it's reverberating because they are a mid- to high-end restaurant––in a city filled with mid- to high-end restaurants––that stays packed. In other words, when people want a nice meal, they may try other restaurants, but they go back to Rolf and Daughters. Again and again.Anyway, I felt it was important to profile Rolf and Daughters in this fashion to give you an idea of the type of chefs I was utilizing for this project. The ultimate goal is to understand how farmers can better serve chefs, and chefs can better serve farmers, so I needed a restaurant who greatly relied on these relationships to get to the bottom of it all. Next week, we'll dive a little further into those details––what farmers do right, what farmers do wrong, and we could all be doing better––so stay tuned.- Jesse.

THE FARMER AND CHEF SERIES: AN INTRODUCTION.

This past Saturday I spent the morning going from farmers' market to farmers' market with the chef-owner and sous chef of Rolf and Daughters in Nashville ––Philip Krajeck and Owen Clark, respectively––as they did their shopping. This was, as you may imagine, fairly generous on their part. As a farmer who sells them produce, it was an admittedly audacious request to be allowed to tag along to other markets and see how they dealt with other farmers. But Philip and Owen said yes, and I think they said yes because they saw some of the same potential in it I did––that this could be a good opportunity for a farmer and some chefs to sit down and better understand one another.... over coffee and hip hop.So after some mild debate on what to do with what I learned––and what I might learn later when I go in to Rolf and Daughters to stage for a day––I've decided to do a series of posts on the farmer and chef, free for anyone who might be curious. I don't know what the end results will be yet, but I do hope the–-forgive me––journey will be helpful not just to farmers, but to farmers and chefs alike. Because alike is what they aren't, really. They can't be––not entirely. One of them needs to grow the food, and the other needs to prepare it in mass quantity, each profession requiring its own vastly complicated, and vastly life-consuming, skill set.The first post will be going up later today so check back. Maybe we can bridge a few gaps, or just reinforce some bridges that already exist. Because there is no reason that these two occupations, which rely so heavily on one another for success, shouldn't do everything they can to better understand each other.- Jesse.